In Flash of the Spirit, his classic study of African and African-American art and philosophy, Thompson quotes one Yoruba explaining that “Coolness of character is so important to our lives. Cool is the correct way you represent yourself to a human being.” Cool is one of the essential elements of Yoruba style. It is high praise for a Yoruba to say of someone that his or her “heart is cool.” The cool heart, however, is not exclusive to the Yoruba. For example, the anthropologist John Miller Chernoff writes in African Rhythm and African Sensibility of a Dagomban drummer living in what is now Western Nigeria who told him that music is served best when cool: “Unless you cool your heart, your drumming will not stand.” Dagombans told Chernoff that one who has learned well “has cooled his heart.”

In 1947, Dizzy Gillespie defied the odds and hit the road with an avant-garde bebop big band. Even with Chano Pozo igniting the audience, a European tour was a roller coaster that lurched from one city to another making great music but plagued by amateurish production. The next autumn, Gillespie booked a tour of the American South. The one white guy in Gillespie’s band, piano player Al Haig, refused to go.

Chano Pozo hated Dixie. He hated riding filthy Jim Crow railroad cars. He hated going through the back door. He hated that Diz had to keep the band’s best arrangements locked away in the music trunk because the local concert promoters wouldn’t let people dance. In November 1948 in Raleigh, North Carolina, somebody stole his congas, and Pozo decided to go back to New York to buy new ones. “I drove him to the train station,” Gillespie recalled. “I saw the train leave. I didn’t know that would be the last time I would see him alive.”

Once he got back to Spanish Harlem, Pozo decided not to rejoin the band until it left the South. Meanwhile, he bought fifteen suits in every color of the rainbow and doused himself with expensive cologne. When he needed money, he went to his record company, got a box of 78s on credit, and sold them for fifty cents each on the street. According to Miles Davis, Pozo was a heavy cocaine user. “He was the baddest conga player on the scene,” Davis told Quincy Troupe. “But he was a bully. He used to take drugs from people and wouldn’t pay them. People were scared of him because he was a hell of a street fighter and would kick a motherfucker’s ass in a minute.”

Simon Joub’s restaurant on Lenox Avenue near 116th Street was noted for its fine Cuban pastry, its strong black coffee, and its conga drums. After Pozo bought his new congas, he hung around Joub’s, stretching his drumskins with hot wax. As he did, he attracted a crowd that included a decorated World War II veterano and influential neighborhood bookie who called himself Cabito. Cabito sold Chano Pozo twenty-five pitos, or joints. At first, everything was chevere (Afro-cuban for “cool”). But that night, Pozo turned his friends on—and they didn’t get high. So, Pozo went looking for Cabito. He found him hanging out at a restaurant with friends. Pozo berated the dealer for selling him such low-grade tanga, and one thing led to another. Pozo knocked Cabito out, took five dollars from his wallet, then walked out.

The next morning, December 2, 1948, the early morning sun was glinting through the windows of El Rio, a bar at 111th Street and Lenox Avenue, as Chano Pozo, dressed in the same black pinstripe suit he’d been partying in all night, eased a nickel into the jukebox. “Manteca” was playing when Cabito walked in. Cabito and Pozo tried to stare each other down, and Cabito split. When he returned a minute later, Pozo and a barmaid were dancing. Cabito called out Pozo’s name. Pozo turned his back and walked toward the bar. Cabito emptied his pistola into Pozo, who collapsed backward, his eyes rolling up and his arms splayed outwards as if crucified. Cabito laid his gun down on the bar and asked the barmaid to call the police.

At his trial, Cabito told the judge that he couldn’t live with the embarrassment of having had his butt kicked by Chano Pozo in front of his friends, so he was left with no choice but to take him out. The judge must have understood, because he gave Cabito only five years. Chano Pozo’s body was shipped back to Havana, and poor people turned out by the thousands to welcome it home. Legends have swirled around the death of Chano Pozo ever since. Many say he died because he’d done the uncoolest thing in the world: he’d offended the gods by turning their secret rhythms into pop hits.