Jim Santiu Owen

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About Jim Santiu Owen

im Santi Owen is an American percussionist, educator, producer, and performer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Drumming since the age of eight, Owen began an intensive training in the North Indian percussion instrument tabla in 1991, studying under Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri at the Ali Akbar College of Music, the California Institute of the Arts, and in India. In 1995, Owen began studying South Indian percussion instruments including mridangam, ghatam, kanjira and morsing with master percussionist T.H. Subash Chandran, and the temple drum, thavil, with K. Sekar. At Cal Arts, Owen studied Jazz with Charlie Haden, James Newton, and Tootie Heath and African drumming and dance from the Ladzekpo Brothers. He was fortunate to study North Indian music and tabla accompaniment from the great Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Owen also studied the art of accompaniment for the North Indian dance known as Kathak from one of India’s greatest dancers, the late Pandit Chitresh Das. Owen holds a Bachelor’s of Humanities from New College of California and a Master’s degree in World Music from California Institute of the Arts. He served as the Music Director for the San Francisco World Music Festival from 2009 to 2014 and is on faculty at Dominican University, The Jazz Conservatory, LINES Ballet School, and the Ali Akbar College of Music. He has just completed 3-year term as a panelist on the Zellerbach Family Fund’s Community Arts Panel, is currently serving a 3-year term on the Funding Advisory Committee for the Arts and Culture Program of the City of Oakland and also serves on arts panels for the San Francisco Arts Commission.Jim Santi Owen has performed extensively with world-class musicians from a myriad of cultural and musical backgrounds. These include his gurus, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Subash Chandran, and K. Sekar with whom he performed both in India and the U.S. Other internationally renowned artists with whom Owen has performed include: Jazz legend Pharoah Sanders.