At first glance, the drum-filled stage at Royce Hall Thursday night for UCLA Live’s presentation of the Global Drum Project appeared to suggest an evening with limited musical potential. Yes, the Project featured Mickey Hart, Zakir Hussain, Giovanni Hidalgo and Sikiru Adepoju — percussion masters from very different global cultures. But a ninety minute, non-stop set of drumming?
For ten minutes or so, my initial observation - much as I’d hoped it would be wrong - pretty much held true. Opening with loops of bird calls, voices and a few pitched instrumental sounds, the four drummers worked and reworked an ordinary back-beat rhythm. Played well, to be sure, but not in a way that revealed the sort of illuminations one might have hoped for from a band of extraordinary international artists.
Matters improved dramatically when the meter switched to a swifter pulse, led by the dundun (talking drum) playing of Adepoju. But the real highlights of the concert were largely generated by individual soloing - especially from Hussain and Hidalgo.
Hussain’s mastery of classical Indian tabla playing is a given, but he is also enormously adept with Western rhythms as well as stick and mallet drumming. Each of his solos was a simmering stew of sounds and style, always driven with a powerful inner propulsion. And the passage in which he dug into the vocal solfege of Indian drumming, with all the swing and alacrity of Jon Hendricks doing a scat improvisation, was a moment in which the “Global” description of the program was right on target.
Hidalgo’s versatile performance, especially when he was bringing his large battery of conga drums to life, provided another authentication of the evening’s goal. Blessed with astonishing speed and articulateness, he applied both qualities to one startling solo after another.
Hart’s dedication to the universality of drumming was present throughout. Without his willingness to use his pop world visibility in the support of projects such as this, they would never take place. So give him credit for transforming what initially seemed to be a potentially monochromatic evening into an entertaining showcase for world class drumming.
By: Don Heckman
