Mambo is the up-tempo, driving Cuban dance rhythm developed in the late 1930s by Israel "Cachao" López and his brother Orestes — and then exported wholesale to New York in the 1940s, where it became the engine of mambo-era big-band music and, eventually, of salsa. Compared to cha-cha (in four, medium), mambo pulses in two (you feel it in two halves, not four quarters) and runs faster — typically ♩=180–230 if you're counting the underlying quarter note, which is why most charts notate it in cut time.
Mambo on the kit is built around the mambo bell pattern, a syncopated cowbell figure played by the timbale player on the large mambo bell (campana). It's not just quarter notes like the cha-cha bell — it's a two-bar pattern with accents on specific beats and "&'s" that lock into son clave. You can play it on the ride bell, on a mounted cowbell, or on the bell of the floor tom for a darker version.
The Mambo Bell — Notes
The mambo bell pattern (across one bar of son clave's 3-side, or two bars in 4/4): 1, &-of-2, 3, 4, &-of-4 — heavy on the downbeats, with a syncopated &-of-2 and a pickup &-of-4 that pushes into the next bar. There are several common phrasings; we'll use the most standard one. The bell does not match the clave note-for-note — it complements the clave, accenting some clave hits and not others.
Underneath the Bell
Kick: syncopated, usually accenting the bombo note (the &-of-2 on the 3-side of the clave) and beat 4. Cross-stick: usually plays the missing notes of the clave, filling in what the bell doesn't catch. The whole texture is woven — multiple voices each catching a different piece of the clave, none of them on their own carrying it.