Multi-GRAMMY nominee, 2012 SF Latino Heritage Arts Award winner, SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director (2013 & 2014), US Artists Fontanals Fellow John Santos is one of the foremost bandleaders, composers, producers, percussionists, and educators in Afro-Latin music. He has published and recorded over 100 original compositions! He has performed and recorded with acknowledged masters like Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Cachao, Eddie Palmieri, Omar Sosa, Joe Henderson, Bebo Valdés, James Moody, Bobby Hutcherson, Paquito D’Rivera and McCoy Tyner. 

He taught regularly at the California Jazz Conservatory (Berkeley), SF State University, and the College of San Mateo until 2020. He has lectured and taught across the US, Europe, and Latin America for over four decades, including prestigious institutions like Yale, Stanford, UCLA, the Museum of the African Diaspora, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Smithsonian Institution, Duke and the Berklee School of Music in Boston. 

He was founder and director of the GRAMMY-nominated Machete Ensemble (1985-2006), releasing nine critically-acclaimed CDs, mostly on John’s Machete Records label (founded 1984). John is featured prominently in the PBS American Masters documentary Cachao: Uno Mas (2008) and is the subject of the documentary Santos: Skin to Skin by Searchlight Films (2022).

He received the Man of the Year Award by Brothers on the Rise (Oakland) in 2013. His work has been recognized by the California Arts Council, the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the East Bay Community Foundation, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the Creative Work Fund, and the City of San Francisco by mayoral proclamation declaring November 12, 2006 John Santos Day. John served as Trustee at SFJAZZ (2017-2023) and is an Advisory Board member of the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance (NY) Oaktown Jazz Workshops (Oakland, CA), and Living Jazz (Oakland, CA).