Photo credit: Jason Koener.
Jose Elias has been a professional musician for the past 28 years and has produced a variety of musical projects from festivals to studio recordings. His career has been highlighted by his work with Conjunto Progreso (1999-2012) who’s album Masters of Cuban Son was nominated for a Grammy award under the category of tropical/traditional Latin album. In 2005, he performed as part of Brazilian composer Livio Tratenberg’s Nervous City Orchestra in which he also served as a music consultant. In 2007, he was commissioned by the Miami Light Project to work alongside Brazilian choreographer Giovanni Luquini, and writer Elizabeth Doud on a work titled Idalina. In 2009, Jose served as executive producer for Conjunto Progreso’s Alive in Miami album, which featured Cuban trumpet virtuoso Arturo Sandoval. In 2011, he served as executive producer on two songs from the Somos de la Calle release by Locos Por Juana featuring Chob Quib Town and Conjunto Progreso. In 2015, he released two recordings under his new label Afro Roots Recordings featuring Senegalese Kora master Morikeba Kouyate and his group the Nag Champayons.
Currently he continues to work as the guitarist/ tres player for the Spam Allstars, and also performs with his own groups Cortadito and the Nag Champayons. In January of 2016 he did an artist in residency for the Everglades National Park and will be producing a new work featuring all original compositions titled Everglades Songbook Suite later this year. Most recently, his mainstay group the Spam Allstars released their first album in more than eight years titled Trans Oceanic. Aside from performance, his work as a facilitator for the team building program, Power of Percussion, has led him all over the world teaching workshops to a variety of Fortune 500 companies, schools, and health care organizations.
Furthermore, over the past 16 years, he has served as executive and artistic director for his non-profit organization Community Arts and Culture. Through this organization, he has received grant awards from the Knight Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and various local and state level government entities. For over twenty years, Jose has produced one of Miami’s longest running music festivals, the Afro Roots Fest. The festival was most recently acknowledged by the Miami New Times as one of “South Florida’s Ten Best Music Festivals“. In addition, Jose serves as a music and grant consultant for a variety of local business and has served as musical consultant on the FX show Louie and a variety of Hollywood films. Most recently he appeared alongside the Spam Allstars in the HBO series Ballers.