Keep on Truckin

Language and the Fifth Limb of Drumming

Gary Chester in his book The New Breed integrates the voice as the fifth limb of drumming.

My friend Charles Knoles told me "If you can hear it, then you can play it" That is the ideal, but one of the stepping stones to TRUE hearing is being able to SAY IT or SING IT first.

In tabla you always learn how to say a GROOVE or COMPOSITION before you learn how to PLAY IT.

I think this phenomenon has to do with the HUMAN method of learning through LANGUAGE. We start learning the language of our MOTHER while still in the womb so it is the most intimate and heart-centric method of expression and assimilation of knowledge that we have available to us.

That is what is so ingenious about the tabla methodology. You learn these compositions as linear monologues of text. Then what happens is that independence and poly-rhythmic ability is an effortless bi product of sustained involvement with the language of Tabla. The compositions become three dimensional and circular and naturally complex and beautiful out of the simplicity of spoken word.

SINGING, BEATBOXING, VOCALIZATION, SPOKEN WORD, TABLA anything that integrates your voice as the fifth limb is so vitally important.

Like I said before Gary Chester's THE NEW BREED is a good place to start for the western drummer.

From my heart to yours, It's an undeniable miracle to be involved in this field of rhythm and life.

CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO OF MARCO MINNEMANN that has turned a scene from Monty Python's THE LIFE OF BRIAN into a drum solo. LANGUAGE IS RHYTHM.



Here is a tabla solo by Alla Rakha who is Zakir Hussain's father and tabla player for Ravi Shankar. It gives you a taste of the vocalization of tabla.



Next is a video by Mal Webb. Absolutely incredible. WOW! Check it.

Foot Stomping at Tangier in Los Feliz

I would like you all to know that prior to my leaving the house tonight I did the exercise that I recommended of sitting behind the drum set and not playing. Holding my bright green Mike Balter 22R Rattan Vibe MalletsI DID NOT PLAYING ANYTHING FOR ONE HOUR. I timed this exercise to the second with my SPORTLINE stopwatch. As a matter of pride, I didn't even play one note after the allotted hour was over, just got up and basked in my increased energy and independence.

Now I am at Tangier in Los Feliz for the Cousin Junebug show. Luckily they have not started yet because I took many a wrong turn and had to endure a WAMU ATM hunting fiasco in order to get the cash to gain entry into the night....club.

After being silent for an hour, sitting to watch live FUNK music seems like a luxury, and I am more attentive than ever because I know in every moment, the miracle of revelation is available. It hits: The almost ubiquitous power of music to make people move. Foot stomping is that miracle for me tonight.

Most people gravitate towards quarter notes. The excited ones have at least one leg doing eighth notes. The guy in the front is speeding through 16th note triplets with his right foot like Geena Davis' rapid-fire vegetable slicing in The Long Kiss Goodnight after the clouds of amnesia lift and she remembers that she is an assassin.

I have a particular fondness for the people doing eighth notes in a completely different tempo than the music and/or the imperfect eighth notes shifted between left and right legs with no apparent mathematical pattern as to when they shift; mid measure, on beat, off beat, struggling, post-shift, to realign themselves with their concept of pulse.

Both feet on the ground, only the left knee bending on quarter notes is another valid reaction to James Brown and the Meters. As is the popular right foot planted, eighth note left leg fidget. Or the decelerating quarter into some mutant relative of the triplet into awkward silence. Or during "Pass the Peas" the impossible-to-maintain uptempo eighth notes. Or the totally avant-garde epilepsy where Merce Cunningham is set free by John Cage into a realm of internal rhythm that is purely independent of the environment.

I'm having so much fun relating all this stuff to the way of the Samurai that I can't help but quote Musashi again to conclude this fantastic evening of Funk and the magic of the human desire to dance/twitch :)

From the Wind Scroll in The Book of Five Rings

In Martial arts, speed is not the true Way. As far as speed is concerned, the question of fast or slow in anything derives from failure to harmonize with rhythm....In the art of dance, if a poor singer accompanies the song of a skilled singer, there is a sense of lag, which results in haste. Also, when "Old Pine" is played on the drums, it is a quiet piece, but in this case too, someone who is unskilled will tend to fall behind or get ahead. And while "High Dunes" has a rapid tempo, it is wrong to perform it too fast.

The Way of Emptiness

There is a scene in the movie Secretary in which Maggie Gyllenhaal puts her hands on a desk waiting in devotion for her love. She stays glued to the desk for three days in the divine patience and stubbornness of love.

In Indian Classical music during the ALAP section of the Raga the tabla player sits without playing and ONLY LISTENS for lengths of up to an hour.

Contentment beyond expression, beyond the individual ego, needs to be cultivated in order for an authentic, objective, fully present, and deeply sensitive method of listening to develop.

If you gain independence from your instrument then when you allow yourself to play it is pure overflow, pure generosity; integration. A deep authenticity will blossom if this independence is cultivated.

Exercise: Sit behind your drum set, or whatever instrument you play, and holding sticks if you are a drummer, DO NOT PLAY ANYTHING FOR ONE HOUR. Just bask in the love of life, the love of music and the love of your instrument. Silence is the foundation.

Miyamoto Musashi says in his "The Book of Five Rings"

...once we speak of 'emptiness,' we can no longer define the inner depths in terms of the surface entryway. Having attained a principle, one detaches from the principle; thus one has spontaneous independence in the science of martial arts and naturally attains marvels: discerning the rhythm when the time comes, one strikes spontaneously and naturally scores. This is all the way of emptiness...