One and two and one and two two; one and two and one and two two
One and two and one and two two; one and two and one and two two...
The other day somebody sent me a YouTube link to a TED talk by Evelyn Glennie, one of the world's most eminent percussionists who is also profoundly deaf, about the art of listening and the complex way in which we connect with the sound colours of the people around us.
Then I went out in the car; on the radio the conductor Simon Rattle
was talking about his very first drum kit.
Then I was sitting in the pub talking to my friend Cindy and a man walked past the window carrying a tomtom and a snare drum.
Today there's drumming in the air.
But always there's clapping and tapping,
the rhythmic babble of conversation,
the thump of things.
The clip below of Evelyn Glennie lasts about half an hour and is brilliant.
I suggest you watch this in its entirety before or after reading this blunder,
which will not take long.
With the other clips embedded here
you're free to watch them as you go along,
or leave them playing while you read on.
Feel free, whatever, to listen, read and mix as you wish.
In fact, in general, please... please:
feel free.
DRUM is the word
the bowl of the U covered with a vibrating
Mmmmmmmembrane on which one DRops
a hand or stick
I’ve been a drummer
for as long as I can remember
a tip tapper from the very beginning
(but not as good as this boy below).
As a small child I used to construct drum kits
of saucepans and Tupperware,
tins of coffee with plastic tops, saucepan lid cymbals.
I'd forgotten all that until I heard today
Ringo himself on the radio
saying he did the same.
Before I had a drum kit I had my own pop group,
led by a man called Ramuel Groovit.
I imagined him, named him, drew him,
designed the sleeve of the concept album,
even wrote the lyrics to songs with no tunes
for a pretend pop group called The IF.
Ramuel sang and played keyboards.
There was a big tall bass player whose name I can’t remember,
which is sad because I was his creator,
the only person for whom he existed.
Now I find I can still draw him:
blonde with big eyes and Small Faces big hair,
Zapata moustache, like a Pepper-era Beatle,
Tall and silent - well, he was the bass player.
And of course I was the drummer.
(I showed this picture to my mum the other day
and she laughed and went to a drawer
and produced this drawing;
Written in ink on it:
by Chris, 1967).
In those days I spent a lot of time in my head.
I did have a pair of drum sticks and played on a toy plastic punchball
which my granny had bought me, to toughen me up probably.
at this point I was also designing clothes,
drawing cartoon faces in felt tip on tee shirts, coloured with DYLON,
cutting out felt target shapes,
copydexing them to my sister’s dresses
whether she asked me to or not
I couldn’t remember which birthday it was when I was given my first drum kit,
but my mum says I was ten - so that was '66.
But then I know I became Ginger Baker when I played,
which dates it 1968 when Cream split up.
The kit was second hand and beaten up, but I could hardly believe
it was possible to be given something so wonderful.
I still think like that about the gift of drums.
The sizzle cymbal was thrilling
though the tomtom was small with a cheap vellum skin
and I had to buy new hi-hat cymbals.
Best was the bass drum to which I glued
that poster of CheI played
brilliant, virtuoso drum solos for hours and hours,
just like this Korean student.
At least that's how I remember it.
My other hero at that time was Alla Rakha,
tabla player with Ravi Shankar.
Alla and Ravi improvised together,
battling, brilliant, sensuous, playful,
throughout each raga.
Eskimos settle all disagreements
through drumming contests called Trommesang:
the clan gathers in festive mood,
the two contestants drum and sing their accusations
which can be true or imaginary, vicious or satirical
& the group decides whose won and peace returns.
They deal this way with robbery, murder...
and if there's been no crime committed
they just do it for fun.
Later my friend Hattie bought me a set of tabla
when she was travelling in India
and carried them all the way back to me.
I loved them,
to look at as much as to use,
but never learned to play them properly.
To play the tabla, I gather, you must understand Tal: a framework in time.
The particular arrangement of audible sounds and silence
is what defines the unique character of each Tal.
The tabla drums are used to maintain the flow
of Tal in music and dance.
The technical term for this manifestation
of Tal on a drum is theka.
Here's a film of Alla (the old, fat one) who died in 2000.
In my teens I played bongos with my friends Keef and John;
we were called Edge of August.
We produced a magazine together
and played gigs where we read our poetry in between songs
In those days I spent a lot of time cross legged
on the floor playing hand drums while someone
rolled joints on a record sleeve
and someone else strummed
the same droning chord sequences
over
and
over.
We were very zen then
seeking the sound of one hand clapping.
As the master says:
"what we call 'I' is just a swinging door
which moves when we inhale and when we exhale"
Sheffield in the 80s was a clenched fist, was electro drum machines,
was Iron John workshops at anti sexist retreats,
was banging the drum as we took to the streets.
I joined a band called The Mysterons
which only played benefits - for miners and steelworkers,
against nuclear power, bombs, rape and rate capping.
We played Stand Down Margaret
and (We Don't Need That) Fascist Groove Thang.
I played cabasa on Stand By Me.
The cabasa is made of loops of steel ball chain
wrapped round a cylinder
fixed to a handle, sounds like a rattle snake,
was developed from the Shekere, an African shaker
made from a dried gourd
with beads strung on its surface.
I have a cabasa, a shekere and all kinds of other percussion;
I try to buy a drum wherever I go:
a beautiful boduran and beater of bog oak from Skye,
a djembe with goat skin head, bought from a guy by the side of the road in Ghana,
a Turkish hand drum like a round of cheese from Womad in... Reading.
Soon after Hattie returned from her travels in India
our son was conceived.
For a while after the children were born
I had a drum kit
but sold it when we were broke.
Later I bought two congas from a friend of a friend of mine.
I messed about on them but, once again, never learnt properly.
In the 90s in Birmingham libraries we ran a project about Silence.
A brilliant young percussionist
whose name now escapes me
played in the Central Library, built up more and more sound
around the ambient hum
of escalators, footfall,murmurings, phone bells.
How much could he enhance the sounds of a place that's thought of as silent
without rupturing the hush?
(We ran another workshop for writers who had to write poems which included a
silence
at the heart of their structure).
And the music librarian, John Gough,
played this piece by John Cage in the music library:
Ten years ago, when we formed a band at work,
(called The Bettertones because we worked together in Betterton Street),
I tuned up my congas and went in search of a teacher.
I found one of the best in Robin Jones.
He asked me to play for him, then sighed and said,
"Okay, so you just tiptaptip on them."
and showed me how it was really done.
Learning new patterns involves lots of concentration
but the sense of satisfaction is immense
when everything at last begins to flow.
It seems such pure learning
to do something over and over
till it clicks
There are three conga drums: the smallest is the quinto, then the tumba,
then the tumbadora and the most common conga pattern (or Timbao) is La Marcha.
To play congas you need to practice the tones:
the slap is the trickiest, then there's the bass tone,
the dead tone and the double heel-toe sound.
Heel-toe slap slap heel-toe o-pen
Playing depends on moving beyond conscious awareness,
we do before we choose and that makes playing possible.
Drumming is about the beating of heads on the walls of cells,
the shaking of chains, the rattling of the bars of the cage.
Like the descendents of refugees
whose names are the mispellings by guards at borders,
of slaves named after their owners,
percussion instruments are improvised, bastardised
and drum patterns from different traditions
have been traded, stolen and muddled over centuries.
Timbales were originally made of buckets with skins across the top,
the clave played on a hoe wacked with a stick.
According to Robin the beat known as the rhumba
in America is not true Cuban rhumba
because a band came over from Cuba
to play a gig in Miami and between numbers
their Yankee host asked the Spanish speaking band leader
what kind of song they'd just played.
But the bandleader thought he was asking
what was coming up next.
And now my son Joe plays the drums.
For his 21st birthday we bought him an udu - a ceramic bowl drum.
Years ago he and I went to the Roundhouse to see STOMP together,
a show that builds on the sounds and beats of everyday life,
in the place where I once saw Ginger Baker’s Airforce,
the legendary percussionist Stomu Yamashta’s Red Buddha Theatre,
Pete Thomas playing drums with The Attractions...
Drums connect us
though it drives me wild when he tap tip taps;
(the rest of the family are used to that).
Robin is Brazilian but trained in Cuba.
He worked with Miguel 'Anga Diaz, who died last year, tragically young.
(There seem to be so many dead drummers now:
Keith Moon, Alla Rakha, Tito Puente...)
When Robin taught me he would say,
"Now if we were in Havana playing rumba with the guys.."
For our 50th birthdays Hattie and I went to Cuba.
On the first day we met up with our daughter Dora
who was travelling in Latin America
and we went to the Bodegita del Medio,
the bar in Havana where Hemingway hung out.
We drank mojitos and to my delight
the guys invited me to play with them
- and I didn't mess up.
But I'm not that good really, nor that musical.
As Robin pointed out, I can't keep time too well,
though he also says that's not just the drummer's job.
With percussion as with so many others things in life
I'm at the level which briefly impresses the un-informed
but no real expert.
I know bits of stuff,
but have a terrible memory
and never learn many facts in the first place.
I catch the drift of things, I get the jist,
I sit silent in cafes
watching all that
animated chat around me,
tapping out its beat.
People worry
about how many blogs there are
that nobody reads,
but just think how many conversations
go unrecorded,
so much animation put into
near identical bits of chat
about kids and homes and politics and stuff,
us laughing at jokes that aren't funny written down,
sharing commonplaces about movies and books.
"What did you think?"
"Good."
"Really? I thought it was like, uh... crap."
We rap, we make verbal patterns, we keep the beat.
This yack
may be inane,
but it has
rhythmn for all that,
the pattern of exchange,
the rich sound colour of
personalities, characters,
improvising,
soloing,
paradiddling
together.
This may be the sound of one hand clapping.
We have nothing to say and we're saying it.
A tabla solo can express a multiplicity of moods and emotions,
complex as any symphony.
Congas can make you smile and dance and fill up with love.
But I like the way drummers
can be so offhand about what they do.
Even Ringo admits cheerfully
he could never be bothered to practice.
My teacher can be a hard taskmaster,
deadly serious about his art,
but also says, "hey - it's only drums and shit, my friend!"
Like the old joke goes:
Question: What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians?
