Apr 30, 1995 Writings
BLINDFOLD TEST, Jamey Haddad
Downbeat Magazine, April 1995 by Larry Birnbaum
Drummer and percussionist Jamey Haddad leads something of a double life, swinging on traps behind jazz players like Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano or laying down third-world syncopations on African, Indian, Brazilian and Middle Eastern instruments with groups like Oregon and the Paul Winter Consort. His performing and recording credits include recent dates with pianists Gil Goldstein and Allen Farnham, organist Lonnie Smith, guitarist Bruce Dunlap and vocalists Carly Simon and Harry Connick Jr., as well as featured roles in a “World Drums” extravaganza in Canada with percussionists from over 30 countries and a gala presentation of Moroccan trance music at Expo ’92 in Spain.
Born in Cleveland in 1952, Haddad picked up Lebanese percussion from his family, then switched to rock and funk drumming. After graduating from Berklee College of Music, he moved to New York to play jazz, but a 1980 meeting with Ramnad Raghavan, the original percussionist with John McLaughlin’s Shakti, launched him on an enduring love affair with Indian drumming that culminated in a Fullbright fellowship to study with master musicians in Madras. Today, he teaches a course at Berklee on third-world music and its influence on the West. Together with drummaker Frank Giorgini, he also developed the Hadgini drum, a twin-bulbed ceramic instrument fitted with electric pickups and suitable for various international styles.
This was Haddad’s first Blindfold Test.
Trilok Gurtu “Tillana” (from Crazy Saints, CMP, 1993) Gurtu, drums, tabla, voice, dol, percussion; Louis Sclavis, bass clarinet, clarinet, Ernst Reijseger, cello; Daniel Goyone, piano.
It has to be Trilok, because there’s no other tabla player I know of who understands the conception of jazz so well. He’s done a lot to promote his country’s musical esthetic and concept of time into a Western thing. I don’t know anyone else who’s made those inroads.
I’d give it 4 stars. There’s a certain kind of intensity that happens when you play a drum set that’s broken up the way he plays it. He’s invented a whole style of being able to play without a bass drum, so the independence is brought to another level, but it almost forces him to play more linearly, much more so than most drum-set players.
Paul Motian
“Women From Padua” (from Motian In Tokyo, JMT 1991) Motian, drums; Bill Frisell, guitar; Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone.
If that’s not Paul Motian, it’s someone who’s making a career out of trying to sound like him. I would guess it’s the trio with Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell, although I’ve not heard this music. Paul Motian has made the art of drumming into something much more than I had come to know it before I heard Paul. The meaning of texture and the necessity to play only things that propel the music and make it meaningful are just ever-present. This was really nice, really poignant. 5 stars.
Glen Velez
“Blue Castle” (from Assyrian Rose, CMP, 1989) Velez, percussion; Layne Redmond, percussion; Steve Gorn, /lutes; John Clark, trench horn; Howard Levy, harmonica, piano.
That can only be Glen Velez. He’s my playing partner in a couple of situations, and although frame drums have gotten popular, nobody has the sound and articulation and execution that this guy has. I think Randy Crafton is also playing on this, and Steve Gorn is playing bamboo flute. I played with Steve two nights ago. If it’s not Randy, it’s Layne Redmond. It’s sometimes hard to tell the secondary parts. It’s Howard Levy playing harmonica and piano, and John Clark playing french horn. Again, Glen has really mined the concept of times inside of times. If it’s in 7, it’s got the inner 7s and the wider 7s, and it really animates his playing field of time. 5 stars.
John Scofield
“Camp Out” (from What We Do, Blue Note, 1993/ Scofield, guitar; Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone; Dennis Irwin, bass; Bill Stewart, drums.
This is John Scofield’s quartet with Joe Lovano and Dennis Irwin and Billy Stewart on drums. It must be new. This is a weird band. I’ve played opposite them with Dave Liebman. I think Billy Stewart is a fantastic drummer. I don’t know any young drummer who has charged up younger drummers like him. It’s hard for older players to give it up to someone who comes along and plays as well as Bill does; but I know that some of my best students say they’d rather flip burgers than play jazz, and it isn’t till they get hip to Billy Stewart that somehow the link between where they’re at and a way to participate in more contemporary music becomes evident. He plays funky enough, with a tight enough sound, that he brings a lot of elements together. It’s a combination of thingsearly Tony [Williams], before his fusion years, and Roy Haynes, at any period. 5 stars.
Dr. S. Balachander
“Manasaa Etulortune” (from The Immortal Sounds Of The Veena, Oriental/ Balachander, veena; S. V. Raja Rao or Karaikudi R. Mani, mridangam; R. Harishankar, kanjira.
That music is my passion. That’s South Indian karnatic music. I think it’s a veena, mridangam, and kanjira. It must be an older recording, because the sound of those instruments has more impact than that, but the playing was masterful. There’s no music that is as rhythmically sophisticated in a classical form as South Indian music, for me. You played some Glen Velez earlier, and for Glen and me, that was truly the catalyst for hand drumming, finger technique, and the concept of the whole cross-grid of times and metric modulation. They’re the champs; so 5 stars. It’s easy to get lost in that world, if you really love it, because we almost have no counterpart in our culture to this music. Raja Rao is a friend, and Harishankar. I know them from South India. The mridangam player, Karaikudi Mani, was my teacher.