Spicing up jazz with an Afro-Cuban beat

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor

Bobby Sanabria grew up in New York City, surrounded by Afro-Cuban music. Now, as a Grammy Award-nominated jazz musician, he tries to give back by holding workshops whenever possible. Bobby Sanabria 7:30 p.m. today Orvis Auditorium, University of Hawai'i-Manoa $25 general, $20 students ($5 discount for advance purchase) 956-6878, outreach.hawaii.edu Also: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Brigham Young University-Hawai'i's Aloha Center Ballroom; $15 general, $12 military, $5 kids 5-12. 293-3577, 293-3545 (charge by phone, with surcharge).

Sanabria, who gives a concert tonight at Orvis Auditorium, playing more conventional instruments such as the drums, said those small-kid moments made quite an impression on him and his eventual career in music.

"I grew up in the project where the Hispanic community was into rhumba and the congas of South Cuban music," said Sanabria, 44. "I'd make music, too, hitting all those mailboxes; and in those days, car bumpers were real metal, which resonated."

When older kids were playing music, he'd watch, learn and play along.

"It was all kind of an interesting dichotomy," he said. "The music was Afro-Cuban, but those playing it were Puerto Rican."

It's this fusion of styles and genres that keeps him fascinated and involved in music today, he said.

Sanabria, a frequent Grammy Award nominee, said jazz was omnipresent in his youth. "The old TV shows — 'Naked City,' 'Peter Gunn,' 'Route 66,' 'McHale's Navy' — all featured some form of jazz. And you could hear jazz on Johnny Carson, David Frost, Dick Cavett and Mike Douglas. That's why I grew up with it."

He thinks the constant metamorphosis of the genre is fantastic, "since jazz always has been a music that absorbs other forms yet maintains its own roots."

To qualify as jazz, he said, the music should have "a tinge of Latin, since the birth of jazz was in New Orleans, the Caribbean city of the U.S." The by-product is what he calls "an Afro-Caribbean American art form."

Seeing Tito Puente perform live made a profound impact on Sanabria, who was 12 at the time.

"It's what I wanted to do the rest of my life," he said.

By 15, he was taking on professional gigs. "I remember once, when I was carrying my timbales through the snow, trying to catch the subway through a blizzard," said Sanabria. "I didn't have a car then, and when you're a kid, you just went to play any time, anywhere, no matter the weather."

He said he was lucky to be exposed to the likes of legendary drummers Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. Also, Sanabria said, in the New York of the '70s, on any given night you could "check out 30 to 40 jazz clubs, featuring two or three bands. Part of the education is exposure."

With the scarcity of jazz clubs these days and its infrequency on radio or TV, how's a movement to survive?

That's why he insists on doing, whenever possible, workshops and sessions outside of the concert format, to expose young people to jazz and some of its variants.

"It's essential for us to share our knowledge with those who are curious," Sanabria said. "The best way to propagate music, to keep it going, is to educate the young people."

He does this with periodic workshops and with three musical outlets: the Bobby Sanabria Jazz Orchestra, the ¡Quarteto Ach! (the four-member combo here with him) and a group called Ascension. The first focuses on big-band jazz sounds; the second enables Sanabria to soar with his signature five-beat rhythm of the clave, delving into the roots of Afro-Cuban vibes; and the third bridges sacred and secular elements of percussion with jazz in cutting-edge innovation.

His work has been featured on numerous Grammy-nominated projects, including "The Mambo Kings" soundtrack. His Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra has been nominated three times for Grammys, too, and he pops up in the works of others, on CDs and on television, including documentaries on Mario Bauza and Mongo Santamaria on the Public Broadcasting System. In June, he will be featured on the Bravo cable network's "The History of Mambo Kings & Afro-Cuban Music."

"I'm still paying my dues," he said. "I think any jazz musician should continue paying his dues. I see on VH-1 and MTV how big rock groups spend mind-boggling amounts to get videos done, and I think how downscale jazz and Latin music is. Yet ours is more spiritually enlightening, spiritually intellectual.

"And we always win new converts. We're told jazz is adult music, not appealing to kids, but that is bull. We always make converts of young children. It's a challenge, yes, to broaden our appeal, but when we played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, some parents with kids came and the kids liked our music. It's a question of exposure. The history of the U.S. always goes back to some prejudice. People fear what they don't know. Education leads to enlightenment; you can't have one without the other."