I think of Ricardo Monzon as a friend even though I only see him once a year. We've gone to the same beach party for years and years. He is a funny, life-loving guy and we have a great time - except that he usually has to leave early to go play a gig. Ricardo, who lives in Melrose, is the default Latin percussionist to many Boston musicians, and he plays tons of concerts and parties and corporate events and with Pops. He's in tune with classical, jazz and pop, and you'll find him all over town with his congas and timbales and shakers and whatnot, from Symphony Hall to some social hall in Revere, and at downtown performances by the likes of Aretha, Donna Summer, Stanley Clarke and George Duke. Oh, and he teaches three days a week at Berklee College of Music, where he's an assistant professor in the percussion department.
Monday night at 7:30, he plays a show that's close to his heart - the third annual Berklee marimba concert celebrating the music and culture of his native Guatemala. The Latin Music Concert at David Friend Recital Hall, 921 Boylston St., is part of Berklee's three-week Latin Music & Culture Celebration. It's also free.
"The marimba is a center, a little magnet for all us Guatemalans, for everybody, all the different social staus, all the different classes," he said. The music and readings will explore "the place of the marimba in everybody's life, and how it has been used politically, religiously, socially in Guatemala."
Ricardo grew up in Guatemala City. On the phone Sunday, he said he remembers his dad putting him in front of a little marimba when he was four or five years old. He went on to study piano at the Conservatorio Nacional De Guatemala, then switched to drums as a teenager when some friends started a band and none of them knew how to play. It was more fun cruising the city with a band than sitting home practicing piano for hours and hours anyway: "I traded four walls and the piano for the drums and being outside," he said. "It was a happy thing."
After getting a teaching degree and making an attempt at becoming a doctor - "My stomach wasn't strong enough...it was very sad, dealing with a lot of kids, a lot of diseases..." - he returned to the conservatory to study classical percussion. He played with everyone from symphonies to show bands, but around 1980 he decided he had to come to Berklee, where he could learn more about writing and arranging. Now he's an alum as well as a faculty member.
Ricardo notes with pride that students can now graduate from Berklee as marimba players. He took the instrument up again three years ago, and says he can play a small orchestral part, "but I'm not an improviser." That he leaves to his students, several of whom will join him and a couple of faculty colleagues on stage Monday. The event also includes readings from Guatemalan poetry, prose and polemic, all centered around the marimba.
"It's an opportunity to bring my culture from Guatemala into the Berklee comunity," he said.
We'll see ya there.
Top photo, Berklee. Bottom photo from album design for "Van Gogh by Numbers" CD (Joe Locke & Christos Rafalides) by Nadja von Massow / Siula Grande Design, photograph by R. Andrew Lepley - shared copyright holders.
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