Press Release
Orestes Vilató to perform with Rebeca Mauléon and Afro-Kuban Fusion
World class percussionist Orestes Vilato will appear in a show this Friday at the King Center on the Auraria campus. He will perform with Rebeca Mauléon, bringing two of the top names in Latin Jazz to the same stage.
Vilato began his career as one of the founding members of the East Coast Salsa movement working with legendary names such as Ray Barretto, Rubén Blades, Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco and Cachao. After 25 years in New York, Vilato moved to California, mastering rock percussion playing with the Carlos Santana Band on seven albums.
Rebeca Mauléon has performed with such luminaries as Tito Puente, Cachao, Carlos “Patato” Valdes as well as Carlos Santana. She is a professor of Latin American, Caribbean, jazz and composition. She has recorded three albums under her own name and performed on 22 more.
As a young boy in Cuba, Vilato studied the guitar. One day he just flipped it over and started slapping out a rhythm on the body of the instrument. “At the time we only had radio in the house and they had a lot of live shows with bands in Cuba,” he said. “I heard some percussive sounds on the radio and I was trying to practice my guitar. That’s why I turned it around and tried to imitate what I was listening to.”
That was the beginning of what was to become his career but he didn’t know it at the time. “My father told me it’s hard to make a living as a conga player and he was pretty close – it’s not a piece of cake.”
He really cut his teeth playing with conguero Ray Barretto in an evolving series of band configurations mixing trumpet and trombone with violin and percussion. “Carlos called me in 1975 when I was on contract with my own group, Los Kimbos, and I came to San Francisco and did a couple of shows, but besides the fact that I was already signed for three more years, I wasn’t mentally ready to jump into the rock ‘n’ roll – 100 percent the other side of the world. I said maybe you could call when my contract is finished thinking he wasn’t going to call me.”
As fate would have it, Santana did call and when he did Vilato was ready. “The atmosphere in New York was not getting better and I had done everything possible there. I said I’m going to try this and see what happens. I had a great time with Santana but it was a lot of work. The best part of course is the show itself. Not only in that band but in any band that tours – the hours are two o’clock in the morning, three o’clock in the morning – take two or three planes and a bus – the traveling, the hotels. Those nine and a half years happened like I was out of the world. Then when I got out of the band I realized there’s still a life.”
We asked Orestes to look back over his career and pick out the work that’s meant the most to him. “I would say Barretto, Santana and Cachao were very experimental and very nourishing for me – especially Cachao because I heard his music as a kid. When he created the Cuban jam session that describes that kind of sound, I knew what he was going to do before he did it. He’d say let’s rehearse – I’ll do what I want and you follow me – it was great – it was just incredible. He showed me the simple side of the music and the simple side of being human – always joking and telling stories of his life – a great musician.”
Orestes Vilato will be a special guest at the 5th Annual Night of Cuban Music featuring Rebeca Mauleón and Afro-Kuban Fusion. The performance will take place in the King Center Feb. 20 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 general admission, $5 UC Denver students.
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