 and welcome back to our show. We're the voice for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Hawaii. I'm your host, Barbara Zuluca, president and co-founder of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, along with my lovely co-host, vice president and co-founder as well of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Hawaii. We have a great show for you today, right, Marisol? We sure do. We are so excited. Today's episode, we are welcoming Latin musician, band leader, percussionist, son of Latin jazz royalty, Tito Puente Jr. Saludos, saludos, saludos. Hi, everybody. Como está, Marisol? Saludos, Barbara. Muchas gracias por invitarme. Y gracias, thank you guys for having me on the program today. Si, estamos aquí con el Tito Puente Jr., el hijo del famosísimo Tito Puente que es conocido como el rey del jazz latino. Bienvenidos. Gracias. Gracias por invitarme. Mucho gusto. So, Tito's coming us today from Seattle. You just had a show there. Yes, I'm doing a concert here, residency at a place called Jazz Alley, where my father performed as well many times throughout his entire career. And we're celebrating the 100th centennial of Tito Puente this entire year. So this is one leg of the tour and I'm out ready to get out of the rain and head to Hawaii for some sun. We got plenty of it for you. So Tito Puente Jr. is gonna be joining us at the Hispanic Heritage Festival. It's a two-day event over at O'ahu Veterans Center on West O'ahu. And it's on Saturday and Sunday. He'll be performing Sunday the 15th. And the event is from 12 to seven on both days. It's $10 per person or you can get your tickets, $15 for both days. And I believe you're coming on to end the show the grand finale on Sunday at 5 p.m. around that time, right? So make sure you guys are there. Barbara, I'm so excited. I'm very pleased for that opportunity for all of you who are listening to Tito Puente's music in celebration of the 100th centennial of my father. It's so cool that I can get to Hawaii at this leg of the tour and finally come back there. I haven't been there. I was talking to our very good friend who works for Alma Latina, Ms. Nancy Ortiz. And she mentioned to me that I haven't been in Hawaii for over about 15 years now. So it's been quite some time since I've been on the island. I'm looking forward to celebrating my father's legacy. The great music will be jamming with my buddy, Edwin Ortiz's and his orchestra. There's food, games, food trucks, all kinds of stuff. Bring the family. Dileque el abuelo y abuela y lo nene. Everybody can come at all ages. I wanna get everybody to come on out and enjoy the music of Tito Puente as the younger generation as they continue and learn more about Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Fano All Stars and our Hispanic culture. And not only that, we're also helping out our friends in Maui with the fire relief. So I'm so looking forward to getting to Hawaii. I will be there on Sunday, but it is a two day festival and I hope I can get everybody excited to join us on Sunday afternoon. I think I'm going around maybe 4.35 p.m. But I will be coming a little bit earlier to meet my fans and friends. And I know there's a lot of people that haven't seen me in a long time and those who have maybe seen Tito Puente perform in Hawaii as well. I'd like to meet them too as well and enjoy a wonderful afternoon and evening of just great Latin jazz music. Oh, it's gonna be great. Speaking of Celia Cruz, I was just in Miami and Celia Cruz and Tito Puente, you guys have such an influence there in Miami. I saw the museum there and talk to us about Celia, like something that we don't know. And amazing. I haven't gotten to the exhibit yet, which just started the exhibit in Miami for Celia Cruz, but today they just named a street after Celia Cruz on Miami Beach. I couldn't attend, of course, because I'm here in Seattle, but very, very cool. And not only that, but they're also gonna represent Celia on the United States Quarter in 2024. The first Afro-Cuban Latina on the United States, like from the United States mint to our hands. And it's gonna be amazing to see that woman be honored in that aspect with on the United States Quarter in 2024. They also just made a Barbie doll of Celia Cruz as well, which is incredible. And she was just a wonderful human being. She was practically my godmother. I grew up being around my father and Celia Cruz traveling the planet, seeing the impact that Afro-Cuban music has made around the world, including Hawaii. I remember being with Celia and my father in Hawaii back in the early nineties, and then performing at a big festival over there. I believe it was at the Blaisdale Arena. And it was a wonderful concert. And I didn't, I couldn't believe how many people loved and came out to see those great icons and those legends. But Celia will forever be remembered as the queen of that music. And we will remember her throughout this whole entire Centennial concert. During the show, I do touch on Celia's life and her legacy because she was so instrumental and important to my father's career. Your father lived a really full life. I mean, he lived in his late seventies, right? He was born in New York. Can you? I mean, I can't imagine what it's like growing up in a life with a father like that. What was it? How did he get started? What was it like for you growing up in that type of household, even in your younger years? Or when did it really begin? When you started to see, hey, this is something a little different than my neighbor kids, maybe your friends. Mira, Marisol, increíble, cuando to de allá en Nueva York, when we were born and raised in New York City, my sister and I, being in the house, there was always a lot of music in our home. My dad played with the radio and he had cassettes. He didn't have a cell phone because back in the seventies, eighties and nineties, he didn't care for having the cell phone. So he didn't want to beep or cell phone. He used to, if they want to get in touch with me, they'll call back, you know? And a lot of celebrities came over the house and called our home and traveling with him was really something special for me. I hope I can maybe in the future, write a book of my experience of being his son and what a great experience it was to know how much impact that he made to all Latinos. Everybody kind of looks at what is the Mambo Pope or like your tío. Like tío, pones, my tío, you know? And his music always resonated throughout your home with your parents playing his music and yourself. And you can turn on Alexa and tell Alexa to play tío, pones, their music. And she'll love playing hundreds and hundreds of songs by Tereya Timbal. But growing up being his son was a really incredible experience for me. I will always cherish it. And now it's my turn to bridge the new generation with my father's generation. The last name, Puente, means bridge in Spanish. And that's what I've been doing for the past 23 years since his passing. And I'm trying to bridge the new generation, the kids that never got to see Tito Puente alive when he was with us here on the planet. They only get to see him on YouTube, the experience of hearing the music live. And I kind of look like him without the white hair, but I kind of want everybody to experience his compositions, his arrangements and his beautiful, incredible illustrious career throughout this entire centennial tour and beyond. Yes, speaking of our younger generation, our Latino generation is just driving this economy. I was just in Miami at latitude. And we learned that at one in five Americans are Latino. And our younger generation, like the medium age of the Latino Hispanic is 25 to 30 years old. So we have the next 30 years to grow. And it's so exciting that they're influencing the entertainment industry, the fashion industry, the sports industry, we're driving this economy, buying homes, graduating at higher rates, pumping $3.2 trillion into the economy. It's exciting. So we do have a younger generation coming up that's gonna learn about your music and the Latino influence. Like it's really hot right now. We're hot, right? We've always been hot. That Barbara and Marisol, we've always been the hip thing. Everybody wants to be Latino. And everybody wants to have sabor and that goya, you know, that sazon that we got. And it's because we love our culture that much. We love being Hispanic. We love our food, our culture, our entertainment, our sports figures, our actors, our actresses. My God, we go, we pump so much money into the movie industry and the television industry. We love seeing more Latinos, people of color, you know, on movies and television as well. And God, we can go on even to maybe one day we'll have a nice, beautiful Hispanic president of this country. And that's really ultimately what we are heading towards with having the Latin X, the younger generation, they are really like driving everything. I went to a concert, well, I didn't go to the concert but I had a show in Puerto Rico last weekend and Barbara earlier, there was a young reggaeton guy, 18, 17 years old, I didn't even remember his name. He packed an 18,000 seat stadium in Puerto Rico, my mouth dropped and I said, I never heard of him before and he doesn't have any radio play. That's the other thing. These kids are driving it through social media and they are pumping into this economy like wouldn't believe. And that brings a lot of people to the island. It brings a lot of people, it's a big platform for any Hispanic artists in the music world. And it's really incredible to see how the Latin X community, the influencers, social media influencers and things like latitude where you went, those conferences are really shining a light on the power of Hispanic and our dollar. So Tito, I have a question for you actually. You said something about like those, I don't even know like these young artists with the reggaeton and they pack it in and like this is where the kids are at. How do you find any maybe challenges or what are you doing, you know, you and your orchestra, what are you guys doing to really get in front of these younger people that might have just the reggaeton, rea, I mean, you know, rap stuff going on when our music is amazing and really trying to stay at the forefront of that and not lose it, right? So, you know, are you touring? Are you, how are you getting in front of people? How are you, yeah, what is it that you're doing to inspire these younger people? So maybe they can not get so out of just the reggaeton because this is soulful, right? It's soulful and there's so much history in this type of music. And I feel like some of that gets lost with all this new stuff, you know? Yeah, I hear exactly what you're saying, but I gotta tell you, most of the concerts that I have been doing, I've been all sold out, full standing ovations, people enjoy Afro-Cuban music. And let's start from the top. The biggest artist in the world today is a gentleman named Benito, aka Bad Bunny. And Bad Bunny has always shown the ultimate respect to the pioneers and the icons and the legends like Celia, Tito Puente, Hector Lavol, Fanya All-Stars. So that to me shows that our brand of salsa, if you will, has resonated with the younger people because these young kids who are listening to Bad Bunny or Daddy Yankee or Evie Queen or some of these new and incredible recording artists who they have been around for so many years, they all have shown respect to those elders men and elders women that came before them. And to me, that's incredible. So maybe one day I can do a duet with Bad Bunny and do a, you know, maybe a feature or collaboration. So I encourage the reggaeton world to continue to make the music that they're doing. It is Latin music, you can paste it and do it any other way. You wanna call it reggae music? I'm gonna stick with the Latin term that it is reggaeton and it is dembo, it is trap music, it is amazing music and kids love it. And I love going to perform somewhere, whether it be a nightclub or performing arts center where I'll have young people in the audience. And I'll mention Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee and Mark Anthony and Jennifer Lopez and I'll mention these newer generational artists and people kind of respond to it in a very positive way where I tell them that most of those artists show the respect to the elders men like Tito Puente, Machito, Tito Rodriguez, all those great, the greats that came before them. I love the way Latin music is going and I could tell you honestly, the radio in the world today or especially in the United States, yes, they do play a lot of more reggaeton but I know when you go to a club or dance hall or anything like that, people do wanna hear that mix. I wanna hear a song by Bad Bunny but I also wanna hear Mark Anthony and I wanna hear a Cheyenne song, I wanna hear a salsa, you know, I wanna hear Celia Cruz and it's nice to see that the younger generation are starting to learn how to dance salsa, learn about Afro-Cuban music and we're gonna do that this Sunday. I'm gonna do, it's gonna be a Mambo 101 class and I'm gonna teach everybody in Hawaii about salsa and Mambo music. They can't wait, yeah. And I love how we support each other. I mean, every generation, I was at latitude as you know with over 6,000 Latino leaders and entrepreneurs and the gala honored your song, Oye Como Va, and Sheila E and Gloria and Amelia Esteban, they all got up there and performed it and gave you guys a credit and it was beautiful. I love that and I love Sheila, she's on my latest album, The King and I, she is the queen of percussion, hands down. I have, nobody can dethrone her right now because she is one of the top female drummers in the world today. Gloria of course, what can we say about our art, our wonderful pop queen, Gloria Estefan who has paved the way for all the Latino artists that we see today in the dance and pop world and Gloria is just a staple, her and her husband Amelia are just wonderful people. And it's nice to see that they give recognition to Tito Puente and Celia Cruz as well. I see you've been traveling across the United States. You're like on the 100th, I don't know, 100th tour or location. I was looking at your social media, I saw that you performed at the 36th Annual Hispanic Heritage Awards. How was, where was that, how was that? That was recently, about a week and a half ago, maybe two weeks ago, I've been everywhere, I'm sorry, I can't really recall, but yes, and it will re-air as a matter of fact, this weekend on your local PBS station, it'll be October 14th and 15th and then the 22nd and the 25th. So they are repeating the show if anybody missed it or you can go to pbs.org and just type in 36th Annual Hispanic Heritage Awards and see the whole entire show. They wanted to honor Centennial, honor my late father. So we did a version of Oye Como Va with Mili Quezada, Federito Martinez and Alex Cuba. The show consisted of a array of different, different styles of music. They honored Cafe Tacuba, which is a wonderful Mexican rock band. The host was Leslie Grace from the Dominican Republic. John Legazamo was in the house. The cast of Blue Beetle, who I love so much, Zolo and the whole crew was there. And it was really, really special for me to be a part of the 36th Annual Hispanic Heritage Awards simply because they looked at the ones that came before that opened the doors and they honored my father. So kudos to our friends over at the Hispanic Heritage Awards in Washington, DC. We filmed that at the Kennedy Center. As a matter of fact, at the end of September, but it aired now and we are right in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month. So that's why they keep repeating the show. So check it out on your local PBS, go to pbs.org for your schedule. Your local station will have it. Where are you going next? After Hawaii, what is the plan after Hawaii? Mira, Marisol, I don't know. I'm gonna hang out there for 15 days afterwards. I'm not leaving that quick. You're not getting rid of me. So it's gonna be special for me because I'm coming with my wife and we're gonna have a nice birthday celebration for her. So we're gonna spend a couple of days in Hawaii, check out the island and enjoy ourselves. I haven't been there in so long, see some people and friends and of course, just enjoy the whole sights and sounds of everything. After that, I believe we head back up to the cold northeast and we'll be in Springfield, Massachusetts. Then we go to Boston. We head down to Texas for a couple of shows too. Most of my concert dates you can see on my social media at Tito Puente Jr. on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok. And I run all my social media and I'm very connected with my fans. And that's something that I've learned from the Latin X kids that are coming up today. I can't even call them kids, young adults that they get very involved and I love to go one-on-one with everybody with my social media. So if you guys come on my DM me or anything like that, it's me, it's not somebody running my page or any bots or anything like that. And I just loved engaging with the fans. So we'll be heading up to the cold northeast back to the winter, because winter will be starting soon. But then again, I reside in Florida, so I'm okay. Are you gonna visit any other islands while you're here? Good question. Oahu's so beautiful. When I was last there, I went to Waimea Bay and that was so beautiful over there. I really love enjoying the sands and the Pacific and the food. I'm gonna take my wife to a luau. You guys gotta recommend one for me. I'm really looking forward to just spending some time right there. I don't wanna do just the tourist thing. I wanna do the cultural thing of Hawaii and be Hispanic in Hawaii. So I think we'll go to a luau and find one with the heads of rice and beans. Oh yeah, let's start one, that'd be awesome. Yeah, we don't have that now. So yeah, we are the fastest growing demographic here in Hawaii. So we have lots of great food choices that are gonna be at the festival. So we can definitely recommend some good places to go eat. Yes, I'm looking forward to it. The American Veterans Hall, it's over there. It's not far from Honolulu, so actually on the other side of the bay, right there. I guess it's like a bay, a jab there. But it's a beautiful place. I'm looking forward to celebrating with you guys. I can't wait to share the stage with Edwin Ortiz and his orchestra. These guys are smoke and hot band. There are many other artists too that are performing as well. You guys can run them down. I know you got mariachi happening, some cultural dancers as well. There should be some merengue, some bomba plena. So it's gonna be a variety of different acts. And I hope that everybody can come out and bring your dancing shoes. That's most important. Or in Hawaii, dancing chancla. Flip flops. Yeah, yeah, flip flops all the way. Now we call them slippers, the slippers. Right, right. No, they call them, what do they call them? Slip flops? The slippers. All the slippers, all right, we call them slides. Yeah, I like chancla. My kids know to duck from the chancla. Oh, okay, okay, good, good. The chancla is the one we throw at each other. Yeah. Looking forward to that. Awesome, it's been so great talking to you. Anything else you wanna talk about, Mari? Yeah, I'm actually, I'm kind of going back, I'm always fascinated at the upbringing, the childhood. Like, I know that you were exposed to it and I just, I wanna circle back to it. When did you feel or did you know like this is what you wanted to do because you know, you're following in dad's footsteps and those are some big shoes to fill, right? Like, when did you know or make that determination? Can you share a little bit about that? I can tell you the two things. It's a two part question there. I recognize, cause I didn't really care for mambo music growing up. I like rock music. I'm into heavy stuff. Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Phil Collins. I'm into heavy things. No way! Yeah, I love rock music. I'm a rock drummer. So that's my favorite type of music. So mambo music was just like, no, I don't wanna go to your concert, dad. I would fall asleep backstage. And I realized how popularly it was when I went to go, well, my sister, she went to go see a group called Minuto, which is very, very popular back in the 80s with Ricky Martin and Robbie Rosa. And that's when I realized how popular Dito Puente was, cause Minuto wanted to be Dito Puente. And then traveling with my father, realizing how popular he was. After his passing in 2000, took me about a good year and a half, maybe two years to build up the courage to start playing Latin dance music. I was, I had a career prior to my father's passing throughout the nineties by doing house music with elements of, they call it today, Afro beats. But back then we called it Latin house music. And I was performing with Proyecto Uno, Los Ilegales, Sandy Papo. Back then the reggaeton artists were like Diego Calderón, Vico C, Big Boy, DJ Playero. Those were the popular ones at that time, Lisa M, another popular reggaeton era. So I was doing, I was dabbling in the Latin dance and reggaeton world and adding the elements of my father's rhythms and Afro-Cuban rhythms. And then when he passed away, the blessing came from my mother Margie and my sister and my brother. They both, my brother Ronnie and my sister Audrey, they said, why don't you continue for your father's band? And that's when I started learning a little bit more about three two clave, cha, cha, cha, cha. Learned that in Afro-Cuban rhythms. And I started picking up the drums and instead of moving over from the drum set, I moved over to the timbales and the conga and just honed in on it. My first album came out in 2003. So I'm celebrating my 20th year performing Tito Puente music and I put out three records that are all salsa, but my career expands more than the 20 years that I've been playing Tito Puente music. But I can tell you now, I've come to terms of who I am. I'm 52 years old now. I've embraced who I am. When you come to my concerts, you maybe you might see an image of my father simply because I look like him without the white hair and all that. However, when you come to the concert, you're coming for the nostalgic, the nostalgic feeling of salsa, Afro-Cuban music. I also teach you about clave and the history of Afro-Cuban music with Celia and I mentioned Celia, Banya, Eddie Pomeri, Charlie Pomeri. I try to teach the new generation about this music and now I'm a vehicle and a vessel for my father's legacy for the new generation. So when you come to the shows, that's what you'll experience and you'll experience that this Sunday. But yes, they are big shoes to fill, but I think I've come to terms where I'm at now that I'm a grandparent and a father that I've embraced who I am. And I'm pretty sure that my family has enough pressure knowing that they're related to the king of Latin music. I'm not the prince at all whatsoever. But I do embrace who I am and I love the fact that I can be that tool or that vehicle for my father's music to go to the next generation. I'm not the greatest player in the world and I never said I was and I never probably could emulate or replicate Dito Puente because he was so incredibly talented. What I do is I honor him the best way I can as his son. Yeah, you're keeping his legacy alive, right? I mean, it's amazing. So thank you for that. It's exciting to have you here. Gracias. Gracias. And you're one of your five children and they have big shoes to fill as well, so. Yeah, I named one of them Dito Puente, Junior, Junior. There you go. Ah, the pressure. He's got some pressure. But you know what? I think I thought I did when I was growing up too. I had to find my way and I'm glad that I'm where I'm at today. And I think he'll do the same. You know, I think he'll probably get into his grandfather's music or some sort of aspect. Remember, Dito Puente wasn't just a musician. It's a whole brand. We had a restaurant, movies, television series and things like that nature. So we're doing documentaries now Dito Puente, a bio pick is in the works. There's so many other aspects to the whole Dito Puente estate as we present my father's stuff in the museum with exhibitions, exhibits and things like that like they're doing for Seyya Cruz. We have so many more hurdles to cross to make sure that Dito Puente's name and his spirit and his legacy continue on for the new generation. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for joining us today Dito Puente Jr. And, you know, we can't wait to welcome you to the islands. Hard thing man. I should be doing this. Aloha. Aloha to my friends in Hawaii. My wife and I are so excited to go. We're tired of the rain here. We want to get there. We're like, we were performing a couple of more shows here in Washington. I'm going out to Yakima and then in Spokane the next couple of days. So some more concerts. But trust me, we are dying to get over there and we can't wait to celebrate with you guys this Sunday or Saturday and Sunday at the, what is it? I think it's the 15th annual, right? 31st. 36, I'm sorry, I was way up. 36, right? Well, you haven't been out here in 15 years since 2008. But yeah. That's why I'm getting the 15th from. Okay. So you guys are on a 36th annual. 36th annual, I believe. Yeah. We're celebrating a heritage festival. And I'm so glad I'm going to celebrate this anniversary with you guys. Yes. And we're celebrating the 100th anniversary of your father. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Family. I love you very much. Thank you very much. We'll see you this weekend. Yeah, thank you. And this is Ola, Iloha and Think Tech. Thank you to my co-host, Marisol Ruiz. And we've been talking today with Tito Pintu Jr. Thank you to our viewers for joining us on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Barbara DeLuca.