Kuumbwa at 50: A Jazz Club Celebrates a Half-Century of Blowing Minds

In the latter half of the 1980s, the mightiest improvisers in jazz took the stage just about every Monday night at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center.

For a budding jazz aficionado like myself, those shows at the pioneering nonprofit venue weren’t just an education. From my first interview disaster to covering a pivotal moment in international relations, the very seeds of my journalistic career were sown at Kuumbwa, a groundbreaking venue which celebrates its 50th anniversary in April.

It was baptism by bebop and far beyond. One night, as Sun Ra’s bedazzled Arkestra promenaded up the aisles chanting “We travel the spaceways / From planet to planet,” led by the stratospheric pealing of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, it became clear that jazz was a multiverse encompassing not only the far-flung African diaspora but several adjacent galaxies.

Watch a video segment of KQED’s ‘Spark’ about the Kuumbwa Jazz Center here.

Becoming a Jazz Destination

First founded in 1975, Kuumbwa had by 1977 settled into its downtown space at 320 Cedar Street. Tim Jackson, a surfer and flutist first drawn to Santa Cruz by the waves, was the only co-founder left by the time I started volunteering to write Kuumbwa calendar copy in exchange for free tickets.

Turning Santa Cruz’s relatively remote location into an asset, Jackson established a viable nonprofit model for a jazz venue, with a cadre of dedicated volunteers and an avid audience supportive of his catholic programing. More than a dozen jazz venues around the country have since followed in Kuumbwa’s nonprofit footsteps.

Mondays were off-nights for artists heading south from the Bay Area down to Los Angeles, or in the reverse direction to play Keystone Korner, Kimball’s or Oakland’s Koncepts Cultural Gallery (what’s with all the K’s?). Kuumbwa quickly became a de rigueur stop for a broad swath of jazz’s elite, from swing era survivors, bebop legends and soul jazz preachers to avant garde avatars, Latin jazz heroes, neo-swing revivalists and hard-bopping young lions.

Jackson didn’t necessarily love every idiom, but he felt a responsibility to showcase the artists defining the contemporary scene. That commitment continued for decades. Jackson recently announced that he’ll move into an advisory role at Kuumbwa, while his son Bennett Jackson takes on programming duties as creative director and Chanel Enriquez becomes executive director.

Unforgettable Nights of Music

Jackson’s semi-retirement (he stepped down from his long-running role as the artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival last year), plus the milestone of the club’s 50th anniversary, sparks a flood of memories. I can close my eyes, and the music from decades ago is more vivid than shows I saw last month.

Eddie Palmieri’s septet, which combined Latin percussion with jazz horns, opening up vast new Afro-Caribbean vistas as he treated the piano like 88 tuned drums. Shirley Horn’s singular combination of strength and tenderness, her harmonic wizardry at the piano and her time-stopping ballads. The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s pageantry and playfulness, with Lester Bowie’s slashing trumpet lines and Malachi Favor’s elemental bass. Max Roach paying tribute to Count Basie drummer Papa Jo Jones, using only two sticks and a hi-hat cymbal.

The thing was, as a wannabe hippie who grew up with posters of the Who, the Beatles and the Grateful Dead on my bedroom wall, I didn’t expect to be up close and personal with musicians whose albums I had in regular rotation. At Kuumbwa, you could chat with artists after a show, or even approach one for an interview.

Although, as I learned, that might not always be a good idea.

Tony Williams, the drum prodigy who helped revolutionize trumpet legend Miles Davis’ music in the mid-1960s at the age of 17, was a famously prickly character. Looking for quotes for a story about Kuumbwa’s 15th anniversary for the UC Santa Cruz weekly City On a Hill, I introduced myself to him at a pre-concert event with my notepad, and without waiting, asked what he liked about playing the venue. I can still see his look of dismay as he backed away, murmuring “no press, no press.”

It was an inauspicious start for a career in culture reporting. But I survived the withering dismissal, and by 1989, I’d started writing features and reviews for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. On the night that Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990, Gil-Scott Heron was playing Kuumbwa. The mood was beyond ecstatic. As I was able to recount in my Sentinel review, when he launched into “Johannesburg,” the structure barely survived the blast of energy.

A Special Celebration

Most of the artists who changed the course of my life as an undergrad are gone now. But as Kuumbwa celebrates its 50th anniversary in the coming months, the venue remains an essential part of the region’s musical ecosystem.

Kuumbwa’s Spirit of ’75 Series marks the milestone by presenting local artists with longstanding ties to the venue, like San Jose bassist Ken Okada, whose Japanese jazz fusion combo performs April 3 with teenage drum phenomenon Yoyoka. (Tickets are priced at $19.75 in honor of the year Kuumbwa was founded.)

On May 2, the exhibition “Celebrating Creativity” opens with posters, photos, and historical ephemera from Kuumbwa’s archives spanning five decades. Part of Santa Cruz’s First Fridays, the event includes a conversation about Kuumbwa’s history and role in the region with Tim Jackson and Bay Area vocalist and historian Kim Nalley.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, and now the venue is in the next generation’s hands. May it continue to reverberate for another 50 years.

Details about Kuumbwa’s ongoing 50th anniversary celebration can be found at the club’s site.