Juma Santos

Juma Santos, also known as Jumma Santos (December 27, 1948 – September 1, 2007), born James R. Riley, was a percussionist and master drummer known for his extensive work over four decades with African music, Caribbean music, jazz, fusion and R&B artists.

Juma Santos (born James Reginald Riley) combined and fused styles and playing techniques of various African musical instruments, experimenting with rhythms, songs, and chants with modern jazz harmonies and melodic forms and structures. His career included performing with many noted artists on projects of historical significance, including recording on more than 75 albums.

Santos recorded on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew and toured with Davis for a year. He also toured and recorded with Nina Simone, David Sanborn and Taj Mahal. Other performance residencies include stints with Ahmad Jamal, Dave Liebman, Pee Wee Ellis, Jack DeJohnette, Gato Garcia, Don Alias, Freddie Hubbard, the Fabulous Rhinestones, Harvey Brooks, Roy Ayers, Don Moye, and his own groups, Rosewater Foundation, Afro Jazz Messengers, the Pan-African Drum Ensemble, the Jumma Society and Sounds of the Urban Forest. Juma can be seen performing with Nina Simone in the academy award winning documentary Summer of Soul.

He taught a generation of aspiring Afro-Cuban percussionists in NYC in the 1990s (at the Fareta School of African Dance and Drum) and in Detroit in the 2000s.

Juma Santos was also a fine photographer/painter who had had several successful exhibitions.

He died in September 2007, in Chicago, apparently of complications from malaria, at the age of 59 and mainly because his religious beliefs did not allow him to use traditional Western medicine when he became ill.