Born to Puerto Rican/Cuban parents in the South Bronx, Gumbi Ortiz was raised in a neighborhood of Caribbean immigrants, hearing people playing drums in the streets, “like they did in the islands.”
That pulsating, syncopated rhythm has been in his blood now for as long as he can remember. A St. Petersburg-based percussionist, drummer, composer and bandleader, Ortiz happily cops to being a one-trick pony – he practices between 10 and 15 hours a day, every day.
“It’s always been that way, since I was maybe 9 years old,” Ortiz says, conceding that this routine, at age 69, is slightly “obsessive.”
Whatever he’s chasing, he hasn’t quite caught it yet. Sometimes the chase is more exciting anyway.
Ortiz is currently off-tour with guitarist Al Di Meola – he was hand-picked by the jazz legend in 1987, and has been part of almost every Di Meola project since. Ortiz holds seven different passports.
Wednesday finds him and his two St. Petersburg bands, New Groove City and Electrik Rendezvous, performing at the Palladium Theater’s Side Door Cabaret.
The latter group focuses on jazz fusion, music from the likes of DeMiola’s old band, Return to Forever, and Weather Report (plus Ortiz’s own competitions, and others); New Groove City (once known as the Latino Project) is Afro-Cuban dance music.
With New Groove, he’s interested in “expanding the vocabulary” of the music, cultural bedrock in several parts of the globe.
“Africa, Afro-Cuba and Afro-America is the same people, it’s the same culture,” Ortiz believes. “So all I am trying to do is connect the dots, rhythmically, to something that was already there socially.
“We’re separated in America because, you know, English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, dark-skinned people, light-skinned people – we have a lot of apartheid tendencies in America.
“And I was just trying to, in my own little humble St. Pete way, musically do this without being Tarzan.”
Tarzan? “You know, King of the Jungle.”
The players in New Groove City are transplants from New York and New Jersey. Musicians with life and work experience from that region, he said, all speak a particular language.
When you know, you know.
A great-grandfather, Ortiz has resided in Florida since 1979 (St. Pete became his home six years later). Still, “I’m a citizen of the world from New York. I haven’t lost my accent, and my kids all make fun of me. I sound like Joe Pesci. And I grew up speaking nothing but Spanish.”
He makes a living from recording sessions, shows with his bands and other performances (he and the late Chick Corea, who lived in Clearwater, played a half-dozen duo concerts) and with Di Meola.
Al Di Meola, left, and Gumbi Ortiz. File photo.
The New Jersey-born guitarist and the Cubano/Bronx percussionist are thick as thieves.
Why? “Because I’m from the Bronx, and I know how to do the dance,” Ortiz offers. “There’s a dance that you do with people with those kind of egos. Because to play like Al, the reason he plays his ass off is he’s got this thirst in his ego that needs to be filled. Jesus Christ, he can play. And that ego never bothers me.
“He’s a genius guitar player. I was a really good hack. I can play, I can do this and I can do that, but I didn’t have that ego to become the next whatever. I’m a plantain, rice and beans motherf—er. I don’t have those ambitions.
“He’s obsessive with rehearsal, like I am about practicing. If he doesn’t have a pick in his hand, he’s in the bathroom.”
New Groove City includes Aron Ferre, piano; Kenny Walker, bass; Luis Alicia, drums; Eduardo Videaud, vocals; Gumbi Ortiz, percussion.
Electrik Rendezvous includes Edepson Gonzalez, piano; Luis Alicea, drums; Evan Garr, violin; Elias Tona, bass; Gumbi Ortiz, percussion. Special guest horn players Scott Myers, trombone; Ronnie Dee, saxophone; Terry Clark, trumpet.
Tickets to Wednesday’s 7:30 p.m. concert (“Gumbi Ortiz Block Party”) are available at this link.