Forum from the Archives: Bay Area Latin Jazz Legend John Santos and Friends Perform Live
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The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank, and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated card may be used everywhere MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. The Forum team is off this week, and in place of live shows, we're going to revel in the bounty of Bay Area music. All week on the 9 o'clock hour, we'll be listening back to our interviews with great local musicians performing live in our studio.

Today, a legend of Bay Area music, John Santos, a Grammy-nominated percussionist and composer known for his Latin jazz performances. He gave us a lesson in the rhythms of his heritage. We listen back to that, our interview, and his live performance with his band. That's coming up next, right after this news. ♪

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We've got another great music show for you. Lined up this morning, we've got a packed house here in our performance studio. The Bay Area Latin jazz legend, John Santos is here. He's a percussionist, composer. Got a full band he's going to introduce after the first song. Welcome to Forum, John. Why don't you take us away? ♪

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Oh man, that is John Santos here this morning. That song is I Fall in Love Too Easily. John, why don't you, do you want to go around the horn and just kind of introduce us to who is playing for us this morning? I'd love to. I want to mention to you real quick, Alexis, first of all, thank you for having us. Oh man, thanks for coming. What an honor to be here at KQED.

in the studio. That piece was written by Sami Khan and Julie Stiles, 1944, and it came out in a 1945 film featuring Frank Sinatra called "Anchors Away." And the arrangement was done by our piano player, Marco Diaz.

On violin today we have Anthony Bleyer. On bass, Saul Sierra. On congas, Javier Navarrete. On the flute, Dr. John Calloway. On saxes, Charlie Gerk. And myself, John Santos, on timbales today. Oh man, and are you, is this kind of a normal group that you play with? Is it special just for us this morning? You know, it's special.

And the reason I said that, because our group is normally a sextet with everybody here, with the exception of Anthony and Javier, who are collaborators going way, way back. Usually we have a drum set player, David Flores.

who lives in Albuquerque. He couldn't be here for this today. So instead of having the drum set, we have the conga drummer. I moved from congas to timbales, and we have Anthony, who has collaborated with us since the 70s, actually. We go back, actually, John Calloway and Anthony and I go back to the 70s. We're all native San Franciscans. Oh, man, yeah. Tell us more about that. Like, how do you think, you grew up right close to here, stationed as, you know, near Potrero Hill. You grew up in Bernal, right?

I grew up in Bernal and spent a lot of time on Patrillo Hill. My mom used to work across the street at Best Foods. I remember in the early 60s, we'd go pick her up there. Anthony and I grew up on Bernal Heights. I was born in the Mission on 23rd and Harrison. John Calloway is a native as well. Yeah, definitely. How do you think that growing up in San Francisco in the Mission, how do you think it influenced sort of your musical trajectory?

You know, the Mission District and San Francisco in general has always been full of music. You know, music in the streets, in the parks, festivals, free. You know, the way it should be. There was a lot more music in the public. And San Francisco had such a great musical scene of rock. The Latin rock movement was born here in the 60s. And, of course, you know, with Santana coming out of the Mission District and he went to school at Mission High School with my older brothers and cousins. Right.

That was very influential. We've always had a great jazz scene here. So a lot of influences here in San Francisco. How about your family? Did you grow up in a musical family? You know, I did. My grandparents on both sides, my Cape Verdean grandfather, who was born in Cape Verde, he was a professional musician. He played accordion and guitar. And my grandfather on the Puerto Rican side played also guitar, Julio Rivera from San Turce, Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico. And so we had the Puerto Rican side and the Cape Verdean side, a lot of great music in my grandparents' house. For those people out there who might be Googling Cape Verde, tell us a little bit more about that place. Cape Verde are islands right off the coast of Senegal, West Africa. And my grandfather was born there. They were Portuguese colonies up until 1975. So they were speaking Portuguese. I never have been there.

But I remember, you know, throughout the 60s, my grandfather would get together with his partners, they were all Creole musicians from Cape Verde, and play the most beautiful music in his kitchen while he was cooking, and they would have the pots going and at the same time playing with viola, a certain kind of guitar, a cavaquinho, which is like a ukulele, violin, and the accordion, and singing these beautiful songs.

It seems like yesterday. I was in the South of Market, by the way. Wow. So, you know, you use a term and lots of people use the term about you, you know, Latin jazz. But this is sort of a music that feels like it's of the African diaspora, right? Mixed with all these other influences. Yeah.

Is Latin jazz the best label for you? Well, if you have to use two words, then that works as good as anything else. But, of course, it defies being identified or categorized with two words. Just like jazz. Jazz is not a style of music. Jazz is an attitude more than anything else. Swing is a style of music. Dixieland is a style of music, etc. Jazz is just a real overarching category. And the same can be said about Latin jazz. It comes from every country of Latin.

of Latin America, it comes from New York, it's largely based on Cuban rhythms, but it's not limited in any way. And we try to kind of present it in all of its colors.

We are listening back to our interview from February with Latin jazz great John Santos. He was playing in our packed studio with a full band, guys he's been playing with since the 1970s in some cases. We're kicking off a full week of listening back on the live forum studio performances from great Bay Area musicians. We'll be back with more from John Santos and friends after a short break. ♪

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Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We've got the Bay Area jazz legend John Santos here in the studio with a whole team here playing some beautiful music. John, why don't you tell us a little bit more about your most recent album and where it stands in your body of work?

This record, Horizontes is the name of it, it's celebrating 40 years of my label, Machete Records. And it's a record that we dedicate to the children of the world because we want to do better and leaving them a planet that is sustainable and that is healthy for them.

And we haven't done a good job speaking for adults in general. So it also represents a lot of resistance to what's going on. With all the arrogance and ignorance that we're looking at, we're trying to resist that through the music. It's very important for us to do that.

The music is a way for us to not only escape, it's always been a way to escape from the reality of going back to times of slavery and escape from harsh conditions and oppression. But also very important nowadays, because we're human beings before we're musicians. And we really want to let it be known that we stand with laborers all over the world and with oppressed peoples, and especially in the climate that we're looking at now.

Man, speaking about work and sustainability, I mean, the music business in the time that you've been doing this has changed so much, right? So how do you maintain a record label and a working life as a musician in this streaming era where it feels like so much of the profit has been skimmed by just a couple companies? You know, really nothing's changed because the reason I formed this label in 1984 was because

precisely because we had just got burned by a record label. So the record labels were always burning the musicians. So I realized we need to take the bull by the horns and do it ourselves. And so that's a great deal of work. It's more than we should have to do. But now I thought with the computers that we'd be able to level the playing field, that didn't last long at all. And the company stepped in again between the buying public and the artists. And so that's why I've always kept

All the music on my label none of it is on any of the platforms none of it is on Spotify Pandora Apple music Amazon nowhere and you got to go to our website You got to go one extra click go to my website John Santos official.com to get our music and that way you go directly to the artists and I would Suggest that you know people try to do that with artists wherever possible because the streaming like you said that streaming you have to sell Thousands and thousands to make ten dollars with the streaming. It doesn't make any sense. I

They can also get your music here on the airwaves, though. Do you want to introduce the next song? Yeah, the next song is actually something that has a lot of meaning for us. It's a tune that we recorded on the first record on my label, which was called Mañana para los Niños. A return to your... Yeah, it's called Tomorrow for the Children.

And at the time I didn't even have children myself, but we were thinking in those terms. This tune was written by Orestes Lopez, the older brother of Cachao. And Cachao was one of the founding fathers of this Afro-Cuban music. That's a gentleman who I had the honor of meeting and playing with in Cuba on my first trip in 1990. So this is his composition. It's called "Bárbara Milagrosa." And it's a reference to Santa Barbara, which to the Afro-Cubans is equated with Xangó from the Yoruba Orisha spiritual tradition.

The piece is a danzón, which also, there's a whole lot we could say about that, but in the interest of time, the danzón is a style of Afro-Cuban music that goes back to the mid-19th century, and it was some of the very first black recorded music in the Americas. The American companies didn't want to record black American music for racist reasons, but they didn't mind recording what they considered exotic music from Latin America.

So the danzong in the first decade of the 20th century was one of the first black musics to be recorded, the danzong. This is that style of music. Oh, cool, cool. Thank you so much. John Santos. ¦

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Santa Barbara, bendita, ayúdanos a vivir.

That was awesome. John Santos and his group here in the studio.

You know, one thing I was hoping that you could do, John, is, you know, for those of us who have listened to a lot of different types of Latin music, but maybe haven't kind of pinned down, like, what rhythms kind of are different between these different kind of styles? Do you think you could give us, like, a little bit of a music lesson here? Well, yeah, briefly, I mean, all of the rhythms, every country in Latin America brings their rhythms to the forefront to mix with jazz and music of the world and classical music. It's a blend of all of that.

For example, the tune we just did actually has a relationship to ragtime because this kind of music, even though it goes back to the latter two-thirds, latter half of the 20th century, excuse me,

The first decade around the turn of the century, the first decade of the 20th century saw the rise of ragtime in this country. And when this style of music is interpreted on solo piano, it sounds just like ragtime because it has the same type of classical roots and rondo form. The rhythm that's played comes from classical music and was originally played on timpani. The timbales, the instrument I'm playing, timbales actually in French means timpani. And it originally was played on timpani.

So the rhythm we're playing... Do you want to do it? Yeah, yeah. The rhythm we're playing... Anthony, do you mind playing the guido on this? Just a danzong. We'll play like four bars of the danzong and then we're going to switch to the mambo. And what Cachao did was to add this African influence, which is called mambo. And when the mambo happens, you'll notice the rhythm change, the adding of the bell, which is African, and the adding of the conga drum, which is Congolese.

So it starts out, we're going to start out like this. Two, three, ah. Here we go.

That's basically it. That's going from the danzong rhythm, which was danced like line dancing, where all the men and the boys were dressed up in their finest and would bow, and the women in their finest clothes with a fan walking very colonial air to it. And then when that switch came, that conga part, it became a couple dance, and the couple actually got close and touched, and it became more sensual, more African. Mm.

The first rhythm we did, the first tune, we did it as a rumba, another Afro-Cuban thing. We did it as a yambu. It's an old style of rumba that used to be played on wooden boxes because it was at a time when conga drums were not allowed because they were African instrument. So that rhythm has the clave in it, which people are familiar with, this rhythm. ♪

That's a yambu. And what about some of these other forms of music that kind of come around later, like say a cumbia? How would that be different from what you're playing for us now? Well, a good thing that you brought up. The cumbia is Afro-Colombian, but the cumbia has been highly commercialized. So there's cumbia, that kind of pop cumbia, which is very different. And it's popular throughout Latin America, in Mexico and throughout Latin America, the cumbia is very popular. And it's very popular in the United States.

But the original cumbia, which I had the great honor of witnessing firsthand in 1984, I played in Colombia and I got to see the real Afro-Colombian cumbia, which I had never seen before. And it's played with African drums and indigenous wind instruments. And it's an absolutely beautiful form, very African sounding.

But the cumbia, you know, that has evolved in dance music and Latin jazz has its own vibe to it. Let's play a cumbia. One, two, one, two, three, ah. That's awesome. This is a musical training I always wanted. I'm so glad to get it here on the show. John, do you want to play another song for us? I would love to.

This piece is an original composition of our bassist, Saul Sierra. It's one that we recorded back around 2006 on a record called Papa Mambo, which was dedicated to the great Cachao, who we've been talking about, the great bass player, the granddaddy of Cuban bass players, who, by the way, held down the first chair in the Havana Symphony while he was playing with the most popular dance band in Cuba during the 40s. Wow. This is called Tercer Grado, and it means third grade. ♪

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Beautiful. That was John Santos and crew here playing Tercer Dado. We've got some listener comments coming in, John. I want to throw a couple at you. John writes, so interesting to hear of the Cape Verdean connection. Please tell us about any Brazilian vibes or connections in your influences.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the Cape Verdean one is, of course, the main one. But as far as what we play, we don't play, we haven't played anything, you know, up to date reflecting the Cape Verdean part. We do play some Brazilian. Every now and then on the new record, we have a tune there that's called Tonada Azul y Verde, dedicated to the environment that is based on a very strong samba Brazilian flavor.

But in general, I grew up more in the Puerto Rican side of my family, so our music represents a little more Caribbean style, and the rest of us are, you know, have Latino roots from different parts of Latin America, Spanish-speaking Latin America. And so we, you know, it's something... When my grandfather...

I stopped hanging out with him, so to speak, in the late 60s, and he became ill. He was the last one from that family. My Cape Verdean grandma, my aunt, my uncle, they all passed before I was born. So the only connection I had was my grandfather. And when he was a little bit too old, which was already by the end of the 60s, I lost contact. So I wasn't really playing yet. I was starting to play clarinet, but I hadn't learned how to play that music yet. So it's not strong in our music that we play now. Yeah, yeah.

We've got the Bay Area Latin jazz legend, John Santos, here. Special thanks again to our engineer, Jim Bennett, making everybody sound good in this incredibly difficult room to record in. We've been loving getting your questions for John Santos. The number is 866-733-6786.

And again, if you want to read more about John Santos, check out the recent profile of him and his wife, Aida Salazar, in Queonda. That's KQED's newsletter for Latinos of all stripes. You can go to kqed.org slash newsletters if you want to check that out.

Again, you can find us also on social media and on Discord. We are in Blue Sky. We're on Instagram and all those places. We are KQED Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break. Put us in a box.

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As far as expectations go, why meet them when you can shatter them? What we choose to challenge, we challenge completely. We are professional grade. Visit GMC.com to learn more. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Earthjustice. As a national legal nonprofit, Earthjustice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment.

They wield the power of the law to protect people's health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, and advance clean energy to combat climate change. Earthjustice fights in court because the Earth needs a good lawyer. Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org. Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We are joined by John Santos and a bunch of the musicians that he works with here at KQED.

We've got another question that I want to throw at you, John. And I think we've covered a little bit of this, but Kalima writes in to say, could you share how the trajectory of Cuban music has evolved over recent decades, kind of where it's been centered and what the relationships of U.S.-based and Cuban-based musicians are today? Thank you for your beautiful music. Wow, that's a great question. You know, Cuba...

And black music in the United States, there's been a connection going back before the word jazz was ever being used. So the Cuban root is one of the most important roots of jazz, is the Cuban root. And it shows up going back

to the 19th century. It shows up in New Orleans. Of course, jazz was born in New Orleans. New Orleans is part of the Caribbean community and it's been connected to all the major ports of the Caribbean for centuries. And, you know, New Orleans is much more like Havana or San Juan or Kingston or Cartagena than it is to any other place in the United States. So there's a natural connection there between jazz and Cuban music.

with the revolution in Cuba with you know starting in 1959 1960 and the embargo which has been an embarrassment and has failed to bring down the government as it was intended and instead has caused a lot of suffering for the Cuban people it's still there but

Cuba has not ceased to be an incredible source of music. It's so amazing. Despite all the hardships that are going on there, the vital, the vitality of the arts and the music is really present. Tomorrow, Chucho Valdez, one of the great Cuban musicians with seminal group Iraquera, they're going to be playing tomorrow at the Paramount. And so that connection with jazz and with Cuban music has always been there and is going nowhere, despite the embargo. You know, the

The thing I was wondering about was whether this sort of burst of popularity of like Buena Vista Social Club and kind of this like layer of music that got peeled off of Cuba and then came and was popularized in the U.S. Do you think that had a kind of rebound effect in Cuba in terms of changing how people were performing or playing or composing?

Maybe slightly. You know, the thing is that the Buena Vista Social Club, that kind of Cuban music, it did bring some attention to it internationally and gave some work to some of the old timers, which was fantastic. But, you know, for those of us who have been following Cuban music, that's the root of the music. And we've always, you know, been aware of that music and celebrated that music. They were playing in Europe before they were ever playing here, you know, as Buena Vista Social Club. Yeah.

I also had a great honor to play with them in Munich. I happened to be in Germany working when they were touring there before they had ever come to the United States. And because I knew a couple of the members of the group, I got invited to come up and play with them in Munich. But their music is amazing. You know, the film did a lot. Although, you know, I wasn't a great fan of the film. There's another film called Lagrimas Negras.

Cuban film about these old-timers called Sexteto Santiago from Santiago de Cuba, which is much better as a film. And it's a similar thing. It shows these old-timers and follows them around. The Bernabeu film left stuff to be desired. I mean, for someone who's so close, it was probably difficult to, you know...

Yeah, like except that particular version. Can you talk a little bit before you play another song just about how you go about composing and kind of choosing which genre you're going to kind of move towards? You know, we don't choose a genre. You know, we write. All of us, you know, we have some great composers in this industry.

room here. In particular, our piano player, Marco Diaz, our bassist, Sol Serra, our flautist, John Calloway, they're wonderful composers and arrangers. And I think I could speak for everybody in saying we're not writing for a certain genre in general. You write and the music will take its own course. After you're done, it kind of tells you where it's going to be.

Unless, of course, you're hired to do a certain type of thing, because these guys are very capable of getting hired to do a certain type of music, and then they can do that as well. But for me, I'm writing melodies and lyrics, and how they're going to end up is always a fun adventure to see where it's going to end up. All right. You want to play some other songs? What are you going to play? Yeah. We're going to play a piece now called...

It's a Cuban piece that was first recorded by a very important group, one of our favorite groups called the Orquesta Ritmo Oriental. The composer was bassist Silvio Vergara, who I also had the great honor of meeting and playing with in Cuba in 1996.

He since has passed, but his piece is called Casave, and that's like cassava. So this is about food, which a lot of the music references food. And they're inseparable. Like I mentioned earlier, in my Cape Verdean grandfather's kitchen, that's where I heard the music, was in the kitchen. And same in my Puerto Rican grandma's house. You know, you smell the food being cooked while we're playing in the other room. So this is about cassave, a cassave root vegetable. ♪

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♪ Rayando la yuca ♪ ♪ Rayando la yuca ♪ ♪ Rayando la yuca pa' comer el cazabe ♪ ♪ Pa' comer el cazabe ♪ ♪ Pa' comer el cazabe ♪

Rayando la yuca, rayando la yuca, rayando la bien pa' comer casabes.

Amazing. John Santos, Marco Diaz, John Calloway, Charlie Girk, Anthony Blea, Saul Sierra, and Javier Navarrete on the congas. Sounding great. Sounding so good. Thank you, Alexis.

You know, we got a comment coming in from Instagram. What I love about the music of John Santos. I love that John's music tells many stories, stories of history, our story that shows the connections between people, stories of the triumphs and trials of romance, stories that celebrate neighborhoods near and far. There's so much I love about the music of John Santos and Machete and Friends. And I also love that the music inspires me to dance.

We're in a tough time in this country in a lot of ways. How do you see your music growing?

kind of doing work in this world where we know lots of immigrants are really worried about being able to stay in this country and there's a lot of political strife. Yeah, well we're on the opposite end of the current spectrum where right now there's a war on diversity. Well, we're diverse. Our music and us, if you look at us, we're diverse. We come from different backgrounds, different countries.

Right now, while there's this kind of war going on, we really feel it's important as artists, but again, as just workers, as human beings, to address and to speak up against what's going on because this is really horrible, what we're witnessing. So the music has always been a form of resistance, whether or not we're singing songs where the title is obviously of resistance, where the lyrics are obviously resisting. The music itself, it's a celebration, but yet...

Having African rhythms shows the resistance, shows the resilience, shows the courage and the creativity of descendants of Africans who maintained these rhythms when they were totally banned. So everything that we do with our music is to resist the direction that this current administration is going in. And we hope that people will not fall into the trap of being complacent and being too comfortable.

Even the story you told about New Orleans just shows how much this country has been about mixing of people from all over the world for a very, very long time. And to try and pretend that it isn't that way seems...

Exactly. And it's not lost on us that KQED is one of the last bastions, you know, of, of truthful radio and opposition publicly. And there's, as you know, there's an effort to, to, to, to squash PBS. So we're, you know, we really value and understand the, the, how crucial it is to have the,

voices like KPFA, KQED, KPOO and have that truth still being told. It's getting harder and harder to do. We really need to mobilize and be in solidarity in a global movement to fight this direction. You must know we're in a pledge drive, John.

Which we are. In fact, we've got Bay Area Latin jazz legend John Santos here. He's a percussionist, leader of the John Santos Sextet, also founder of Machete Records, a record label a long time here in the Bay Area.

We would love to get some more of your calls, comments, appreciations for John Santos. Of course, if you've seen him perform, what was that like? 866-733-6786. Again, here in the studio, we've got Marco Diaz, we've got John Calloway, we've got Charlie Girk, we've got Anthony Blea, we've got Saul Sierra, and we've got Javier Navarrete. Special thanks again to Engineer.

Jim Bennett. Maybe we can have you play us another tune, perhaps. Wonderful. We'd love to. This piece is an original by our pianist, Marco Diaz. It's one that we recorded several years ago, and it came out in 2020 on a project that we did for the Smithsonian, for Smithsonian Folkways, called Art of the Descarga. The Descarga is a jam session, kind of

akin to the bebop jam sessions. And so it's a vehicle for improvisation for the instrumentalists. What's special also about this tune is that it's inspired by a rhythm from Guantanamo. And people usually know Guantanamo for the wrong reasons, for the prison and the torture that our country...

carries on there and it's being dusted off, I understand. Now people are being brought there again to be imprisoned without due process and it's a mess. But Guantanamo happens to be the birthplace of a lot of wonderful music and dance, incredible art that comes out of Guantanamo. And the signature rhythm and dance from Guantanamo is the changui. So this is based on the changui rhythm and it's called Descarga con Changui. ♪

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Thank you.

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The 9 o'clock hour of Forum is produced by Grace Wan and Blanca Torres. Our interns are Brian Bowe and Jesse Fisher. Jennifer Eng is our engagement producer. Francesca Fenzi is our digital community producer. Judy Campbell's lead producer. Danny Bringer is our engineer. And big thanks to Jim Bennett.

who's been here in the studio doing the live mix of the show. Katie Springer is the operations manager of KQED Podcasts. Our vice president of news is Ethan Tove and Lindsay. And our chief content officer is Holly Kernan. Last couple shout-outs for the band here. Martha writes, Thanks for helping my heart to sing this beautiful sunny California morning. Harvey writes, John is a Bay Area musical treasure.

as are all the musicians in his groups. Viva! Jenny writes, Long standing, sometimes sitting, sometimes driving listener. Thank you so much for having a show today that is lovely. I keep turning the radio on and then quickly off with great regret as I can't get past the news these days, but I could listen to these guys forever. We've been talking to Bay Area Latin jazz legend John Santos here. Thank you so, so much for joining us. ♪

Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with me, Dick.

Hey Forum listeners, it's Alexis. Did you hear that Forum is launching a video podcast? It is true! Each week we'll drop a video recording of a recent Forum episode on the KQED News YouTube channel. We can't wait to bring you into the studio for our conversations on Bay Area culture, California news, and beyond.

Our first few episodes are out now. Just visit youtube.com slash kqednews to see it all. That's youtube.com slash kqednews.

Thank you.

Learn more about how you can get involved and become a supporter at earthjustice.org. Hey, Forum listeners, it's Mina. I have exciting news. We're taking Forum Beyond the Airwaves, Beyond Podcasts, to your screens. Now you can watch the Forum conversations you love and be in the room with me, Alexis, and our guests as we talk about the Bay Area, California, and beyond. Check it out at youtube.com slash kqednews, youtube.com slash kqednews.