Give the Drummer Some #1: Rhythm & Sound
A new but also old podcast series / secular and sacred rhythms / free-er jazz / body music / no not that Rhythm & Sound
Give the Drummer Some is an idea I’ve had knocking around for a good while now - a series of mixes exploring the ever-expanding world of drums and rhythm-based music. In fact, I recorded this first episode here way back in June 2021…and promptly did nothing with it, apart from some scrambled pitches to radio stations way out of my league.
I’m sure most folks who have even a passing interest in live music understand the pure joy of watching a really good drummer play live. You certainly don’t need a musician’s understanding of the instrument to appreciate in - there’s a pure physicality to drums that cuts across geography, language and style, and it speaks to something within us that feels immediate and instinctive.
I spent most of my youth watching drummers - partly just as a fan, mostly as a bassist. There’s usually not much in the way of monitors at DIY shows, so I took to using Fugazi bassist Joe Lally’s technique of standing behind the drum kit, so that I could at least see exactly what the drummer was playing and lock-in, even if I couldn’t hear much of anything (earplugs would have likely helped here, but I was far too young and dumb to consider that).
I finally started learning to play drums myself in recent years, and while I’m still extremely bad at it, it’s been an extremely rewarding journey - not least because I’ve had two excellent teachers, firstly Jodie Freer of the excellent Freer Ideas, and more recently John Colpitts aka Kid Millions, who some of you may know through his work with Oneida, Boredoms, and his own head-melting solo releases.
As with any instrument, one of the joys of learning is having a newfound appreciation for the drums and the possibilities the instrument presents. While I can still barely keep time, let alone be truly creative on the kit, there’s something uniquely exciting about realising “oh I could put this here, or strip out that hit, and it sounds brilliant.” This series began as a kind of offshoot of my ongoing attempt to learn the drum, going back to records in my collection and taking a deeper dive into different styles and traditions that sparked my interest.
Because while rhythmic music is instinctive and immediate, it’s also a wildly complex beast, with a huge amount of room for expression and innovation that’s constantly changing and evolving - multiplied and refracted exponentially by the arrival of sampling and DJing, with producers constructing whole new sonic universes from the rhythmic innovations of jazz, soul and rhythm & blues, reggae and more, and continuing to expand outwards at an even faster rate today. Equally digging back into history, ceremonial and secular drum music has existed for time immemorial. Just one single LP purchase recently, the incredible Bahrain: Fidjeri: Songs of the Pearl Divers feels like an entire self-contained cosmos of new information for me - folk music from the Gulf that often accompanied specific and common actions, like rowing, setting sails, and pulling up the anchor.
This first episode is a bit of a broad overview of the scope of the show - largely because I was hungover when I was recording this and “winging it” as they say, but I still stand by the selections here. There’ll be more to come, including some “in focus” episodes on some of my favourite drummers and percussionists.