Desde La Bahia—San Francisco

Latin Beat Magazine, Nov, 2003 by Jesse Varela

TAMBORES BY THE BAY! As we celebrate this Percussion Issue, let me share my brief perspective of how Afro-Caribbean music and percussion weaved their way into the musical fabric of the San Francisco Bay Area. The story began around the turn of the 20th century, after the Spanish American War, when a number of Puerto Ricans transplanted to Hawaii's sugarcane fields and subsequently made their way to the Bay Area by ship and rail, in search of a better life. Many established small colonies in San Francisco and Hayward. What they sang was jíbaro music, whose lyrics expressed their feelings and struggles.

Güiros, maracas and perhaps panderos were the initial percussion instruments used by these groups to compliment the voices, guitars and cuatros (Puerto Rican folkloric guitars) at social functions. One of the first bands to circulate among the Puerto Rican community in the Bay Area of the 1930s was that of Julio Rivera, the step-grandfather of drum master John Santos. He played Puerto Rican and Cuban-based music around the SF Mission District for El Club Puertorriqueño de San Francisco, the oldest Latino organization in the U.S. (incorporated in 1912).

Latin percussion received wider acceptance in the 1940s, when the society bands of Xavier Cugat and Enric Madriguera made their way west. The rhumba craze of the 1930s, sparked by Don Azpiazu's El Manicero (The Peanut Vendor), opened the door to Latin music in vaudeville. San Francisco was the gateway to the Pacific and boasted beautiful entertainment emporiums along Market Street, such as the Golden Gate and Orpheum theaters.

The appearance of singer Miguelito Valdés at the Golden Gate Theater in 1942 was a turning point for the new Caribbean sounds after WWII. Valdés, originally from the pioneering Cuban big band Casino De La Playa, made his big U.S. splash with Xavier Cugat, and recorded with Columbia Records. The Cuban singer--allegedly of Mexican-Spanish descent--greatly influenced Luis Alcaraz and other Mexico City-based bandleaders.

The repertoire that Alcaraz culled (comprised of danzones, boleros, guarachas, rumbas, fox trots, blues and swing tunes) was the first to add Spanish lyrics to North American pop tunes. It was only a couple of degrees hipper than Cugat but it was a formula that pioneer Bay Area Latin big band leader Merced Gallegos (1904-1956), a double bassist from León, Guanajuato (MX), would follow.

Gallegos arrived in the Bay Area in the 1920s and started his band in the late 1930s. He ushered in the mambo era at Oakland's popular dancehalls in the 1940s. His repertoire consisted of stock arrangements of popular Latin and North American favorites of the day. His theme song was Santa, a beautiful bolero by Agustín Lara, but he kept a varied book of rancheras, danzones, boleros and guarachas. A classically trained musician, Gallegos was a strict taskmaster who not only led his own band but also played in the pit band of the Curran Theater. His musicians had to read well, so he used players from the Musicians Union's Local #6. His lead trumpeter was Alan Smith, who went on to play with Duke Ellington. An important member in giving the band an authentic Latin kick was the Puerto Rican-born conguero/singer Nod García, a student at San Francisco State University.

A youthful Mexican American audience packed his shows, allowing him to bring in big name artists from Mexico, Latin America and the East Coast. In 1950, Gallegos promoted the first appearance in the region of Pérez Prado (who introduced the mambo to the Bay Area).

Both Benny Velarde and Armando Peraza occasionally worked with Gallegos but Velarde had another early 1950s gig in Oakland at the California Hotel's Sunday afternoon Mambo Sessions. His group, The Panamanians (featuring Velarde on timbal and Carlos Federico-Smart at the piano), catered to a largely African American clientele. Around 1951, Velarde moved to NYC and Federico took the gig, with a group that included timbalero Willie Vargas, a superb musician who left Federico to join Pérez Prado.

A 17-year old percussionist-singer named Pete Escovedo soon filled the opening. Escovedo was part of that Mexican American teen generation embracing jazz and Afro-Caribbean music in the Bay Area. Along with his brothers, Phil and Coke, he felt the vibe of the West Oakland blues scene and the hippness of the San Francisco jazz scene. Pete and his brothers had heard vibraphonist Cal Tjader's first Latin-jazz experiments in the mid-1950s with Velarde (timbal) and Edgard Rosales (congas). But most importantly, Armando Peraza took them under his wing and taught them.

The omni-presence of Armando Peraza in the Bay Area has been air important foundation for every percussionist who followed. Cal Tjader recruited NYC drummers Luis Miranda (from the Machito Orchestra) in the mid-1950s and Willie Bobo and Mongo Santamaría (from Tito Puente's band) in the late 1950s.

In the 1960s, The Copacabana Nightclub brought the NYC bands of Tito Puente, Machito and Tito Rodríguez, as well as L.A. kingpins Modesto Durán and his Charanga. The Cable Car Village in SF also featured the singing conga player Juanita Silva, a.k.a. Juanita La Chiquita, who in the 1960s played in a band with Armando Peraza.