I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's;
I will not reason and compare: my business is to create (William Blake)
I remember around 20 years ago telling my drum teacher that someone had said that they could tell that he was my teacher. I remember his reply was that if anyone ever said I sounded like him I should take it as an insult - I needed to sound like me. At the time one of my biggest goals was to be able to play like him, so I didn't quite get it, but it obviously stuck because I remember it. I remember one of my students a few years later saying a similar thing - that someone recognised my style in him. I have to be honest and say that it was a bit of an ego boost - but I remembered what I was taught and passed on the wisdom.
A few years ago a famous percussionist was in South Africa. He gave a workshop on drumming and percussion that I was fortunate enough to attend. One of the comments he made really stood out for me. He said something to the tune of a drum being your instrument, and you need have the freedom to express yourself through it. If that means hitting it on the side or the rim to get the sound you want, then you need to have the freedom to do just that.
And so it is in life. For a time we follow a system handed to us by others, but we're eventually faced with a choice as to whether we continue following that system, or whether we take the journey of the Soul and create our own system, finding our own rhythm and the means of expressing that.
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True, but at the same time we need to become part of something bigger, that transcends individualism.
I guess ther is a subtle difference between mimicry and oneness.
Who was your drum teacher?
Yes - you're right. I don't understand that 'something bigger' to be another system, or even a loosely organised group of people, though. It's been the realisation that I am part of something 'bigger' - that seperation and isolation is an illusion. The journey each of us take is the same journey on one level. But you get to a point where you cant rely on 'what the book says' and you needs to draw from more experiential and intuitive wisdom to figure it out for yourself.
I think you refer to the concept of advaita - radical nonduality.
I agree about the way of the adventurer. It does leave behind all that we cling to - literary traditions, mores, habits. It takes us closer to mystery, which we can't define. So spritual progress in that sense means knowing "less".
Who was your drum teacher?
My drum teacher was Lloyd Martin ;)
Jumping Linefish.
I've known Lloyd for 28 years, and recently saw him in CT.
Only found your blog now, didn't know you started blogging...
I would partially agree, but then wonder, do we really find something of our own? Or are we always taking from others, and just maybe combining ideas in a somewhat unique way? Can we really break with what was delivered, or mayby just find something else which was delivered?
Gavin.
i enjoyed this post and the one about kicking the tree. it reminded me of the paradox of the click track. when we first start playing long with one, it often introduces increased tension into our playing as we consciously struggle to keep with it.
then we fall into the pocket and can't hear it anymore? i love the paradox of that, that when we are in the zone the click disappears and the more we trust it's silence, the longer we stay there.
didn't you start drumming for Khanyisa with Rolf Weichardt and clan, after i left?
Thanks liquidlight. I'm not sure when you were with Khanyisa. I left somehwre around 1994 so not sure whether that was after you or before you. Before me it was pretty much a sequencer with a stand in drummer every now and then if I remember correctly?
Cobus - you're right. The sense of seperation that we call 'self' or 'our own' is an illusion and we're all really connected and influenced by all that is around us - but perhaps that's a subject of another blog ;)
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