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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  The International Body Music Festival kicks off next week in Northern California.  The sounds are all made with nothing more than what you’re born with and the music is 100% organic.  Keith Terry is with me in the studio here at WGBH.  He’s a founder and director of the International Body Music Festival and Keith, I’ve got to say, if you had already eaten your Thanksgiving meal, I wouldn’t want you to start smacking your body around but I’m going to have you illustrate anyway what it’s about in a moment, digestion be damned.  Keith, welcome and tell us first a bit about the International Body Music Festival.  It’s the second time the festival’s taking place in the Bay Area.  What’s it all about?

KEITH TERRY:  Yeah, this is the second year, we started last year and it’s a six day festival.  It takes place throughout the Bay Area, Oakland, Berkley, San Francisco.  We do a combination of performances and workshops and open [PH] mic, a lectured demonstration.  It’s kind of all activities, a party every night.  It’s really a nice hang.

WERMAN:  And so international body music.  I mean presumably, this is something that people all over the world actually partake in.  They have the same kind of motivation to make sounds, not using any instruments except their body, right?

TERRY:  That’s right.  We find both traditional, you know culture specific, traditional body music all over the world and more and more contemporary styles that mix a lot of cultural and rhythmic ingredients.  It’s probably the oldest music, you know before we were making instruments, we were probably playing our bodies and using our voices to express those musical ideas.

WERMAN:  So give us a demonstration of body music as you know it and then we’ll kind of get you to give us a little tour around the world, body music-wise.

TERRY:  Okay, alright so this is a style that I’ve been working on for like thirty years.  So it’s a contemporary style, it’s not a traditional style but I just kind of play around a little bit here.

WERMAN:  So what we’ve got going on here because listeners aren’t here in the studio but I’ll describe it, you’ve got a piece of plywood, about an inch thick that you’re stomping on and you’ve got kind of tap dance shoes on, is that right?

TERRY:  Well, they’re actually, they’re just leather-soled shoes, there are no taps on them.  But they’re hard leather-soled shoes.

WERMAN:  But they’re thin soled and you’re really feeling the floor and then there are the hand claps of course and you’re hitting other parts of your body.  Are there parts of your body that make slightly different noises than other parts?  I mean do you know where your kind of like cavities are?

TERRY:  Sure, I mean they’re subtle.  I mean basically you know, you’re playing the equivalent of a cardboard box or something. There are subtle differences between like the chest and the belly, where you can get these slaps.  In some parts of the world they really get these high slaps like in Sumatra, they get this really nice thing.  And then you’ve got you know, the back side, the butt.  You’ve got a brush on the hip and then you know, thighs and you know, so it kind of moves around.  Visually it moves around and also sonically it has subtlety.

WERMAN:  And the idea of the International Body Music Festival, I mean one could say is that people don’t just speak this universal language of music, but they also you know, speak it using a universal instrument, our bodies so give us a little tour around the globe.  Maybe you can illustrate what’s going on in Bali and then show us some stuff around the Mediterranean, kind of Spanish flamenco palmas which is the hand clapping and maybe some of the interlocking clapping from the Middle East.

TERRY:  Sure, well in Bali, Indonesia they have a [SOUNDS LIKE] Katchok which is interlocking vocal percussion and these are done by men in the past but more and more women’s groups are popping up.  These are concentric circles of performers and the group may vary from anywhere from like 20 performers to a thousand.  I mean sometimes it’s really a spectacle.  And they often use this syllable, [SOUNDS LIKE] cha-cha-cha-cha and it’s just a beautiful kind of whirlwind, it’s like a vortex of how these parts lock in together and it’s very fast.

WERMAN:  So they vocalize but it’s kind of a percussive vocalization.

TERRY:  Very percussive and this can go on for you know, 45 minutes, an hour.  I mean it takes quite a lot of endurance and just great concentration.

WERMAN:  Alright, give us a taste.

TERRY:  Yeah.  [SOUNDS]

WERMAN:  So there’s actually very little smacking of the body with Katchok.

TERRY:  Exactly.  It’s really a local percussion.  There is some, there are choreographed moves where people’s arms are kind of you know moving together and hands are splayed and shaking, it’s kind of a shimmering look with all these hands.  I mean you can imagine, you know, you get 200, 300 people in very tight concentric circles.  It has a strong visual impact as well.

WERMAN:  And to contrast that in Spain and in the Middle East, hand claps are pretty common and especially in flamenco and you know, the antecedents to flamenco in the Middle East.

TERRY:  Exactly, exactly.  Well all throughout Northern Africa, Tunisia and Morocco, all the way into the Persian Gulf, you hear this high popping sound.  It sounds kind of like this.  So you get those high overtones.  I’ve got my hands really splayed, the fingers are almost rigid and it’s a very flat and when you clap, the fingers are aligned.  It looks as, I mean if you look from the side you see one hand basically and the entire surfaces of your hand strike it once and it kind of captures that air in there to get that high popping sound.

WERMAN:  Right.

TERRY:  And you hear these interlocking clapping patterns throughout that region, that whole region.

WERMAN:  And when you say interlocking you’re talking about many clappers kind of going through these patterns and then those patterns interlock [OVERLAPPING]

TERRY:  Exactly.  It’s like a, it’s a weaving of these rhythmic patterns, these polyrhythmic patterns.

WERMAN:  And then make the connection between that and the flamenco palmas.  Literally, the palm, right?

TERRY:  Yeah, yeah.  Apparently the Moors brought it from North America, the Middle East into north, into Spain.  And we have palmas in flamenco music and dance and you hear that a lot.  Palma, palm and you hear palma and contra-palma.  So the palma is the downbeat and the contra-palma is the upbeat so you get this [SOUND], you get this sound a lot in the music and dance and that is created by two or more players, you know, kind of [SOUNDS LIKE] hocketing these pieces together.

WERMAN:  So what happens when you get together people who take different approaches to body music?  How many countries are represented at this?

TERRY:  Well, let’s see.  At last year’s festival we had a group from Brazil; we had then from Turkey, from the Arctic, from Bali, Indonesia, from France, Canada and the U.S.

WERMAN:  So it’s going to be somewhat mirrored this year, right?

TERRY:  Yeah, it’ll be similar this year.  We have [SOUNDS LIKE] Apuve Zapateo which is footwork which is accompanied often by Cajone, the wooden boxes and guitars, but this time it’s being accompanied by vocal percussion.  All the parts are created by the vocal.

WERMAN:  Well Keith, it’s wonderful to talk with you.  Maybe you can set up for us some body work to end the show with today.  Something that’s really just impressed you recently.

TERRY:  I think I’d like to play a piece from [SOUNDS LIKE] Baba Tukas which is a group from Sao Paolo, Brazil.  They’re a 12 member group.  They’ve been together for 10 years and they just have a beautiful style.  I think you’ll enjoy it.

WERMAN:  Keith Terry is the founder and director of the International Body Music Festival.  The festival takes place in the San Francisco area next week.  For more information on the festival and to see an exclusive web performance, just go to TheWorld.org.  Keith Terry, thanks very much for coming in and happy Thanksgiving.

TERRY:  Thank you, Marco.

WERMAN:  The Brazilian group Barbatuques brings our Thanksgiving Day program to a close.  From the Nan and Bill Harris Studios at WGBH in Boston, I’m Marco Werman.  We’ll be back tomorrow with another spin of The World.