Masterclass On The History of Jazz Drumming

Playing at the 2015 Clearwater Jazz Holiday   Photo by: Joe Sale @ www.TampaimageFactory.com

                                                                                                   

I had a great time last week presenting a masterclass on the history of Jazz drumming and it's connections to blues over at Academy on The lakes School in Lutz. I of course started with an introduction to 2nd line drumming and also talked about and displayed the way Baby Dodds had to play with King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band before I went back to the military drumming of the Revolutionary war era and the Swiss rudiments. I also brought along some instruments from Egypt, West Africa, Cuba, Brazil, Persia and Morocco to give the students a taste of some of the music that are within the roots of jazz and to show how there has been a re-birth of the multi percussion setup. The students really enjoyed it and they especially enjoyed the rendition of Chameleon that Mr. Cameron Schmitz(guitar) and I played and of course there were many questions about the strange instruments from all over the world that I had setup on the table. I had to play each of them hahaha!

I am going to continue to work out some more ideas based around the history of jazz and also the histories of different percussion instruments from North and West Africa that have migrated all the way to the coast of China and to the Americas.


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