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The world lost an icon when Latin jazz pioneer Eddie Palmieri died last month. His music lives on through recordings, but also through sheet music. That's thanks in part to a publisher in rural California. As KVPR's Kerry Klein reports, this pioneer has helped make the work of Palmieri and other Latin jazz artists available to the world from his home office in Madeira.
KERRY KLEIN, BYLINE: Steve Alcala is a music teacher and trumpet player.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUMPET PLAYING)
KLEIN: He joined a mariachi band in high school, studied jazz in college and in the 1980s, became a high school music teacher. It was then that he heard something that changed his life.
(SOUNDBITE OF EDDIE PALMIERI'S "LEAPFROG TO HARLEM")
STEVE ALCALA: I go, whoa. This is cool. I love this.
KLEIN: It was Latin jazz - think salsa and American jazz and Afro-Caribbean rhythms all woven together, like in this piece by Eddie Palmieri.
ALCALA: I was thinking to myself, man, I think the kids would really like playing this stuff.
KLEIN: But there was a problem. He couldn't find the sheet music that would help his kids learn.
ALCALA: That's their textbook. It's just like math. You have to have a textbook.
KLEIN: Pioneers who were performing Latin jazz typically weren't sharing their sheet music beyond their bands. That left students and musicians outside of major jazz scenes without an easy way to learn the music. So Alcala set out on a painstaking task.
ALCALA: I had to do all the transcribing myself from records I used to listen to.
KLEIN: He'd literally write down the musical arrangements he heard note by note, sometimes for 10 or 15 different instruments.
ALCALA: And the kids really loved it.
KLEIN: So did other band leaders. They started asking him where he found this music, and that got him thinking.
ALCALA: And then I says, you know what, there's a need here for that, so I'm going to go ahead and start a publishing company.
KLEIN: He started cold-calling the biggest performers.
ALCALA: And then I give them my spiel about teaching Latin jazz at a Roosevelt High School and would I be able to get their arrangements from them?
KLEIN: The idea took off. Alcala named his company 3-2 Music. It's a nod to a common Afro-Caribbean rhythm.
ALCALA: (Rhythmic clapping) Bop-bop-bop, (rhythmic clapping).
KLEIN: Now, Alcala publishes sheet music by more than 70 Latin jazz composers and pays them royalties.
ALCALA: Japan buys a lot of music from me. Germany loves Latin jazz, Austria. And there was one particular group that played in Iraq during the war.
KLEIN: Military bands and especially school bands are his biggest customers, including the jazz orchestra at Fresno State University.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARCHING BAND MUSIC)
KLEIN: The band's director, Richard Lloyd Giddens Jr., was Alcala's student back in the '90s. He's now using that same sheet music he played with his students. He says before 3-2 Music, teaching Latin jazz was nearly impossible.
RICHARD LLOYD GIDDENS JR: And now there's an outlet. There's a vehicle. There's a platform where this music exists, that people can find this music and perform it.
KLEIN: Giddens' students, like Trevor Kubose, say they're grateful to have access to this genre.
TREVOR KUBOSE: Latin music, Afro-Cuban music, West African music has such a profound effect on my life and everything I do in music.
KLEIN: Composers appreciate 3-2 Music as well. One of the first to publish with the company was Oscar Hernandez.
(SOUNDBITE OF OSCAR HERNANDEZ AND SPANISH HARLEM ORCHESTRA'S "PERLA MORENA")
KLEIN: He's won three Grammys, and yet he says hearing students play his work is a thrill.
OSCAR HERNANDEZ: For me to see young people learning the music, man, that's where it all starts.
KLEIN: And Latin jazz experts say that by giving more students access to this music, Alcala and his business have helped popularize it around the world.
For NPR News, I'm Kerry Klein in Fresno.
(SOUNDBITE OF OSCAR HERNANDEZ AND SPANISH HARLEM ORCHESTRA'S "PERLA MORENA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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