“Drumming is breath to me. Nothing quite as powerful as being a conduit for energies, ancestors, rhythms, and songs while playing the drums.”
- Gregory E.Woods Keeper of the Drums 2008
When I first started playing professionally I was living in Rabat, Morocco. My first gig was with the legendary blues man, Mickey Baker. I did two shows in Rabat and Casablanca. It was incredible and frightening. His only command was "Play. Whatever you do don't stop playing. Just play!" Somewhere during the next two hours he suddenly signaled a dramatic pause and I stopped with the group. He yelled out, "Play. Play." The audience broke out laughing and applauding. I played my heart out to thunderous applause. Later in Casablanca we put on a good show and got paid with money!
I learned the importance of one drum soon afterwards. I can play three congas and a pair of bongos at one time when necessary and the music ask for it. But pulling sound out of one drum and moving both the band and the audience is, simply put, an act of power. It is a dance with powers and it consumes me with colors and dreams in the forms that dream-people appear to me when summoned by the spirit of my drum.
One day, we are still in Morocco, someone from the American Embassy asked me to put together musicians to perform with Randy Weston. Randy Weston is a powerful, rather intimidating man and musician. He was, then, living and traveling throughout North and West Africa learning traditional music and rhythms and blending those rhythms and songs with blues and jazz. His music then and now is something many have never experienced and need to experience for the enrichment of soul and the touch of another realm of existence. In his music the past, the present, the future join with the Mother Land and her offspring in an embrace that taps the souls of the one and the many.
I was afraid to tell him I played the drums. I gave him my bassist, Serge. Serge was a Haitian from Paris who had flown down to join my band a few months earlier. Randy Weston was on the acoustic piano. Someone else found a conga player. The one drummer they found was one of the percussionists from the Royal Moroccan Orchestra at the time. I had seen him before. In fact we had passed each other in the studio trading places in front of the camera a couple of weeks earlier. I had no idea he was such a deep musician until he performed with Randy Weston.
Moroccan music is beautiful, important and true to its progenitors and the living present of its people. Arabic music is like that. You cannot find love music with more depth and pathos like Arabic songs. If you are curious listen to Oum Kalhtoum (I think I spelled her name wrong) the best singer born into both Egypt and the Arab world.
Now here I am in the audience listening to this trio and I am rendered silent with tears streaming and my mouth agape in wonder. What happened between them and us was beyond words in the realm of magic, the mystery of exchange between souls and the magic of invention. The drummer sat on stage with one drum, a red conga drum, and played from the depths of the reddish brown and dark soil of Morocco, Benin, Nigeria and Ghana. It sounded like two; sometimes three drummers playing with him and the drums talked and sang to the piano and copulated with Serge’s acoustic bass lines!
I had brought a red cassette recorder into the auditorium. I recorded from the front row. I couldn't listen to it for months and I couldn't play my drums for a long time. I was numb with the innovations I witnessed and the lure of magic and the calls from Powers this one man pulled out of his drum that night. I was captured and initiated into a form of study that led me into the forests, the halls, and the empty spaces full of the knowledge of creating and birthing. That is the best I can describe from memory a pivotal moment in my life.
I have learned a great deal about the drum since then and have learned how to share from new and deeper levels from behind drums. I wish all of you could sit and be a part of one of my drum circles. You are beautiful souls. ~ Gregory E. Woods, Dawn wolf Keeper of Stories
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