Corrections or additions?
This article by Jack Florek was prepared for the
April 18, 2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Salute to Tito Puente, Musician & Mentor
As a youngster growing up in the South Bronx, jazz
artist Bobby Sanabria covered the walls of his bedroom with pictures
of his heroes. These weren’t baseball stars, but musicians, such as
Willie Bobo, Bob Rosendarden, Buddy Rich, and Ralph MacDonald. And
even back then, the place of honor went to Tito Puente.
Sanabria still feels Puente’s overwhelming influence, and loss.
"Although
others have had a great impact on my playing," Sanabria said
recently,
"Tito, as a band leader, composer, arranger, and player has had
the most significant influence on my music. He is my mentor — a
total musician."
Sanabria will bring his 19-piece band, the Bobby Sanabria Afro-Cuban
Jazz Band, to the College of New Jersey’s Kendall Hall Theater,
performing
on what would have been Tito Puente’s 78th birthday, on Friday, April
20, at 8 p.m. The show will be a celebration of the life and work
of Puente, who died on May 31 last year. Also performing will be the
Eddie Palmieri Latin Jazz Band and the 79-year-old master of the conga
drums, Candido.
But Sanabria himself is much more than a critically-acclaimed and
popular musician. In trying to define him one is tempted to use a
veritable freight train of hyphens, referring to him as a
drummer-percussionist-composer-arranger-
teacher-writer-lecturer. He is also the author of a three-part video
series "Getting Started on Congas."
But there’s more. Besides being a Grammy-nominated recording artist,
he is also a passionate champion of Afro-Cuban big band music. He
likes to speak to audiences from the stage, between numbers, providing
insights into the intricacies of such musical hybrids as Cu-bop (a
1940s merging of Cuban musical sensibilities with be-bop). As he
acknowledges,
he has been a fortunate man, having had the opportunity to perform
and record with many of his musical heroes from his boyhood bedroom
wall, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Mario Bauza, Paquito D’Rivera, and
Puente.
Sanabria’s role as educator has made him a musical hero to many young
people with jazz aspirations whom he has taught at workshops around
the world (including a workshop he taught at the College of New Jersey
in January). He is also a faculty member at the Drummer’s Collective
(a world renowned center for the study of drums and percussion), the
New School, and the Manhattan School of Music, where he conducts both
schools’ Afro-Cuban jazz orchestras — the only two student bands
of this kind in the United States.
The son of Puerto Rican parents, Sanabria was born in the 1950s and
grew up in the Melrose Projects in the South Bronx. He says he
acquired
a passion for music from his father, who worked as a machinist in
Long Island, and would unwind from his daily four-hour commute by
listening to music. Together, they would take in the eclectic sounds
of jazz, rock, R&B, soul, big band, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian Jazz
music over the radio and from their family record player.
But a kind of music multiculturalism also permeated
the streets of Sanabria’s youth. "It was a great time to be young,
Latino, and growing up in New York City," says Sanabria.
"There
was drumming heard in every neighborhood, and the music we had
inherited
from `the great jazz mambo era’ of the 1940s and ’50s inspired us
to seek out our cultural roots. This, combined with the other music
I was listening to, is the foundation of my playing, composing,
arranging,
and teaching today."
Inspired by Puente, Sanabria attended Boston’s Berklee College of
Music, where he studied orchestration, harmony, sight singing,
conducting,
drums, and percussion. He graduated in 1979 with a bachelor of music
degree.
Sanabria’s volatile onstage performances have been compared to those
of boxer Muhammad Ali, with his sinewy, propelling percussion, mixing
Cu-bop with romantic pop ballads, and the cool grooves of ’60s Motown.
Topping it off with a rawness reminiscent of Charlie Parker and Dizzy
Gillespie, he pushes his Latin big band to the hilt, often driving
audiences into musical ecstasies.
Having toured the world many times, playing the music he loves,
Sanabria
has seen first hand the power music has to touch many lives. He’s
seen how the multicultural flavor of his music can serve as a unifying
force. "The heart has no color," he has said. "Everybody’s
blood is red."
— Jack Florek
Bobby Sanabria, Eddie Palmieri, & Candido Camero, College
of New Jersey, Kendall Hall, 609-771-2775. $25. Friday, April
20. 8 p.m.
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
Facebook Comments