"Manteca" is a 1947 jazz composition credited to Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller. Pozo wrote the layered guajeos of the A section and the introduction, Gillespie wrote the bridge, later extended to sixteen bars, and Fuller wrote the horn arrangement. Mario Bauzá had recommended Pozo to Gillespie as a Cuban percussionist. The big band first performed the tune at Carnegie Hall on 29 September 1947. Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra recorded it in December 1947, and the 78 rpm single followed in 1948.
Gary Giddins of the Village Voice called it one of the most important records ever made in the United States. It is the first tune rhythmically based on the clave to become a jazz standard, and one of the earliest foundational Afro-Cuban jazz tunes, although it is often wrongly cited as the first authentic Latin jazz tune, since "Tanga" came earlier. From spring 1948 the band played it with Pozo's abakuá chants. A live recording at the Royal Roost in New York on 9 October 1948 is Pozo's last recording of the tune; he was shot and killed in Harlem two months later. Bobby Parker's 1961 hit "Watch Your Step" was based on its riff. Later versions include those by Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, Oscar Peterson and Paquito D'Rivera.
