American music is complicated, but its roots can be traced as was proved by John Santos on April 17.
The Diversity Day program, hosted by the Stewardship for Equity, Equal Employment and Diversity (SEEED) Committee, has been shown at Skyline College over the past several months in an effort to showcase the diversity of the college’s musical population.
America does not have one continuous culture; our country’s population is composed of different ethnicities from all around the world. Therefore, our individual ethnicities meld.
Music is always a personal experience. It tells the tale of what life is like inside of another person’s head, and is usually an individual experience. However, it can also go into the realm of a cultural experience, and can unite a group of people by telling what they experience on a daily basis.
The Diversity Day program has been going on over this spring semester and has been using musical shows to get its point across.
It started with the African talking drums show back on February 28 and on April 17 did a show about Latin Jazz featuring John Santos and his quartet as the performers.
The presentation last on April 17, for those of you too lazy to look at a calendar, started the way these presentations usually do: With the performers talking about their music and how it connects with the rest of American music, but before we get to that you should probably know who John Santos is.
John Santos is a San Francisco born, Latin Jazz percussionist. Furthermore, he is a member of the Latin Jazz Committee at the Smithsonian Institute. He is widely respected throughout the intellectual community, and is considered one of the foremost historians in the realm of Latin Jazz. He has done other seminars and performances of this sort.
“John Santos was a real coup as he is considered one of the best Afro-Cuban performers in the country if not the world,” said Rosemary Bell, the Coordinator of Student Diversity Day.
Due to his experience in the field he was able to talk with complete confidence about the origins of Latin Jazz.
He started with the introduction of his quartet, with Marco Diaz, a grad from SF State on the piano, Saul Sierra, a Berkley Grad on the double bass, and Orestes Villató, a Cuban professional who often played the timbales.
He then began to explain where Latin Jazz comes from. In this country it comes mainly from New Orleans due to the nature of its location, a rich port city on the Carribean, but that is only in this country. He explained that Jazz connects the whole Carribean Sea. He also said that in the way that this music connected the countries in the Caribbean to each other this musical style connected the United States to the rest of America.
“In school we are taught that the United States equals America, and this causes problems in dealing with cultures south of our borders, but we have many connections to South America, and this can be seen in our music,” said Santos in his opening speech.
At that point the presentation moved into a performance in which the music was to “lift our spirits and induce a sort of euphoria”, and judging from the crowd’s reaction the music did just that.
The whole presentation was rather entertaining and induced quite a bit of toe tapping from the audience. The feelings evoked by the songs varied quite a bit from a formal song like Danson Orchestra Tipica, to a much more free formed song like Mulatta Rumpara.
The performance ended at 2:15 with the song Equinox Guido which featured a gourd solo, in which it looked like the gourd was carrying John Santos along for the ride. This is the third such performance of this type that I have been to, and I hope to go to more. Rosemary Bell says that the performances all went well, and that they will continue on next year. For my part I hope they do.
