Are you Cuban or Puerto Rican? |
He loves jazz and plays clarinet and trumpet, |
I had great parents and there was music in our house every day and my parents danced. |
I looked around and thought 'Man, I don't know about this?' |
I started laughing and said 'Guys, I think (Latin jazz) is over the hump,' |
I started on timbales. I had a friend who had a little Latin jazz band. His father made the timbales for us, so I learned to play on them. |
I've been doing this since way before the music became popular. |
It really started getting played in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s with Latin dances like the mambo, cha-cha-cha, samba, and bossa nova. Today, we have the salsa and meringue. |
My brothers and sisters got into mambo and cha-cha-cha music that they played on the radio, ... Back then there was only one station in L.A. that would play it. The disc jockey was Chico Cesno who would play what he called 'musica Cubana' or 'musica Latina.' |
They said I can't play because Chicanos can't play congas, |
We played at the Village Gate, |