Bobby Sanabria playing a drum set, Courtesy of Corbis
by Robin T. Reid
September 14, 2008
This article was originally published by Smithsonian Magazine. The full article can be read here.
The history of jazz is not strictly black and white, Bobby Sanabria contends. It contains shades of brown, too, in the form of the millions of Hispanic people from throughout the Caribbean and South America.
Why those musicians don't get their due frustrates the award-winning musician and composer. So, Sanabria—the son of Puerto-Rican immigrants—uses the power of the blackboard as well as the drums to right this wrong; in addition to performing, he teaches courses on Latin jazz at New School University and Manhattan School of Music in his native New York. We interviewed him over the phone at home in the Bronx shortly after he returned from a series of gigs in Italy.
