Today we’d like to introduce you to Pablo Sanhueza.
Hi Pablo, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My musical journey began in Santiago, Chile, where I was born and raised. My early exposure to music came from my extended family, cousins, aunts, and uncles, and the folk ensemble in my grade school, where we played folkloric music rooted in the Indigenous South American, African, and Iberian traditions, closely connected to the political and social movements in Chile in the early ’70s. I initially picked up an acoustic guitar in third grade. Later on, during my adolescence, my uncle Ivan, a music teacher and guitarist himself, warned me about pursuing music as a livelihood, believing that music should remain a vocational and spiritual activity motivated by higher values far from those of the music industry.
With this guidance in mind, music remained a constant in my life. During the 80s, it was punk rock and metal, the music that I resonated with the most. Then the 90s with all the genre-bending alternative rock and bands in Latin America, bringing in the roots folk sounds, percussion, charangos, quenas… it was a moment in which the indigenous and African roots of our music began to resurface through rock and hip hop. Folk traditions that weren’t always taught in schools.
By the time I arrived in the United States in 1996, at the age of 22, the guitar had taken a secondary role. I had developed a deep passion for Latin percussion; congas, timbales, cajón, bombos, and the drumset had taken priority.
Once based in Kansas City to continue my college education, I also attended the mythic late-night jam sessions 1-5 am at Mutual Musicians Foundation during the mid-90s. That was a full immersion in traditional Kansas City jazz, rhythm & blues. Jay McShann, Sonny Kenner, Pearl Thuston, all of them were there playing every weekend… I knew who they were… but didn’t really know who I had in front of me until they passed… I have those musical memories both as a listener and jamming with them at the Foundation.
In 1999, I moved to New Mexico, where I played in several recording projects, rock bands, and studied cajón formally with Gitanos from Andalucía, and West African and Afro-Cuban percussion with visiting teaching artists from these regions. Los muñequitos de Matanzas from Cuba were a source of initial inspiration and education to continue researching music that was not, and continues not to be easily available for most communities.
When i returned to KC in 2003, I came back to join a good friend of mine to put together a professional Salsa and Latin Jazz project called Descarga KC. Since then, this original idea has evolved in multiple ensembles, the most successful artistically and professionally is our current 11-piece Kansas City Latin jazz Orchestra.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s never a smooth road, not even now as an established musician with a career that spans three decades.
To tackle the task of addressing the structural obstacles that creatives face, we would have to address the ethos of an economy that looks for the cheapest way to get the most profit with the least effort. This way of thinking reduces and contaminates the depth of the arts. Which is what the mainstream music industry offers. “A music career is not a social media career. ” Quote me on that .
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The Latin Jazz Institute is a significant extension of my dedication to preserving, performing, and educating about Latin Jazz, particularly within the Kansas City community, and my connection with Chile and spiritual ties with Latin America.
It is the first of its kind in the Midwest: We are recognized as the first cultural immersion education and performance non-profit Orchestra in the Midwestern United States dedicated to Jazz and Latin American music and dances.
Preservation and Advancement: Our fundamental mission is to preserve and advance the folk arts from Latin America and the caribbean, and the continuity and advancement of these traditions; Salsa, cumbia, merengue, and contemporary urban genres at the crossroads of the Latino-American experience in the United States.
Intercultural and Intergenerational; We strive to remain an intercultural and intergenerational organization, showcasing international visiting artists with access to all communities and all ages.
Bilingual Focus: We are specifically noted as the first bilingual performance and education private non-profit conservatory in the Midwest focused on Latin Jazz, Salsa, and Latin American folklore.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I am primarily a musician and educator who works with traditional music, rhythms, and storytelling rooted in Latin America, and the slow process of transculturation (500 years), the creation of new instruments and ways to play them, based on those of the Iberian Peninsula and Africa. In many ways, a process that continues in a more superficial and accelerated manner, through the illusion of connection the internet and social media offer, like a crash course on anything…
Today, our challenge is to access the infrastructure and operational funding to create spaces to pass on this rich knowledge that not only speaks to the beauty as an aesthetic value but to the beauty of celebrating our life, nature, families, and communities as a source for everything else.
I make music centered on storytelling, to express gratitude, and celebrate life in its complexity and simplicity. All of these values remain in those artists who follow their call as a vocational mission. Our challenge as artists is to become producers and curators of events that interpret the needs and likes of the people in the cities we live in, but also challenge our audiences with music that requires them to be attentive and look further from what they already know.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kansascitylatinjazzorchestra.com
- Instagram: @kansascitylatinjazzorchestra
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kclatinjazzorchestra
- Youtube: @kansascitylatinjazzorchest7479
