I now live close to the Delmar Loop in St. Louis.
There’s a parkish affair on it, concrete but still a park,
and on Sunday from about 4 to 7 a group
of drummers gather; they play afro-cuban
sort of stuff. They’r pretty good, in fact.
So I dropped by with my Sweet D fife
and sat in. I used earplugs to spare my hearing.
I spent a couple of years in India
howling at the moon and playing in such
groups. Anyhow these people liked the fife, nobody threw anything
at me and a couple of people smiled.
It’s great fun using the flute as a percussion
instrument. Cuts, rolls, crans, trills,
long notes punctuated by ornaments,
tunes that fit the rhythm. Finally I started
playing rhythmically crazy fun stuff.
Definitely
frees one up; highly recommended.
A nice thing about this group is that, while
the majority are black, there are a good
number of white folk too. And some
babes started belly dancing. Naturally
I’m gonna go back.
that reminds me of a little outdoor festival i participated in several years ago. it was a multicultural event. we followed a turkish (?) group that had a belly dancer. inbetween acts i crossed paths with the dancer in the hallway (intentionally hehe) and complimented her on her performance. i half jokingly invited her to come out and dance when we played. she stood in the wings as we began playing some tunes and then once she caught onto the irish beat she came out and dance around in her costume and little finger cymbols. she was awesome, the audience loved her and i did too
… forget michael flately, a pale comparison next to her
Amen to that. I was passing through NC State campus one night on foot and heard some drum and fluting coming from our Bell Tower.
There was a group similar to what you describe: drummers beating out some Mideastern rhythms, a guy just jamming on a silver
Boehm flute, and a young lady dancing in the grass. I love that sort of casual approach to music: just bring your talents to the table, and we
all can benefit.
It’s funny cause in the old days we all would
have been high as kites. Not here, though;
but plainly people would have been.
They were burning sage, I think, the smell
was potlike but not psychotropic.
As a seasoned percussionist I must agree.
I don’t music outdoors that much these days with impropmtu groups.
When I do I prefer to join feral rhythms with fifey flutes rather than drums.
Pentatonics work well in these situations. (including reducing heptatonic pieces down to pentatonics - this way we can focus on volume and catchy rhythm. For instance, Banish Misfortune (D Mixolydian) reduces well into Raag Tilang scale ( D F# G A C D+) without loosing its ID).
Non diatonics work well also as in Harmonic Minor Scale and also Hejaz (Raag Bhairav). Belly dancers love this.
The addition of a piercing pipe does wonders for a percussion outfit.
Many good percussion groups out in the wild are lying all Danae for melody.
(I will not talk here about bad, boisterous and stagnant tom tom groups)
Yes, I know some Indian music and some middle
eastern music, and I played this.
Finally though I began fingering the flute in a scrambled,
crazy way, very rapidly, freeing myself from melody,
and then I continued as a percussion instrument.
Much fun.
‘Feral rhythms’ is apt.
Most of the people in this group were middle aged
black men and nobody seemed high. Of course
that’s no guarantee. And one certainly gets
high on the drumming. I joined in for the fun
of it but after awhile I realized these people
were good. Apparently a fellow is teaching
Afro-Cuban drumming here in St. Louis,
and he was pointed out to me as
one of the drummers.
We also had a juggler, and some
young men were dancing occasionally
too, doing some sort of choreographed
martial arts fight in the circle.
As mentioned I plugged my ears to play.
The D fife is piercing. It seemed pitched
right, though there was no note to which
the drums were tuned.
How old I’ve become! I used to dance
on the beaches of South India, literally
all night. Now this seems to me to be
slightly too far out… Still it’s nice
to be the elderly gent who walks up,
pulls out an instrument nobody has
ever seen, and does something
unexpectably good and different.
Are you sure that the circle was Afro Cuban and not Brazilian. The dancers sound like they were practicing Capoiera which is perfomed to percussion backing.
My wife has a thing for Mark Dacascos, and especially likes the move “Only the Strong” where he plays a Capoeira guy. I personally thought the movie was a bit out there
I asked one of the drummers where the rhythms came
from. He said Afro Cuban; that’s all my info. As mentioned
the fellow who teaches this stuff was there, apparently
leading, at least somewhat.
The dancers weren’t drummers.
Maybe i’ll learn more about it next Sun.
Thanks.
