Bio:
Seven-time Grammy-nominated percussionist, US Artists Fontanals Fellow, and 2013-2014 SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director, John Santos, is one of the foremost exponents of Afro-Latin music in the world today.
Born in San Francisco, California, November 1, 1955, he was raised in the Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean traditions of his family, surrounded by music. The fertile musical environment of the San Francisco Bay Area shaped his career in a unique way.
His studies of Afro-Latin music have included several trips to New York, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Colombia. He is known for his innovative use of traditional forms and instruments in combination with contemporary music, and has earned much respect and recognition as a prolific performer, composer, teacher, writer, radio programmer, and record/event producer whose career has spanned four decades. John has performed and/or recorded with acknowledged, multi-generational masters such as Cachao, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Bebo Valdés, Max Roach, Eddie Palmieri, Patato Valdés, Lázaro Ros, Bobby Hutcherson, Manny Oquendo, Chucho Valdes, Paquito D’Rivera, Buenavista Social Club, Chocolate Armenteros, John Handy, Billy Cobham, Zakir Hussain, Hermeto Pascoal, George Cables, Generoso Jimenez, Joe Henderson, Ernesto Oviedo, Regina Carter, Chester Thompson, Francisco Aguabella, John Faddis, Ed Thigpen, Giovanni Hidalgo, Steve Turre, McCoy Tyner, Batacumbele, Poncho Sanchez, Omar Sosa, Mel Martin, Ignacio Berroa, Danilo Perez, Los Pleneros de la 21, Jose Luis “Changuito” Quintana, Armando Peraza, Pancho Quinto, Tootie Heath, Art Farmer, Pupy Pedroso, Jacqueline Castellanos, Malonga Casquelord, CK Ladzekpo, Pancho Terry, Juan De Dios Ramos, Carlos Aldama, Yosvany Terry, Dafnis Prieto, Oscar Castro Neves, Mark Murphy, Orkestra Rumpilezz, Larry Coryell, Lázaro Galarraga, Regino Jimenez, Luis Daniel “Chichito” Cepeda, Modesto Cepeda, Guillermo “Negro” Triana, Lázaro Rizo, Raul “Lali” Gonzalez, Amado DeDeus, Pedrito Martinez, Jose Lugo, Jerry Medina, Orestes Vilató, Kamau Daaood, Johnny Rodriguez, Sonny Bravo, Arturo Sandoval, Nestor Torres, Anthony Carrillo, Paoli Mejías, Raul Rekow, Andy Gonzalez, Jerry Gonzalez, Jovino Santos Neto, Lalo Schifrin, Gema y Pavel, Pete Escovedo, Claudia Gómez, Maria Márquez, Jon Jang, Wayne Wallace, Mark Levine, Elio Villafranca, Bruce Forman, Linda Tillery, Charlie Hunter, Joyce Cooling, Bobby Matos, Mark Weinstein, Roberto Borrell, Sandy Perez, Jesus Diaz, Roman Diaz, Pablo Menendez y Mezcla, Yma Sumac, Rhiannon, Larry Vukovich, Kenny Washington, Faye Carol, Kellye Gray, Destani Wolf, Kimiko Joy, Kenny Endo, Abhijit Banerjee, Erik Jekabson, and Carlos Santana, among others.
John is widely respected as one of the top writers, teachers and historians in the field and was a member of the Latin Jazz Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian Institution. He is currently part of the faculty at the California Jazz Conservatory (Berkeley, CA), San Francisco State University, Jazz Camp West (since 1986) and the College of San Mateo (CA). He has conducted countless workshops, lectures and clinics in the US, Latin America and Europe since 1973 at institutions of all types including the Smithsonian, the Adventures in Music program of the San Francisco Symphony, the Berklee School of Music in Boston, UCLA, Yale, Stanford, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Michigan, Temple University, Brigham Young University, Cal Cal State Monterey Bay, Cal State Hayward, the University of Colorado, Yakima Valley Community College, Ohio Music Education Association, the Afro-Cuban Drumming and Dance Program at Humboldt State University (CA), Cal State Sonoma, Cal State Sacramento, Cal State San Jose, Tulane and Dillard Universities of Louisiana, Jazz Camp West, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Los Angeles Music Academy, the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco), the Lafayette Summer Music Program (CA), the Oakland Public Conservatory, and La Universidad Inter-Americana in San Germán Puerto Rico. He has contributed to the international magazines and publications African Arts Journal, Poetry in Flight, Percussive Notes, Modern Drummer, Modern Percussionist, and Latin Percussionist.
John was the director of the Orquesta Tipica Cienfuegos (1976-1980) and the award-winning Orquesta Batachanga (1981-1985). He was founder and director of the internationally renowned, Grammy-nominated Machete Ensemble (1985-2006), with whom he released nine CDs with special guests from Puerto Rico, Cuba, NY, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, mostly on John’s Machete Records label that was founded in 1984 and continues today. He currently directs the highly acclaimed John Santos Sextet Latin jazz ensemble with six full-length CDs under their belt to date. John has also produced four full length CDs with his Afro-Caribbean Folklóric Ensemble, El Coro Folklórico Kindembo since 1994, two of which were Grammy-nominated.
The San Francisco Bay Area community in which John still lives and works has presented him with numerous awards and honors for artistic excellence and social dedication. John received the Community Leadership Award from the San Francisco Foundation in 2011. He was presented with the San Francisco Latino Heritage Award in 2012 that included a Certificate of Honor signed by Mayor Edwin Lee, and Certificates of Recognition from the State Assembly, a Certificate of Recognition from the State Senate, and a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from the US House of Representatives. He was also selected for the Man of the Year Award by Brothers on the Rise (Oakland, CA) in 2013. A photo of John from 1987 by pioneering Puerto Rican photographer/activist Frank Espada hung in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC in 2016-2017!
John’s work has also been recognized and supported by the Monterey Jazz Festival (2002), the Smithsonian Institution, the California Arts Council, United States Artists, the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Fund for Folk Culture, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlitt Foundation, the East Bay Community Foundation, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the Creative Work Fund, and the City of Oakland. The City of San Francisco issued a mayoral proclamation declaring November 12, 2006 John Santos Day. He was featured prominently in the PBS American Masters documentary, Cachao: Uno Mas (2008), and is the subject of another PBS documentary by Searchlight Films (Oakland, CA), currently in progress.
John is an advisory board member of the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance (NY), Living Jazz (Oakland, CA), and the Oaktown Jazz Workshop (Oakland), and a Trustee of SFJAZZ.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).