Russell Buddy Helm

What is Performance Art Drumming?

What is performance art drumming? It can be whatever you want it to be. There is an underlying concept that validates what is happening. I saw these bizarre art events in San Francisco, LA and New York around the 1970′s and the eighties. The art might have been good, or it might not have been interesting at all, but there was a premise, a reason to do it this way. You had to get the joke, maybe. Performance art involving live music, most importantly for me, was being done by non musicians. This opened up the arena of what would be considered acceptable as art and as music. Tim Buckley had blown the doors off conventional concepts of what a vocalist should be doing with their vocal cords. That was the right direction, in some respects, but there was an ingredient missing, for me, in the creative expressions that did not take into account the greater consciousness that drives our being. I wanted substance with my performance art. Portraying anything spiritual or divine was avoided in that era of conceptual performance Art. I sensed the audience wanted to have a transcendental experience, but it didn’t seem fashionable. I used what I could use, and fashioned a concept that allowed me to perform again. In joy and celebration. It took a while to evolve this new mode of meditative drumming; inspired, non judgmental improvisation. I used Chuck Berry’s business model; he picked up players in whatever town he was booked in. Every musician knew his music, so there was no need to rehearse. So I preached the gospel of the groove using basic downbeat patterns found under classic Rhythm n Blues songs. Rhythms most everyone was familiar with. Our sacred grooves. So every night, in a different city, van full of hand carved blessed Ghana djembes, the meditation grooves always worked. The universe was getting me to do this, probably for the rest of my life. Way back in 1975, the same month that Tim Buckley was murdered in Venice, California, my conceptual performance art manifesto; “Bluesprint”, a long series of hand drawn blueprints of performance art events, was stapled on a gallery wall at San Jose State Art Department. “Same Song in Every City” was an event sometime in the future when musicians in different cities were somehow connected to each other and they play the same song together. By 1989, that concept of simultaneous downbeats across the US was starting to take form.  But creating our rhythmic matrix required a framework that would automatically create a coherent energy field every time people gathered to drum. That common recognition of a great concept in art or literature is what binds us together as souls on our journey through time. We need Universal Truths in our face. But in drumming, the Downbeat will suffice for our undeniable universal truth and it showed itself to be a powerful healing tool as well, for me and many others. My performance art drumming was not music for me. It could not be, otherwise I would have been paralyzed by self criticism and remorse. I had to call it something else. Which meant that I would not be subject to rules outside of my own conceptual framework. For instance, I would play an African drum but I would not play traditional African rhythms. At the time, and still today, there are people who feel the djembe should only be played as a traditional African instrument. If that were the case, then Miles Davis would have to play like John Phillip Sousa and Charlie Parker would have had to play like Guy Lombardo. It is a musical instrument that can be played in many different ways by many different people. There are no wrong notes. Only a matter of taste. Secondly, I would play a tambourine with my foot; flip it face down, slip my toes under the little cymbals, heel out on the edge, and slap it flat against the floor. It made a great sound, it was musically playable, soft and loud, sparse or syncopated. Played like a hihat, the grooves swing like Count Basie, stomp the tambourine straight up and down on every beat and you’ve got AC/DC. But more importantly it holds the group steady and can even slow them down into the laid back meditation grooves that heal and bring peace to our souls.  I encourage all the drumming students to get familiar with a tambourine on their foot. It is the orchestra with the djembe. Thirdly, I would encourage women to find their place as leaders of drumming groups. This point was part and parcel of the overall strategy to have drumming and dancing as a sacred part of our lives in this culture. It was really up to the women to do it right. Fourthly, I would not compete and I would not play aggressively or loudly. I saw Baba Olatungi’s hands, they had been punished.. This left only a few options. Healing, meditation, which in the long run evolves into therapy drumming which is the next big thing…

Drumming as Performance Art has been the result of all of my experiences as a musician, artist, person, technician, shaman, and whatever else. Why would a twenty two year old, successful, healthy rock star drummer leave the coolest job of backing up the Top Male Vocalist of 1974? I was blending authentic Rock n Roll, Rhythm n Blues, with Afro Cuban, folk, rudimental march drumming, jazz, symphonic percussion, indigenous voodoo, and trance drumming, which was putting Tim Buckley’s vocal improvisations into the realm of extraterrestrial and even spiritual at a time when godless arena rock reigned. The decadence had set in and overshadowed the flashes of cosmic consciousness insights from the Sixties. I sensed a dead end to my rhythmic investigations into conjuring consciousness in front of thousands of willing, enraptured participants. I needed to find another venue without the restrictions of the music business. Ending my career as a celebrity I returned to art school at San Jose State, a California hotbed of conceptual and performance art. After Tim Buckley’s murder it was difficult for me to play any kind of music. But the muses persist and in this case, the ghosts too. But there was a spiritual pressure to perform again. I had to testify. But it had to be hip. I had to find a way to play some sort of sacred groove. There was nothing in the culture to suggest this activity. Creating the drumming meditation using a djembe and foot tambourine with vocal talking and singing evolved out of thin air. It was a new arrival in our culture. I was led to this by the drum itself.

Foothills of the Ozarks, Missouri Breaks. 1953. Middle of the night. A lone gas station. Texaco. Trees, humid night air, buzzing insects around the tall single spotlight illuminating along a dark, flat country road. A large touring car pulls in quietly and cuts its engine. Packard, with Tennessee tags. Must be headed on down to Tulsa or maybe even Los Angeles. The attendant puts his Texaco cap on his sweating brow and puts on a smile for the customer. A lonely job but he was glad to have it. “Fill ‘er up?” He put the pump in the tank, locked it off, then washed the windshield and checked the oil. A small man wearing a cowboy hat emerged slowly from the back seat, he pulled a guitar out with him. “Mind if I play you a new song I just wrote?” The attendant nodded. Suddenly the night became even quieter; the guitar, the stranger’s voice, the words, all made the night seem infinitely bigger. The attendant tried not to let his sudden emotion show as he lowered the heavy hood gently to it’s click. The song was entrancing and beautiful and faded off into the woods amid the crickets. “What do you think?” The small stranger in the big cowboy hat asked the attendant. He nodded, forced his voice to work through the intense feelings he was suddenly experiencing. “Right purty song, mister.” The thin stranger smiled, it made his night. “Hank. Call me Hank.” They drove off, that picker and his driver and the attendant went back inside to close the gas station for the evening. The night felt huge, and lonely. He was alone now, he let the tear drop fall from his cheek. No one would see.

“Hello Mr. Zawinul, It’s an honor to meet you. My father really loved your piano work with Cannonball Adderley Quintet..” The young Jaco spoke respectfully, his long straight black hair, narrow features, almost a cross between Boticelli and Geronimo. The Weather Report concert in Miami was good, but not sold out. “…And..” Jaco continued, “…I am the greatest bass player in the world.” Joe was ready to tell this punk to fuck off when the woman who had introduced them interjected, “Don’t be too hasty. He just might be right.” Their correspondence consisted of casettes from Jaco to Joe. His playing was unique, unusual, lyrical, his fretless electric bass had nuance, tone and vibrato unlike anything, but he was young and untried. When Miroslav decided to leave the band, Joe called up Jaco to give him a try. Initially Jaco overplayed, bombastic and operatic. Joe had to cool him down, playing simply to fit into the arrangements, but when the song “Birdland” started to come together, it was obvious that Jaco was gifted beyond anyone’s expectations. The song is one of the most popular modern jazz songs, right up there with Take Five. Joe Zawinul was amazed and pleased at their success. He had resolved himself to playing dingy jazz clubs the rest of his life, but since Jaco joined the band they were headlining at colleges and festivals. They had a new young audience that loved their music. When Jaco recorded with Joni Mitchell he forced his way between Joni standing next to her engineer at the mixing console, he pushed the faders up that controlled the volume of his bass accompaniment to Joni’s song. It was suddenly very loud in the mix. “That’s the way it should be.” He said with conviction. Joni heard it; he was right. Jaco’s gorgeous fretless bass stayed way up in the mix.

Lt. Helm eyed his brother’s new aquaintance across the dining room table in their parent’s home in the heartland of the Pennsylvania Dutch country. She spoke fluent smooth mid Atlantic English, but he could feel that she was not American. The way she smoked a cigarette was a give away. He turned to his date, a friend had introduced them. She was fun. Winifred was also a beauty, from Indiana. Friend of his friend’s fiance. Safe. He whispered to her, “Would you please take Roy’s girlfriend to the bathroom…to freshen up? I have to talk to my little brother privately.” Winifred perked up with her native curiosity and sense of danger and what felt like budding love. “Alright.” She said quietly. When they were gone, Russell reached across and grabbed his brother’s hand, long and pale, resting on the table. “What are you doing with her?” Roy’s prematurely bald head was flushed with excitement from the attention. “Nothing.” Lt. Helm moved his hand from his brother’s flattened hand and opened the woman’s purse, looking inside without touching anything. “What are you doing?” Roy protested weakly. “What you should have done the first moment you met her…She has an automatic pistol in her purse.”