The sound of a hand slapping a thigh, a voice panting and laughing, or a pair of feet hitting the ground might not seem like much. But to Keith Terry, they’re some of the most important elements of body music.

The director of the third annual International Body Music Festival, which will include a free concert as part of Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors series tomorrow, Terry has been involved with body music for 35 years. A drummer, he discovered he could make music with no instruments while accompanying tap dancers. He mimicked their sounds by, well, hitting himself.

“What you’re doing is similar to hambone moves,” one of the dancers told him, referring to the African-American tradition. “You should pursue it.”

Terry is a member of the Oakland, Calif.-based Slammin All-Body Band, which will appear in a program of music from across the Americas with Brazilian band Barbatuques, hambone artist Derique McGee, and an Inuit throat singing duo.

At a time when we have more access to instruments from all over the world than ever, plus an infinite number of sounds that can be produced electronically, it might seem strange that Terry, a Guggenheim Fellowship winner, relies on such primitive means.

“I think it was the first instrument,” he says. “Before we were making those instruments, we were probably clapping, stomping, using our voices.”

In a way, body music is the counterpart to modern electronics, bringing us back to basics, he says. But “basic” doesn’t mean simple or uniform.

“We’re all playing the same instrument, but how we approach it really varies from culture to culture,” he says.

Slammin includes dancers with backgrounds in jazz, R&B and funk. Barbatuques draws on samba and maracatu — “very funky music, very polyrhythmic,” says Terry. A Turkish ensemble that played a previous festival often made very slow music in odd time signatures, with beats in groups of 7, 9 or 21.

But the most fascinating act this year looks as if it will be Inuit throat singers Celina Kalluk and Lucie Idlout from arctic Nunavut, Canada. The sound hasn’t been “spread around” much, Terry says, giving him a chance to give many listeners first-time exposure to an art that’s little like anything else.

In a video of a previous Body Music Festival on Lincoln Center’s website (lincolncenter.org), the singers stand facing each other, their mouths about 6 inches apart and their arms interlocked. They seem to converse in a language of voiced sounds similar to humming and sharp exhalations of breath. The music accelerates until one and then the other collapses in laughter.

“It sounds really old and futuristic at the same time,” Terry says. “One tries to trick the other to make a mistake. It’s a game — every time it ends in laughter. It’s so contagious that the audience laughs, too. I just love that.”

Ronni Reich: (973) 392-1726 or rreich@starledger.com

International Body Music Festival concert
Where: Damrosch Park Bandshell, Lincoln Center, Broadway and 66th Street, New York
When: Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m.
How much: Free. Visit lincolncenter.org.