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.
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.
