Jazzed: Free concert series kicks off with Gumbi Ortiz and the Latino Projekt

After years of being a sideman to jazz heavyweights, such as Chick Corea and Al DiMeola, Gumbi Ortiz has put together a band of his own.

Drawing from the jazz world he's been a part of for more than 20 years, his Cuban heritage and American secular and popular music, Gumbi (pronounced GOOM-bee) and his Latino Projekt try to make jazz fun and funky again.

The Latino Projekt will kick off the Naples Beach Hotel and Golf Club's SummerJazz on the Gulf series Saturday night with a three-hour show. The St. Petersburg band has been performing for about six years, but has a new lineup. We talked with Ortiz to get a better idea where his sound comes from and why he hopes there's no room to sit at his show.

Q: I was listening to your most recent record and I definitely heard some Prince and some funk and soul like Sly and The Family Stone. How did it happen that you fused those together with the Latin music?

A: It is kind of an accent. If you live in New York and Boston or the South, you have an accent in your voice. It's just kind of natural.

I think that when you grow up in an area like New York like I did there's an accent or flavor in your music because there's so many cultures around. You know, the African-American culture, the Cuban culture and all sorts of cultures and pop music too. If you are a young Latin kid growing up in NYC, you just can't help but have those tendencies come out in your music naturally.

It wasn't even conscious. It wasn't my idea where I said I'm going to do a little Sly, a little Earth, Wind and Fire and combine it with a little Cuban music and see what happens. It was a natural way of making music for me.

Q: When a lot of people think of Cuban/Latin music the first thing they think of is the Buena Vista Social Club or Cubanismo. You guys have a different sound. Where's the line of tracing the Cuban and Latin heritage into that?

A: That comes naturally because I'm the conga drummer. And the conga drums are the Cuban national instrument. So right off the bat, it's going to sound Cuban no matter what we do. Try to keep the tradition of Cuban street music, rumba, you know. We just start making the songs real. The piano player is a Latin cat but he grew up playing in a black church. He knows the montuno, the Cuban figure on the piano. But he has the wonderful ways of voicing things more jazz more gospel. Instead of telling him, 'no we're just a Cuban band, we can't do those voices,' I encourage that kind of intermingling of the cultures.

...The Buena Vista Social Club was not a true indication of what's happening in Cuba now. It was just a movie with a sentimental value. That whole thing was a movie. These guys were musicians, but they were never part of the scene. To say that Cuban music today is the Buena Vista Social Club is not true.

... If it something is alive it will be constantly changing. There's no such thing as something traditional. That's man-made. I don't think that's natural.

Q: Do you have a problem finding an audience for your music because of it's a kind of a "mulatto" sort of mentality?

A: We have enough Cuban stuff that when people hear it, they love it. But it's different enough that I understand people might be turned off by it. That's just natural.

... If you go to a restaurant and ask for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they bring it with peanut butter that has nuts in it. You go: 'Wait a minute. Where's the creamy peanut butter? That's real peanut butter."

... It's not like we are a salsa band that has a built-in audience. So what we have to do is to create our own thing. It's not that difficult, as crazy as that might sound. ... Audiences can be made, and the more we play the more people love what we do. So I'm encouraged by that.

Q: How is it being the leader of your own band this time around? I know you've worked with a lot of guys like Al (DiMeola) who are pretty notorious task-masters. What did you learn from them and how do you put that to work?

A: I hate to say it, but some of that stuff wears off, you know. And I grew up with a dad too, whose favorite saying was 'you can't get juice unless you squeeze the orange.' That's part of being a band leader. Sometimes to get the best out of people you have to push them. ... You have to be a task master. Especially if you are creating something new. ... Sometimes there's part of art that's volatile. I don't yell and scream at my cats, but they know I demand a certain amount of creativity to come out of them.

Q: How difficult it is getting the juice from the new band?

A: Am I getting juice? Damn right. I don't have to squeeze them no more. They squeeze themselves. They come in with stuff. My lead singer is creative as all hell. He comes up with stuff now. On the record he created all the vocal tracks on his own. I was in Europe the whole time.

Q: Is there a different mentality being a set player and having your own band?

A: I always think about this with I'm on stage with Al. I'm on stage and there's Al and he's definitely the man, a legend and all that stuff. I've been with him for 20 years now. I've had a long time to analyze this.

I'm more relaxed when I'm with Al because it's his show. It's like if you are at your mother's house. You relax. You don't pay no bills, nothing. She cooks, she cleans, she does everything. You just be. When you are on your own you have to do everything... You are in control of your own destiny.

So with Al, I'm definitely more relaxed. With my thing, I'm a little bit more nervous because you are bringing out your own personal music ideas out in the open. It's like being naked. You don't know if you are going to get killed or not.

It could have been easy for me to make a regular salsa band or a regular jazz band and just go out there and take advantage of whatever tiny bit of notoriety I have. But if we are going to live and die, we might as well live and die on our own terms.

Q: How much of what you guys do is improvised and how much is planned out?

A: All the songs are written out. The beginnings are written out. After that it's all improvised.

Q: So you play in that jazz tradition?

A: Absolutely, it's built in. ... The object is to get people dancing, of course. If people are just standing still, I get nervous. That means we are playing too much jazz.

Q: What do you mean 'too much jazz'?

A: Jazz audiences in the United States are conditioned to just sit and listen. So I know if people just sit and listen, that it's not tribal enough. So we have to switch gears.

Q: That's the ultimate goal of your music you think?

A: The ultimate goal is for people to dance. That's ultimately that.

Q: So, it's like rock 'n' roll in a sense.

A: It's like rock 'n' roll and R&B. That's the ultimate. I don't hide the fact that I don't want to sit there for people to intellectually figure out what I'm doing. ... My object is for you to get your fat ass up and dance. I play the drums. I don't have any pretension.

...(Jazz) used to be dance music, big band dance music, '40s and '50s. (Jazz musicians) were getting tired of it and wanted to be respected musicians. Jazz started evolving into 'Oh yeah, look at what we can do.' Codes from the underground. 'No one can understand it because we are playing it fast.'... And then bebop was born. Then it was marketed like this was America's classical music. Music of intellect. Now you have (expletive deleted) Wynton Marsalis. How did that happen? It's like, dude, you play, but you haven't created anything and nobody's dancing. What the hell did you do with the music?