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Incredible conversation with Luis Medina

Good afternoon, everyone. We are here with broadcaster, DJ and event producer Luis Medina. Mr. Medina, how are you today?  

I am well and ready to talk to you right now.

Mr. Medina, you have a very long career as a radio presenter. You got started in this business in 1974. What led you to spend so much time in your career on the radio? 

In 1971 I was studying architecture at San Francisco State University, but in 1974 I changed my major to broadcasting and communications in the Department of Radio and Television. When I was a kid, I was always fascinated by broadcasters on TV with their microphones. My parents gave me a toy microphone, and I always imagined I was broadcasting. At the time I was accepted in the broadcasting program, I already loved salsa because my cousin  Stella played popular music for me since I was about 8 years old. I loved all kinds of music. At home, we always had the radio on, and my parents always listened to tropical music, which was very common at that time.

In 1974 my cousin Eduardo invited me to go to a radio station called KBRG to visit some friends who had a program called Venezuela Suya. In another studio in the station, there was a radio producer named Arturito Santiago, who was the master of ceremonies for the Gran Combo de Puerto Rico when they did dances in San Francisco hotels. When I saw him doing his job, I was intrigued. Two months later, my cousin called to tell me that he’d gotten involved in a community radio station called KPOO San Francisco and asked me if I wanted to help him with the show. I brought a stack of LPs, and we did the show from midnight until 6 am. I went a few times to help, but I could not maintain that pace because I was still in college.

A few months later, he called me to tell me that he had a show from 3pm to 6pm on Sundays. He told me he was talking to other people I knew in order to do the show together. I got a segment of 45 minutes to an hour to do whatever I wanted, so I decided to start programming salsa. I helped produce several programs until I had my own show. In 1979, while I had a four-hour show on Saturdays on KPOO, KBRG’s program director, Al Carlos Hernandez, called me. KBRG was a powerful FM station at that time. That gave me the opportunity to do a commercial show.

I am part Venezuelan and part Mexican, but I grew up in the United States. I spoke Spanish perfectly until I was five years old, but when I started school, I just wanted to speak English in school and at home. When I turned 18, I decided to get my culture back and relearn to speak Spanish again. However, I’m wasn’t completely fluent in Spanish because I have to translate mentally from English. I explained the situation to Al Carlos, and he told me that he did not care. That’s how I became the first radio announcer to do salsa programming in English on a Spanish-speaking station. The program was called Sabor Caliente and it lasted about a year and a half, until they let me go due to philosophical differences. After that, I did specials in KPFA, until Víctor Castro, who produced the program Ahora, invited me to alternate weeks with him. I produced salsa shows on KPFA from 1983 to 1995.

What Medina has to say about all his combined activities

How do you balance your radio activities and event production and your job as a DJ?  

When I was a student at San Francisco State University, I became co-director of the university’s productions to present musical acts. From 1974 to 1976 I presented acts from various genres such as rock, R&B, and jazz, among others. I also presented some salsa and Latin jazz shows, including Pete and Sheila Escovedo, who were part of Roger Glenn’s band, Benny Velarde and others. I became friends with Pete and Sheila before Sheila became Sheila E and I also worked with Pete’s brother, Coke Escovedo in the 70s.

Then I met Roberto Hernandez, who had an organization that helped produced the first major street fairs in the San Francisco Mission district together with a coalition of community agencies. I got involved with the fairs, which presented the famous singer Joe Bataan among others. It was the era of Latin rock, but salsa was also booming. I was part of the renaissance of salsa music that occurred on the radio, but I also had the opportunity to play an influential role in the community in the Mission. In 1977, the Mission Cultural Center opened in a furniture store ran by artists that were organizing it. I became part of the music committee and we presented performances and salsa groups that were growing in fame at that time. I was involved on the activities of the center until the 1980s, when some of us created a production group called CMP (Cultural Music Productions). During the 80s we did a series of dances, in which I worked as master of ceremonies. I already had experience as master of ceremonies because when I was at KBRG, they gave me the opportunity to introduce some great shows with Celia Cruz, La Sonora Matancera, Oscar D’ León, Cal Tjader and La Orquesta Broadway. I was also master of ceremonies for Brazilian carnivals for about five years. With CMP I was involved in dances with Willie Colón, Bobby Valentín, Oscar D’ León, and boxing champion Roberto Durán (who at the time wanted to be a salsa singer).

Eventually I left CMP, and I was contacted by Roberto Hernandez, who offered me the position of entertainment director of his new organization, MECA. I accepted and started to help him program the schedule for events such as the San Francisco Carnival, and the 24 Street Fair. I worked with Roberto until 1994 and we presented Santana, Los Lobos, Eddie Palmieri, Luis Henrique, Willie Colón, Yomo Toro, Mighty Sparrow, The Neville Brothers, Shaggy, and many more. When Roberto Hernandez left the organization, I stayed for four more years and worked with Manny Oquendo and Libre, John Santos, Pete Escovedo and Pancho Quinto. In 1998, the president of the organization Patricia Aguayo and I had some problems, so we stopped working together.

A radio DJ and a party DJ are two completely different things. It took me a little while to adjust to being a live DJ. In the early 1990’s, the producers at the Alta Vista club hired me from time to time. Then, they moved to a ship called Alta Vista del Mar in Pier 3, and occasionally hired me as their DJ.

In 1994 I met a very ambitious young Venezuelan by the name of Adrian Goddard and started working with him at his club, 330 Ritch. It was a winning combination of Adrian’s talent as an event producer and my talent as a DJ and MC. I worked there for about nine very successful months, but then I had an opportunity with KPFA and I was forced to leave the club because the schedule conflicted. My priority was to produce my own salsa show (ironically, this program didn’t last long, but in 1997 they offered me the same slot, which would become the program Con Sabor, which I still produced today, 25 years later, at KPFA, on Saturdays from 9-11pm.)

A little later, Kimballs Carnaval hired me as a Latin House DJ, as this rhythm was very popular at that time. I wanted to please them, but it wasn’t a good fit. Eventually I was hired as a salsa DJ by the club Kimballs West. This opened other opportunities and I became the DJ in residence at the most prominent salsa clubs in San Francisco at the time, the legendary Jelly’s Cafe, where I DJ’d until it closed in 2010 and the popular Café Cócomo, which closed in 2014. I now DJ and MC primarily for special events and private parties.

Something very important in my story is that in 1997 I worked with Bill Martinez and Arturo Riera  and they both gave me the opportunity to be master of ceremonies for a very important series of concerts featuring Cuban musicians who were allowed into the States for the first time. I was the first master of ceremonies for a Los Van Van concert in San Francisco and I also represented my show and KPFA for their concert at Stern Grove in 2019. That was one of many times that I worked with that group.  I also was the MC   for Orquesta Aragon, Cubanismo, NG La Banda and other Cuban acts.

During the pandemic, I was offered a show with an online radio station called World Salsa Radio. I started the show Sabiduría con Tumbao on Wednesdays from 5 to 7 pm. What makes this show different from Con Sabor is that Sabiduría Con Tumbao is a conceptual program that focuses on certain musicians, musical themes and movements within salsa and Afro-Latin music. On the other hand, Con Sabor offers a broader perspective of salsa, Latin Jazz and música cubana from the classics to the latest.

Since the pandemic started, I produce all my radio shows at home. I managed to master the technology and built my own home studio. I am not afraid of technology or modern things. I go with the flow because I’ve learned that I should be at the forefront of technology and music. If I do not know something, I am going to research it right away. I keep an open mind and ears and I appreciate and listen to all kinds of music, something that was key when I was music director at KPFA from 2001 through 2014. In terms of my own programs, I really love salsa from the 70s, but I’m not stuck in any time period.

 

His life and career

Ernesto Tito Garcia is a Nicaraguan bandleader and timbalero who has been part of many musical groups that passed from romantic salsa to mambo and many other Latin genres.   

This astonishingly gifted artist has been playing professionally since the year 1971. A few years later, he formed his first orchestra called Ritmo 74, which was in charge of opening up for the biggest names in Latin music from back in the day. Both Ernesto and his fellow musicians were noted for their ages and the musical styles they used at the time. 

He experimented with Latin rock during his youth until he heard salsa for the first time and wanted to devote himself fully to that musical genre. After spending a long time playing romantic music, he decided to experiment with hard salsa and added his own style to the rhythms played by La Orquesta Internacional. 

Our conversation

We are very happy to get him in International Salsa Magazine today ready to go and talk a little about his life and musical career. 

My father signed me up for music lessons. I did not like them very much, but they kept me busy and interested me. Thanks to those lessons I took once a week, my ear opened wide and I learned to read music, which is a very rare thing for a timbalero. In 1969, I was 13 years old and my dad was paying for weekly accordion lessons and when Santana came out in my eighth grade, I heard my first timpani and knew it would be my instrument. That’s when I told my dad not to spend money because I wanted to play the timpani. He was a good man who died in my arms because of the same cancer I have today. 

On Broadway Street, San Francisco was where I began to learn how to play the timpani. My dad helped me buy my first timpani and I found a group that played Latin rock just like Santana, which gave me the opportunity to develop my technique. When I was in San Francisco, I did not hear much of salsa because it was more present in New York City, but my dad bought some records recommended by a friend containing the last of salsa. That was the first time I heard salsa and I was playing Latin rock with the group I already mentioned. When I heard that music, I met a girl who was interested in buying an electric piano that belonged to my girlfriend’s brother who was 15 years old at the time. From there, we formed our first orchestra in 1974, which we called Ritmo 74. When the music outside like Eddie Palmieri or Tito Puente came, people over 40 years old also came, but young people did not like it because the music was very regimented and had many pitoretas (wind musical instrument, also known as clarion). 

About the time Willie Colón came out was when the orchestra started getting big because we were the young people of salsa. I was 16 or 17 years old, while the oldest member was 26 or 27 years old. We had agents who gave us the opportunity to open up for the biggest names in New York like Eddie Palmieri and Willie Colón. At that time, we were the only orchestra of our generation with that kind of playing. We were growing up, but the thing is that I liked education and for whatever reason, I found that I made good grades.   

As our fame grew here in the Bay Area, I had to devote much time to rehearsals, learn new songs, among other things. That’s why my grades started to fall and I was about to graduate from high school. The last two years were the most important ones at school, so I realized I would not be able to do both at the same time. So I decided to quit music and knew the only way in which I could do it was to sell my timpani, so I went to a store and they gave me $60 for them. 

I got my grades up, was admitted by San Francisco State University and the first year was amazing, but I met other Latino students who also played music. They began renting a room right there on campus to rehearse, so I did not have to go somewhere else. It was there that we founded La Orquesta Salsa Caliente and as soon as we got to be known, people liked us. About two or three years later, my grades started to fall again, so I quit music again. I graduated from College and was admitted to the school of optometry in 1985 or 1986. Thanks to that diploma I started working with a very skilled Salvadoran doctor. He was a surgeon and ophthalmologist. When I formed my own orchestra, I had two very simple rules for the members. The first was that when we played, we could not take any kind of drugs or alcohol, while the second was that we had to always wear a suit and a tie, that’s what no other youth orchestra did.   

Do you think that the style of mambo that your orchestra plays is what makes it unique or are there other elements that stand out? 

First of all, when I formed the orchestra, romantic salsa was in vogue just like its exponents included Eddie Santiago, Tony Vega and many more. The problem was that the music was boring because the arrangements were very simple. In 1996 or 1997 was when I heard Tito Puente with his orchestra playing mambo and that is what gave me the idea to do the same with four or five pitoretas. That’s when I lost several musicians and singers because they wanted to sing romantic salsa, but I was tired of that. 

So, we started playing what I called hard salsa, which had mambo arrangements and singers who knew how to perform it. That combination pushed us on a new level. Those who wanted to sing romantic salsa formed their own orchestra. Julio Bravo was one of my favorite artists and I helped him with some musicians. There was also my comadre Denis Corrales, who formed her women’s orchestra. The orchestra looked very good with all the girls, but it was not what dancers were looking for. There is also the case of Venezuelan Eduardo Herrera whose voice was incredible and he also grew up with salsa music, but he did not know how to sing hard salsa. 

Do you think having musicians from so many different countries has to do with the final product you present to the public?  

This did not have a lot of influence on our music. Back then, our orchestra was called Salsa Dulce. When my agent retired, I got stuck with the orchestra. He wanted the orchestra to have my name in its title but did not want it to be too obvious, for example, Los Titanes de La Salsa Con Tito García or El Gran Combo Con Rafael Ithier. Regarding nationalities, the singer was Venezuelan, the bass player was French, the pianist was Peruvian, the conguero was Puerto Rican, the saxophonist was Irish and the trombonist was American as was the trumpet player. It was the reason why my agent suggested me to call it Tito García Y Su Orquesta La Internacional. I liked how it sounded so much that I called the group that.  

What are your future projects? 

I can mention an album dedicated to Tito Puente and am going to record it between San Francisco and Nicaragua. The problem is that his family has the rights to all his music and I do not know if they give me permission to do it. I hope they are not going to charge me a lot for those rights. Of course, we are going to make money with the project, but costs are much more comfortable and negotiable in Nicaragua. That is one of the reasons why I want to do it there.  

What Orquesta La Moderna Tradición is

Orquesta La Moderna Tradición has been one of the most legendary groups of Cuban music in its entire history. It is a group whose members are based in San Francisco, California, and consists of 11 members who play different genres such as danzón, timba, guaguancó, cha cha chá, son, rumba, charanga, among others. They also mix in elements from American jazz, violins, and Afro-Cuban rhythms.    

The beginning of this orchestra’s story goes back to 1996, since they started to perform throughout the United States to bring the best of traditional Cuban music to every corner of the country and transport Cuban immigrants back to the Havana’s streets and clubs during the 50’s. All the success accumulated allowed them to perform at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Smithsonian Institution, the Lincoln Certer and many other venues of high prestige.    

Recently, Orquesta La Moderna Tradición once again displayed their talent at Yoshi’s, a jazz club and restaurant located in Oakland, California, whose reputation in the San Francisco Bay Area is not up for discussion. Our editor Eduardo Guilarte was present at the show to cover the details of the event, which left all those present in awe.  

Conversation with Tregar Otton, founding director of the orchestra 

Based on the above, we talked with Tregar Otton, founder, director, composer, and violinist of the group. This talented musician, born in the Marshall Islands and raised in Texas, started to learn about classical music from an early age and joined the Berkeley Symphony while he still was a teenager. By the 1990s, this musical promise worked as a regular part of Virgilio Mart Y Sus Majaderos, La Tipica Novel and the Charanga Orquesta Broadway. 

By the year 1995, Otton founded Orquesta La Moderna Tradición with Roberto Borrell. At the beginning, the group started to become well-known for its soft sounds of Afro-Cuban charanga, which are accompanied by a set of wind instruments and violins that give a unique touch to this group’s music. 

Today, we have the welcome presence of the musician to talk about each and every one of the issues raised in this brief review and anything he wants to reveal to our dear readers. It is such a pleasure to have you here today, Tregar. How are you feeling?  

I am fine here near San Francisco. Good to see you today.

Very good, Tregar. You got started in the world of music at a young age. Could you tell us a bit about your beginnings? 

I started playing violin when I was four years old and my family had a violin teacher as a neighbor. My parents did the laundry for all our neighbors, so we met her and she ended up giving me classes every day. After that, I studied a lot of classical music, bought music when I was about 20 and fell in love with it because it used the violins differently from classical music. I really enjoyed playing dance music because the connection with the public is quite different from that of classical music. In the case of classical music, many people get bored, but Cuban music and salsa music make a much more direct connection to the audience. There is nothing like playing for a floor with dancers. 

We understand that you were born in the Marshall Islands, but grew up in Texas, is that correct? 

Yes. After my dad married my mom, they both moved to Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, in the middle of the Pacific. After that, I grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, till I was 13 or 14 about when I moved to California.   

I asked because it is very interesting how you set your eyes on Cuban music despite your origins. Where does this interest in Cuban music and the rhythms you play come from? 

For the same reasons I play dance music. It caught my attention when I heard Charanga de La 4 or one of these New York bands. I was impressed that violins were part of the percussion and were making repetitive sounds with the refrain and the son montuno. We are more part of the rhythm section than the melodic section in many of our songs. We can dance while we are on stage. I was also impressed by the improvisations of Cuqui and Alfredo de la Fé. I had many Latin friends I met in college while learning Spanish because no one in my family spoke it. 

How did Orquesta La Moderna Tradición come about and who joined you in its foundation? 

I was working with a group. I was in New York, where I was playing with the Broadway Orchestra and the Orquesta Tipica Novel. I was very lucky to have been in that city because I got to know many veteran musicians in the 80’s like Renato Valdés, Virgilio Martí, and Adalberto Santiago. I visited a Cuban friend from San Francisco named Fito Reinoso, who had a group called Ritmo Y Armonía and he visited us here in New York. I was tired of the cold in New York, so I decided to go to San Francisco, where Tito and I had the idea of creating a group. It was there that I met a great drum instructor and dance teacher Roberto Borrell, who joined us to found Ritmo y Armonía. After two years, we had to be apart, but Roberto and I still wanted to play danzón. At least here in the Bay Area, it is very difficult to get singers. The ones we have are good, but there are not so many. So, we planned to make a danzonera or danzón group. When the orchestra began to work, we only played danzón songs, rehearsed every week and did many tours with this musical genre because there was a boom with swing dancing and dance music during the 40’s. So, we were surfing that wave. So, we were surfing that wave and doing collaborations with swing groups because it was older music. Danzón is a very rich genre, but it is no of interest to many people because they do not know how to dance it, so we started expanding our repertoire to include more modern and dance music. We still play danzones, but only two per set. There are still musicians from the original group in the orchestra including Michael Spiro. Roberto went to Peru about a decade ago, so Michael and I stayed with the group and invited Eduardo Herrera, who is a singer born in Caracas, Venezuela, to perform with us. We expanded the repertoire by doing the best we could with my own creations. Let’s remember I am the arranger of the group, so I do some songs and we have one that is included in the new recording in which I wrote the music and maestro Carlos Caro from Cuba added the lyrics. 

Although rhythms like danzón are not so popular, did you feel the acceptance of the public? 

There were many people who knew danzón who began to notice that it was a very interesting genre due to the presence of the violins. As Roberto Borrell is a dance teacher, he teaches many of his students how to dance danzón, which is not easy because they should be affixed on each turn they have to make according to the sounds of the instruments.   

Can you go from one genre to another in the same song? 

Yes, we do that a lot. On our new album, we have rhythms with batá drums from music of Santería, which we use for our danzón songs. It sounds complicated when I explain it, but it is easy at the time of listening to it. 

What makes Orquesta La Moderna Tradición different from other Latin music groups in the United States? 

Well, I know no other group that plays danzón or charanga. There are two genres of popular dance music in Cuba that come from son montuno, which uses violins and flutes. In the case of charanga, the musicians use violins and flutes. Since the 70’s and 80’s, charanga is now no longer heard in the United States. In Cuba, neither do you hear danzón much. We are a group that has so many danzones in the repertoire. There are not too many groups that play cha cha chá. Me being an arranger, I try to create cha cha chá songs that are not copies of what was played by Orquesta Aragón and other bands in the 40’s and 50’s.   

Given that music has evolved so much, what reaction do you perceive from the young public when you play charanga, cha cha chá, danzón and other rhythms? 

Interesting question. For young people who do not know and are not salsa fans, our music sounds like salsa because it is difficult to distinguish the genres without knowing them well. However, I work as a music teacher and I have many groups of children, in which there are many salsa fans. They listen to Ray Barreto, Willie Colón, and Hector Lavoe. They also like charanga and understand it well. However, I think danzón is more difficult because it has to be a reflection of what people are feeling in their culture. Cha cha chá is simpler and innocent, but danzón is finer and refined. I think music can influence people and play its part in changing the direction of their culture. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your performance at Yoshi’s? 

Because of COVID-19, for a year and a half, we could not do anything. We could not even rehearse until the vaccine came on the market. We got this date with Yoshi’s because we have played there many times before as well as Yoshi’s in San Francisco. So, they gave us a date and we had the support of local DJs like Luis Medina, Chuy Varela and Jose Ruiz. We also made use of social media to promote us, sell our CDs and attract people to our shows. The staff of Yoshi’s was impressed because it is rare that a local band has been able to sell so many tickets. We were very excited to see so many people loving us and showing how much they love music. We have a large audience that is very loyal to us and has been going wherever we perform for over 20 years.  

What are your future projects? 

We get everything ready for the repertoire of the new album. When I was in New York, I was working with Juan Carlos Formell, Juan Formell’s son, who is the bass player and took over his father’s position in Los Van Van. I was one of the first people he met here in the United States and we became very good friends. Then he told me that I could arrange any of his songs without any problem, so I have about four or five of his songs ready and some others that I have not finished yet. We have enough material to make at least two albums, but it is very expensive. One could only cost us about $15 to start with. 

Your social networks or websites  

Official website: www.danzon.com  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OrquestaLaModernaTradicion  

Bandcamp: https://orquestalamodernatradicin.bandcamp.com/album/encantado-2