Influential bands hold the potential to change the landscape of a musical scene, altering the area’s artistic direction drastically; these groups seems like unstoppable creative trains, but eventually all good things do come to an end. In the San Francisco Bay Area, John Santos and The Machete Ensemble spent over twenty years building a unique identity for Latin Jazz in the Bay Area. Their musical presence entertained, educated, and informed audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. During this time, the individuals in the band built strong identities as musicians, composers, and bandleaders. Some band members moved onto other projects, but the core of the group remained together for decades. The Machete Ensemble maintained a creative vitality through their second decade, and they received national acclaim through a Grammy nomination for the 2003 release S.F. Bay. Despite the band’s powerful artistic momentum, the changing dynamics of the San Francisco jazz and Latin music scenes took its toll and performance opportunities for the group began to dwindle. In 2006, leader John Santos looked at the financial realities of maintaining a large ensemble in a tough economic era and decided to bring the band to a close. On November 12, 2006, The Machete Ensemble closed the San Francisco Jazz Festival with a concert at The Palace Of Fine Arts reviewing the band’s musical history and bidding the Bay Area music scene farewell, ending an important Latin Jazz legacy.

While the end of The Machete Ensemble left a void in the San Francisco Latin Jazz scene, the group’s alumni filled the gap with a wealth of exciting and creative projects. Santos formed a quintet that continued his musical vision, finding more extensive work opportunities and recording two fantastic CDs, Papa Mambo and Perspectiva Fragmentada. Pianist Rebeca Mauleon had already changed the state of Latin music with her educational book The Salsa Guidebook, and she continued as a trendsetter with her group Afro Kuban Fusion. Trombonist Wayne Wallace released a string of attention grabbing albums and formed Patois Records to support his work; the label also reached into the greater Bay Area scene recording Latin Jazz vocalists Kat Parra and Alexa Weber Morales. Legendary timbalero and longtime Machete member Orestes Vilato stayed with Santos’ group for a while before leaving to record a long overdue solo release, It’s About Time. Rhythm section members David Belove and Paul Van Wageningen found ample work in the Latin Jazz scene, supporting such diverse artists as Tanaora, Pete Escovedo, and Mark Levine and the Latin Tinge. After twenty years of practical experience, all of these musicians had built a firm understanding of Latin Jazz and they spread their knowledge throughout the scene. In some ways, the splintering of the group actually strengthened the Latin Jazz scene as each band member built successful Latin Jazz careers.

Flautist John Calloway maintained his musical trajectory at full speed, broadening his artistic concept, exploring new territories, and expanding his educational activities. Several years before The Machete Ensemble ended, Calloway formed his own small group and began performing around the Bay Area. The group recorded Calloway’s first recording as a bandleader in 2001, Diaspora, which found success among Latin Jazz audiences. At the same time, Calloway returned to school at San Francisco State University, pursuing post-graduate studies. Following The Machete Ensemble’s farewell concert, Calloway continued to perform and record with Santos as a member of his new quintet, keeping a fruitful artistic relationship alive. Concurrently, Calloway performed with a number of local Latin Jazz and dance bands on a regular basis, and his group, now known as Diaspora, maintained a regular performance schedule. Calloway released a second album as a leader in 2007, The Code, which built upon his established compositional sound and included contributions from fellow flautist Orlando “Maraca” Valle. In the following year, he completed his work towards a doctorate at San Francisco State, earning a PhD. He organized a collective of local flautists into a group called The Flute Odyssey, performing an eclectic mix of music at The Intersection For The Arts, with an upcoming concert at Yoshi’s – Oakland. Calloway’s artistic schedule never slowed, in fact it moved forward at a frantic pace, keeping his music at the forefront of the San Francisco scene.

In the last piece of our three-part interview, Calloway brings us up to speed as we look at his current activities. He discusses his own band and recordings, The Flute Odyssey, and future plans. Keep reading for the details . . .

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LJC: You released your first album as a bandleader in 2001, Diaspora, at a time when Machete was slowing down. Had you been doing your own thing for a while or was this something new?

JC: I actually formed my own band in 1999; it took me turning 40 to form a band. I’ve had my band about 10 years now. It was something that I needed to do. On top of that I was going through a master’s degree program, and when I recorded my second CD, I was in a doctorate program – all these things were happening at the same time!

LJC: Were you trying to explore something different than your work in Machete or had your concept changed?

JC: I wanted to play more flute, and just put my own stamp on it. At that age, I decided to be more than a sideman; I wanted to put my own name on something. It’s just natural.

LJC: After that album, you had The Code, which I just love . . .

JC: That’s funny because most people like the first one better. You know why, because the first one has more groove-oriented stuff and this one is little bit more esoteric. When I make another CD, it will be more like the first one. At some point, you can try to replicate the newest thing out there, like Danilo (Perez) or David Sanchez, doing odd meter, deceptive stuff. If you can do that and you feel good about it, great, but you have to develop a sound that works for you. There’s a reason Tito Puente and Poncho Sanchez never changed their sound. At some point, it depends on what your voice is and what you want to hear from the music when you step back. I guess there’s an audience – most of the musicians want to hear new stuff. But if you think about it, the more you take stuff out, you better do it really well. Because if you’re not playing with Wayne Shorter, or you’re not Miguel Zenon, then the drop in gigs is big or you’re playing a hole in the wall for no money. It is kind of good to learn as a craft and do – I might put some odd metered stuff on the next record – but at some point you should do what you feel works. My era is ten years before this stuff, which is basically not going to deceive you too much and you’ll always be able to tell where the pulse is.

LJC: You have Maraca on The Code – it’s great to hear the two of you playing together. How did that come together - did you know him before the recording?

JC: Yea, I knew him, he kicked my ass, and I enjoyed it. There was no pretension from me of trying to play at his level. He’s a beautiful person; he’s somebody that you feel really cool about.

LJC: You’ve worked with a lot of great Latin and jazz musicians, is there someone that you’d like to have on a future recording?

JC: If I could think of someone that I’d like to have on my next CD, I’ll hopefully get Mark Levine to play on it. I actually tried to get him to play on my last CD, but he was out of town at the time. Nationally, I’d like to have Oscar Hernandez, because he was one of my mentors. Those would probably be the two off the top of my head.

LJC: How did you come up with the idea for The Flute Odyssey?

JC: After I did my CD release in 2007 at Yoshi’s, I knew that I needed to come up with something different. I do believe that if you’re playing locally and you’re trying to play in big venues, you’ve got to have a concept. My thing is to have some type of conceptual event – because if you’re already playing around the Bay Area regularly, it’s less likely that people will come out to a big venue. They might, but you’ll get more people if you offer a theme with it.

I did the first Flute Odyssey at Intersection For The Arts, and we got a reasonably good crowd. It was something that no one’s done before. I did it because flute players mostly are not really in the forefront, and this is a way of putting them there. There are all different players too, which is one of the things that I wanted to try.

LJC: Who was on the first Flute Odyssey gig and what did you do there?

JC: Everyone that is on this gig was at the first event, with the addition of Kenny Stahl, Miguel Martinez, and Francis Wong. I was looking for flute players that spoke to me, that would do a little bit more than play straight-ahead jazz.

LJC: So then is the idea to bring together different Bay Area players that bring various perspectives to the flute?

JC: Yea, exactly, except we’re all not playing traditional flute – we’re playing different flutes. I’ll be playing Cuban wooden flute, Hafez Modirzadeh will be playing nay, Mas Koga will be playing shakuhachi, and more.

LJC: So this second event at Yoshi’s is a bigger venue, so will you do things differently or is it an extension of what you did before on a larger scale?

JC: It’s exactly that, and extension of what we did before, but we’re bringing in more different concepts and we’re trying different concepts. We’ve got Tim Barskey, a beat box flute player!

LJC: Are you guys all going to play together or is it individual sets?

JC: We’re going to do both.

LJC: Is it something that is going to continue?

JC: It might, but it won’t be something that’s regular. If I was just playing there and there’s not CD release party, I might get a halfway decent crowd. But the reality is that if you’re playing in the Bay Area a lot and you decide to play Yoshi’s, there’s nothing new about it. The one thing that you will get is the people that won’t go anywhere else besides Yoshi’s. If you play there too often . . .

LJC: You’ve got this great concept on The Code where you refer to the unspoken language between musicians that have worked together for a long time. For me, that really translated to the Bay Area Latin music scene, since it’s such a close-knit scene. If you could sum up the good and bad of today’s Bay Area scene, how would you describe it?

JC: The good side of it is that there are a lot of good players, like Christian Tumalan – there are a lot of good players out there, and I think there’s another generation. I also think that one of the difficulties will be to get the upcoming generation to really want to play this music. It’s something we have to constantly work at. People think, “Well, I just want to be a player . . .” Well, the bottom line is if you don’t have an audience that have an interest in this music, you’re not going to have people follow it. Think of the big band or Dixieland music that Tuck Murphy used to play in the Bay Area years ago; the audience for that has got to be very small compared to what it used to be. That could happen to Latin Jazz. They’re having the Outlands Festival right now and that’s going to draw 10,000 people; we’re not going to draw 1,000 people for anything – you have to create a comparison. We need to develop musicians who don’t think of Latin Jazz as a lesser music than jazz, which a way that a lot of younger jazz players see it. You have to work at it – you have to promote it, you have to let people know what it’s about, and you have to let people know that it sounds good, but it’s not that easy to play.

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Make sure that you check out all the pieces of the Calloway interview:

In Part 1 of our interview, Calloway discusses his time as a young musician in San Francisco during the seventies and his time in New York. You can check it out HERE.

In Part 2, Calloway talks about his time with the Machete Ensemble and his work as an educator. You can read it HERE.

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Check Out These Related Posts:
5 Albums That Remember Bay Area Latin Jazz Saxophonist Ron Stallings (1947 - 2009)
Latin Jazz Conversations: Jose Madera (Part 3)
Latin Jazz Conversations: Mitch Frohman (Part 3)
Latin Jazz Photo Album: John Calloway & Diaspora

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