Why I love being a percussionist
Ever since I first sat at a friend’s drum set at the age of 11, I’ve ben enamored with the feeling of drums moving the air around them.
Every strike performed by a percussionist delivers a combination of something you can hear and something you can feel through its vibrations. It’s human emotion, material science, physics and maybe a little something more all coming together to create a full-body experience.
You only need one drum and one beat to get a crowd dancing, but it even goes beyond getting people grooving. The unique combination of metals, woods, skins a percussionist chooses and the way they hold their hands, move their arms and employ their feet all result in a wide variety of emotive and personalized musical expressions.
Percussionists have the ability to mold the way people experience time and space. When it comes to rhythm, it’s as much about the spacing between the notes we hit as it is about the notes themselves. A surprisingly subtle alteration in pacing and power to a funky beat that has dancers flying free can transform that same dancefloor into a mosh pit of heavy metal bliss.
Percussionists are also masters of detail and interpreters of history. We spend time learning how the scraping patterns of the Puerto Rican guiro differ from the scraping of the Dominican guira, and how the Columbian guacharaca is something else entirely. We trace the evolution of the jazz beat from the marching bass drum, to the hi-hat, to an ever increasingly complicated ride pattern, to the electronically-inspired fragmented grooves of today.
Along the way, we find our voice and relationship to the beat. Some people can make everything feel fast and exciting. Others have the magical ability to make even the most brisk rhythm feel like it’s floating in a sun-drenched pool. Some astound with mind-boggling complexity, while others can make simplicity sound like the most exciting thing on the planet.
This is what I want to celebrate with the Chicago Rhythm All Stars. So many percussionists, who usually spend their time backing others up, are taking all this rhythmic knowledge and creating futuristic music that still feels attached to this Earth. It’s creativity that gets lost in the shuffle because percussion is so misunderstood.
The event is 10 days away. Join us August 24th at the Golden Dagger for the first installment of this series.
A folkloric dance accompanist turned house producer, an experimental jazz drummer (me), and a tap dancer / rapper will all be sharing their takes on rhythm music. Hope to catch you there!