Santos has placed the Bay Area on the cutting edge of Latin Jazz.
- Lee Hildebrand, East Bay Express

Santos has been faithfully carrying the Latin Jazz torch on the other coast for years. He has generally been a sparkplug for a wave of musical invention at the vortex where Jazz, Latin and other ideas meet.
- Jazz Times

John Santos is well on his way to becoming a Latin Jazz legend.
- Derk Richardson, S.F. Jazz Festival

Santos is one of the most creative musicians I've ever had an opportunity to work with; he's a joy for me to listen to...
- Max Roach

John Santos is one of the gentlemen who live in my heart and pay no rent.
- Eddie Palmieri

...one of the best... he knows our music and everything that puts it together.
- Dizzy Gillespie

The Latin music Renaissance man.
- Jesse Hamlin, SF Chronicle

Master percussionist Santos has made sensitivity, originality and virtuosic grasp of Afro-Cuban musical forms the touchstone of his work.
- Tempo, Philadelphia

The Bay Area has become an important national and international center of Latin music, thanks in part to percussionist, historian and ethnomusicologist John Santos.
- Dan Oulette, SF Weekly

One cannot speak of the history of Latino Jazz and Charanga music in San Francisco without mentioning John Santos.
- Luis Tamargo, La Opinion, Los Angeles

If San Francisco is one of the northamerican capitals of Salsa, John Santos is its mayor.
- Enrique Fernandez, Mas, New York

Building on the great Latin dance band tradition of Machito, Arsenio Rodriguez, andTito Puente, Machete is dedicated to expanding the possibilities of the genre .
- Andrew Gilbert, Downbeat

Perhaps the most innovative Latin Jazz group playing today outside Cuba...highly innovative, intimately explosive.
- Lee Hildebrand, East Bay Express

Brilliant, revolutionary... they drive the temperature through the ceiling... One of the Bay Area's hottest discoveries.
- Larry Kelp, Oakland Tribune

A band that cuts both ways--playing concert music that deserves cool attentive listening and churning out sizzling rhythms that urge the listeners to rise up out of their seats and writhe in sympathetic motion.
- Derk Richardson, SF Bay Guardian

The Machete Ensemble brilliantly integrates traditional Yoruba and Cuban forms with contemporary instrumentation and arrangements ...vibrant!
- East Bay Express

Machete is sharp, and points to an area partially mapped out by Libre, Grupo Folklorico Experimental Nuevayorquino, and of course, Cachao. Serious company, and The Machete Ensemble deserves its place.
- Straight No Chaser (London)

La banda de Santos es inovadora y explosiva...En John Santos tenemos no solo un excelente musico, sino un embajador cultural y portavoz de nuestros ancestros. Si San Francisco se ha convertido en centro de atencion para los amantes del jazz latino y afrojazz, la razon es simplemente una: John Santos.
- Hoy (Dominican Republic)

Here's a new sound of Latin music: intelligent and immersed in the fire of it sources.
- The Capital Times

...provides a window on the joys of true interaction. A masterpiece.
- Time Out (New York)

No one puts out Latin Jazz as adventurous as what's found here.
- Jazz Now