Seven-time Grammy-nominated percussionist, US Artists Fontanals Fellow, and 2013-2014 SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director, John Santos, is one of the foremost exponents of Afro-Latin music in the world today. Born in San Francisco, California, November 1, 1955, he was raised in the Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean traditions of his family, surrounded by music. The fertile musical environment of the San Francisco Bay Area shaped his career in a unique way. He is known for his innovative use of traditional forms and instruments in combination with contemporary music, and has earned much respect and recognition as a prolific performer, composer, teacher, writer, radio programmer, and record/event producer whose career has spanned five decades. He illuminates and illustrates the historical and evolving intersection of Jazz and traditional Afro-Latin music.
John has performed and/or recorded with acknowledged, multi-generational masters including Cachao, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Bebo Valdés, Max Roach, Eddie Palmieri, Patato Valdés, Lázaro Ros, Bobby Hutcherson, Zakir Hussein, and Carlos Santana, among many others.
John is widely respected as one of the top writers, teachers and historians in the field. He has conducted countless workshops, lectures and clinics in the US, Latin America and Europe since 1973 at institutions of all types including the Smithsonian, the Adventures in Music program of the San Francisco Symphony, the Berklee School of Music in Boston, and has contributed to the international magazines Percussive Notes, Modern Drummer, Modern Percussionist, and Latin Percussionist.
John was the director of the San Francisco Bay Area’s first Cuban charanga style orchestra, La Orquesta Tipica Cienfuegos (1976-1980) and directed the award-winning Orquesta Batachanga (1981-1985). He was founder and director of the internationally renowned, Grammy-nominated Machete Ensemble (1985-2006), mostly on John’s Machete Records label that was founded in 1984 and continues today.
He currently directs the highly acclaimed John Santos Sextet Latin jazz ensemble with five of the brightest artists on the Latin Jazz scene – Dr. John Calloway, Marco Diaz, Saul Sierra, David Flores and Charlie Gurke.
John has also produced four full length CDs with his Afro-Caribbean Folklóric Ensemble, El Coro Folklórico Kindembo since 1994, two of which were Grammy-nominated.
The San Francisco Bay Area community in which John still lives and works has presented him with numerous awards and honors for artistic excellence and social dedication. John received the Community Leadership Award from the San Francisco Foundation in 2011. He was presented with the San Francisco Latino Heritage Award in 2012 that included a Certificate of Honor signed by Mayor Edwin Lee, and Certificates of Recognition from the State Assembly, a Certificate of Recognition from the State Senate, and a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from the US House of Representatives. He was selected for the Man of the Year Award by Brothers on the Rise (Oakland, CA) in 2013. He also received a Most Influential Jazz Musician Award from the Buddy Montgomery Annual Awards ceremony in September of 2016 in Berkeley, CA. A photo of John from 1987 by pioneering Puerto Rican photographer/activist Frank Espada was on display in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC in 2016! John’s image also appears in several murals around the Bay Area.
John’s work has been recognized and supported by the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Smithsonian Institution, the California Arts Council, United States Artists, the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Fund for Folk Culture, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlitt Foundation, the East Bay Community Foundation, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the Creative Work Fund, South Arts, the Jazz Coalition (NY), the San Jose Jazz Festival, and the City of Oakland. The City of San Francisco issued a mayoral proclamation declaring November 12, 2006 John Santos Day. He was featured prominently in the PBS American Masters documentary, Cachao: Uno Mas (2008), and is the subject the documentary Santos: Skin to Skin by Searchlight Films (Oakland, CA), that made its debut in 2022 in Washington DC, at SXSW (Austin, TX), the Mill Valley Film Festival (CA), and at SFJAZZ. In 2016, he performed at the American Folklife Festival and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, both in Washington DC. In 2023 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, CA and a Legend of Latin Jazz Award from the Jazz Education Network at their conference in New Orleans.
John is an advisory board member of the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance (NY), Living Jazz (Oakland, CA) and the Oaktown Jazz Workshop (Oakland, CA), and a Trustee of SFJAZZ (2016-2023).
