Bobby Sanabria Brings Diversity: Tours Broaden Audiences and Build Appreciation for Afro-Cuban Jazz

by Matthew Brown & Martha Dodson

Bobby Sanabria. Photo by Martin Cohen.

Latin jazz artist Bobby Sanabria has toured the mid-Atlantic region four times in the last four years courtesy of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation's innovative ArtsCONNECT Program. which supports presenter consortia touring projects in the region. ArtsCONNECT receives major funding from the NEA. Mr. Sanabria has been selected by collaborating presenters each year to give performances and participate in imaginative outreach activities designed to help presenters diversify programming. Through ArtsCONNECT-funded projects, cooperating presenters plan entire tours with the help of the artist or their agent, share promotional resources, curriculum materials, audience development ideas, and models for working with the artists.

Bobby Sanabria is an extraordinary percussionist, composer, arranger, recording artist and educator. He has performed and recorded with jazz greats such as Mongo Santarnaria, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, and Paquito D'Rivera. Among the high-profile recordings featuring his work is the soundtrack for "The Mambo Kings," and, more recently, the John Sayles film,"Hombres Armados." Sanabria attributes his multi-cultural approach to his roots in the Bronx "projects," where he grew up. There, tunes by the Beatles entered into the daily cultural mix with the likes of Sergio Mendes, Arsenio Rodriguez, and Frank Zappa.

"It was a great time to be young, Latino, and growing up in New York City," the artist says. "There was drumming heard in every neighborhood, and the music we had inherited from 'the great jazz mambo era' of the 1940s and 1950s inspired us to seek out our cultural roots and the common bonds that we share in the African-Caribbean Diaspora."

Sanabria has conducted clinics, lectures and seminars on the Afro-Cuban Jazz tradition worldwide. His knowledge of the subject and his easy rapport with children has made his educational activities a popular component of his mid-Atlantic tours. Sanabria serves on the faculties of the New School for Social Research and the Drummer’s Collective, a New York Center for the study of percussion that enjoys world renown. Sanabria and his ensemble, Ascension, released their first CD, "NYC Ache," ("Ache" is a Yoruba word for "Power"), on Flying Fish Records in 1993. DownBeat magazine gave the disc four and a half stars, calling Sanabria’s drumming work "as excitingly authentic as [it is] intense." His second CD will be released in 2000.

"Brindando El Sól - Que Rico Es"

The Sanabria tours are notable because they represent diverse collaborations of presenters, including those based on college campuses, at urban art centers, in rural grassroots organizations, and at community development agencies. At each stop on the tours, Sanabria and the other musicians work with members of the community as designated by the sponsoring organization. The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, PA, for example, has long nurtured ties with Philadelphia's Latino community through residencies, education activities and other community-based programs. Bobby Sanabria's residency at the arts center took place during their annual "Onda Latina" (Latin Wave) arts festival in March and April 1998. Onda Latina included some of the most innovative emerging Latino artists and writers: Puerto Rican dancer Viveca Vasquez; performance artists Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamantes' "Stuff;" jazz sensation Eddie Palmieri, and Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Perez. Visual artists showing their work in a concurrent gallery exhibit offered glimpses into the lives of Latinos in America.

Sanabria's contribution to Onda Latina was substantial. While there, he worked with a Philadelphia school of the arts, whose students learned firsthand about Latino jazz. He also helped performing arts students prepare for their own public performance, which took place as an opening act for his concert at Painted Bride. "These are students who haven't had a lot of exposure to Latin-American music," commented Gerry Givnish, then-artistic director for the Painted Bride. "It's musical terrain they've never traveled but, especially for people who improvise, it gives them new musical models to work from."

In New York, Sanabria gave an evening performance at the Unison Performing Arts Center, as well as two master classes, one at State University of New York in New Paltz, and another for a young people's jazz ensemble. He also delivered a lecture for local high school students. Before such audiences, Sanabria likes to explain how different ethnic groups enjoy the same musical roots. "The music is born out of a whole group of different cultures. We really have many more similarities than differences. Unfortunately, too often it's our differences that get accented..."

Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania presented Bobby Sanabria as part of its series on, multicultural music. The school was founded in the eighteenth century by a religious denomination whose members believed that no service was complete without music. Sanabria's concert began with a pre-performance discussion, examining the roots of his music. The presentation enhanced the college's music education program and opened the institution's doors to the Lehigh Valley's Latino population, a community of more than 9,000 people.

New York City students were introduced to Latin-American traditions and history when Sanabria came to Aaron Davis Hall for a one-week residency. During his engagement there, Bobby Sanabria gave two performances and a series of workshops that helped local high school students explore Latin music's links to Africa as well as its migration through the Americas and the Caribbean. His student audiences were treated to historical footage of Latin music masters, and they were shown the instruments that Latin musicians use in their music making.

Another stop on one of Sanabria's tours was a five-day residency at New Community Corporation in Newark, New Jersey. The agency's Community Arts Program created an Hispanic Cultural Committee and a Cultural Committee of the African Diaspora to advise staff on programming to reach out beyond traditional jazz audiences. During the engagement, one of Sanabria's sets was broadcast live on WBGO, Newark's jazz radio station.

The Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island, New York booked Bobby Sanabria as a way to further develop their programs in jazz, to continue reaching out to underserved Latino populations on Staten Island, and to educate children and adults about the history of Latin jazz. They created a bilingual guide to be used as a community outreach tool for the lectures, school workshops and master classes. In addition, Snug Harbor sponsored a panel discussion, moderated by Sanabria, entitled, "Afro-Cuban+Jazz: Roots, Rhythms and Realities." Throughout the engagement, Snug Harbor worked in partnership with the Latino Civic Association to develop the outreach activities, promote the performances, and secure additional funding.

In all of the examples described above, the presenters made use of the artist's artistic abilities and his skill in working with adults and children to craft quality engagements that went beyond a series of block-booked public performances. Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation's ArtsCONNECT Program requires presenters to seek out other presenters interested in booking the same artist and collectively plan a tour and request funding for fee support. These consortium projects each had a lead presenter that functioned as a facilitator, initiating meetings, conference calls or other modes for exchanging information during the project planning stages. Presenters were encouraged to use one another as resources, sharing audience development strategies, educational support materials, or marketing efforts. The partnership continues once the project has been funded, giving the partners a built-in network for discussing how the tour is proceeding and resolving unforeseen problems. This approach works especially well when some of the presenters in the consortium are more experienced in presenting the artist or art form they've identified. The other presenters, then, have a mentor with whom to consult as the project unfolds.

Each of the Bobby Sanabria tours supported by the ArtsCONNECT Program has given the presenters involved an opportunity to present a high-quality artist as a way to reach out to Latino audiences in their communities (perhaps for the first time) as well as to educate adults and children alike in the rhythms, historic roots and artistry of Afro-Cuban jazz.

Contributors to this article include: Bobby Sanabria, Laurel Raczka and Gerry Givnish (Painted Bride Art Center), Stuart Bigley (Unison Performing Arts Center), Nancy Clark (Moravian College), David Rodriguez (Aaron Davis Hall), Chase Jackson (New Community Corporation), Ellen Kodadek (Snug Harbor Cultural Center), Matthew Brown and Martha Dodson (Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation).

National Endowment for the Arts
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