to boldly go where no man has gone before...pure percussion

A friend of mine runs a charity and he said that they need an act to fill up a 1 hour slot this Saturday. He asked me if I would consider doing a 1 hour drum solo. I told him that I already know that the general public won't go for it, however if I could get my good friend with his congas or DJEMBE I might consider trying to fill up 1 hour with something that the public WILL DIG. So my friend said ok. So I'm playing pure percussion Saturday afternoon in a band shell with Thundershowers and 87degrees forecast!

Now I find out that this "charity" venue is much larger than I expected with thousands visitors each year and a Bongo player has also signed up, so we'll be a percussion TRIO. I'll try to videotape this.

Anyone here have any experience with pure percussion or drum circle type things? I'm working out ideas this week and jotting them down. I even have something in mind for audience participation.

Dan

People have been doing hours and hours of continuous percussion-only playing for people for thousands and jillions of years. Whether it's African drumming, Afro-Latin drumming, or lots of long-haired people with love beads meeting at the Venice, CA Boardwalk every day for drum circles when the sun goes down, it's been done forever and a day. Many have performed for hours at a time, some drum circles going on all evening, even longer than a Neil Peart drum solo.

I would strongly recommend making it participatory so people stick around and get into it.

OH I know that this is the oldest form of music, but nowadays in North America people mostly listen to rock, country blues etc. with MELODIC instruments.

Of the 10 ideas I have jotted down, I have 2 for the audience to help with.

1) A conga line with 1+2+3 4 1+2+3 4 1+2+3 4 1DA +DA 2DO +DO 3DA 4DA

2) Audience claps on 1 2 3+4 and we build around that.

I'd have the audience clapping syncopated if I thought they could handle it LOL !

Dan

I was SUPPOSED TO keep track of the time, and we were supposed to do 14 different ideas in 1 hour, but this one is almost 10 minutes long. This is the first one of the performance. The guy on the mixer must have fallen asleep after 5 minutes and nudged the REVERB way up. Thankfully we picked up some live audio with the camcorder.

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