Bobby Matos was born in the Bronx, New York, on July 24, 1941, and was raised in a cross-cultural, artistic environment. His interest in music developed when he began tapping out rhythms on his grandmother’s pots and pans. As a youth, he studied with conga drum masters Patato Valdez and Mongo Santamaría. While performing across New York, he was encouraged to play timbales by Willie Bobo and Tito Puente. In the late 60s, he attended The New School and the Manhattan School of Music. Around this time, he also recorded “My Latin Soul” for Phillips International Records, which helped establish his reputation as a bandleader. In the 70s,Bobby toured and recorded with artists such as Ben Vereen, Bette Midler, Fred Neil, Jim Croce, Joe Loco, Ray Rivera, Miriam Makeba, and many others. During the1980s and ’90s,he recorded several albums under his own name, most notably five critically acclaimed CDs for Ubiquity Records’ “Cubop” label. He also produced CDs for Ray Armando, Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers, Dave Pike, John Santos, and Jack Costanzo. In 2004, he released “Made By Hand,” recorded on the independent artist collective label LifeForce Jazz, co-founded by Billy Higgins and Dawan Muhammad. Bobby soon became the top Latin Jazz producer for that label, continuing to expand his own archive and legacy. He even established his own Café Con Bagels label before his passing in November 2017 at the age of 76.

Like many legendary artists, Bobby Matos was deeply connected to the grassroots elements of communities worldwide. He was dedicated to building cross-cultural appreciation and enrichment by combining authentic performance and ritualistic storytelling.

THE EVENT

Although his bands performed commercial concerts and major festivals, Bobby was also well known for teaching and conducting workshops on the emergence and evolution of African cultures in the Americas. These programs and events were usually hosted by nonprofit community-based organizations and presented at smaller venues within traditional neighborhoods, which brings us to how this classic recording came about.

In August 2007, Bobby and the Heritage Ensemble (also known as Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble) were invited to perform at the San Jose Jazz Festival. When the word got out that Bobby was coming to the Bay Area, LifeForce Jazz (Bobby’s current record label at the time) began receiving inquiries about the band’s availability to perform in the North Bay, since SanJose is about 50 miles south of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. Bobby was scheduled to bring his band up from Los Angeles the night before the San Jose performance; however, with help from Bobby’s significant Bay Area following, we were able to arrange for the group to arrive earlier in the day and do an impromptu performance at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley that night. We secured an agreement with the venue about two weeks before the event, giving us the same amount of time to promote it. La Pena was the ideal venue for this gig, since 1975 La Pena has been a central site for Latinx, Caribbean, and Indigenous diasporic communities of the Bay Area to preserve and celebrate cultural traditions, present new interdisciplinary creative works, and to nurture grassroots social justice movements with artists, activists, and allies: La Pena staff and supporting community graciously accommodated us in every way, helping the event become a successful “descarga” and dance party.

Everyone who attended, participated and celebrated at the event also experienced the joy of witnessing what many refer to as spontaneous creativity, both on and off the bandstand.

Heritage Ensemble performers are also prolific composers who prepared special arrangements of their original compositions for presentation at the San Jose Jazz Festival. However, some of those originals were premiered the night before at la Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley. Fortunately, the music performed there was wonderfully recorded by Mauricio Acevedo, who also engineered the house sound. Since we didn’t plan to release a record, we filed the tracks for documentation purposes and didn’t really listen to them for a couple of years. By the time we got around to listening seriously, we vowed to release them at some point, but as always, “The Creator Has The Master Plan:’ Thus, it took 18 years to prepare and present this legendary double CD to the general public as a memorial tribute to Bobby’s legacy.

– Dawan Muhammad