After over a decade of relentless touring and recording in all but complete obscurity, the Texas-bred quasi-collective suddenly found itself held up by the press and public as one of the major figures in the jazz world.
But as the category names for all five of the band’s Grammy® awards would indicate (Best R&B Performance in 2014, Best Contemporary Instrumental Album in 2016, 2017, 2021, and 2023), Snarky Puppy isn’t exactly a jazz band. It’s not a fusion band, and it’s definitely not a jam band. It’s probably best to take Nate Chinen of the New York Times’ advice, as stated in an online discussion about the group, to “take them for what they are, rather than judge them for what they’re not.
”Snarky Puppy is a collective of sorts with as many as 20 members in regular rotation. At its core, the band represents the convergence of both black and white American music culture with various accents from around the world. The defining characteristic of Snarky Puppy’s music is the joy of performing together in the perpetual push to grow creatively.
Always evolving in its musical output, each new record brings a new vision and progressive direction, “Snarky Puppy has always been a band that prioritizes the sound of music, our rule is that it can’t sound like it sounded before” comments League, he continues, “the music has to feel like it’s moving somewhere”
And moving somewhere it most definitely has. The Empire Central World Tour, which started in the USA in April 2022,has taken the band to 30 US States and 33 countries around the world. It’s incredible, although not at all surprising, how far Snarky Puppy have come since ten friends got together at the University of North Texas in 2004.It also raises the question –where will Snarky Puppy go next? For Snarky Puppy fans, the answer to this question is a very exciting prospect.
Papi Disco
Papi Disco, known to his family as Dorian Lopez, is a Chicano multi-instrumentalist percussionist that is equally adept on the turntables. From time spent producing some of the most memorable events of Northeast Florida and procuring global talent to descend onto his adopted hometown, Lopez has gained the reputation of being a serious musician with an unbound creative focus. His love of salsa and soul, hip hopand hits, disco and dance music have allowed Lopez to evade pigeonholes in an industry quick to place artist in tide, little boxes.
Born in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, California, the young Lopez grew through circumstance into the teenager that spent a number of years as homeless young man, navigating the streets of L.A. with a crew of gutterpunks living in in abandoned buildings. A flippant invite to hop trains towards the East Coast brought Lopez to Northeast Florida, where he was able to channel the angst into percussion classes and, eventually in 2004, landed an internship at a small record label, which allowed his to learn the ropes of the music business.
His love for hip hop and neo-soul led him to his first experiments with beat-making, where the natural progression and the innate acumen quickly led to the sale of his first few beats. That led to work a s a percussionist in the Elevated Hip Hop Experience, a large ensemble band that fit his tastes. But there was still a part of Lopez’s identity that lacked development. That all changed with a chance meeting with a Cuban percussionist who formally introduced Lopez to the Afro-Cuban rhythms that permeated his youth.
The lesson proved invaluable, as Lopez began to meld the different styles into what for him was a signature sound. His success with the groovy Ancient Deep and the infamous party The Garage, finally gave Lopez the platform to showcase just how well-rounded a musician he had become. He was able to connect with a not-so-distant cousin that had moved to the area before him, Goliath Flores and worked on several different projects that still thrive to this day. The requests to provide beats, percussion and remixes soon followed. Today, Lopez is one of the most in-demand DJs in Northeast Florida primarily because he can and does play it all.
The moniker Papi Disco came from uniting his known love for deep cut Disco tunes and a former colleague that referred to him as ‘Papi.’ Papi Disco knows that regardless of the destination the journey is the good part and there is some much room for creativity in the journey.