I’ve had the pleasure and honor of playing and collaborating with many greats during my more than 25 years in professional music. By far one of the most talented, eccentric, and genuinely original characters was the late, great Rey “Conga” Diaz. He had been in poor health the past couple of years, and sadly passed away on Sunday, December 29, his birthday, with his mother and sister at his side.
Though we weren’t as close as we once were, we had known each other for the better part of 31 years. Diaz and I were not only friends, but musical brothers, and drinking, smoking, and canoeing buddies. For years he organized an annual camping and canoeing trip to Peace River in Arcadia, FL, which once ballooned to more than 100 paddlers. The proprietors of the Canoe Outpost came to know us as the “Conga Rey” group. We had many great, noisy, boisterous, surreal, and musical times together, and one year the exaggerated pronunciation of his name as “RRRRRReeyyyy” became all the rage. IYKYK.
We initially worked together during my first real professional recording session, for Michelle Riu’s Up, Down, and Strange in 2004 or 2005. She had a brilliant batch of songs already written and arranged, and just needed a studio band to commit them to tape. Enter the super-talented Derek Cintron on drums, guitar wizard Tony Medina, who was my then bandmate in the Pawn Shop Drunks, and producer / engineer Ferny Coipel. We breezed through the recording of the 10 or so tracks, but soon realized there were certain spots that needed something more.
Enter Rey. Already a well-known and established percussionist, he brought a flair and a smoothness to several songs, like the sublime “Take My Suggestion”.
I soon thereafter found myself in the same situation with the Pawn Shop Drunks when we took our foray into Latin rock. We already had a great percussionist in Tony Suarez, but our song “El Negro y la Balsa” needed some additional percussive muscle. Rey came in and deftly added timbales, cowbell, and shekere. The song was eventually released on Sony Discos, and the video hit number one on MTV Latino in 2005.
Conga Rey once pulled together members of Electric Piquete, the Spam Allstars, Humbert, and Afrobeta for a one-off session, whose result was a totally improved soundscape of psychedelia, funk, Latin and other elements called “Black Coffee”. Though there for the original session, which was more like an extended holiday weekend hang and jam, I came in after and tracked some bass for it: https://soundcloud.com/michael_mut/rey-conga-diaz-and-friends-black-coffee. There are photos and video of this session out there somewhere (paging Tony Landa!).
Speaking of Electric Piquete, Rey was there for the beginning. He was part of our percussion-heavy Hialeah Fest debut in 2007, which featured our band’s other co-founder Ed Rosado on drums, plus Miguel Suarez on guitar, Tony Suarez on congas, and Izo Besares on bongos, with Diaz anchoring the heavy tribal vibe. Rey was also present for many early era writing sessions, once hilariously dubbing an original song as “Cheque Sin Fondo”, a name that stuck for more than a decade) and played many early gigs. Here we are in Key Largo at Pontunes during 2010.
I once had the pleasure of sitting in with Rudy, his deliciously funky original project with Robbie Gennet, during an early 2000s Hialeah Fest. There was no way I could ever fill in original bass player Johnny Gobel’s immense shoes, but Rey gave me the confidence to try. It was an early sign that I could sub in and play with anyone. Rey was well-known throughout the SoFla music scene and super-connected, once even winding up playing a session with the surviving members of the Doors, plus Phil Chen on bass (true story!). He, Tony Medina and I also collaborated in Playlist, a disco cover band that made some seriously groovy noise in the mid and late teens.
Besides Rudy, Rey was an integral part of The Baboons in the early 90s, which I long admired, then became a late-stage fill-in on bass. That band was an inventive blend of world beat, funk, spoken word, psychedelia, and a lustful whimsy. They recorded a couple of albums, won a few prestigious local awards, and graced numerous stages throughout South Florida. Rey and I played the band’s 20th anniversary show at the soon-to-be shuttered Tobacco Road in 2012.
Diaz was also a founding member or a big part of King Konga, The Weeds, Conjunto Progreso, Suenalo, The Mighty Iguanas, and many more, I’m sure.
Rey, rest in peace. I’m sorry I didn’t make more time to go see you again after last summer. I know we will JAAAAAAMMMM together again someday. Love you, brother.
