Israel “Cachao” Lopez, the Cuban bassist and composer who has invented the mambo music style, died Saturday at the age of 89.

Known by his fans as Cachao, the composer fell ill in the past week from kidney failure and died surrounded by his family at the Coral Gables Hospital, as Reuters reports.

Cachao was born in Cuba in 1918, in the middle of a musical family and he had already become a very talented bassist as a teenager. He left the communist country in the early 1960s and went to the United States, where he performed until the last months of his life.

In the 1930s, while experimenting with his multi-instrumentalist brother Orestes Lopez, he discovered mambo, which resulted from the two brothers’ improvisational work with danzon, and elegant musical style popular in that age. In an interview with the Miami Herald in 1995, Cachao said that he and his brother had first created a faster type of mambo, but they had to invent a slower version so the people could dance on it.

“We would take turns at the piano and try things out,” Cachao said in the above mentioned interview. “And that's how things came up. We realized then that this rhythm was not common. And it was faster than it is today. . . . But it was too fast for dancing, and we were six months without any work. People didn't like it. When we slowed it down, then it became danceable.”

The bassist went through a period of obscurity in the 1980s, after moving to Miami. But his career revived in 1990, following the documentary  “Cachao ... Como Su Ritmo No Hay Dos” (Like His Rhythm There Is No Other), made by the Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia. Garcia was a great admirer of Cachao, whom he considered the  “musical father” of Cubans.

After regaining popularity, Cachao released several successful albums and even won a Grammy for his album  “Ahora Si!” in 2004. The father of mambo was also honoured with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in 2003.

“Imagine, this is for all of you. I want to dedicate this award not only to my country, but all Latin America and the United States,” he said, in his acceptance speech.

The funeral services for the Cuban musician were scheduled for Wednesday.