Present intense

Although Santos grew up in a family in which one grandfather led a popular Puerto Rican band and the other played Cape Verdean music, in most respects his early music education -- clarinet, marching, and stage bands -- was quite typical. That all changed in '68, when his older brothers and cousins started talking about this high-school classmate of theirs, a cool guitarist named Carlos Santana who used timbales and percussion in his rock band. Santos was beginning to take an interest in the congas, and after Santana's first album, the 40-year-old percussionist recounts, "I had an excuse to get into the older music through Santana's. When I started looking for music with conga drums, I got out of rock and roll and into the music of my grandparents, and even further back into folkloric music. That's how I made the jump to Cuban music in a strong way; the drum naturally pulls you in that direction."

The only way to learn the music was to watch, listen, and play. He performed in his grandfather's band, and his father took him to clubs, where he occasionally sat in. "I learned a lot of basics that way. None of the older musicians can teach; they are all self-taught and have no formal way of explaining what they do. They play by feel. A lot of what I learned came through recordings, too. That's where I discovered a lot of the things I incorporated into my music."

In 1972, he formed a Cuban folkloric ensemble (now called Coro Folklórico Kindembo, it just released its first album, Hacia Amor, on Xenophile). In 1976, he formed Orquesta Típica Cienfuegos, the first band that reflected his omnivorous appetite for all musics Caribbean. In its four-year history, the 11-piece group tackled Cuban forms like string-orchestra charengas and danzóns, more horn-oriented son, folkloric rhumbas, and Puerto Rican jibaro music and bombas, as well as Dominican merengue. His next band, Batachanga, leaned more toward the charenga style; it made two albums before breaking up in 1985, after which Santos shifted to Latin jazz with the eight-piece Machete Ensemble.

The band is named for the knife used to cut sugar cane, but it has other connotations for Santos. "It is also a weapon in the independence movements for Caribbean countries and an implement in the Yoruba religious rituals. It is the symbol of Ogun, the god of iron and war."

For Santos, there is plenty of common ground between jazz and Afro-Caribbean music. "It's not so much about preserving formulas that are tried and true as it is about experimenting and enriching them if you can. Without improvisation you don't have jazz, but without improvisation you don't have rhumba, you don't have son."

The Machete Ensemble's Machete (Xenophile/Green Linnet) features timbalero Orestes Vilato. A member of the Fania All-Stars and veteran of the important New York charengas of Fajardo and Johnny Pacheco, Vilato moved to the Bay Area in 1980 to work with Santana. "He's been an adviser and mentor," Santos says. "In my opinion, he's the greatest timbales player alive."

Among the CD's other special guests is bassist Israel "Cachao" Lopez, inventor of the mambo and probably the most important Cuban musician alive. Several years before Machete was recorded, Santos had contacted Cachao through Vilato, when Santos did a tribute to Cachao on a radio program he hosted. In 1989, as a member of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, Santos invited Cachao to participate in a concert charting the evolution of Afro-Cuban music. It was at that jazz festival concert that actor Andy Garcia met Cachao, for whom he later produced the two Master Sessions CDs (Epic) and a documentary film.

Whether Santos is working as a disc jockey, teacher, concert impresario, or producer (he's produced Xenophile CDs for Conjunto Céspedes and Colombian singer Claudia Gómez), he believes his most important contribution is preserving and handing down a tradition. "The music has a lot of aspects -- spiritual, social, historical -- that are lost or on the verge of disappearing. The rhythms and forms are, in some cases, centuries old, but the fact that they can relate to the issues that are important to us now . . . that is what gives the music life. If it talked only about the past, then it would die."

The Machete Ensemble plays the Villa Victoria series at the Jorge Hernández Cultural Center at 8:30 p.m. this Friday, May 31. For more information, call 927-1731.