LJC Community Conversation: What’s Your Story?


LJC Community Conversations are designed to explore major ideas in the Latin Jazz world together as a community and inspire conversation through comments. My main motivator here is my belief that LJC readers hold a great deal of knowledge and passion around Latin Jazz, and I think that we can learn something from everyone. Whether you’re a seasoned Latin Jazz performer or a newcomer to the music, leave a comment and let your voice be heard!

Today’s conversation lets us get to know each other a little better . . .

Music enters our life at various points and always carries different reasons. Some people are raised around music – their parents may be musicians or they might carry a burning love for a musical style. Others discover music later in life. School music programs expose children to a wide variety of performance options and popular culture often serves as a major motivator. Some people become attracted to musicduring their childhood. Their spouse might be involved in music, or they might need the creative outlet provided by instrumental study. Once music takes over our lives though, we always remember the milestones that drive us deeper into our passion.

My background left me as an unlikely candidate to become a musician, and it created an even more unrealistic transition into a Latin Jazz fanatic. I grew up without a strong exposure to music; Christmas records and 1970s A&R radio constitute my strongest childhood musical memories. I took piano lessons at a young age, but dreaded each one. When I became a teenager, 1980s rock stole my mind and drove me to guitar lessons. Looking for other musicians, I joined my high school band; California tax cuts had ruined arts education, but we had a small program. I switched to bass and performed with the school’s jazz band, intrigued with improvisation and the higher level of musicianship. I still had a lot to learn, but it inspired me enough to stay with music.

I continued music in college, eventually finding my way into Cuban music. Guided by suggestions from teachers and peers, I became a huge fusion fan. Chick Corea and Weather Report captured the majority of my attention, and I found the Latin influence the most exciting. At that point, “Latin” songs were all the same to me; the only thing that defined them was the lack of a swing rhythm. When I attended a concert by the school’s Latin Jazz Ensemble, that generic impression of Latin music changed. I quickly signed up for a class on Cuban music, and then a class on Brazilian music. I studied bass tumbaos and samba rhythms in my private lessons, building the skills to play the music. Eventually, I joined the Latin Jazz Ensemble, playing a variety of classic charts from Poncho Sanchez, Tito Puente, and more. It left me with a deep love for Cuban music, one that would guide my life’s musical studies.

Years of learning lay ahead of me, but my experience in my college’s Latin Jazz Ensemble really changed my musical life. I became determined to learn everything about Cuban music that I could. I read Rebeca Mauleon’s Salsa Guidebook multiple times and regularly listened to a variety of specialty radio shows. I searched for recordings and I attended concerts. Eventually I went back to school in search of answers and learned a great deal about Latin Jazz and traditional Cuban music. After graduation I focused upon performing, joining every salsa and Latin Jazz group I could find. When I started teaching, I brought my love for Latin music into that context, sharing what I had learned. I saw the internet as a way to reach more people and looked to find a home for Latin Jazz. With every new step of my Latin Jazz journey, my appreciation and excitement for the music has grown, building into a major center of my life.

I’d be curious to hear how Latin Jazz entered your life . . .

JOIN THE CONVERSATION!

We’ve all reached a common interest in Latin Jazz, but I’m sure that we all followed different paths to get there. Here’s a great opportunity for us to share our backgrounds and get to know each other a little better. LEAVE A COMMENT and let us know how you discovered Latin Jazz and what it has meant in your life. I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone found Latin Jazz . . . fill us in – what’s your story?

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Do you have an idea for a future Community Conversation? As much as I enjoy exploring my own interests with this weekly post, I’d prefer to have this forum address the overall interests of the entire community. Do you have an issue that effects Latin Jazz? Do you have an idea for a fun topic? Let me know so that we can throw it out to the whole community – Leave a Comment or e-mail me.

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3 Comments


3 Comments

  1. reginald, March 4, 2008:

    Thanks for this opportunity to share my story. Let me start off by saying that I may not be a professional musician, but I am a musician in my soul.

    I have always been surrounded by music. My dad started his life as a professional trumpet player, and although he quit the music business early, he would always be playing the turntable and his reel-to-reel at home. That’s how I got exposed to every kind of music, from Beethoven to Celia Cruz, and Miles in between…

    When I was a young teenager,I did show some inclination towards playing an instrument, and being a musician, but I guess I was never encouraged to do so, probably due to my Dad’s bad experience as a professional musician. So there I was, going to College and trying to become an engineer. But I would always be listening to everything, from Beethoven to Celia Cruz, and Miles in between. I would even try myself many times at studying a musical instrument. Of course, with the realities of family and professional life, I did not have much time for this.

    How did I become a latin jazz fanatic? Who knows??/ I guess it was a natural evolution. I listened to a lot of jazz music. and I loved dancing to latin (cuban) rhythms. I guess latin jazz satisfied both these tendencies in me. Now I have maybe 4000+ latin jazz (afrocuban to be exact) songs in my ipod, mostly emusic or itunes downloads. My favorites are at, what I like to call, the center between straight-ahead jazz with a conga in the rhythm section, and instrumental salsa. Eddie Palmieri , Poncho Sanchez, John Santos are some of my idols.

    I am 50+ now, I still fool around with an electric bass, trying to play some tumbaos, while playing my ipod (evolution). My next gift to myself is gonna be an upright. I hope to find enough time to learn (more than) the basics. I dont expect to play at any jazz festival, jamming with a Great, but my secret goal is to be proficient enough to play in some community orchestra around town when I retire. Thus realizing the dream of my life.

  2. Brandon, May 31, 2008:

    I began as a kid growing up in N.Y., exposed to a broad genre of music as well. One example was Olatunji’s “Drums of Passion”. My father played some of the classic Latin albums of the big bands but didn’t have a wide selection. I got into drumming with folks I’d meet in Kingston Park, and Prospect Park, and of course Central Park on Sundays in the spring and summer, during the period of the height of the Civil Rights movement and the quest to rediscover our roots. Dance troupes and occasional jams on the A train (and a memorable protest at Lincoln Center once) were some of the other milieu’s I honed my chops.
    I went to Boston for college and never left. While here, I’ve met/played with some remarkable musicians, including one of my heroes Giovanni Hidalgo (“Time Shifter” is one of my favorites). I loved the creativity so abundant in the 60′s 70′s and 80′s, and some in the 90′s. Eddie P., Brazil 66/77, Chucho Valdes, Los Munequitos…the range and variety is quite voluminous. It seems, to me anyway, that you have to really be on an “inside track” to learn of the innovation still occurring these days. Until my nerves are shot or I’m completely incapacitated, I’ll keep playing. And (as evidenced by finding this website) I’ll keep looking and listening too.

  3. Juan, January 13, 2009:

    My story is perhaps a bit different, though that’s the point of the entry isn’t it? I was born in COlombia, and so my background is actually filled with a completely different type of music. Since i constitute the young generation I did not get to hear much on the sound of the 80′s and or 70′s much less music from the 60s. I actually was filled with the music from Colombia and that would be enough to me. Though indeed most listened to the mainstream rhythms, artists like Victor manuelle or Gilberto were erally into the mainstream in the mid 90s. It was later on when I realized the music i had always heard (from artists like Luch Vermudez and Jayme Llano González) was way back on time, maybe nearing the end of the 40s and 50s. Despite this I always was a fan of jazz from the first time I had heard it. Fortunately Colombia still has gotten several radio stations with specialty programs. As for more of my background it is crucial to let most people know I am not sighted. I had studied piano privately on a very early age (4) and none on my family has gotten a career in music. After finishing the private studies which I suppose familiarized me with the keys and melodies I moved on to study at Colombia’s national university in their music conservatory. Because music braille is one of the things that is perhaps more abundant in the Uninted States than in Colombia it was pretty difficult for me to carry on and keep on studying most classical music. Fortunately for me the university had taught me the basic building blocks of theory, like triads, scales, ETC. and most of the basic music grammar, and my piano instructors would teach pretty much hands on, or orally should there be a lack of music braille. This went fine until at one point things changed. There were lots of news floating around of how fancy the equipment was in the uNited states–things like newer braille embossers (printers), personal talking or braille digital asssistants, ETC. in a nutshell my family moved to the united States for this reason and for other reasons which caused us significant struggle. I ahve been here for about 5 years (to this date) and pretty much like with any other things i have to say that it is different on many aspects. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I had heard of latin jazz. I surely had heard the big names (Puente, Cachao, Machito, ETC) though I didn’t know what they played was collectively called as latin jazz. The music probably slipped through sometime ago, but the study of the music really took off from 2 years before. i have been carefully listening to many artists, exploring and (sometimes immitating) other artists and now i am in a local community college in Florida trying to find something that matches latin jazz. The downside is that musical textbooks are not enough, since there is a vast lack of material in a format I can access, such as computarized text, braille or audio examples. It is quite a struggle, since most recomendations I get are “buy this and this” to find out that there’s music in the book that my friends do not understand or the book does not have a cd or any other kind of alternate demounstration. Transcribers often omit the music part from the books, so that does not help either. I am currently exploring a study on which I am going to produce a form of software into which I can input a piece of braille music and have it transcribed to print music without the need for a separate program. Currently there is a braille music editor, though it does require finale and the bass clef is terrible, plus its outdated already. I ahve most of the knowledge of whats on a clef and what it looks like, though having a reader describe that for me is quite different from one to the other. If the music were transcribed in braille correctly (there is tons of information about music braille online) then learning from textbooks would not be a problem. I am lucky to have developped absolute hearing and so learning music this way is not a problem, though it always interest me to have it notated since i can learn something I would not otherwise. I might possibly just go for a jazz degree and then transfer to a school which would support or concist of a latin jazz ensemble. I am currently working with 2 groups which specialize on the popular forms of music. One of them is just starting–it mainly goes for salsa, though I try to incorporate the faint sounds of latin jazz on the piano. The other one’s easier to summarize since it deals with international music, so it pretty much carries a bit of everything–including brazilian music. In addition to being a pianist i am also a composer. A composition degree interest me more than jazz, though right now of course everything’s not in the stage on which I can predict exactly what I’ll do and of course its up to an opportunity and time to help me define and establish my path.

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