Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#238: Bobby Sanabria (Jazz drummer and Latin percussionist) (pt. 1 of 2)
Today we release part 1 of our interview with Bobby Sanabria. He’s a noted drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, conductor, producer, educator, documentary film maker, and bandleader. He’s a 7-time Grammy nominee who has performed with dozens of renowned artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Bob Mintzer, and Randy Brecker. If you’re at all interested in Latin Percussion over the past 75 years, or what it takes to be a productive arts entrepreneur, you’ll want to join us!
In this episode:
From his electrifying encounter with Tito Puente to his dramatic decision to pursue music as a career, Bobby paints a vivid picture of his journey, reminding us all of the power of passion and determination. Bobby retraces his steps to an unforgettable encounter with the iconic Keith Copeland, which transformed his life in unimaginable ways. From understanding the odd meter of Don Ellis's music to taking lessons with Copeland, Bobby's tale reiterates the timeless significance of mentors in shaping our lives. His narrative is a testament to the everlasting beauty of perseverance, a beacon of hope for every artist who dares to dream.
Fasten your seatbelts as we explore Bobby's instrumental role in the creation of the Bronx Music Heritage Center. As the notes of his tale intertwine with those of folklorist Elena Martinez and Nancy Biberman, they create a symphony that echoes the diverse cultures and music that thrive in the Bronx. Hear Bobby talk about his studio experiences and his insights on being a band leader. His story, a synchrony of chasing dreams and defying expectations, is an inspiring melody that leaves us craving more.
Hi everyone, nick Petrella here. This episode is sponsored by Steve Weiss Music, percussion specialist since 1961. If you're looking for a rare piece of sheet music, a specialty gong or anything percussion, steve Weiss Music will have it. Please visit SteveWeissMusiccom or click their link in the show notes. That's S-T-E-V-E-W-E-I-S-S Musiccom. Our percussion series sponsor.
Announcer:Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service is not an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. My longtime friend, Bobby Sanabria, is on the podcast today. He's a noted drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, conductor, producer, educator, documentary filmmaker and band leader. He's a seven-time Grammy nominee who has performed with dozens of renowned artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santam aria, Bob Mintzer and Randy Brecker. We won't be able to cite all of Bobby's accomplishments here, so we'll have a link to his website in the show notes and include links to all of the people in place, as we'll mention in the podcast. Thanks for being on the podcast, Bobby.
Bobby Sanabria:It's a pleasure to be here, nick. We haven't seen each other since COVID, and now we get through cyberspace, get to see each other through Zoom, and people get to hear our jibba-jabba, as we would say, through audio. So, and nice to meet Andy, your producer as well. Nice to meet you too, bobby. Hello everybody.
Nick Petrella:Well, let's start by having you tell us how a kid from the South Bronx got to play with so many legendary musicians.
Bobby Sanabria:Well, I mean, I'm a product of my environment. Although I was growing up in the South Bronx, during the time period where everything was basically burning around us, there was a vibrant music scene happening, and it was the last time period when mainstream jazz, pop music and other forms like funk, even disco, r&b etc. And all forms of Latin music were all on the same plane in terms of you could just turn the radio dial and hear all those musics, and the lingua franca, excuse me, at that time, when I was a kid, was what we today called salsa, which is basically Afro-Cuban-based dance music. The way we played in New York City, in particular the Puerto Rican community. It was coming out of all the bodegas. You'd hear gonga drums in the park playing Cuban rumba, and I'm a product of all that. So by the time I was a teenager, in one hand I have a Tito Puente album, the other I have an Art Blakey or in the Jazz Messengers, or John McLaughlin in the Mahavishnu Orchestra album. So and then all the TV shows had jazz and all the TV talk shows were talking about Merv Griffin, dick Cavett, david Frost, johnny Carson's Tonight Show these are names. Probably the young people listening to this are going. Who are those people? But you can look them up on YouTube and check out what their shows were like. And they all had jazz bands, in particular big bands, except for Merv Griffin, but he had excuse me, not Merv Griffin Mike Douglas. Merv Griffin was another gentleman. He had a big band or semi-big band. Mike Douglas had a small band and they would frequently have jazz artists as guests.
Bobby Sanabria:The Ed Sullivan Show. I saw the Beatles when they first came to the United States on the Ed Sullivan Show. But when I saw some of the other groups that Ed Sullivan would feature, like Count Basie, tito Puente I saw on the Ed Sullivan Show. I saw Candido on the Ed Sullivan Show. I saw Buddy Rich on the Ed Sullivan Show and obviously who doesn't get excited when you see in here? Buddy Rich, incredible drummer, all the drummers in these bands were exciting to me, much more exciting than what I saw what Ringo was doing, and I was attracted to all of that.
Bobby Sanabria:And not that everybody in my neighborhood became a musician, but New York City had the best music program in the country at that time for junior high school and high school students. Every junior high school had at least two bands, two music teachers. Many of them came from the jazz world, or with jazz enthusiasts or with themselves working in the salsa scene. So they introduced that music to their students with. Even if they had a marching band, the students would always ask hey, let's form a jazz combo or a jazz big band On the high school level. It was incredible, and you would frequently see kids with musical instruments walking down the street. You know whether it was a trumpet, a trombone, a sax, et cetera, and I saw all that.
Bobby Sanabria:Our heroes when we were kids were not these celebrities that you see today, these so-called pop stars. They were either athletes or musicians, and I came from that. So when I saw Tito Puente when I was 12 years old playing in a street concert in front of my building I grew up in the Monroe's Projects I was just hooked. I said this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, and I pursued that, to the consternation of my high school track coach. I was very, very good in track and field and forget it. But by the sophomore year I had given all that up, all the sports, everything. The only thing that I was consumed by was music.
Bobby Sanabria:And then David Carmona, who was a good friend of mine. He was from Costa Rica. He was in a high school band. I went to Cardinal Hayes High School in the South Bronx this is a long story but it has a nice ending and he was, one day I'd go into the band room a little early so I could at least play the snare drum. I didn't have any drums or anything, but we were gigging already. I had some team ballers and my father had finally got me a cheap drum set. That was a that's a whole nother story, but we were. We were gigging with little local bands made up of kids our own age, high school kids. I guess you could call them at that time garage salsa bands, for lack of a better term. And we were inspired by Santana as well. So we had rock. We do rock tunes with Afro Cuban rhythms like Mambo, cha Cha Cha, et cetera, like Santana does.
Bobby Sanabria:Anyway, david was very advanced already and one day I walk in and he's reading a catalog and it says Berkeley College of Music on it and I said what's this? And he goes man, this is the school Quincy Jones went to, the Chick Corea went to, et cetera, this, that and the other. And I said, wow, you know. So our goal, both of us, was to get audition for the school and get there. And Mr William Ryan, he knew what. We were the only two in band class interested in being professional musicians. We were already gigging, getting paid for what we you know in the scene at that time, doing little gigs.
Bobby Sanabria:So he goes, you guys are never past the audition. First of all, you'll never get past the theory test. Do you know what a mixolydian scale is? Do you know what an Ionian scale is? And we're looking at him dumbfounded. He goes listen, I'll tell you what I'll do. Stay out of trouble, don't get into jug.
Bobby Sanabria:I went to a Catholic school which was Cardinal Hayes High School, and jug was judgment under God. He spent like an hour and a half after school standing straight up like in the military, and you couldn't move or anything. You couldn't do any work. Eventually they let us sit down. But so stay out of jug and I'll teach you. Monday, wednesdays and Fridays after school I'll give you like a half hour theory instruction and because of him we passed the auditions and passed the theory exams. To get into the school At that time you had to pass the theory exam and an audition. It's a lot different now and I always thank Mr Ryan for that.
Bobby Sanabria:He's no longer with us, but he taught me what it was to be a professional musician and my father was the one that exposed me to what I call the multiverse, cause he had a very. My father had Jose, many recipes, had very eclectic tastes in music. He was a working class guy, he was a machinist, but his ritual was every day took him two hours to get to work, two hours to get back, cause he worked all the way in Long Island was to sit in a lazy board chair and just listen to music. And I'd listen to what he listened to, which was Harry Belafonte live at Carnegie Hall.
Bobby Sanabria:Montavani, sergio Mendez in Brazil 66, machino, tiro Puente, tiro Rodriguez, james Brown, the birds, adobe Gray, folkloric music for my sister, homena, puerto Rico. It was ridiculous. And then being bombarded by all that music that I told you on TV, the cartoons all have music. All the Banna Barbera cartoons had music that was jazz oriented because Hoyt Curtin was a jazz pianist. So little I was getting trained at an early age, the best air training you could have in the world, and then it was everywhere.
Nick Petrella:It was in school, you had a mentor. It was in the community, said home.
Bobby Sanabria:Right, right. So I get to the Berkeley College of Music and because I had skills that nobody else had at that time, from my street training I could play Kongas, bongwantin Ballas. I know a little bit about Brazilian music from just from listening and you know. In any case, I got into the best ensemble at the school in my freshman year, which was the Michael Gibbs Chrome Waterfall Orchestra. It was Michael Gibbs was the gentleman that wrote all the arrangements for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, john McLaughlin and the London Philharmonic, so he was the art composer in residence at the school, artist in residence, and he had a band made up of the best students and the best and the teachers that he was. It was mixed, so I was the percussionist because he had seen Weather Report with Alex Cunha and Manolo Badrena. So he wanted that vibe in the band. And also, I guess he was inspired also to by one of my heroes, don Ellis, who I saw on PBS many moons ago on TV, the incredible forward thinking trumpet player, and his main thing was that he was Don was an ethnomusicologist. He drew upon East Indian music, brazilian music, cuban music, jazz obviously, but he composed a lot in odd meters and his big band was, at that time period, college bands and high school bands across the country were playing his music. You know why? Because most of the teachers in all of these programs were road warriors. They were jazz musicians who had gotten off the road for whatever reason, sick of it, or they were starting families and they wanted, they needed gigs and they applied to all these colleges and high schools and they became band directors.
Bobby Sanabria:And you are what you eat. They would expose the kids to the repertoire of all these great big bands that they had been playing at that time. You had Stan Ken still working. Buddy Rich's big band was roaring, firing on all cylinders. You had Maynard Ferguson with a big band. There were ghost bands like the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, etc. They would play all the state fairs and so it was a good time period for jazz. It was the last time period really. People of our generation, nick, were really exposed to jazz. They had a chance. You had a chance. The kids today, there's no way. Yeah, because they're. They're being bombarded by pop music and hip hop. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you eat just a certain kind of food, you're going to get indigestion eventually. You're not going to get much nourishment. So that's my opinion on what's happening now.
Bobby Sanabria:But be that as it may, when I was in that ensemble we would rehearse, you know, ensemble called E1. And that was the biggest ensemble room at the school. I don't know if it's if it's still named that, but at every rehearsal there would be like 50 people outside the door watching inside what we were doing. And the first two rehearsals there was a guitar player with big hair, lumberjack shirt. I just was shy and at that time you know I'm meeting all these guys I remember Kermit Driscoll later went to become onto become a well-known basis Was the bass player and then the third week the guitar player wasn't there. The guy to replace them was Bill Frazzell. So I asked Kermit, hey, whatever happened to the guy with the lumberjack shirt and the giant big hair? I like the way he played. He goes.
Bobby Sanabria:That guy that was Pat Matheny man, he's. He's on tour, for he just got signed to ECM. He's on a world tour. But I had to hurt Pat Matheny's recordings but I never knew what he looked like. So I'm a kid from the project. So there you go.
Bobby Sanabria:But we were playing odd meter music, just like Don Ellis, and I knew. I remember the first rehearsal he put some music in front of me and I believe it had a bar seven, a bar five and a bar a bar nine and Michael Gibbs goes to be Roberto, can you, can you come up with a groove for this on the congas? I mean my arrogant Bronx attitude. I said, sure, I can count, and the guys in the real sex were laughing at butts off etc. And he, he laughed. He laughed as well. He goes, he's, he's, he's, he's Rhodesian. So he has kind of like a British accent. He goes oh, splendid, marvelous, you know, you know all this. So that that was my experience at Berkeley. And then I met at Berkeley.
Bobby Sanabria:The guy that changed my life was Keith Copeland, the great drummer, because he made me the drummer I am today. I was just a street drummer. I could read a little bit and I got away with my hoodspot as a Jewish brother in New York, say, and the fact that I know all these things from African music in the streets and my cultural upbringing. But he really made me a professional drummer. How to read charts got my hands together with the Wilcoxon books, the independence exercises from syncopation. It was amazing. I always have to mention him. I make an appointment mentioning him, because there's always a point in everybody's lives that they meet somebody that really changes their lives. And for me, musically, it was Keith, and he changed the lives of many, many drummers that studied with him and he never gets enough credit and he's no longer here with us. He would have said he gave me the best drum lesson I have ever had in my life.
Bobby Sanabria:The first lesson I had I was studying with two other guys who shall remain nameless. That won't teach me anything, because on the first lesson with the first guy he goes OK, here's how you play seven over five and over this article. Man, I mean my head. I need to learn how to get my mechanics together. He's coming out with this Frank Zappa stuff on me right away and I go OK. So finally, in the lunchroom there was a guy named Charles Telleran who's a great drummer. He's a great pianist. He's from San Francisco. I think he's from LA, but or San Francisco, I'm not sure. He's from the West Coast. He goes to me.
Bobby Sanabria:You need to study with Keith man, he's from New York, like you, and I go Keith Copeland. Yeah, he goes. Yeah, man, you. That's the cat and the people around and the lunchtap because we all the musicians would hang out with the players from that day that played the same instrument. Everybody said, yeah, that's the cat.
Bobby Sanabria:So I go to the office. They tell me, oh, he's got a waiting list like almost two years. You know, I go, I go listen, I got to study with him or else I'm going to commit suicide. Wait a minute, wait a minute. So the woman behind it just starts Are you serious? I go, yeah, I'm serious. You know, wait a minute. So here, you're going to have to find them and ask him personally. So I'm looking for him, I'm looking for him and I finally I'm Mass Avenue, I bump into him.
Bobby Sanabria:Hey, mr Copeland. Mr Copeland, I'm Roberto Sinapprio, I'm from the Bryce, I got a study with you and he goes hold on, man, you know like I was a little bit remembered the way he said man, man. You know like because I know who you are. You know because he was African-American. So you know, because he was African-American, he was from Jamaica Queens, and it turned out that he had grown up with Billy Cobham and Lenny White, so they were his contemporaries. So anyway, that day in the evening I had a note in my mailbox you are another student of Keith Copeland and that's great. He made room for me and my first lesson was this. I'll tell you right now. I love telling the story but people think it's I'll land this. But it's true.
Bobby Sanabria:I walk in. He had a new beautiful set of blond sonar drums with new Sabian cymbals. Sabian had not even. They had just started advertising. Their first ads featured Phil Collins and Harvey Mason, and Keith was the third endorser. So I go, what are these? He goes, what are these? These are the sh** man. So he goes all right, roberto, sit down for me and play In those days. As you know, nick, most drum teachers drum set teachers have two drum sets One for the student, one for the teachers. They could play duets in tandem. So I was one and his seat was very high. So I start turning the seat to make it lower and he starts going hey, hey, what the f are you doing, man? And I go, I'm lowering the F and C Cause I'm from New York, so he comes off to me like that, like.
Bobby Sanabria:I'm lowering the F and C. It's too damn high. And he goes listen, man, if you walk, if I, if. How would you like it if I walked into your house where you live and I started rearranging the furniture in the living room because I didn't like the way it was Set up? I go, well, I'd be pissing. Same thing.
Bobby Sanabria:The drum, those drums, they're my drums. My house, when you, you're my guest, do not change anything. When you sit in on a jam session and do not switch anything on the drummer's trap set, you know it's disrespectful. It's a good life With my head. I'm going wow, I finally got the right teacher. So somebody else today probably, you know, would go to HR at the school. Hey, the teacher yelled at me, cursed at me, but in those days I mean, that's what I needed. And I think we all need. We all need a kick in the ass, whether it's from our loved ones or, in this case, a great teacher. And he was man, he, you know there's a lot of cats out there that are playing professionally, that haven't given him the depth, the deep appreciation that he deserves. So I'm giving it to him now.
Bobby Sanabria:Yeah, and after that I was playing in town. I formed my own group, asensiong, in which I had in to a certain extent in high school and I was making a big reputation for myself in Boston. I even did some guest shots, hosting radio on WBUR and Emerson College Radio, et cetera. I did as much as I could when you were while I was in Boston, but I would come back every summer to New York City and I'd do some gigs, but a lot of guys would tell me man, you're gonna go back to school, I can't have you in the band because you're gonna quit right away. But don't worry, if you're getting called now, you're gonna get called when you graduate, and I did. I got called by Mongo Santa Maria right after I graduated, and the rest is history. So yeah.
Andy Heise:So at what point did you realize you could be a professional musician or play music? You know full time.
Bobby Sanabria:Oh, there was no doubt that in my mind that I was gonna be a professional musician. There was no doubt. As soon as I got that little drum set and the set of Team Ballads and then later on Kongas and Ballads, I was like playing in little bands. You know, I'd meet cats. Hey, I play in this, that and the other. And all of a sudden you get called to a rehearsal. They got a gig somewhere, some church dance, all that kind of stuff. That was all available to us when we were young. You gotta understand.
Bobby Sanabria:The time period that I grew up in New York was in total freaking chaos. 1977, it all came to a head in that gigantic, massive blackout. I've survived every blackout that has happened in New York, but the 77 one, that was the killer, dillar, as we would say back in the day. That was when the South Bronx, where I grew up, exploded South Brooklyn, harlem and that was an important thing in a weird kind of way. You know why? Because every electronic store was robbed and whether they robbed boomboxes, everybody had a boombox. That weekend I bought one off a guy for five bucks with son of them on the corner.
Bobby Sanabria:It was an amazing time period and, like I said all of these things were and I was a sophomore or no, a junior at that time at Berkeley. I graduated in 79. So it was an incredible time period. I can't stress enough how incredible it was. If you looked at the Village Voice at that time. The Village Voice was this thick. Half of it were ads for rock and jazz clubs and Latin clubs and a lot of other kind of weird clubs too. But that time period will never, be ever duplicated created.
Nick Petrella:You're the co-artistic director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center and part of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Jazz Academy, as well as the Weil Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. How did you get those positions, and why is education and sharing Latin music so important to you?
Bobby Sanabria:Well, it's not just Latin music, jazz and it's relationship to Latin music. I'm a jazz musician, that's what I am. I just happen to be Latino, or the new term is Latinx, which I don't dig, but I'm on record of saying that now. But I'm sure I'm gonna get some emails from colleagues, friends of mine. But in any case, the Bronx Music Heritage Center was Nancy Beberman, who was an incredibly famous housing lawyer and you could see her in the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam. She was a student at Columbia University. She's featured prominently in that as a talking head in that documentary series on PBS.
Bobby Sanabria:Anyway, while she was acting as a lawyer housing lawyer in the South Bronx, she noticed that women were being taken advantage of, especially single women. So she decided to form a nonprofit. She called it WETCO Women's Housing Economic Development Corporation. This was like 29 years ago. 28 years ago, with a consortium of people she bought the old Morris Sanya Hospital for $1, because, as I told you before, new York was. It was like the best of times and the worst of times. It was incredible.
Bobby Sanabria:You'd go buy a nice high-rise building, then you'd see a burned-out building, you know, or a series of burned-out buildings. The Morris Sanya Hospital was abandoned. I used to. My parents used to take me there when I was a kid. She renovated, she bought it from the city for a dollar. She went through grants, et cetera, private funding. She renovated it, made a junior high school in it on the first floor, and with an arts and theater and music program, she realized that the arts were important.
Bobby Sanabria:So then she built another building, a Freeman Street in the South Bronx, or what's known as Louis IX Boulevard, with 185 apartments, solar panels on the roof and everything, and on the first floor she put an art gallery space. And she told she had a meeting with me and my significant other, the great Elena Martinez, the great, noted folklorist and cultural anthropologist, says. She said I want you guys to run this space. What's your vision for it? Right, like that, we're having dinner with her. Turns out she was a fan of mine. She had been following me around for years. You're the right person to do this with Elena. So I said well, I'd make it into something like Jazz at Lincoln Center, except that we are the.
Bobby Sanabria:I'll use the great Bill Graham as our inspiration. Bill Graham, the great rock promoter. He was a Bronxite but he loved Latin music and jazz. He was. He was the one that discovered Santana. Anyway, bill Graham's model was give him what they want, but give him something that they also need. So he booked a grateful debt at Fillmore Eastern or Fillmore West and he'd have the Buddy Rich Big Band opening up for them. Nobody does that today, nobody has that kind of vision or whatever. So the hippies would come in and they'd see Buddy Rich's Big Band or whoever, woody Herman's Big Band, and they'd be going, wow, what the hell, you know, because he knew they would be excited. And then they see the grateful debt or Santana, which he loved, obviously, and the rest was history. That's our.
Bobby Sanabria:I told her that's what I would use as an inspiration. I told her and went and what he's done at Jazz Aliccicin, except that I would feature all of the cultures that exist and all of the music that exist in the Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, because I don't think you know, dr Mark Nacer from Fordham University has said he teaches African American studies that more forms of music have been nurtured in the South Bronx than any and that in any other place in the United States other than it may be Tremay in New Orleans. When he told me that and he told Nancy that I was a guest and when I started thinking about it I go. He was right Do WAP, hip hop, funk, r&b, disco, salsa. There's even people in Fordham Road. There was a country group of people that were into country Western music. Then you got all the different folk music Irish folk music, italian folk music, gospel, I mean. It goes on and on and on. So people don't know that about the Bronx.
Bobby Sanabria:So anyway, that was Nancy's vision and we've been running the place for about 13 years. And now we're going to open up in December the Bronx Music Hall where the co-artistic directors, demi and Elena, or the artistic directors in the Bronx Music Hall from the small art gallery space which we've done everything there film screenings, panel discussions, black Lives Matter meetings, theater, numerous concerts of every style of music you can imagine, representing the different cultures in the Bronx. And now we're going to do that in a 250 seat theater and we already are using the outdoor stage in the summer months. We've been doing that for the last two years and we have a small amphitheater that holds about 80 people outdoors in the back and the 250 seat indoor theater and we have a dance studio, and the two lobbies that we have are huge. We could even have concerts in there. So we're ready to fire on all cylinders that hopefully, by December 8th will be open.
Bobby Sanabria:It's been rough because of COVID, the transportation of materials, all that's been delayed, but we're getting there. We're getting there. So I'm very proud to be in that capacity. I've learned a lot meeting with architects and with contractors and let me tell you, nick and Andy, we're in the wrong business. You want to make some money and be a contractor. I'll just leave it at that. Those of you who are listening and have homes and you've had to hire people to fix them, renovate that. You know what I'm talking about.
Bobby Sanabria:Yeah, and then, in terms of the Wild Center and Lincoln Center, they, they, through my reputation, they've gotten in touch with me and asked me to do various things. The last thing I did for Lincoln Center Jazz Lincoln Center I did a whole four week course, meeting one time a week, and this was through Zoom, because of COVID and the life in times of Buddy Rich, which was a very, very hip, because I was able to find the first recording Buddy Rich appeared on and was for this trumpet player's name is Sashley now, but all you hear Buddy Rich is doing this. Boom, chick boom, chick boom, chick boom, chick boom, chick boom, chick boom, chick boom, chick no, fills, no. Yeah, I always play that for people and they go man, who's that man? It's so corny. I guess who it is. It's Buddy Rich. So what does that tell you? Like he used to say, you play what's appropriate for the music.
Andy Heise:Yeah, so. So, bobby, that kind of leads me to my next question is at this point in the career, are you primarily focusing on projects that you want to do? Are people seeking you out to do partnerships, and what do you look for in those types of partnerships and collaborations?
Bobby Sanabria:Well, I've always been weird in that respect. They got to. I was doing a lot of gigs, like all of us do in New York what we call club dates, which are weddings, bar mitzvahs, corporate gigs etc. Both of you have probably done that as well, where you're at and you can make it. It's very lucrative. You can make a lot of money doing that and I started little by little turning it down because it was killing my soul and what was keeping me alive in terms of my soul was all the work I was doing in the jazz world and in the salsa world and in the studio world.
Bobby Sanabria:I caught the last tail end of the great period of studio work in New York City. So when you're walking into a studio and you see people like Lou Soloff on trumpet, ronnie Cooper on baritone, saxophone, you know a murderous row of the best musicians in New York City. And then you have to do a wedding gig, play top 40 music, and there's nothing wrong with that because from that I learned to be an MC and be versatile, etc. Et cetera. I remember when the first studio date I did was with the great Chico O'Farrell and Lou Soloff was playing trumpet at the NA Kid. You sound really good. Because we had done a gig the day before with this great band leader, marco Rizzo, pianist, who was the pianist for the I Love Lucy show, and he had a Wednesday gig every year every Wednesday lunchtime at the in the World Trade Center Plaza, which unfortunately is no longer there. So that's. I met all these guys, the cream of the crop of the studio musicians Lou Marini on alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, all these guys, jerome Richardson on tenor and flute, anyway.
Bobby Sanabria:So at the end of that session, lou Soloff comes to me. He goes hey, kid, you sound good man, yeah, yeah, let me give you a piece of advice. He goes oh, thanks, so you get, why stop, stop? Let me give you a piece of advice Don't ever do Broadway and don't ever do club dates. He goes why it'll freaking kill your soul. I'm telling you repeat after me, and I go I'll never do club dates, I'll never do Broadway. He goes great, great, I got to go, I got to go. I'm in a rush because where you got, where you going? I got to do a wedding gig, I got to do a update, I'm late. Your story, it was a hilarious so so that's, yeah, at this point in my life.
Bobby Sanabria:I only do things that I that I want to do. Sure, occasionally I'll do a favor for somebody. Sure, yeah, but I'll do it on my terms, you know. For example, I played a wedding two years ago for a friend, but I was the band leader, so I was able to pick the musicians and play whatever we wanted and within reason. Within reason and with the way I lead, when I lead a type of gig is I look at it as a jazz gig. So I feature the musicians as soloists.
Bobby Sanabria:So if we're doing a pop tune, a cover of a Billy Jolt tune, there's going to be somebody soloing on it. Sure, and people you know sometimes come up to me it goes, wow, man, you did that, that arrangement you did was a lot of hip. But then the original recording, I go, yeah, yeah, well, that's because there's solos in it and this, that and the other, yeah, all that kind of stuff. So that's a thing that young people don't realize. Because of hip hop culture today, unfortunately, they don't get to hear solos. When we were growing up, every pop tune, even the Beatles, featured like an eight bar, what we call a donor like, which is an eight bar solo or a four bar solo. It could be a guitar little feature, anything, even on the edited versions from albums. If you don't believe me, check out all that music from the 60s and 70s. There's solos throughout all of those things. They're not maybe jazz oriented solos, but they have the same. They have the spirit of jazz because they are featuring somebody as an improviser.
Nick Petrella:Right yeah. So your, your band leader statement segues nicely to the next question. I'm going to give you a scenario and I'd like you to give us your thought process. So you're contracting for your band and you need a musician Say it's a trumpet player. What are all the things you're looking for in that person?
Bobby Sanabria:Well, there's a couple of things. First of all, they have to be technically qualified to do the job and they have to have experience, not only in Latin music and jazz but other forms of music. They have to be professional. If I tell them where a certain type of garb, they're not gonna as soon as I hear well, listen, man, I don't have a white tie or something like that. Usually by the end of the statement I go you know something? It's all right, thank you, I just realized I got somebody you know.
Bobby Sanabria:There's a piece of advice for your young listeners out there and maybe a reminder to some of your older listeners. This is a service industry. We are in service to the music. If the conductor in a symphony orchestra tells you to play the triangle a certain way and you're thinking, well, if I do it that way, it's gonna mute the triangle or whatever. But they have something in mind that maybe you don't have in mind. You don't start giving them gruff. You appease the person because this is a service industry. You're there to service the music. So they have to be technically capable, professional, versatile and they can't be a d*** If you. I think that checks all the boxes. Oh, and also they have to be willing to embrace my vision as the band leader, my vision. So that comes under the not being a d***.
Bobby Sanabria:Category Right.
Andy Heise:Have you received any formal training in music business or have you just kind of picked up those topics along the way and do you share your experience in the industry sort of the business side of things with students that you work with now?
Bobby Sanabria:Well, I'm a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks. I have a PhD in that. Oh man, I can tell you stories that'll curve your, make your head stand up, curve your spine and blow your mind. But I was at a symposium on music business. It was me, omar Hakim, I think, his wife Rachel Z, and one other person that the musicians' union called us up for. And one thing I said perked up Omar right away. I said the higher you go up in the music industry, the more BS you have to put up with. You would think right that the higher you go up, the less. The higher you go up, the more BS you gotta put up. And Omar, he was like applauding me he go, bobby is totally right. Then he gave the whole story about him and Sting when he got that key. So if you wanna find out more, check out some interviews with Omar. Yeah, I'm sure that you'll find some stuff for him talking about that on YouTube. But yeah, be prepared, it's the road less travel, it's not for the faint of heart. And if you're too sensitive, you gotta grow some. Well, you gotta grow some onions and grow them fast, because there's just so much competition out there. That's all right. Competition breeds excellence.
Bobby Sanabria:I remember when my father, I told him I was going to Berkeley and he had assigned the papers for me to, because at that time I don't know how it is now, but if you're a minor, you have to sign. Your parents, a guardian has to sign the papers that you're leaving the state and you're going to another state and you give permission. So my father, right away, in Spanish everything sounds most dramatic in Spanish I thought why do you want to do that? I thought you were just a hobbyist in this and all this, and it was love. He was worried about me. This is a tough business. Why don't you stay here in New York? You can still play like you're doing now. And I told my father listen, pop, if I stay here, man, I'm not going to survive and I need to get my thing together and be. I need to meet people from different parts of the country. You know, I gave him the whole spiel and he's like still giving me guff back and my mother's just looking on the side and she finally tells him in Spanish Joe, my father's name was Jose, joe, if you don't sign the papers for your son to fulfill his destiny and his dream I'm going to divorce you and I'm serious. She was serious. There was like five, 10 seconds and he goes damala pluma, give me the pen.
Bobby Sanabria:So, with the spirit that I had, there was no way that I was going to be tonight. There's no way, and that's the way you have to be. It's kind of the those of you who are listening now who are into sports. You know I got that. I know I got that drive from my mother. She was like that when she rested peace in my father. My father was easy going, you know, but he was a strong individual. He displayed it. He just displayed it. My mother would yell at you, scream at you, whatever I was. I'll give you another example, the fiery aspect of my mother and why I love her so much Juanita she in the fifth grade, when I was in this Catholic parochial school medical conception they were given an exam for gifted kids and if they passed the exam, they went to this experimental school in Manhattan with Monsignor Willam R Kelly, where you didn't have to pay any tuition, it was free.
Bobby Sanabria:So I had the the highest grades in the class, but they didn't. They didn't offer me the interview or the chance to take the exam. They gave it to for lack of a better term three white kids. My mother found out. She was stormed into the office of that principal. I remember his name was a brother, robert, and she started screaming because I didn't. I wasn't there, but everybody told me about it. Your mother, man. She was screaming and yelling half Spanish, half English. Why, you know, let my son take exam. He's smart. Why? Because he's Puerto Rican. You know this, that and the other. And forget it. I took the exam. I was the only one that passed it, the interview, and I went to that school for three years, which also changed my life, because it made me.
Bobby Sanabria:And we, you know, we were protesting the Vietnam war. It was run by these Franciscan brothers, anybody who knows anything about the Catholic church. The Franciscan brothers are the most progressive ones and they forget. They made us little revolutionaries. It was, it was hilarious. But I was taking college and high school. I took political science in sixth grade. My mother goes to me what's political science? And I go, man, I have no idea. I guess it's the science of politics. I don't know, you know. So I found out quickly and, man, it was just. I grew up in an interesting time period. I just, I'm just lucky. I'm just lucky. I always say that I'm so. I was born in 1957. So I just turned 66. So that means I experienced everything that you could imagine in terms of the modern era, from Sputnik to West Side Story premiering on Broadway when the movie came out, the Kennedy assassination, medgar Evers, malcolm X, everybody, robert Kennedy, all the Vietnam war, nixon, you know that was all within the first 15 years.
Bobby Sanabria:Yeah, yeah. Of your life right. It was amazing. It was amazing, amazing, I still. I talked to my son about this sometimes and he's going damn, pa, you know plus and son. Now you know I've experienced the birth of the computer technology. I still don't know how to freaking use it correctly. You know as much as I should, you know. So I'm lucky. And then the luckiest thing for me was experience all that music that I told you about.
Announcer:Thank you.
