Vantage Point

I have a gigging kit and a kit that stays set up permanently in my living room. For my show on Friday night I took the snare drum from my permanent setup with me. Today I got on my drums to mess around with some African Claves from Billy Martin's book but my snare drum was still in its case in the van.

I decided to use this as an opportunity to move toward sound and away from musical dependencies and habits. Expanding intimacy with drumming itself rather than with a drum set, with sound itself rather than with music, with the act of drumming rather than with what I am drumming.

I walk around the town playing on mailboxes, road signs, thrift store objects, telephone poles, benches, buckets, cups. Anything that looks like it might have a song I check to make sure. So why doesn't that extend to the drum set as much? Habit? Comparison? Expectations? Musical taste? Fear? I think the main thing is there is no preconception about a mailbox or a five gallon water jug. There is not an extensive library, in the exalted annals of music history, of mailbox and water jug recordings and techniques.

These found-percussion trysts are innocent encounters with sound. There is no, "am I doing this correctly?" because there is no "correct" way to play a mailbox or a water jug.  The obsession with technique and perfectionism, as it correlates to the learning of an instrument, is only useful if it does not tamper with the ability to innocently experiment with your instrument stripped of all historical and musical context.

That is why I didn't go and get my snare drum. I did a practice session and some soloing minus the snare. It completely changed my relationship with the toms.  It changed the way I thought about melody and drumming. The grooves were wilder and simpler. Africa came to visit or vice versa. When you change vantage points your vision and your knowledge expand.

Set up your drum set backwards.  Use only floor toms.  Remove all your cymbals. Do a solo blindfolded. Drum in the forest. Video tape yourself and play it backwards.  Duct tape your right hand to your heart and drum with your left. Do anything to break your dependency on your instrument in order to increase the chance of entrance into extra terrestrial innocence where intuition and sound converge in the melted heart.

Africa. India. Ecstasy.

I am excited to be working and learning with Arthur Lee Land. He has extensive experience with the art of live looping. He is teaching me about congas, bongos, djembes, talking drums, cowbells, shakers; the works.

One of his more exquisite loops is drenched with that African sunlight and the moving sidewalk on a moving sidewalk feeling that Elvin Jones is known for. I am now completely in love with implying 6 over 4 and we get lost for hours and hours in the continually expanding and contracting movements.

We have a show on new years at the new Cafe Paradiso and I'm gonna be playing tablas and djembe. For future shows my kit will look more like the picture above but Congas and a Djembe will be added.

My heart is pounding for Africa and India and the Shaman-healer-priest-wild man-nut bucket-asteroid lasso-Santa-triplet-whip-crack against-the-moon aesthetic is blossoming like the birth of a rose colored planet. I'm excited and honored to be getting an education and making music for a living simultaneously.

PS Jupiter left its phase of debilitation and I always and especially feel escalating gratitude for my tabla teacher Pandit Anup Ghoshji. Big love, namaste, and happy holidays to all!

Something I Wrote for KKJZ 88.1 in LA When They Asked On Air, "What Does Jazz Mean To Uou?"

It's tempting to start this paragraph with the word Jazz, but jazz survives its own annihilation. I think of jazz as the music that will be playing after the apocalypse. Classical music like that scene in the Titanic with the quartet playing as the ship is sinking, is the music being played during the apocalypse, but after the ego has been incinerated, what is left behind is a world of skeletons, gods and jazz. Embryonic in the dark altar in the heart of Africa jazz is bottled at the source where the universe is heard as one whole note. Jazz is the invocation and propagation of silence that binds all of us together back to a Higher Self. Jazz is freedom within imprisonment. Jazz is the volcano god whose muscle guts the hearts of people with the guts to unlearn everything they know, it's the dark feminine, the tornado, the against the grain of society power, aligned with the north star at all costs, worship of the terrifying moment stripped of all pretense, jazz is life and death, its firefighting, its wrestling the Marlin to ground zero, its a collision of planets, what a blessing we have created together, Africa, America, the whole universe of sound, truly I can see that the big bang, on the one, or the four if you're from New Orleans, is what started this amazing music.

Humility and Perpetual Learning

As a drummer, artist and survivor :) I always keep my ears "peeled" for inspiration, revelation anything that will open the skies and summon the LIGHTNING GOD. I regard every person and every moment as a highly revered teacher. If you are FULLY OPEN you will be bombarded by continuous OMENS OF BLISS. You can walk on water when you have the balls to follow your bliss.

One of the stories I have overheard, I forget the source, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter if the story is true or not because the principle is so gorgeous. I heard that in some parts of Africa the master drummers refrain from teaching the babies and little kids for awhile. In fact the masters give all the kids drums and then learn new ideas, new approaches, new perspectives to the ART of drumming from them. Kids, non-drummers, beginning drummers, everyone truthfully has something to teach you if you can remain grounded in the sheer joy and humility of perpetual openness and learning.

One fun exercise to maintain humility is to go into a music store where everyone likes to show off and pretend to barely know how to play. It's interesting how attitudes shift depending on skill level or association. The lesson is for you, to remind yourself to treat ALL ARTISTS at every level with the same amount of respect and humility. Not just because it fosters well being, an open heart, and harmony between all people, but because paths are not necessarily linear. If you are totally encouraging and uplifting and respectful to a beginner drummer, that drummer might develop into an ELVIN JONES equivalent. Your network should be maintained with love and dignity ALWAYS with EVERYONE at all times.

The lesson is you don't have the right to judge even yourself. Stick to the bliss and the work.

Check out my son Dil Mondrian Hurlin!