Remembering RAUL REKOW

by Alex Pertout

Raul Rekow was a celebrated conga player, pioneer of the Latin-Rock movement, best known for his work as a member of the Santana band for 38 years. Rekow was born in San Francisco on the 10th of June, 1954. In his teens he was captured by an emerging new sound in popular music, the music of the Santana band, this in turn inspired Raul to take up conga drums. “I started playing with a couple of friends who were also inspired by the Santana band, Jorge Bermudez and Leo Rosales, the three of us used to get together and play and practise all the time,” he told me.

They were so immersed in drumming that according to Bermudez “at about 15 we got this mad idea, let’s be professional conga players!” This was the late 1960s and in the Bay Area “everyone was buying a conga, everybody was inspired by the whole Santana sound, in any park you had twenty or thirty conga players, nobody really knew how to play, we all would go there and just beat on a drum,” Rekow recalled. Soon after he joined a local group called Soul Sacrifice, later renamed Dakila, which played Santana covers. As his reputation grew, he was invited to join the very successful Latin-Rock band Malo, which at the time had a major radio hit with ‘Suavecito’. Upon leaving Malo he met John Santos, nowadays a highly respected band leader, percussionist, ethnomusicologist, with whom he spent the next few years on a daily learning quest, obsessively transcribing and developing rhythms and songs from various Afro-Cuban folkloric sources. As they progressed they presented masterclasses and played in a local salsa band together.

According to Rekow they also made sure to meet any visiting New York percussionists and took the opportunity to query any of the material they were learning from recordings, “we would fine-tune our folkloric chops” he recalled, “we would ask all the questions we had, how do you play this? how do you play that? these guys were able to give us little tips on how to do it.” During that time he also joined Sapo, an offshoot of Malo which gained moderate success. In 1976 he was invited to join the Santana band, an association that was to last 38 years.

This new Santana band went on to work with producer David Rubinson developing what was later released as the ‘Festival’ album. The album marked the arrival of Rekow on the international scene, its opening track ‘Carnaval’ featuring a fiery and energetic conga drum executing an Afro- Brazilian samba de roda pattern. It was the start of a career with Santana that amassed seventeen albums, including the extremely successful ‘Moonflower’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘Shaman’ which spawned hits such as ‘She’s Not There’, ‘Smooth’, ‘Maria Maria’ and ‘The Game Of Love’, many Grammys and other awards and countless international concert tours. Rekow’s discography also includes a vast collection of releases by other artists including Herbie Hancock, Aretha Franklin, the hit ‘Freeway of Love’ features his conga playing, Whitney Houston, Malo, John Lee Hooker, Congarilla and recordings and instructional audio-visual material produced with his percussion colleague Karl Perazzo.

Santana toured Australia in 1977 as part of the mega Rockarena concerts also featuring Fleetwood Mac and the Little River Band, the Melbourne leg was staged at Calder Raceway. At the time they were promoting the follow up ‘Moonflower’ album and the band’s percussion section featured the legendary Armando Peraza, timbalero Pete Escovedo and a young Rekow playing four white LP fiberglass congas. The drums, mounted with thin skins, exuded an extremely explosive sound, personally this was an incredibly exciting and inspirational day. My friend Peter Grech and I met Rekow at the Hilton on his next visit while on the ‘Marathon’ tour of 1979. He immediately struck a chord with us, invited us to his room and proceeded to show us pattern after pattern of Afro-Cuban drumming repertoire by playing on the room’s coffee tabletop and on a wastepaper bucket. This continued with and without drums for the next few days. We were in awe and with his blessing recorded everything he played, everything he said.

Those early recordings are still with us and still sound amazing. It was the start of a long and respectful friendship. With every passing tour we would attend all the concerts courtesy of Rekow, he would then spend countless hours with us sharing his vast knowledge. This went on for decades. As we grew, our time together during his tours here took all sorts of directions, from enjoying a Vietnamese dinner, to recording material together in my home studio, to attending and performing at one of my gigs, to spending time enjoying a quiet dinner at home. I have released some material from those recordings already, ‘El Baile’ is featured on my ‘From The Heart’ release and I have additional material which I will release in future. Over the years I had the pleasure of inviting Rekow on many occasions to the Faculty of VCA at the University of Melbourne. He presented outstanding percussion masterclasses, took part in performances with the Latin-Jazz ensemble I direct in the Jazz & Improvisation department, delivered

open discussions on his career and the music business in general and also conducted intimate classes for percussionists, inspiring everyone along the way.

He endorsed Latin Percussion congas, which in turn produced the Raul Rekow LP signature series conga, featuring an impressive tiger print finish with gold glitter accents and gold tone hardware. Remo heads, who also endorsed Rekow, produced synthetic heads with the tiger print to custom fit those special drums. As far as developments for the instrument itself is concerned, Rekow always felt that he was part instrumental in the development of the now popular ‘comfort curve rim’. As he explained to me, he made use of a garden hose cut through the middle to cover the traditional metal conga rim in turn creating a softer edge, a necessary development in order to safeguard his hands. The ‘comfort curve rim’, a rounded soft edge rim was later designed and is now standard hardware used by most conga manufacturers.

He was a multi-award winning artist, a pioneer of the Latin-Rock scene, a leading exponent of his generation of congueros and without doubt one of the most admired and widely known due to his outstanding contribution and participation in the ‘Santana sound’ for more then three decades. According to Santos “nobody in the history of the conga drum has exposed the drum to as many people, as many audiences, as many stages around the world then Raul.” His legacy in the percussion world is enormous. He developed a personal sound that is easily discernible, a sound that defined conga drums in the international arena. He inspired percussionists around the globe, myself included. He was a friend, a teacher, a mentor and will always be in my thoughts and in my playing. Rekow passed away on Sunday the 1st of November 2015 due to complications from lung cancer, he was 61. From my heart I thank you so much Raul, may you rest in peace.

Raul Rekow is survived by his wife Diane, sons Raul Jr. and Rafael, daughter Marie-Danielle, brothers Bruce, George and Larry, daughter-in-laws Maria and Tracy, son-in-law Shaun, grandsons Raul III and Julian and grandson Elias. My thanks to Raul Rekow Jr, Jorge Bermudez, Peter Grech, Terry Tlatelpa-Lopez and Thomas Schwarz.

Photographs courtesy of Peter Grech and Thomas Schwarz.

© 2015 Alex Pertout. Published by Drumscene Magazine and The Sydney Morning Herald.