Kilvin Peña is a bassist from Santiago. He plays acoustic and electric bass, and some keyboards, and he has spent his working life in the rhythm section of other people’s bands, which is where most of Dominican jazz is actually made.

Típico first

He picked up the bass at fifteen and started out playing música típica — the accordion music of the Cibao, where the bass has to hold a pulse that never stops moving. He went from there to the Escuela de Música de Bellas Artes for formal study, took jazz classes, and stayed.

The route matters. A bass player who learns the instrument inside típico arrives at jazz already knowing how to keep time against an accordion, and that is not a skill a conservatory hands out.

The Monday sessions

He came up jamming at the Bar es Teatro of the Teatro Nacional, where the Guy Frómeta Band held down Monday nights and young players sat in with older ones. By his early twenties he had worked with the Roberto Santana Quartet, the saxophonist Carlos Estrada, the trumpeter José Luis Almengot, Fellé Vega, Rafelito Mirabal and the trio of Jonatan Piña Duluc.

The influences he lists say what kind of bassist he set out to be: Fellé Vega, Rafelito Mirabal and Quique del Rosario at home, and Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Haden, Chick Corea and John Patitucci abroad. Charlie Haden and Jaco Pastorius are opposite answers to the same question, and choosing both is a working musician’s answer.

Twenty years in the section

He has stayed in demand. He played the Festival Arte Vivo tribute to the bassist Pengbian Sang alongside the other players of his instrument; he holds the bass chair in Rafelito Mirabal’s Sistema Temperado, including the night it shared a bill with El Prodigio; and he backs Oscar Micheli when the pianist brings a group to Santiago.

He also teaches. At least one younger Dominican bassist lists lessons with him alongside lessons with Quique del Rosario, which is how a scene this size keeps itself going.