MULTIETHNIC BEAT\Jazz band offers music, message.

Byline: Sherry Joe Crosby Daily News Staff Writer

Combining music, poetry, dance and theater, a jazz band transformed Hart High School's cafeteria Thursday into a concert hall, where students listened to the sounds of jazz trumpet pioneer Miles Davis and Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen.

The two-hour performance by Bobby Matos and his Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble kicked off a free six-week drumming and dance workshop at the Santa Clarita Valley Community Center.

Part of Share The World, an arts in education program supported by the city and several nonprofit agencies, the band and three actors explored the theme of finding one's identity in contemporary multicultural society.

In two one-hour performances, they combined the work of composers such as John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie with dance, drama and poetry from Langston Hughes and Luis Pales Matos, one of Puerto Rico's most lyrical poets.

"A lot of people can relate to that because people come to Los Angeles from all over," Matos said of the interdisciplinary production called "Rumba Rap City." When the audience leaves, he wants individuals to have "a sense that no matter how different we appear to be, we're all the same under the skin."

The band's bass and percussion rhythms and toe-tapping dance sequences thrilled many students, including Elizabeth Arana. Now the senior wants to take mambo lessons.

"I loved it," Arana said. "This is the only assembly I didn't ditch. I loved the dancing and the music."

But the performance seemed to wear on other teens, more attuned to the sounds of Pearl Jam and The Smashing Pumpkins. Junior Danny Amelang said the musicians' venue - a school cafeteria - and the complexity of the message overwhelmed some students.

"It was a big chunk to throw at students," Amelang said after the group's first performance. "It's a hard situation when (students are) surrounded by friends."

Today, the musicians are expected to play at Placerita Junior High, where they will trace the origins of traditional and contemporary Afro-Latin music from its roots in Africa and Europe to its contemporary form.

By concentrating on African and Latin cultures, Matos said he hopes to encourage minority students to expand their knowledge of literature and music.

"We hope to inspire students to read and write," he said. "We want them to know that great literature is also Latin and Asian and everything else."

He also wants to show students of different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds that they share universal human experiences.

"The walls that exist are artificial," Matos said. "Because of language, we're sometimes separated. We're trying to show that that's not the only way to be."

At the community center, officials can hardly wait for the workshop to begin. Director Allen Price said the program will bring a new dimension to the community center, which offers boxing, tae kwon do and a toy loan program.

"We don't have a program of this type, and we're all about diversity and exposure," Price said.

The workshop is held every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., starting Jan. 27. At the last meeting, March 2, students will show off their skills during a community performance.

For more information, contact the community center at 286-4151.

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Photo (1--color) Jazz ensemble members Laura Canellias and Albert Torres perform a Cuban dance Thursday for students at Hart High School's cafeteria during an assembly. (2--color) Students watch Laura Canellias dance to Bobby Matos and his Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble. John Lazar/Special to the Daily News