Our community has a major impact upon our lives, shaping our cultural awareness and the paths that we take to express it. Interactions with parents, friends, extended family, teachers, and other community members give us clues about their values and the traditions that they cherish. From birth, we learn by imitation, so we naturally gravitate towards the same types of activities and priorities. These values become an important part of our lives, but at some point, they eventually come into conflict with new ideas that we encounter. We weigh these differences through many avenues, struggling to find a concrete sense of meaning. In some cases we reject the vales given to us by our community, and in other ways, we hold onto them dearly. This process defines our younger years, sending us on an experimental journey to realize our potential and discover our inner voice. When we emerge on the other side of the process, we arrive with a solid sense of self, and in the case of a musicians, a firm artistic direction. This musical personality might reflect an evolution and a whole world full of influences, but at the core of it, our original community remains. Our identity as mature musicians and individuals directly reflects upon our community and our relationship with it.
Percussionist Annette Aguilar began her musical life in San Francisco and built a love for music based upon the active artistic world of her community. Born to Venezuelan parents, Aguilar and her family found themselves in the city's Noe Valley district, surrounded by the sites and sounds of the sixties. As she grew her, Latin roots drew her to the Mission, which was bubbling with the sound of Mongo Santamaria, Carlos Santana, and much more. She was drawn to the drum and local classes helped her make the leap into drum kit and eventually Latin percussion. She was surrounded by young people motivated by the same musical movement, and she soon became part of an active community that included musicians such as John Santos, Karl Perazzo, John Calloway, and more. The area was ripe with fantastic mentors and role models that included Pete Escovedo, Cal Tjader, and many more. San Francisco soon began housing a number of serious and influential Latin music groups, including Tipica Cienfuegos and Ritmo '74. Aguilar's brother Jaime was a vocalist with Cienfuegos, and as the group opened for a number of visiting bands, Aguilar soaked in all the sounds. Surrounded by music and musicians made a huge impact upon Aguilar, and she soon knew that music would become her life.
Aguilar took in all the amazing music of the San Francisco scene and applied it to her drumming, soon finding work in many groups. Her passion grabbed hold and eventually took her out to New York to build her career. In the first part of our interview with Aguilar, we take a look at her early days in San Francisco, how the city's culture influenced her, and some of the amazing musicians around her.
LATIN JAZZ CORNER: You were born in San Francisco, how did you get interested in music as a young person?
ANNETTE AGUILAR: I was born on 25th and Sanchez in Noe Valley (San Francisco). I think that we were one of the very few Hispanic families that lived in the neighborhood—my parents were from Nicaragua. They had owned a house on 25th Street and Sanchez and my aunt had a house up the block on Jersey and Castro. We were in Noe Valley, but of course, we all gravitated down to the Mission, being Latino.
There were no musicians in my immediate family, but we were listening to a lot of music in the sixties. Growing up in San Francisco, there was a lot of stuff going on. The Beatles were happening, and all this music was going on in the community. I went to a Catholic school called St. Paul's on 30th and Church. In the summertime, they had a music workshop, and I took it one year. We were learning drum set and hand percussion. Actually Karl Perazzo was at that workshop; we were close in age—he was 9, I was 10. So drum set is really my first instrument.
Then as we got older, into our middle school years, the whole Santana thing happened. In the early seventies, that whole scene happened—San Francisco, the Mission, and Noe Valley had this musical stuff happening. So when Santana came out, it was kind of a blessing for Latinos. Here's this guy who's a Mexican American, and he's in the same ballpark as us, making it famous and playing Latin music. The percussionist was from Nicaragua, so for me, that was kind of like, wow. And he became national.
Another thing that kind of helped me was my school music program. After I had left the Catholic school, my three brothers and I were bussed from Noe Valley to the Avenues. We were bussed to Parkside in the Avenues. There was a music teacher, a man that came around and asked people what instrument they wanted to play. I already loved the drums, so I came to his class and I learned how to play snare drum. So the school and community is what inspired me.
I think basically, the culture of San Francisco really impacted me. We were listening to James Brown and Aretha (Franklin), Jimmy Hendrix. We lived in the Avenues for a minute, so we were close to Haight-Ashbury. George Harrison came down there and the whole thing that happened in the late sixties. Santana being Latino and making it big also helped too.
It goes back to the church, to your school, to your community—that's what makes all of us. Everybody that was growing up there during that time—Karl Perazzo, John Santos, John Calloway—for all of us, it was just part of it. There were so many people studying music. It was typical for anyone to have a band when they were 12 or 13 years old. When we were 21, we already felt that we were ancient history!
LJC: When you saying that you were playing at 12 or 13, what kind of bands were you guys putting together—was it more of a rock thing or were you going for the Santana Latin Rock thing?
AA: Everybody was going for the Latin Rock thing. We were proud that we were Latinos, and there was a lot of political stuff happening. The political scene that was happening in the late sixties and early seventies—stuff with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, and then later the Bacchi case—it influenced us. Politics, demographics, geographics, and timing . . . music has so much to do with everything. It's not just about how quick you can play licks on the guitar; it's your culture. It's everybody's culture.
But the bands, we were all Latin Rock—that was the focus first. Then later, the Afro-Cuban thing really kind of took over.
LJC: I've heard about great rumbas in Dolores Park, were you exposed to that rumba thing early on?
AA: Yea, I was part of that via Tipica Cienfuegos . . .
LJC: Were you in that group?
AA: I wasn't in that group, my brother Jaime was in that group. My brother started playing with Calloway and they had a band. Then Santos came in and it became Tipica Cienfuegos. I was around that whole scene. I met Calloway there; he had to be at least 14, and I was around 15. He was up at McLaren Park; he was from the Excelsior. I was Noe Valley/Mission. He played everything; he was even playing saxophone. He was also really a great timbale player. They were doing a lot of funk stuff with the horns.
Calloway was also transcribing for people when he was in high school. When people come up and say, “Well this kid is this age and he's doing this," I ask, “How old is he?" “21." “O.K., that's great, but I remember that Calloway was doing that when he was fourteen!"
In San Francisco, you had Gibby Ross, you had Karl Perazzo . . . Gibby Ross was sitting in with Tito Puente when he was 9! That was normal for us! So don't give me your 21 or 25-year-old guy doing riffs out at the Litchfield Jazz Festival! That's great, but it's different when you grew up with Santos, Calloway, Harold Muñoz, and of course, Karl (Perazzo), who was a great bongocero, a great congureo, and a drum set player. So it's quite interesting . . .
LJC: Were the big role models of the San Francisco scene like Tjader, Chepito Areas, and the Escovedos available to you? Were you able to hang with them and learn from them?
AA: The people who very open to me were Pete Escovedo and his family, especially when I started gravitating more towards the conga drum.
I had a bit of an episode when I was in junior high school, so I had a bit of a break. I was gone from home for a while. My mother was trying to send me to Nicaragua when I was 13. I went to Texas to live with my aunt, and from there, I was supposed to go live in Nicaragua. I think that my mother had a sense that there was going to be a war (in Nicaragua) that was going to break out, and being pretty rebellious, I would have gotten involved. So she pulled me back to San Francisco. Then the war broke out in Nicaragua, and the Revolution happened; it was not a good scene. So it was a good call that they decided to have me come back.
The music really kind of took a part in my life then. I met a man by the name of Ron Bermudez. I got to sit in with Cal Tjader via him, because he was producing shows. I met Tjader and I met his daughter. I got to play with Tjader, and after that, we went to the Escovedo's house.
Pete was always very open. I got to play with him and then I met Sheila. Sheila was like a monster. She was around all that, but she was very kind and inviting. That was the scene back there, with Pete Escovedo, the father really supporting everyone's stuff. Sheila's family was really supportive and I got to play with them. John Santos has always been like that too, always. And Calloway, and all those guys. It was a kind of open scene.
In the early days, there was a band called Ritmo '74. That whole scene started happening when Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe came out in the mid-seventies. The whole salsa scene really boomed in San Francisco. El Gran Combo was coming here, Barretto was coming here . . . there was a lot of excitement about this whole salsa scene. It was the whole New York scene, and the whole Puerto Rican/Nuyorican kind of stuff. It wasn't about Cuba. Later it was—when Los Papines came. They didn't come until about 1977. Tipica Cienfuegos opened for Los Papines. My brother was in that show. I was into that whole thing, studying.
LJC: You were getting into Afro-Brazilian music at the same time, right?
AA: My heart was really into salsa and Afro-Cuban. I remember I won a scholarship and I went to Washington D.C. in 1975. Me and another friend were the only Latinos in that scholarship program. I had a tape recorder and I was playing Eddie Palmieri's The Sun of Latin Music. All these other kids were like, “What the hell are you listening to?" I said, “It's The Sun of Latin Music! You don't know what that is?!?"
We got heavily into the salsa scene. Indestructibleand all those albums were out . . . those albums are great. Then Ruben Blades came out here with the Siembraalbum. Tipica was opening for all these people. Of course, there was Celia. I knew who Celia was because my mother and my father saw Puente in the late fifties. Mongo and Tjader, they were just part of the San Francisco scene. I met Mongo when I was 18. There were so many concerts. That particular group—Tjader's group with Vince Girauldi and Al McKibbon was great.
All these guys on the West Coast had that kind of San Francisco mixed thing—the people in Noe Valley were living with Irish Italians and then some Latinos and then the Mission. I would say in terms of more open, people in New York in the seventies were not as open as people like the Escovedos, and John Santos.
I got into the Brazilian scene because in the late seventies, I listened to Milton's album, the one that had “Cravo É Canela" on it. I was like, “Wow, listen to these melodies, they're so beautiful . . ." Then I read this book called Drum & Candleand it got me into the whole Afro-Brazilian thing. The Afro-Cuban Yoruba and the Afro-Brazilian Condomble are similar. The other thing that got me into it was going to see the movie Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. I also got into it because of a San Francisco group Batucaje.
Percussionist Annette Aguilar began her musical life in San Francisco and built a love for music based upon the active artistic world of her community. Born to Venezuelan parents, Aguilar and her family found themselves in the city's Noe Valley district, surrounded by the sites and sounds of the sixties. As she grew her, Latin roots drew her to the Mission, which was bubbling with the sound of Mongo Santamaria, Carlos Santana, and much more. She was drawn to the drum and local classes helped her make the leap into drum kit and eventually Latin percussion. She was surrounded by young people motivated by the same musical movement, and she soon became part of an active community that included musicians such as John Santos, Karl Perazzo, John Calloway, and more. The area was ripe with fantastic mentors and role models that included Pete Escovedo, Cal Tjader, and many more. San Francisco soon began housing a number of serious and influential Latin music groups, including Tipica Cienfuegos and Ritmo '74. Aguilar's brother Jaime was a vocalist with Cienfuegos, and as the group opened for a number of visiting bands, Aguilar soaked in all the sounds. Surrounded by music and musicians made a huge impact upon Aguilar, and she soon knew that music would become her life.
Aguilar took in all the amazing music of the San Francisco scene and applied it to her drumming, soon finding work in many groups. Her passion grabbed hold and eventually took her out to New York to build her career. In the first part of our interview with Aguilar, we take a look at her early days in San Francisco, how the city's culture influenced her, and some of the amazing musicians around her.
LATIN JAZZ CORNER: You were born in San Francisco, how did you get interested in music as a young person?
ANNETTE AGUILAR: I was born on 25th and Sanchez in Noe Valley (San Francisco). I think that we were one of the very few Hispanic families that lived in the neighborhood—my parents were from Nicaragua. They had owned a house on 25th Street and Sanchez and my aunt had a house up the block on Jersey and Castro. We were in Noe Valley, but of course, we all gravitated down to the Mission, being Latino.
There were no musicians in my immediate family, but we were listening to a lot of music in the sixties. Growing up in San Francisco, there was a lot of stuff going on. The Beatles were happening, and all this music was going on in the community. I went to a Catholic school called St. Paul's on 30th and Church. In the summertime, they had a music workshop, and I took it one year. We were learning drum set and hand percussion. Actually Karl Perazzo was at that workshop; we were close in age—he was 9, I was 10. So drum set is really my first instrument.
Then as we got older, into our middle school years, the whole Santana thing happened. In the early seventies, that whole scene happened—San Francisco, the Mission, and Noe Valley had this musical stuff happening. So when Santana came out, it was kind of a blessing for Latinos. Here's this guy who's a Mexican American, and he's in the same ballpark as us, making it famous and playing Latin music. The percussionist was from Nicaragua, so for me, that was kind of like, wow. And he became national.
Another thing that kind of helped me was my school music program. After I had left the Catholic school, my three brothers and I were bussed from Noe Valley to the Avenues. We were bussed to Parkside in the Avenues. There was a music teacher, a man that came around and asked people what instrument they wanted to play. I already loved the drums, so I came to his class and I learned how to play snare drum. So the school and community is what inspired me.
I think basically, the culture of San Francisco really impacted me. We were listening to James Brown and Aretha (Franklin), Jimmy Hendrix. We lived in the Avenues for a minute, so we were close to Haight-Ashbury. George Harrison came down there and the whole thing that happened in the late sixties. Santana being Latino and making it big also helped too.
It goes back to the church, to your school, to your community—that's what makes all of us. Everybody that was growing up there during that time—Karl Perazzo, John Santos, John Calloway—for all of us, it was just part of it. There were so many people studying music. It was typical for anyone to have a band when they were 12 or 13 years old. When we were 21, we already felt that we were ancient history!
LJC: When you saying that you were playing at 12 or 13, what kind of bands were you guys putting together—was it more of a rock thing or were you going for the Santana Latin Rock thing?
AA: Everybody was going for the Latin Rock thing. We were proud that we were Latinos, and there was a lot of political stuff happening. The political scene that was happening in the late sixties and early seventies—stuff with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, and then later the Bacchi case—it influenced us. Politics, demographics, geographics, and timing . . . music has so much to do with everything. It's not just about how quick you can play licks on the guitar; it's your culture. It's everybody's culture.
But the bands, we were all Latin Rock—that was the focus first. Then later, the Afro-Cuban thing really kind of took over.
LJC: I've heard about great rumbas in Dolores Park, were you exposed to that rumba thing early on?
AA: Yea, I was part of that via Tipica Cienfuegos . . .
LJC: Were you in that group?
AA: I wasn't in that group, my brother Jaime was in that group. My brother started playing with Calloway and they had a band. Then Santos came in and it became Tipica Cienfuegos. I was around that whole scene. I met Calloway there; he had to be at least 14, and I was around 15. He was up at McLaren Park; he was from the Excelsior. I was Noe Valley/Mission. He played everything; he was even playing saxophone. He was also really a great timbale player. They were doing a lot of funk stuff with the horns.
Calloway was also transcribing for people when he was in high school. When people come up and say, “Well this kid is this age and he's doing this," I ask, “How old is he?" “21." “O.K., that's great, but I remember that Calloway was doing that when he was fourteen!"
In San Francisco, you had Gibby Ross, you had Karl Perazzo . . . Gibby Ross was sitting in with Tito Puente when he was 9! That was normal for us! So don't give me your 21 or 25-year-old guy doing riffs out at the Litchfield Jazz Festival! That's great, but it's different when you grew up with Santos, Calloway, Harold Muñoz, and of course, Karl (Perazzo), who was a great bongocero, a great congureo, and a drum set player. So it's quite interesting . . .
LJC: Were the big role models of the San Francisco scene like Tjader, Chepito Areas, and the Escovedos available to you? Were you able to hang with them and learn from them?
AA: The people who very open to me were Pete Escovedo and his family, especially when I started gravitating more towards the conga drum.
I had a bit of an episode when I was in junior high school, so I had a bit of a break. I was gone from home for a while. My mother was trying to send me to Nicaragua when I was 13. I went to Texas to live with my aunt, and from there, I was supposed to go live in Nicaragua. I think that my mother had a sense that there was going to be a war (in Nicaragua) that was going to break out, and being pretty rebellious, I would have gotten involved. So she pulled me back to San Francisco. Then the war broke out in Nicaragua, and the Revolution happened; it was not a good scene. So it was a good call that they decided to have me come back.
The music really kind of took a part in my life then. I met a man by the name of Ron Bermudez. I got to sit in with Cal Tjader via him, because he was producing shows. I met Tjader and I met his daughter. I got to play with Tjader, and after that, we went to the Escovedo's house.
Pete was always very open. I got to play with him and then I met Sheila. Sheila was like a monster. She was around all that, but she was very kind and inviting. That was the scene back there, with Pete Escovedo, the father really supporting everyone's stuff. Sheila's family was really supportive and I got to play with them. John Santos has always been like that too, always. And Calloway, and all those guys. It was a kind of open scene.
In the early days, there was a band called Ritmo '74. That whole scene started happening when Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe came out in the mid-seventies. The whole salsa scene really boomed in San Francisco. El Gran Combo was coming here, Barretto was coming here . . . there was a lot of excitement about this whole salsa scene. It was the whole New York scene, and the whole Puerto Rican/Nuyorican kind of stuff. It wasn't about Cuba. Later it was—when Los Papines came. They didn't come until about 1977. Tipica Cienfuegos opened for Los Papines. My brother was in that show. I was into that whole thing, studying.
LJC: You were getting into Afro-Brazilian music at the same time, right?
AA: My heart was really into salsa and Afro-Cuban. I remember I won a scholarship and I went to Washington D.C. in 1975. Me and another friend were the only Latinos in that scholarship program. I had a tape recorder and I was playing Eddie Palmieri's The Sun of Latin Music. All these other kids were like, “What the hell are you listening to?" I said, “It's The Sun of Latin Music! You don't know what that is?!?"
We got heavily into the salsa scene. Indestructibleand all those albums were out . . . those albums are great. Then Ruben Blades came out here with the Siembraalbum. Tipica was opening for all these people. Of course, there was Celia. I knew who Celia was because my mother and my father saw Puente in the late fifties. Mongo and Tjader, they were just part of the San Francisco scene. I met Mongo when I was 18. There were so many concerts. That particular group—Tjader's group with Vince Girauldi and Al McKibbon was great.
All these guys on the West Coast had that kind of San Francisco mixed thing—the people in Noe Valley were living with Irish Italians and then some Latinos and then the Mission. I would say in terms of more open, people in New York in the seventies were not as open as people like the Escovedos, and John Santos.
I got into the Brazilian scene because in the late seventies, I listened to Milton's album, the one that had “Cravo É Canela" on it. I was like, “Wow, listen to these melodies, they're so beautiful . . ." Then I read this book called Drum & Candleand it got me into the whole Afro-Brazilian thing. The Afro-Cuban Yoruba and the Afro-Brazilian Condomble are similar. The other thing that got me into it was going to see the movie Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. I also got into it because of a San Francisco group Batucaje.
