The Beat of My Own Drum (11 page)

A lot of kids stay in gangs or keep committing crimes because their friends do. Being away from all that gave me a different perspective. I had a chance to move forward and move on. I didn’t just have to accept that this was how my life was going to be.

I grew wings.

Flying high, I learned to face my demons, challenge their power over me, and start to put them behind me. Accepting that began the long process of bringing me back to the values of love and tolerance that Moms and Pops had modeled for me all along.

9
. Resonance

The quality of a sound being deep and reverberating

Music has no color, has no lines

It’s a language that reaches all nations

We bring this gift of love for everyone to share

Just take some time to show someone you care

“PEACE AND JOY”

THE E FAMILY

M
usic remained my lifeline, and its umbilical pull on me only intensified during the months that I was away from home. Surrounded by silence, I realized how much I missed noise.

I also came to appreciate that playing music and being around my crazy family made me happier than anything else. From the day I first tapped along in time to Pops on my lap to the night I stood on the stage with him at Sweet’s, music was what brought me back to a place of serenity and safety.

Whenever music filled my ears, I could lose myself in the rhythms and the beats that reconnected me with the vibrations that had shaped me in my mother’s womb.

Living at my aunt’s house I found music in everything around me, just as when I’d played with Moms’s pots and pans. I found comfort in slapping out a rhythm with my hairbrush on the wall of my room or beating a rhythm on a trash can. I also had more conventional access to music, of course, and played records and listened to the radio. And I didn’t much care about what kind of music I listened to—my tastes were expanding.

I loved Chicago and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Jacksons and the Beach Boys. I was still crazy about Motown and discovered the musical genius of Stevie Wonder. When I found out he was blind it seemed so incredible to me, until I realized that I often closed my eyes when I played.

James Brown never lost his impact on me—and his 1968 number “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” really resonated. I thought of him as a modern-day Sammy Davis Jr.—the way he could sing and dance, he had so much soul. Plus he had two drummers who had to watch, call cues, and make signs to each other. I thought, How do they do that?

Feeling homesick for the crowded, noisy spaces I’d grown up with, I decided one day that it was time to go home. My lesson had been learned. I thanked Aunt Love and packed my few belongings.

I was still attending the San Leandro school, so when I moved back home I had to get up at five
A.M.
every day to catch the bus. But it was worth it just to be back in the bosom of my family. Moms and Pops, Juan, Peter Michael, and little Zina welcomed me with open arms and open hearts.

The best part about being back home was being around live music on a daily basis. That truly fed my soul. Things seemed to be much better financially, too. My uncle Coke and my father were
still in the Escovedo Brothers band, but in 1971 they’d also joined a hot local band called Santana, which cleverly blended Latin jazz, rock, and jazz.

A charismatic Mexican called Carlos Santana, who often came around our house to hang out and jam, fronted it. He was ten years older than me, and the first person I really came to think of as “famous.” Carlos and his band had played “Soul Sacrifice” at the 1969 Woodstock music festival, which was filmed by a documentary team that went on to win an Oscar and made the Californian band instantly recognizable around the world.

Woodstock was such a big deal in Oakland—everyone talked about it for years afterward; we all wished we’d been there. And it was doubly cool to have a local band do so well on such a global stage. Scores of other bands started up to mimic their sound or play Santana covers.

Carlos had been born in Mexico and was inspired by his father, a mariachi violinist. Until he became successful he’d worked in a series of local bands just like everyone else and sometimes washed dishes in a restaurant. He’d been especially influenced by my “godfather,” Tito Puente, and by our friend Eddie Palmieri, which is how he came to meet my uncle Coke and Pops.

I thought Carlos was so handsome, with his big brown eyes and curly dark hair. He spoke softly, and I remember feeling a little shy around him. When he asked Pops and Uncle Coke to join him on tour and in the recording studio, that was a big deal, and we all felt the consequences.

Riding high, my father and uncle ended up working with Santana on and off for the next three years. Pops was grateful and honored, but he still had his own dreams to follow, so eventually he and Coke left Santana to form their own band, Azteca.

My little brothers and I were blissfully unaware of the machinations of the music industry, with all its politics and ego clashes.
All we knew was that we loved jamming with friends. Still inspired by the Osmonds and the Jacksons, along with the Temptations and the Supremes, we worked out a whole new bunch of songs and dance routines. Buying the latest hit records continued to be our passion, and we sometimes pooled the allowances we earned doing chores to buy what we wanted.

To do our musical heroes justice, we knew we needed matching outfits, so we threw together what we had or asked a neighbor to make up some color-coordinated clothes for us.

I look back at some of the photos of us from that time and laugh out loud. What were we thinking? For one gig we wore the strangest combination. My friend Anna Marie worked at the Kaiser Hospital as an intern nurse, and she managed to find us three sets of green scrubs. For some unknown reason, we accessorized them with boots and belts, cowboy boots (with a Cuban heel), or platforms. We thought we were so cool.

Another time I wore flowing white dress pants with a swooping-neckline top that draped at the sides. It was sleeveless, because I’d discovered early on that I couldn’t bear to have my arms covered too closely when I played congas. The fabric brushed against my skin when I was moving my hands so fast and became a distraction, so my arms had to be free.

To complement my look, Juan and Peter Michael wore white bell-bottoms and shirts with thin black ties.

That white dress was probably the classiest outfit I ever had back then, and it made me feel feminine for the first time. Suddenly I was aware of my own sexuality and comfortable with it. I wasn’t just a skinny fourteen-year-old with no idea what to do with her own body.

I can’t remember the name of the first band we formed, but I do recall we only played Mexican music. We also jammed in a few
local garage bands. My brothers worked hard to keep on top of their game, but I was lazy and never rehearsed—I just got up and played.

Juan, especially, had to work harder to be a musician than Peter Michael or me. He just didn’t seem to have the same feel for it in those early years (although he’s sure made up for that now!). There was a hit song at the time called “One” by Three Dog Night, which had the line, “One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know.” Apart from the fact that it sounded like they were singing “Juan,” the words of that song always reminded me of my brother, the first boy in our family, and made me sad.

Growing up, Juan was accident-prone and often got hurt. He became partially blind from a rare disease, so he missed a lot of school because he was always in the hospital, which made him a little insecure. He always seemed to be by himself, and I knew how lonely that could be.

After I was sent away to Aunt Love’s, he took up with the East Twenty-first Street Gang. He gave up the sports he’d always loved and started getting into fights instead. By the time I returned home, he and Moms were clashing frequently, and she was tough on him because she was so scared of where he was heading. All that he had left to save him was music.

I decided to be a better big sister to him, so I persuaded him to come to the pool hall with me, where we’d try to beat my uncles for money. We spent much of our teens in those halls and both became mean players, but our uncles were professional gamblers and unbeatable. We didn’t have a hope in hell of beating them.

Peter Michael had started off being the cute one, and that’s how he remained. He did well in hurdles and the high jump at school, and everyone loved him. He probably got into as much trouble as Juan and me, but he was slick about it because he always cried if he
was caught, and—as the baby—he got away with everything. He was definitely the favorite for a long time, and no one could argue with that when he looked so adorable.

As a matter of fact, he is still Moms’s favorite, although she won’t admit to it!

Like Juan and me, though, music was to become Peter Michael’s one true love, and he went on to be an Emmy-nominated music director, composer, and musician.

My sister, Zina, was still very young at the time, so she tended to be home with Moms. She never seemed to share our passion for playing music and was always destined to follow her own very different path. While she has a beautiful singing voice (she sings the bridge on some of our later songs) and dynamite dancing abilities (you can spot her in a few of my videos, some of which she choreographed), she didn’t choose to become a professional entertainer like the rest of us.

Pops likes to say, “That’s because she’s the only one with any sense!”

Ask Zina why she didn’t become a musician and she’ll tell you it wasn’t her calling. She loves music as much as we all do, but I suspect she simply wanted to get away from all the noise, not make more of it!

It can’t have been easy for her to be born into a house filled with so much sound.

Not only were most of our friends musicians, but there were other musical families we hung out with, too, like the Guzmans, Floreses, and Godinezes. It seemed like everyone we knew had a band. We all played together, exchanged licks, and created temporary bands with a fluid membership that often depended more on our abilities to recruit than our musical talent.

If someone had equipment or a place to rehearse, they were in. No audition required. After a few months of playing around,
though, we decided to up our game and try to get ourselves into a proper band.

We’d heard from one of our friends, Tony Flores, about a group that was looking for a percussion section, so we hopped on a bus across town to audition. The band was headed by a girl named Martha, and it primarily played the Mexican music known as cumbia, which we weren’t crazy about. But it was a
real
band, and that was good enough for us.

For the audition, Juan was on bongos, Peter Michael was on congas, and Tony was on guitar. I played the band’s own set of drums (which I wasn’t so well versed in, but I did it so that we’d stand a better chance). By the end of our audition, the band said they wanted us to join them, but they already had a guitar player, a bass player, and a conga player.

“No problem,” said Tony. “I’ll switch to timbales.”

That left Peter Michael out on a limb, so the band decided not to take him. We felt kind of bad, but he said he understood, and we all hoped we might get him in later on. When we returned home and told our folks what had happened, though, they weren’t having any of it.

They were perfectly clear: “Either you’re all in or none of you are in!”

Our faces fell. Juan and I begged them to understand. “But they already have a conga player. If we tell them that, we’ll all get turned down.”

“Too bad,” Moms and Pops said firmly. “You guys stick together. You’re family.”

Even though we were worried that sticking up for our kid brother might ruin our chance, we reluctantly agreed that joining the band without him would be wrong. We’d grown up knowing that family came first; we looked out for each other, we resolved things within the family, and we tried to honor each other.

So back we went with our tails between our legs to explain that we were a package deal. The band must have respected our decision, because they just shrugged their shoulders and said, “Okay. I guess we’ll have two conga players, then.”

Shortly afterward, we were booked for our first gig—a quinceañera. The night went well, and when we were paid ten dollars each we felt immensely, stupidly rich.

The band was doing okay, but it wasn’t really playing the music I liked, so I was excited when I got a phone call from a guitarist named Joe Cano, who led a local band called Grito (which means “yell”).

“We heard your dad plays with Santana.”

“Yes, he does,” I replied proudly.

“We have a piano player, a guitarist, a bass player, and two percussionists,” Joe told me. “But we need a drummer.” Grito also wanted to perfect a Santana sound, so—with Pops and Coke’s connections—I was a valuable commodity.

“Come for an audition tomorrow afternoon and bring your drums,” Joe added.

Taking a cue from my mother, I agreed without hesitation. Her attitude to life had rubbed off on me so much that if anybody had asked me, “Do you know how to pole-vault?” my answer would be, “Sure! Show me how and I’ll try it. Let’s go!”

I’d said yes to Joe even though I had no idea where I’d find a drum set on such short notice. The only sets I had access to were owned by musicians who came to our house, but they were all working and needed them.

Thinking quickly, I asked another of my cousins, Maurice, if I could borrow his. He was bemused. “I’ve been playing for two years. You’re fourteen years old and you’ve barely touched the drums, but you’re the one with the audition?”

“I guess I’m just lucky!” I replied.

He laughed. “How are you going to audition as a drummer when you don’t even know how to set them up on your own?”

“Can you show me how to do it so that I look like I know what I’m doing?” I replied.