After 16 long years of playing assorted “rat holes and dives,” after a lifetime of being told “you’ll never make it playing that kind of music,” Poncho Sanchez figures it’s his turn to gloat.
Though long sneered at by performers who considered his music hopelessly out of date and rejected early on by Cuban musicians who laughed at the prospect of a Mexican-American conga player trying to perform Afro-Cuban music, Sanchez persevered.
He may be bruised a bit from the blows he has suffered along the way, but today Sanchez towers over the very world of Latin jazz that once ridiculed him. In fact, with one superb new recording in the CD bins, two more releases due later this year and a touring schedule that’s bringing him to most of the world’s music capitals (including Chicago at the Elbo Room Saturday), Sanchez appears to be on the verge of achieving the wide recognition that always had seemed beyond his reach.
The miracle is that he has achieved this without giving an inch to the commercial forces that deemed him a musical anachronism.
“When I first started this band, in 1980, they said, `You’ll never make it playing that old stuff,’ ” says Sanchez, referring to the traditional Afro-Cuban jazz that he has revered for as long as he can remember.
“A lot of musicians in Los Angeles–we won’t mention any names–but several well-known players in town were very much into funk fusion. And they said to me, `That music you’re playing is not what’s happening, you’ve got to go fusion.’
“And today I see these same players, and you know what? They’re leading their own Latin jazz bands in L.A.! So I say to them, `Shame on you–after giving me a hard time, now you’re playing Latin jazz? Shame on you.’ And I say it right to their faces.”
One doesn’t doubt it, considering the depth of Sanchez’s passion for this music and the personal and professional sacrifices he has endured to play it. In a music world in which artistic compromise and crossover appeal are considered the natural routes to larger record sales, Sanchez has taken a different path, offering instead the purest forms of Afro-Cuban jazz.
In fact, with the death of pioneer composer-bandleader Mario Bauza three years ago, the slender touring schedule of septuagenarian bandleader Cachao and the somewhat hammy recent performances of timbales virtuoso Tito Puente, Sanchez must be considered one of the foremost standard-bearers for Afro-Cuban music around the world.
Other ensembles may be flashier (Puente’s band), bigger (Ray Barretto’s outfit) or more aggressive (Chicago’s Chevere), but few define the rhythmic complexities and lyric ardor of authentic Afro-Cuban genres as eloquently as Sanchez’s long-running octet.
“You’ve got to have a lot of respect for him and for what he has accomplished,” says Alejo Poveda, a brilliant Chicago percussionist who co-leads Chevere.
“He has taken a different point of view than a lot of Latin bands, and he’s done it as a Mexican-American musician. That doesn’t mean that Mexican-Americans can’t play Afro-Cuban music, but Sanchez plays it better than many Cubans and Puerto Ricans.
“He brings you close to the source of the music.”
Though long sneered at by performers who considered his music hopelessly out of date, though early on rejected by Cuban musicians who laughed at the prospect of a Mexican-American conga player trying to perform Afro-Cuban music, Sanchez persevered.’
Little wonder, since Sanchez grew up hearing the sounds of Machito, Puente and other Latin jazz giants virtually since his birth, in Laredo, Texas, in 1951. Having moved to Norwalk, Calif., when Sanchez was 4 years old, his parents settled in a Chicano neighborhood where the sounds of Latin dance band records blared into the streets. Sanchez’s 10 older siblings routinely danced to the cha-chas, merengues, guaguancos and pachangas that their parents adored, and by the time Sanchez was a teenager, he had taught himself the basics of guitar and congas.
“I used to go to Griffith Park, in L.A., where about 30 conga players show up every Sunday,” he recalls. “They had one big circle of about 20 players who weren’t very good, and then they had another circle of six or seven Puerto Rican guys who were incredibly good.
“Of course, I was in the terrible circle, until one of the guys from the other circle came over and said, `Hey, you’re pretty good–you must be Puerto Rican.’
“And I said, `Nope.’
“So he said, `Oh, you’re Cuban.’
” `Nope.’
” `Chicano?’
“No, I’m Mexican-American.’
“And the other guy said, `Well, your mother must be Cuban or Puerto Rican.’ Of course she wasn’t.”
Word of Sanchez’s prowess on congas eventually reached one of his heroes, the sublime vibes player-bandleader Cal Tjader, who took Sanchez on tour with him from the mid-’70s until Tjader’s death, in 1982.
“He was like my musical father–I was next to him when he died, of a heart attack, 13 years ago on Cinco de Mayo, while we were on tour in Manila,” says Sanchez. “I still miss him.
“To me, he was the greatest vibes player who ever lived. Maybe not the greatest technically, maybe not as fast as, say, Gary Burton, but Cal wasn’t interested in playing with double mallets in each hand, like Gary does.
“He wanted this beautiful, warm sound, and he had this wonderful touch on that instrument. But he also could play piano, drums, timbales. So I learned a great deal just by being around him. He never took me aside and said: `This is how you do this,’ or `This is how you do that.’
“But it was just watching him–the way he handled a crowd, the way he entertained an audience, the way he conducted himself in front of a microphone–that’s where you learned.”
For years Sanchez had wanted to pay fitting tribute to Tjader, and his exquisite new release–“Soul Sauce: Memories of Cal Tjader” (Concord Picante)–does just that. If earlier Sanchez albums such as “A Night at Kimball’s East” and “Para Todos” were notable for their musical exuberance and technical virtuosity, “Soul Sauce” reflects the more lyrical side of both Sanchez’s work and Tjader’s influence.
It also underscores Sanchez’s utter refusal to take the commercial route. Though his record label, Concord Picante, told him that he could hire any big-name vibist he wanted to play the role of Tjader, Sanchez declined.
“The late (Concord founder) Carl Jefferson said, `I can get you Bobby Hutcherson, Gary Burton, whoever,’ ” remembers Sanchez.
“They’re all excellent, they obviously could play the charts, but the problem was that they wouldn’t try to sound like Cal. I needed someone who would live and breathe Cal’s music.
“So I got this guy I know, Ruben Estrada, who’s actually a barber by trade, but he knows how to sound like Cal. I mean, he’s no Cal Tjader, no one is–but at least we get the feeling of Cal on the record.”
Any musician who would choose a vibes-playing barber over Burton or Hutcherson clearly marches to his own beat. In Sanchez’s case, that distinctive view of the music world owes not only to Tjader but to others, as well. The “Latin influence and classic compositions” of Machito, the “incredible timbales playing” of Willie Bobo, the “authentic early bands” of Tito Puente all established the precedents on which Sanchez has built his sound.
And though he realizes that, for all his recent success, he’ll probably never acquire the fame and fortune of such Latin-pop crossover groups as, say, Los Lobos, that’s not the point.
“A lot of my fans say they’re so glad that I have stuck with the real thing,” says Sanchez. “But I respect and love this music too much to water it down. That’s insulting the music. So I tell my fans not to worry about anything. As long as I’m alive, they’re going to get their authentic Latin jazz.
“That’s how it’s going to be so long as Poncho is around.”
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The Facts
Poncho Sanchez
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Elbo Room, 2871 N. Lincoln Ave.
Tickets: $12-$14
Call: 312-549-5549
