John Santos is back in the game.

Eight months after the breakup of Santos' acclaimed big band, the Machete Ensemble, and only two months after he was laid low by hip replacement surgery, the percussionist's calendar is once again jam-packed. He has a new quintet, a new CD (Papa Mambo) due out in July, and live concerts scheduled for the Stanford Jazz Festival on July 6 and Yoshi's on July 11.

"The whole nature of being a musician playing non-commercial music is that you have to be versatile and stay busy," Santos says. "Mainly I've been working on the production and the mixing for the new record, trying to get that ready so I can have it in my hand by the time these CD release celebrations come up. We're very happy with it."

Cienfuegos, Batachanga and Machete

A San Francisco native, Santos has been a familiar figure on the Bay Area jazz scene for decades. He found his calling early in life: by the age of 12, Santos was already playing conga with his step-grandfather, Julio Rivera, a Puerto Rican musician whose band had been a Mission District fixture since the 1930s. 

"It was a hobby that morphed into a profession," Santos recalls. "I was working professionally within a year, going out and playing gigs and getting paid — not much, but getting paid — even though I was still a kid. And that's basically it. I never stopped, and I never did anything else."

In 1976, Santos joined Orquesta Tipica Cienfuegos, an academically minded Afro-Cuban ensemble that provided much of the template for Santos' future career. His next group, the fiery Orquesta Batachanga, played the scene between 1981 and 1985 and produced two albums. But it was the Machete Ensemble that took Santos to the next level, remaining together for nearly 21 years and releasing nine well-regarded CDs.

When Machete said farewell with a sold-out performance at the Palace of Fine Arts in November, 2006, the band was still at its musical peak. But the realities of the music business worked against it. "It came down to economics," says Santos, echoing the lament of large-ensemble leaders everywhere. "With the way the money is in the arts, the cutting of funding... Decent-paying work for an 11-piece group that played non-commercial music was drying up. It just wasn't worth it to try to keep the band alive and fresh and rehearsing when we had so few gigs."

Another factor was the personal toll taken by Santos' multiple roles as bandleader, business manager, promoter and record label owner. "It was a difficult job," he says, adding: "I always had the feeling that being an administrator and a booking agent and manager — wearing all of those hats — kind of held me back as a player. The time I could have spent practicing was being spent doing business and other things."

Still, Santos looks back on Machete's two-decade run with pride. "I believe I speak for all of the Macheteros in saying we feel good about the legacy we were able to leave. When we listen back to that music, there's nothing there that we're ashamed of, nothing that was merely trendy. It holds up from beginning to end."

A New Band, A New Direction

As the Machete Ensemble started to lose steam in 2003, Santos began gigging with a quartet. Adding a fifth member soon afterwards, the new group hit its stride just as Machete wound down. "The timing worked out pretty well," says Santos. "Here we are less than a year after Machete and we're already getting our first CD out."

Leading a combo after two decades with a large band provides Santos with fresh challenges. "There are a couple of differences which are obvious," he explains. "The voicing and the harmony aren't as lush, or as fleshed out as with a larger group. It isn't as full of a sound, but on the other hand, the small group affords us a lot more space and a lot more room. After all, music is as much about space as it is about filling up the space."

Santos says the smaller band is helping him to grow as a player. "With the quintet, I find it's harder work. I really have to step it up, to push harder and really be responsible for the rhythm in a larger way. But that's something that I've really welcomed. I've had to practice more and make my playing stronger to fill those shoes." And while he's still the business manager, handling affairs for the smaller group is "a lot more manageable."

The quintet represents a blend of old and new, featuring two of Santos' valued Machete colleagues -- flutist John Calloway and percussionist Orestes Vilató -- as well as two younger but already well-traveled musicians: pianist Marco Diaz and bassist Saul Sierra.

Diaz is a Bay Area product, a graduate of San Francisco State University's music program. Sierra, originally from Mexico City and a graduate of Boston's Berklee College of Music. "They bring a lot of fresh energy and excitement to the group," Santos says. "And Saul in particular is also a composer and arranger; he wrote a couple of the pieces that we use. The new album has a lovely piece, a danzón with strings and flute. That's an original composition of his."

Making Papa Mambo

The quintet's new CD, "Papa Mambo," is named in honor of Israel "Cachao" López, a legendary Cuban bassist often called the "father of the mambo." But it's not a mambo record per se. The disc continues Machete's tradition of variety, mixing up styles and textures, folkloric tracks and deep rumba rhythms sitting alongside more familiar, danceable jams. As Santos explains: "It's a real mixture of stuff, and I've always felt that it was important to do that. With Machete we always tried to present Latin jazz in its full spectrum."

Santos is passionate about this topic. "Some people are under the impression that Latin jazz is a very specific thing, and it's not," he says. "It's like jazz as a whole, which is hard to describe in one sentence because there's so many different styles." He continues: "The music has expanded beyond the traditional boundaries. It's more inclusive now. This music has taken root all over Latin America and all over the Caribbean. We take influences from all those places now, though without denying that the roots are mostly Cuban, and originate with the Cuban rhythms and instruments."

The spirit of variety extends to the disc's lineup. "Papa Mambo" may be a quintet CD, but don't be surprised if it sounds like a larger group — some 20 guests make appearances on the album, including the great Puerto Rican singer/trumpeter Jerry Medina, best known for his groundbreaking work in the 1980s with the band Batacumbele. 

"He's phenomenal," says Santos. "His voice has the same power and range as 30 years ago. We have him on a piece that's in kind of a New Orleans style, very different for what we do, and he scats. And we also have him on the title track: he sings in a folkloric, kind of Afro-Cuban style on that, and he did a great job."

Also on hand for the recording were trumpeter Ray Vega, a heavyweight veteran of the New York scene, as well as local percussionists Harold Muñiz and Javier Navarrete, violinist Anthony Blea, singers María Márquez and Orlando Torriente, and "at least a dozen" background singers working in various combinations.

Santos sees this musical mosaic as fitting right in with the Bay Area style. "People here appreciate the value of mixing and experimenting and honoring and respecting and incorporating other people's traditions," he says, "and we try to bring that into what we do."

A Long, Hot Summer

The gigs at Stanford and Yoshi's are just the tip of the iceberg for Santos this summer. He's also in the studio, laying down tracks for vocalist Kat Parra's second CD. That album is being produced by Wayne Wallace, another Machete Ensemble colleague, and features many members of the old group.

Santos also has plenty of teaching gigs, including a fifteen-week lecture class, "The Roots of Latin Jazz and Salsa," at the Museum of the African Diaspora, running from July through October. It's a course that Santos has taught intermittently since the 1980s. 

"I show slides and we listen to rare recordings, talk about the roots of the music, exploring the connections between jazz and Latin American forms," Santos says. "I haven't done this in several years. It's been really wonderful to get back in and polish it up, add some of the new information I've gathered over the past few years."

Santos will also spend this summer teaching at Humboldt State University's "Explorations in Afro-Cuban Dance and Drum" workshop, running July 21-28, and then at the Lafayette Summer Music Workshop from July 29 through August 3, working with a range of students from middle-schoolers to adults. In the fall, Santos will resume instruction of the College of San Mateo's Afro-Latin Percussion Ensemble.

It's a heavy workload, but Santos greets all of his projects with relish. He seems particularly happy with his smaller, more flexible band, which allows him the freedom to explore more possibilities and spend more time doing what he loves. "There won't be another big group like Machete," he says. "Not that I'll be directing. I'm not saying we'll never have a reunion, but it's certainly way too early to think about that now. I've got my plate full."

Forrest Dylan Bryant is a jazz journalist and DJ based on the San Francisco Peninsula. He writes frequently for online and print publications and can be heard on Friday mornings as the host of "No Cover, No Minimum" on KZSU, 90.1 FM. You can visit him online at http://www.fojazz.com.