Poncho Sanchez
Latin jazz band leader, conguero and singer Poncho Sanchez has played alongside jazz legends such as Ray Charles, Billie Preston and Tito Puentes. Now aged 60, with 26 CDs and seven Grammy nominations behind him, the poor Mexican boy from the outskirts of L.A. has risen to stardom, and is one of the leading forces behind Latin jazz music today. Ahead of his headlining gig at the Hong Kong International Jazz Festival on October 1, Sanchez speaks to Beverly Cheng about how he learned his rhythm from watching his six sisters dance the cha-cha-cha in their family home.
HK Magazine: Was music a big part of growing up?
Poncho Sanchez: I’m the youngest of eleven kids. There aren’t any musicians in my family, but my brothers and sisters got into the first wave of mambo and cha-cha-cha music that came to Los Angeles by way of New York, Puerto Rico and Cuba. I grew up hearing the songs of Tito Puentes, Machito and Mongo Santamaria. I grew up listening to that and watching my sisters dancing in our room.
HK: Did you learn how to dance before you learned how to walk?
PS: I learned to dance at a very young age. What happened was that I had six sisters and four brothers. My sisters learned all the latest dances. We used to watch American bandstand on the TV.
HK: Do you all still dance?
PS: Even today, when we throw a party, usually it’s me and my sisters who just jump up and dance. Out of the boys, there’s only me and my brother Jesse who likes to dance. But after a couple of beers, we all do the Mash Potato.
HK: Did your rhythm in dancing translate to making music?
PS: My sisters started loving this mambo and cha-cha-cha and I would hear their feet stomping on the floors of our house. I listened to the record and I would hear the bonga, the maracas, the bongos—the Latin percussionists—I could hear all of these different rhythms going on and all I wanted to do was learn how to play music.
HK: What was your first instrument?
PS: I first learned how to play the guitar because we were poor people. There were eleven of us and we never had any extra money, there was just enough money to feed the family and that was it. So the guy across the street had an electric guitar and he was learning how to play rhythm and blues. I would always go over and watch him practice every day. I told him, “show me how to play guitar”–and then
I learned the guitar.
HK: When did you join your first band?
PS: I was about 12 years old. I went to go join the neighborhood band, kids my age. They all had electric guitars and I had an old, beat-up acoustic guitar with a couple of strings missing. Anyway, I actually hid my old guitar behind my back because I was so embarrassed. They said, “we don’t need another guitar player, but what we need is a singer.”