MY COMPLETE MUSICAL STORY.
§1. I was born into a musical family on the island of Curaçao, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean. My father was a well-known trumpet player and arranger, and all my brothers and sisters played an instrument or sang.
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§2. Since all my older brothers played the guitar, there were always guitars lying around at our house.
§3. At the age of more or less 5, I picked one up, and my oldest brother, Alcides "Ido" Camelia, became my first teacher; he taught me how to play my first song: “My Bonnie (Lies Over The Ocean)”.
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§4. From that point on I continued to learn on my own by watching and copying what my older brothers were doing.
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§5. I finished elementary school in 1969 and was accepted into Peter Stuyvesant High School to pursue the education of "V.W.O." (from the Dutch "Voorbereidend Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs" = "Pre-university Education"), the highest level of secondary schools in the Dutch system that Curaçao had.
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§6. During my 4th school year, I received my first opportunity to join a band: “Fire, Smoke & Ashes”, with Michael Rivers (lead guitarist), Carlos Joseph (singer), Russ Henry (drummer), Waldi Room (conga player, r.i.p) and later Earl Schalmein (keyboard player).
§7. "Fire Smoke and Ashes" was a hard-rock group from my neighborhood, that played “covers” (songs already recorded by other groups) of groups like Jimmy Hendrix, Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and others. The group needed a bass player and since they already had the bass, they asked me to play it, even though I had never played bass before.
§8. Luckily, since I was already a guitar player, the bass turned out to be easier, and I was able to learn to play it in a relatively short period of time, and so was able to do the required job.
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§9. And that was the beginning also of the bass guitar becoming my second instrument, which I still play today.
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§10. Of course, being in a rock group, and the hippie movement having had already penetrated in Curaçao, drugs were part of the scene, and naturally, I participated.
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§11. But the marijuana use started to affect my school discipline and at some point, I stopped attending classes. Consequently, in 1974, I got expelled from this high school for not following the school regulations.
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§12. My parents, understandably, disagreed with all this “hippie non-sense” and my mother did all she could to get me out of this band.
§13. She succeeded when the members decided they didn't want any more problems with my parents and found a new bass player.
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§14. I was of course very disappointed, and during these 2 years that I was out of school and out of the band, and with the marijuana use starting to take a toll on my mind (especially on my memory), I started to feel a need for help, which led me to the practice of Kriya Yoga meditation in Curaçao.
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§15. Thanks to this discipline I was able to kick this drug habit out of my life and in 1976 returned to my pre-university education, but at a different high school (Radulphus High School), and managed to complete it.
§16. This achievement also qualified me for a guaranteed scholarship/loan to pursue a college degree (which is why this education is called "pre-university education": upon completion, one has to pursue a university or college degree).
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§17. In the meantime, I had joined a new group, “Mezcalito”, with Roque Regalado (bass), later Lionel Jacobs (bass), Franklin Rubiano (drums) and a neighborhood friend Kim Vlaun (flute, guitar), who also became my second guitar teacher, and was the one that introduced me to jazz chords on the guitar. Kim was taking guitar lessons with a popular jazz guitar teacher in Curaçao, the late Henk Kowsolea. So, now I was playing the guitar again.
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§18. After I finished the 6-year pre-university in 1978, I took 1 year off in order to reflect on whether I should pursue further studies in music or not, since my father, although himself a musician, disagreed with this idea.
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§19. In 1979 I was finally ready to make up my mind and chose to kill 2 birds with 1 stone: I decided to study "music pedagogy" (music education to prepare music teachers) in Bogotá, Colombia, at the “Universidad Pedagógica Nacional” (National Pedagogic University); and where I could at the same time also continue my yoga practice, since the "guru" (master) of my Yoga teacher was residing and had his "ashram" (temple) there.
§20. And by deciding to study to become a music teacher, I was at the same time also following my father's advice of studying a more "secured" profession. (School teaching was an important and well-paid profession in Curaçao due to the Dutch educational system that Curaçao had.)
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§21. While in Colombia, I played my first jazz gig, but as a bass player, and became more aware of the high demands of this American art form.
§22. During the time I was attending college, I decided to start organizing jazz studies with college classmates and other friends with similar interests. The goal was basically: to learn to improvise; and I was back on the guitar. Antonio Arnedo was on saxophone, Rafael Leal on drums, on bass Omar Baracaldo, and a Dutch trombonist Tom, whose last name I can't remember at this time.
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§23. After giving a demonstration at my university, of the work we had been doing with this jazz study group, and which was very well received, I became determined to delve deeper into this American art form, especially the improvisational aspect of it.
§24. I also became a regular guitarist in the jazz quartet of the Colombian keyboard player Jorge Eduardo Lalo Velosa, with whom I performed for a long time.
§25. And while in Colombia, I played jazz on and off with several other musicians, of whom Marco Antonio Ramirez is the only other name I still remember (because I reconnected with him on Facebook).
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§26. While doing my last semester at the university, I applied for an extension of my scholarship/loan to pursue jazz studies at a pioneer and world-renown jazz school in the USA: Berklee College of Music.
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§27. My application was approved and after graduating in December 1983 from the university, I was in less than 2 months on my way to Boston Massachusetts, where Berklee was located and where I arrived in February of 1984.
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§28. At Berklee I studied for 6 1/2 years (I had many musical interests), taking courses from the guitar department, arranging department, songwriting department and graduated with a diploma in "Professional Music". (I chose the diploma program because my interests were only in music, not in the Humanities which I had already studied in Colombia, but for which Berklee didn't want to transfer the credits, due to minor differences in the titles.)
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§29. I was also fortunate for having been accepted to receive private lessons with William Leavitt himself, the Chairman of the Guitar Department and author of many of Berklee's guitar instructional books. (To study with him, you had to first fill out a written application and then wait to see if he would approve it.)
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§30. Even though I was able to stop smoking marijuana "cold turkey" (using only willpower) with the help of my yoga practice, I was still fighting the body's cravings for it and occasionally found myself smoking it again when performing with certain musicians in Colombia.
§31. But while at Berklee, I discovered Scientology, where I did the "Purification Rundown" (a program that gets rid of all toxic drug residuals in your body), which stopped all cravings of my body for the marijuana.
§32. I also did the “Student Hat Course”, which taught me how to solve the 3 main study barriers.
§33. Both actions helped me a lot as an artist: after the Purification Rundown my mind regained back its clarity, and the Student Hat course taught me how to re-organize and correctly put into practice all the Berklee information I had received.
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§34. After finishing Berklee in 1991, I became very interested in putting this study theory and techniques into practice teaching music, and so chose private teaching as my first musical activity after Berklee.
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§35. I also attempted to start a Latin jazz group around that same time, but quickly realized that doing both things was going to be too much work for 1 person if I wanted to do each one well, and so postponed that idea for later.
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§36. But I still ended up performing as a sideman with many different groups, among others: La Nueva Era (merengue), Supercombo La fuente (cumbia), Souvenir (calypso), Jorge Arce and his group Humano (salsa & plena), The Jazz Trio (swing), Vox Pop (polyphonic poetry), Bala Tounkara (West-African music) and others.
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§37. I also recorded for several artists during this period of time: Ramiro Mendez (cape verdian music), Grupo Chévere (merengue and bachata), Rumbafrica (soukous), Sali Oyugi (r.i.p., Kenyan music), Mondo Sweetie (Cuban and Spanish rumba flamenca), and The Three Kings (hip hop).
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§38. As you can tell, I'm able to perform in many styles of music, as most Curaçaoan musicians are, because we grew up listening to a wide variety of music.
§39. We listened to American music: Rock, soul, funk and rock ballads; Latin music: salsa, merengue, cumbia, bolero, chachacha, rumba; West-Indian music: calypso, soca, rock steady (a precursor of the reggae), reggae; and we also had our own folkloric rhythms of course: tumba, sehu, tambu, dansa, salsa antiyana, and the Curaçaoan waltz and mazurka. I was familiar with all these styles.
§40. What also helped increase my familiarity with many of these styles was the fact that my father allowed me to stay up at night watching his group, Combo Aristo, rehearse at home (I must have been around 6 or 7 years old). They played many styles of music: guaracha [now called "salsa"], merengue, cumbia, boleros, ballads, tumba [a rhythm from Curacao], and bossa nova.
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§41. In 2001, I received a call from an old friend asking me to perform at an art exhibition of a Mexican painter, Jose Cedillo. I accepted and took this as an opportunity to re-start my Latin jazz group, which I originally named "The Camelia Group".
§42. For that occasion, I used a quartet consisting of guitar (myself), keyboard (Rebecca Cline), bass (Tal Shalom Kobi), and drums (Martin Wernert).
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§43. But it wasn't until 2006 that the group began to move more steadily.
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§44. Later I changed the name to "The Camelia Latin-jazz Band" to better reflect the style of music I was playing. I also decided to take out the drum set and replaced it with Latin percussion only: congas, bongos, timbal, tambora and/or güira.
§45. Additionally, I changed the repertoire by taking out the calypso and samba rhythms and decided to continue using only the 5 main Latin styles, namely: salsa, merengue, bachata, cumbia, and boleros. This way I could have a wider choice of available Latin percussion players because most of them were not familiar with the rhythmic patterns of the samba and calypso, and so I couldn't use them for these styles.
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§46. The musicians I have used the most for this group are:
- on keyboard: Soohee Moon (South Korea), Mihoko Abe (Japan), Hanna Noh (South Korea), Ai Yamashita (Japan), and Rina Kohmoto (Japan);
- on percussion: Arioto Amado Rodriguez (Dominican Republic), Ruben Vazquez Sr. (Puerto Rico), Ruben Vazquez Jr. (USA), Luis Shephard (Dominican Republic), and Santiago Hernandez (Cuba);
- on bass: Tal Shalom Kobi (Israel), and Gerry Rollock (Trinidad).
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§47. To make the group adjustable to different scenarios, I created a trio, quartet, quintet, and sextet version of it. The trio consists of a guitar, a keyboard (which also does the bass), and 1 percussion. Currently, I have been using mostly the trio and quartet versions.
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§48. But since many would get up and dance to these Latin styles, which then would limit us in our jazz solos, I decided to create an additional band, especially for dancing. I based the repertoire on well-known Latin classics (oldies), and called the group the "Camelia Latin Dance Band".
§49. It currently exists as a quartet and quintet. The full band consists of 3 percussion players, bass, and keyboard.
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§50. I also created an instrumental solo guitar repertoire for places that were looking for only 1 musician.
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§51. I've been the manager and music director of all these groups ever since.
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Thank you for reading my musical story. - Rod.