Sep 30, 2008 Writings

By Kristin Bartus

“I’m about as cool as I can get,” Jamey Haddad says over the phone from his home in suburban Cleveland, Ohio.

What the veteran drummer and percussionist means is that after pushing back our interview half an hour so he could finish up a couple of things, he’s as ready as he’ll ever be to proceed.  But it’s funny he put it that way because the description is actually very apt.  Jamey Haddad is a cool cat.  His chilled-out attitude and comedic storytelling ability (complete with accents) alone would make him cool.  When you add his infectiously intense passion for music, he oozes coolness.

It’s kind of unbelievable how cool he is today in particular, considering what his last few days have been like.  Haddad just returned home from a trip to Beirut that got cut short when fighting broke out near the concert hall where he was supposed to perform.  Upon his arrival home, Haddad’s 15-year-old daughter, Georgia, told him she wasn’t feeling well.  Two hours later she was in surgery for an emergency appendectomy.  After happily announcing how great his daughter is doing now, Haddad nonchalantly notes, “It’s always something.”

Although the school year has ended (he teaches at four different music schools in Ohio and Massachusetts) and he has the summer off from commuting to the East Coast two days a week, he only has two more weeks at home before hitting the road for two months of touring with Paul Simon.  Haddad has I been playing with Simon for about ten years now, just one of many diverse acts with which he’s performed.  The long, long list includes renowned jazz and world musicians who reflect his roots, like Dave Liebman and Paul Winter, popular musicians like Simon and Judy Collins, Broadway songstress Betty Buckley, and even Yo-Yo Ma.

Haddad can currently be heard on the recently released album Esperanza by 23-year-old prodigy Esperanza Spalding, who has been called “the most talked-about young jazz bassist on the planet.”  When bassist/vocalist Spalding performed one of her new songs on The Late Show With David Letterman, Paul Shaffer gushed, “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is the coolest act we’ve ever had on the show.”  It seems only appropriate that Haddad would be collaborating with her.

“I’m someone who I think maybe can join some loose ends together between people who are reaching outside from traditionally where their training is or where their background or ethnicity comes from,” he explains of his diverse collaborations.  Modest too.  Add another coolness point.  He jammed on drum set with Dean Martin’s marimba player at age five; he’s traveled around the world learning all sorts of hand drumming traditions; and he’s even designed his own instruments: Jamey Haddad has found something pretty special to offer performers and listeners through his years of musical self-discovery.  At age 56, he’s still making new discoveries every day.

The Natural.

Haddad’s drumming days began in Cleveland, where he was born and raised by American parents of Lebanese ancestry.  Middle Eastern food and music showed up in his life regularly as a child.  It was at a Lebanese-flavored party where Haddad first remembers being drawn to the drums.  He was four years old and enchanted by watching his aunts and uncles having such a grand old time.

“I never saw them have so much fun, just carrying on big time, sweating and dancing, and people were playing music.  It went on all day.  When you’re a little kid and you see that, it’s like, what could possibly compare to that?  I felt a real affinity for just being able to participate in it.  I just felt it instinctively.

“I remember saying to my father, ‘If you get me one of those drums, I can play it.’ He kind of laughed at the time, but he said, ‘Okay.”  So his dad got him a Middle Eastern darbuka drum.  Haddad’s uncle gave him a couple of lessons on the drum and then turned him loose.

That Christmas, his grandfather got him a drum set.  Shortly thereafter, Haddad began lessons with a guy named Howard Brush, who was off the road after playing drums for guys like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

“I was really dyslexic as a kid and I stuttered a lot and I was kind of a mess — and my teacher was really a great guy,”  he recalls.  “I would go in for my lesson and he’d give me lessons to do, but he could see I was having a problem reading.  But he liked me and I guess he thought I could play.  He was a marimba player, so he would just say, ‘Hey, let’s play a tune.”

Brush would show him something very basic about how to play along and then “he’d play a tune and I’d play along with him,” Haddad says.  “He was just cool and he made the music experience be really about real-time decision-making, relating.  I became like a tuneaholic from that experience.  I’ve always enjoyed accompanying from that point on.  It always seemed like a natural fit for me just to come up with some sort of solution when somebody played because I was always allowed to do that.”

Haddad took lessons for a couple of years and after that just played his drum set all the time.  He continued to play the Arabic drum as well.  When he got into his teens, his grandpa took him to a jazz club called The Theatrical.  It was there where he first heard Bob McKee, a local drummer who used to lead the orchestra on The Mike Douglas Show.  Haddad began taking set lessons from McKee — and started hanging out at McKee’s drum shop on a daily basis.

When he wasn’t hanging out at the drum shop, 14-year-old Haddad was begging his older sister to let him tag along when she went to dances and clubs with her dates.  They often went to a club that would showcase Motown acts like The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, and Stevie Wonder.  “They would bring me down with them because they knew I was a drummer,” he laughs.  “They knew I was crazy for it.”

Haddad not only loved to listen to the music of the era, he loved to dance to the music.  At the dances, where a couple of different blue-eyed soul groups would always play, “We would dance and I knew all the tunes just by listening to them.” So when he heard some band members talking about needing a new drummer, he told them, “I know all the music. I can play right now. They kind of looked at me and laughed and said, ‘What do you mean?’

“Somebody who knew me said, ‘I think he could probably do it.’  So on the last set, they let me sit on the last tune.  They asked me to pick a tune and I said, ‘You pick. I know them all.  I told you I know them all.’  They picked a tune and I played it and I actually got the gig.”

Higher Education.

There was never any question that Haddad would pursue a life of drumming.  “It always felt right to me,” he says.  By the time he finished high school, he was regularly gigging in clubs.  He enrolled in a local college and continued playing all the time.

Haddad played a lot of jazz gigs at a club called the Smiling Dog Saloon, where he’d perform opposite such big names as Herbie Hancock, Sun Ra, Stan Getz, and Dexter Gordon.  When he wasn’t gigging, he’d be hanging out at a music store owned by jazz guitarist Bill DeArango.

“I would go there and he’d have people playing in the basement and he’d be talking about music and play-ing us older records, but also never insisting that we do anything except [explore] the spirit of improvisation — the language of music, of really trying to get your voice together.  Some guys played more swing, other guys played funky, but as far as he was concerned it was all cool.  He was just interested in communication.”

About a year and a half after high school graduation, Haddad’s parents told him that if he wanted to go away to music school, they would support it.  He didn’t really know much about mu-sic school.  The one place he had heard about was Berklee.  He knew that some of his jazz fusion favorites like Keith Jarrett and Joe Zawinul had gone there, which was a huge selling point.

In spite of all of his performing experience prior to heading to Berklee, Haddad says he “still had a ton to learn” because he had never been involved in any formal school bands.  In addition to learning from the school’s prescribed curriculum, Haddad gained a great deal from the time he spent with the “wave of Brazilians” who happened to come to Berklee at the same time he did.  “They were different from the jazz musicians because they actually intimately knew their music in a way that was different.”  Their music was part of their culture.

While at Berklee, Haddad got the opportunity to work with one of his idols, Brazilian musician Airto Moreira, who he’d heard on his Miles Davis and Weather Report records.  “That was like a dream to me because he was kind of doing what I really liked.  He was actually playing drum set and playing percussion.”

“I was always involved with playing some sort of hand percussion, but at that time, we never really saw anybody much who could play really extensive hand drumming kind of stuff.”

Go East, Young Man.

Haddad left school early in favor of gigging.  He spent time playing in Boston and Vegas before heading to New York City in the late ’70’s. Inspiration-wise, it was a great time.  Wayne Shorter had made a record with Brazilian guitarist Milton Nascimento, which brought world music into the jazz mix.  “It was hard-hitting, gorgeous, orchestrated, funky, rock, jazz — it was all the elements we love in great music,” Haddad remembers fondly.  “A whole new playing field — one that made sense to a funk mentality, to a young jazz mentality, to a freer playing kind of mentality, a mentality that encompassed the sound of nature and happenstance.”

Then the group Shakti appeared and also rocked Haddad’s world by coherently merging jazz with a variety of traditional Indian drums.  As far as his own music, however, Haddad was struggling to make a living. It was almost 1980 and hard for musicians to get enough paying gigs to cover the increasingly expensive costs of New York City.  So he moved back to more-affordable Cleveland.

“I was pretty depressed, though, when I came back here,” Haddad says.  A friend suggested Haddad check out an older South Indian mrdangam player named Ramnad Raghavan who used to play with Shakti and was teaching at Oberlin and Cleveland State.

When Haddad went to see him, “He asked me to keep tala, keep cycle, and he just played.  He was just really grooving, like in 4/4, and he showed me how to keep an eight-beat cycle, and then he started modulating the time.  He kept time with his foot too, so you could see where he was coming from, but after about five minutes, man, I didn’t even know what my name was.

“This guy just dropped me off like down the road somewhere and took off.  He was laughing and playing and smiling and offering me nothing but love, but at the same time totally dusted me off.  When it was over, I said, ‘Brother, I’m yours, man.  If the universe decided to send me back here to Cleveland and send me to you, I got the message.  I’m here.’ I saw him three or four times a week for about four years.”

Haddad says he has a thousand instruments and the mrdangam is the most difficult one for him to play.  Raghavan eventually encouraged him to apply for a Fulbright Fellowship to study drumming traditions in India.  He got the fellowship.  “When I got there, it took me about a week to realize that I would never play this music, nor should I play this music, but it was a really great experience.

“I was really focusing on being a jazz musician and trying to integrate some of what I’d been part of through his experience into my playing life.  But when I got there, I realized what they didn’t know about what I loved was a lot too — for as much as they had going on.   There’s something special about what I had going on back home.  It all made sense.  I figured out who I was more and I was going to let the experience just have its way with me and let it just go into the mix and just do my best.”

Haddad had a similar experience a few years prior when he had spent part of a year in Brazil.  Although playing with the Brazilians  “was such a love fest of people and music and generosity of music sharing,”  in the end he knew it wasn’t his music.

“It was never that cut and dry: What music do you play?  What is your music?  I was fortunate around that time that I got a call from Dave Liebman, a great saxophonist and jazz musician and he asked me if I’d be interested in playing with him.”

Liebman Residency.
“He had some pretty advanced thinking about harmony and song form,” Haddad says about working with Liebman.  “There was so much to learn and so much to try to remember and have it be part of your instinctual process.  It seemed like it would never happen, but man, on the road we’d hit and I wouldn’t need the music after the third night or so. I used to go to bed dreaming about how to improvise, approaches on the tune.

“There are very few things that are that intense that you could perform at, that incorporate so many of your physical, mental, and spiritual parts of you,”  Haddad says with awe.  He ended up playing and touring with Liebman for more than ten years.

Amid Haddad’s many travels and studies of drumming styles, he was also experimenting with creating his own drums.  He says he’s inspired to design instruments based on the sound he’s missing and to suit his technique.  His Hadgini is a double-headed ceramic drum that fit the style of split-finger playing he was into.  The Koohabata integrated the influence of the Cuban bata drums, the mrdangam, Indonesian kandang, and the West African djembe.  His Hadjira was a way to get the basic functions of the Indian kanjira, the Brazilian pandeiro, and the Arabic rig.

“I was trying to figure out how to integrate that sound into what I was doing,” he says. “I was working on trying to play my drum set in different kinds of alternative setups.

“I started bringing more instruments to the gigs and different types of things.  Sometimes I’d be playing drum set gigs and people never knew I played percussion at all, and I’d be doing percussion gigs and people never knew I played drum set.  And at some point, there’s a practical reason why, just schlepping all this stuff is just crazy.  So you start to find ways to integrate it, so it will seem like a seamless thing.

“I got better — I think I got better at it anyway — as time went on.”

A Word About Simon.

Paul Simon seemed to like what Haddad was doing.  In 1998, Simon overheard one of Haddad’s demo CDs and asked to meet him. Haddad has been working with him since and admires his ethic.  Even on the hundredth gig of the tour, Simon rehearses as long as he did for the first show.

“To make a tapestry of sound that never really existed in any particular culture before — it’s not necessarily rock and roll and it’s not African mu-sic — you’ve got to play a lot in order to have real meaning.”

Today.

After spending much of his adult life based out of New York City, Haddad decided to resettle in Cleveland about five years ago.  One upside: The cost of living doesn’t force him to take every bit of work that comes his way anymore.  He’s enjoying playing regularly with a couple of different groups, one with “the great Panamanian piano player” Danilo Perez.

“They improvise a large part of their concerts, based on elaborate, long song forms that could be extended,” he says.  “Anything could happen at any moment, and they’re up for it, and they have the talent for it.  That’s where I see myself, in a band like that.”

He also gets his kicks these days trying to hunt down instruments to show-case in one of his passion projects: The Musical Instrument Museum, which is set to open in Phoenix in 2010.

When the school year resumes, he’ll continue to impart his wisdom on world music to the next generation of performers as well.  “I do my best to take people to that place, to try to let them see that it’s truly about them, about awakening something in them,” he says of his students.

Esperanza Spalding was one of his students at Berklee.  “I guess it worked,” Haddad jokes, but adds, “I couldn’t re-ally take credit for anybody — especially someone like her.  She came and she was a burning star from the downbeat.  She’s an inwardly directed musician.  There’s so much coming out of her.  She has no choice but to just bear witness to it as it’s happening.

“I guess when she went to do her record, she invited me to come because maybe she thought, again, I could help tie up some loose ends.  I was honored to do it because I really love her.”  In Spalding’s liner notes, she thanks her teacher for his “insane creativity and belief in my thang.”

Contributing assorted hand drums and percussion (including the Hadgini and Hadjira), Haddad brings vibrant, authentic depth to all the songs he’s featured on throughout Spalding’s eclectic jazz album, which ranges from sultry to funky to sweet to sad.  Although Spalding wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on her album, she kicks it off with “Ponta de Areia,” a song by Milton Nascimento — the same Brazilian musician who so inspired Haddad when he was her age.

Haddad recommends people check out the old footage of Nascimento per-forming on YouTube, promising, “It’s going to rock your soul.”  Why? Because Nascimento exemplifies what music is about, Haddad explains, his voice rising with intensity.  “It’s about how much you ‘get it’ while you’re doing it.”

Aug 1, 2005 Writings

The Spirit of World Music
BY JAMEY HADDAD
Percussive Notes
I really don’t give a damn about mixing politics with music. Music doesn’t need the burden of politics. But I was just reminded by my friend Mark Stewart that every time we play, we make some kind of political statement. Regardless of the musical setting, you’re really letting someone know where you’re coming from. That is the focus here.

Jamey Haddad with the Moroccan women’s ensemble Hadra des Femmes de Taroudant.

I started off the summer of 2003 by re-cording a trio record with singer Nancy Wilson. Then while the bombs were fall-ing in Baghdad, I was in-vited to Beirut, Lebanon and Amman, Jordan to perform with Iraqi singer Kazim El Sahir, acknowl-edged as the sixth most recognized voice in the world by the BBC (how do they really know?). Some-thing is up with him be-cause they had to call the army to get us in and out of both gigs. He and his whole group were fantas-tic. He had a full Iraqi or-chestra and choir with four percussionists. Some musi-cians had already experi-enced bombs in their towns and even on their homes, but before we parted they were singing and chanting my name out of thanks for wanting to share music with them. Thank God for music!

Following that, I started rehearsals with Simon and Garfunkel for a fall and spring 2004 tour. This was and is an extremely powerful and memorable part of American and Eu-ropean musical and cultural history. One night, we played Rome for 600,000 people. I was proud to see the power of Paul’s truly American form of music so well received in Europe, where although anti-Americanism was running high, people still responded openly to the mu-sic and the sentiments that created it—a different America.

The year continued with recordings and concerts with saxophonist Dave Liebman, singer Betty Buckley, Palestinian oud/violinist Simon Shaheen, com-poser/saxophonist Daniel Schnyder, The Paul Winter Consort, Italian singer Chiara Civello, and Venezuelan pianist Leo Blanco. Then there was a five-week concert series across the U.S. with the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music tour that mirrors the invited artists from the Fez Festival every June in Morocco. I performed with everybody on the tour.

My favorite was a Moroccan women’s troop, Hadra des Femmes de Taroudant, from the desert. They were seven singers/ drummers aging 24 to 74, the 74-year-old being the youngest! When we parted and they all gave me their drums as a gift, there wasn’t a dry eye among us. The tour also included Francois Atlan, an Al-gerian Andalusian Jewish singer, a southern Christian Gospel group, and a Jewish and Islamic cantor. Next, there was a huge concert at Rome’s Circus Maximus, organized by Quincy Jones’ “We Are the Future,” with a cast of hundreds in front of a sea of people. Lastly, I toured and recorded with Vietnamese-French guitarist Nguy8n Lee.

I mention these things for the simple reason that, although I do know some-thing about all those styles of music, I am not authentic in any of them. The only thing I am authentic about is my ability and desire to harmonize. I know these folks could get someone from their own musical environment to give their music a cer-tain flavor, but I would like to think they are searching for a mix that helps bring their composi-tions and feelings to life. Sometimes it’s a business strategy to use musicians from outside your normal circles to gain some recog-nition, but I hope they hire me for the right reason.

I am an extremely lucky person to have lived, played, taught, and studied music as a global language, and I can hon-estly say that I view America at its best when it comes to providing a fertile playing field for the grafting of cultures. Hav-ing said that, I think many of us may be se-duced and blinded by American pop culture and music. The danger here is that we’re coming close to putting out the cultural eyes of the rest of the world (MTV has the biggest stick). It’s like a spiritual diet of great-looking, genetically altered veg-etables that have no nutritional value. Pretty soon you become oversized and spiritually starved for the sustenance that is not there. Unfortunately, it is now becoming harder to find nutritious musical seeds.

If I am anything, I am a jazz musician first. Becoming a jazz musician was all I really wanted. My definition of jazz is broad, though. Jazz was a fusion in its inception and jazz will always be an art of fusion. In the world music scene, I know it’s those skills that help me the most. Perhaps it’s my Lebanese mother and father that made my foray into non-western cultures seem as natural as it does (they were both born in the U.S.). Or maybe it’s my inability to really sound like my jazz heroes that prompted me to explore a more wide-open playing field with like-minded players from around the world.

One thing is for sure: There came a time when I truly felt that the quality of vibration that came out of any musician was far more meaningful than what they were playing. I found myself falling in love with music that I knew nothing about, more than the music I knew inti-mately. Better yet, in these musical envi-ronments, the musicians liked me and could feel my heart, and they embraced my good-willed musical intentions (even when I wasn’t cool). Certainly, in many situations I was puzzled and mystified as to when, why, and what to do, but with the right spirit, the process of gaining in-sights is a total joy.

I often describe to my world music classes at Berklee and New England Conservatory what was a real turning point for me. In 1988 I was invited, along with Richard Horowitz (co-composer of music for the film The Sheltering Skies) to rehearse in Marrakech for two weeks. Our job was to develop a musical pro-gram to perform for the King of Morocco at the World’s Fair in Seville, Spain. Ri-chard and I, along with five other Ameri-can musicians, began rehearsing with ten different Moroccan folk groups, mostly from the Berber tradition. One day, after rehearsing a song for hours, I started get-ting bored with the short repetitive tune. Afterwards, a musician from that group invited me back to their tent camp. I was excited at the prospect of hearing these musicians play their music authentically, not the dumbed-down version so that we westerners could feel comfortable and participate.

This particular group had three male musicians—two playing bandir (an early frame drum with snares) and a violin-ist—and four female vocalists. I arrived at their large tents late in the evening, and they began playing together as they did every night. I couldn’t help noticing that the women, whom I had gotten to know at the rehearsals, seemed to go into a trance and had let their hair down to the floor (it was up during the day). To my surprise, after a whole day of re-hearsing, they were still playing that same little tune!

I thought I had it all figured out dur-ing the day, so I joined in the circle and clapped for a good while and again started to get a bit bored. Then I noticed that what I had previously thought was the downbeat really wasn’t, and how the melody fell against the time in a totally different way. Even the musicians didn’t look like the same guys, but they were. As the night went on, my perception of that tune changed significantly, and I was also changed! I remember walking home hours later basking in the afterglow of the experience. Although their music wasn’t new, it acted as a passport into another dimension where a new level of perception made everything seem richer and deeper.

We now have so many international students here in western music conserva-tories that Coltrane is as exotic to some people as Balinese music is to others. If, indeed, music has a power to provide a functional spiritual aspect to our passage on the planet, we must have the obliga-tion to share more of that planet with our students, and we as students need to take the responsibility to expand our mu-sical diet and accept the greater role of music on the planet. To be sure, the abil-ity to do one thing really well is a great start in helping create a personal stan-dard for touching the common link in all of us.

Last year, there was a wonderful inter-view for the Berklee faculty in which Joe Lovano talked about the importance of studying the masters in jazz. I was puzzled by how many of my most talented students have no interest in jazz, but—understanding that they have very little cultural link coming from countries like Peru, Greece, or China—I asked Joe what he would tell such students. His re-sponse was (as I can best remember), “Well, I guess they could have stayed home, but they came to America, so since they’re here with all this great music, who couldn’t learn something from a master?”

I agree. If you’re in America, studying the jazz tradition can provide perhaps your greatest musical tools in reaching out to the rest of the musical world, even if you never have any desire to be a jazz musician. It can all seem too much for a young player to absorb without serious devotion in this most developmental pe-riod of a young life. My suggestion is to give the masters a real chance to touch you. Invest in your originality, stay close to what feels musically true to your na-ture, and develop strong musical rela-tions with people who want to see you shine.

Finally, allow yourself to absorb the feeling of what’s really happening in whatever musical setting you find your-self attracted to. At first, you might not hear what to play, but a willing spirit and an open heart will set the stage for the miracle in music to happen.

PERCUSSIVE NOTES 51 JUNE 2005

Jul 5, 2001 Writings

Plain Dealer: Art News, July 5, 2001
By John Soeder

Jamey Haddad marches to the beat of a different drum – dozens of different drums, actually, including several of his own design. His musical studies and sought-after skills as a percussionist have taken this self-described “Lebanese kid from Cleveland” to Africa, Asia, South America and other far-flung locales. Now he’s on the road with Paul Simon, who headlines Gund Arena tomorrow night. Haddad, who grew up in South Euclid and graduated from Cathedral Latin School in 1970, expects to have a fan club of family members in the audience. “They’ve always been very supportive,” he said by phone before a concert in Detroit.

A strong background in jazz and world music makes him eminently qualified to provide the intricate polyrhythms and globe-trotting grooves that propel the multicultural rock ‘n’ roll embraced by Simon, who is touring with an 11-piece band. Besides Haddad, the rhythm section includes Steve Gadd on drums and Steve Shehan on additional percussion. Haddad said he has a “corral” of 100 percussion instruments onstage, including four drums custom-made to his own specifications. He praised Simon for making “pop music with integrity” and for introducing elements of world music to pop audiences. “I’ve lived in India, Brazil and North Africa. Playing music in all those places has made my life a lot richer,” said Haddad, who now calls New York home. His wife, Mary, is associate dean of admissions at the Juilliard School. They have an 8-year-old daughter, Georgia.

Haddad, 49, is prominently featured on Simon’s latest album, the Grammy Award-nominated “You’re the One.” The two musicians first hooked up four years ago after a mutual friend played a demo CD of rhythm tracks by Haddad at one of Simon’s rehearsals. “Paul is a poet who finds stories everywhere. He feels that if he has a great rhythm track, he can make a great song,” said Haddad. He also has worked with Carly Simon, Judy Collins and jazz singer Bob Dorough, among others. Many of the tunes on “You’re the One” were roughed out and refined in jam sessions where Simon would bounce ideas off Haddad, Gadd and Shehan. Haddad is especially fond of “The Teacher,” a ballad in 11/4 time. “People don’t even notice the fact that it’s in an odd time signature because it has such a trancelike feeling,” he said. He performed with Simon at the Grammy Awards in February and at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in March. Haddad got to accompany Paul McCartney, too, when the former Beatle joined Simon onstage last month in Los Angeles at a benefit concert for the Adopt-a-Minefield campaign to eliminate land mines.

As a child, Haddad was raised on a steady diet of Middle-Eastern music at home. “I started playing drums when I was very young, 3 or 4 years old,” he said. No stranger to the local music scene in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Haddad drummed for the North River Street Rock Collection, a popular local rock outfit. He also played alongside Joe Lovano, the sax star from Euclid, in the jazz trio Inner Urge. “I always thought Cleveland was a real soulful town, musically,” said Haddad.

Between gigs, he teaches at the New School University in New York and Boston’s Berklee College of Music. He’s writing a book about “the polyrhythmical aspects of playing rhythm in the flavor of a groove,” he said. “I believe that rhythms sit in a playing field of time,” he said. “They’re not just written notes somewhere that you can execute.” For Haddad, music provides a vehicle for exploring, not only other cultures, but other states of mind. “It’s a passport to another zone,” he said. “What you hope for is a chance to sink so far into yourself that the perception of any moment gets richer.”

Dec 3, 1999 Writings

By Robert Kaye, December, 1999

Sorry if I seem a little incoherent this morning; we just traveled eight hours by bus.” says Jamey Haddad. The “we” is significant. Haddad is currently touring with Paul Simon’s band, an integral pulse-maker in a cosmopolitan rhythm section that includes Steve Shehan on percussion and Steve Gadd on drums.

Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, Haddad, of Lebanese descent, is equally comfortable playing drum set in a smoking jazz ensemble or hand percussion with exotic world music artists. His discography of over 100 albums includes projects with jazz saxophonists Dave Leibman and Joe Lovano, both of whom he’s played with for almost ten years. He’s produced albums for and recorded with the Paul Winter Consort. Haddad has also recorded with Brazilian guitarist Badi Assad, Irish vocalist Noirin Ni Riain, Palestinian violinist Simon Sheehan, pop diva Carly Simon and the jazz group New York Voices.

“I’m fortunate to be able to travel to many different places playing music,” says Haddad, who now calls New York home. “One of the single biggest eye-openers for me was performing in the world drumming events. Some of the

“The common light that runs through us all is central to the music experience. And with time, persistence, generosity of spirit and an open heart, a common link rises up.”

…events had over 250 percussionists from over 30 counties!”

On the road, along with his cases of instruments, Haddad brings an open mind and an attentive ear. “The experience of gaining insight into any culture outside your own can be extremely subtle and limited,” he says. “But one thing is certain: The common light that runs through us all is central to the music experience. And with time, persistence, generosity of spirit and an open heart, a common link rises up and acknowledges one to another as being of the same source.”

A self-styled “road scholar”, Haddad is no stranger to the academic world. He often teaches a course called Insights Into World Music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and the New School in New York City. He received a Fulbright Fellowship to study classical Carnatic percussion in South India and was awarded four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for jazz performance and international music studies.

Haddad is also involved in instrument design, frequently developing his ideas in conjunction with other craftsmen. Collaborating with Udu maker Frank Giorgini, he created the clay “Hadgini” drum, whose u-like shape flares out at both ends, with apertures for changing timbre and pitch. “The Hadgini combines elements from different instruments,” he explains. “Tonally, it’s similar to the darburku, an Arabic drum, or the djembe from Mali. It focuses the pitch a lot more than the Indian ghatam [clay pot]. You can modulate it about an octave or more.” Some of Haddad’s other instruments include the Hadjira, Hadjenga and Koohabata drums.

For Haddad, percussive prowess is more than just a matter of technique. “With all this musical instrument and performance cross-pollination,” he says, “the single thought that stays with me is, ‘Am I playing from the soul? Do I have enough musical skills to interpret what’s happening and internalize it, to be able to be harmonious with it, to always remember that what really counts is not what you do, it’s how you make people feel?’ The intensity and color of your vibration is what remains in the cosmic language of music.”

In addition to his other projects, Haddad is working on an instructional book-video set titled Global Standard Time. “It deals with various aspects of rhythm and how to understand it,” he says. “For example, is the rhythm vertical? Are there horizontal aspects to it? Is it polyrhythmic? What do you focus on regarding your position in the rhythm? Is there a ‘one’? Is there one central point, or does it constantly mutate as it’s going?

“There are all sorts of rhythmic vehicles that are used in different cultures,” he continues. “For instance, there’s the Bulgarian aspect of playing odd times, lining up small sets of numbers like 1-2/1-2/1-2-3/1-2/1-2 to make a measure of 11/16. And then there’s the South Indian version, which basically puts all that into a common time and actually calculates how it cadences to one of a cycle. So it takes that kind of knowledge. If you can actually be a good enough observer of what’s happening, you can really listen and offer some of your own ideas and not be threatened by your ignorance.”

Haddad’s passion for different cultures’ music is tempered by his high ideals. “I think the world music scene has a lot of charlatans,” he asserts. “I could even be considered one of them. People ask me to do projects for them all the time, and sometimes I feel inadequate to a point and will decline. I know it’s almost impossible to know all the world’s music as well as I’d like. Knowing any one thing at a deep level is my goal. Being in an intense, focused state translates over the gaps in knowledge.

“There’s so much music out there,” Haddad concludes. “I’ve been blessed to have been in so many different places and to have played with so many musicians from various cultures. I just always try to do my best, because I’m in love with this world’s music.”

Nov 20, 1999 Writings

BERKLEE TODAY, FALL 99 By Mark Small

Word that a break in Associate Professor Jamey Haddad’s touring schedule with Paul Simon would allow for his participation in Berklee’s World Percussion Festival in August was welcome news to both festival organizers and participants. Haddad’s deep understanding of the rhythmic underpinnings of American jazz and music of far-flung cultures has placed him in demand at Berklee, in the studios, on the scoring stage, and elsewhere for over two decades. Haddad regularly works with four diverse acts, Paul Simon, Dave Liebman, the Paul Winter Consort, and Broadway actress and singer Betty Buckley. He might also be found on any of the world’s seven continents playing or recording with such folks as violinist /oud player Simon Shaheen, the Assad Brothers (Brazilian guitar duo), South Indian master drummer Trichy Sankaran, French percussionist/composer Steve Shehan, or oud player/composer Rabih Abou Khalil.

Haddad lives in New York and for six years, has made the weekly commute to Berklee for two full days of private teaching, world percussion classes, and frame drumming ensembles. As his musical horizons have become more global over the years, so have his opportunities. A family man, he says one of the hardest things about his current high-profile gig with Paul Simon has been the time spent away from his wife Mary and their daughter Georgia. Ironically, it was through six-year-old Georgia that he made the connection with Simon.

One of Georgia’s playmates at a Washington Heights playground is the son of Jim Corona, Simon’s soundman. After the two dads became acquainted, Haddad gave Corona his demo CD containing some grooves that revealed his eclectic musical nature and showcased the percussion instruments he has developed. At a subsequent Simon rehearsal, Corona popped the CD into the player to test out the speakers. It caught the legendary songwriter’s attention and Simon told Corona he wanted to meet Haddad.

“Paul had worked very hard with his band to get the right feel for one of his songs,” said Haddad. “When he heard one groove on the CD he was able to play the song to it. He had Jim invite me to the rehearsal studio to play.” Haddad brought an array of unusual percussion instruments and a Jam Man device that allows him to overdub various instruments in real time to create a groove. Simon was impressed and the next day he was working one-on-one with Haddad on grooves. Since November of 1998, Haddad has been working with Simon’s 12-piece band and recording tracks for his upcoming album. The Paul Simon/Bob Dylan double bill was one of the summer’s most celebrated tour attractions and included stops at places like Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl.

Haddad began to play music at four years old. “Growing up in Cleveland and being of Lebanese ancestry, I started playing the Arabic dumbec and a drum kit at the same time,” he recalled. “The music I played with my relatives at parties was folkloric. Seeking to become integrated into American society, I wanted to play Motown music and Stevie Wonder tunes.” Haddad became friends with fellow Cleveland musician, saxophonist Joe Lovano, a player Haddad credits with shaping his playing and teaching him much about the jazz tradition.

After studies at Berklee, Haddad played with many different jazz musicians and continued to expand his horizons in other directions. He received a Fulbright Fellowship and studied percussion in South India for six years. He has also received four National Endowment for the Arts fellowships to pursue jazz and international studies and collaborations.

Playing with Paul Simon is an unusual situation for Haddad who has never sought out a pop music gig. “Paul is someone who can appreciate where I am coming from,” he said. “I don’t think there is anyone who rivals him at integrating musicians and flavors from around the world with popular music form. He really knows what works for him. We have rehearsed for two hours before every concert and talked about details in the music. Working like that, you learn a lot about what textures work and what ones don’t, what beats elevate and those that don’t. Paul understands what happens when you get that part of it right—you get 20,000 people having a great time and dancing in the aisles.”

Haddad wonders if he had gotten a gig like this early on, would he have put the demands on himself that has or would his talents have matured as they have from playing so many different kinds of music?

“It could be a bit deceiving for a young musician to play on a gig like this with two percussionists and a drummer like Steve Gadd—the groove is really happening and the music so recognizable that people just love it. You might start thinking that the job is to make people happy. If you think the job in music is just to do whatever it takes to make the people happy, you could become a bust. To me, the job is to become the best human being that you can be and music is your tool. As a byproduct, you make people happy by doing what you do. Music is an inner trip that helps your growth as a person and as an artist.”

Jul 29, 1999 Writings

DAILY NEWS, New York City, JULY 29TH, 1999 By Jim Dwyer

Directly in front of Jamey Haddad were the boxes of air that he touches into music: 40 drums and shells, hollow sticks and ceramic pots, broomsticks and cymbals.

The percussion tools and Haddad sat on a platform slightly above the rest of the stage.

Just below him were the backs and arms of four horn players and a guitarist from Cameroon. Across the stage were two other drummers, a keyboard player, a bassist, another guitarist. At the front of all the players was Paul Simon. And beyond him were 19,000 people in the arena at Madison Square Garden, screaming their heads off. Paul Simon

On stage, the wash of spotlights fell into Haddad’s eyes, blurring the thousands of people into shapes in the dark.

He peered into that darkness, trying to find one bright face.

This was Tuesday night, when Paul Simon ran a concert for the ages at the Garden. How Jamey Haddad came to back Simon, a New York original, is a story that begins in an uptown playground.

For 30 years, Haddad has been regarded as a percussionist of fierce originality and brilliance, a man who moved in the cloistered world of jazz and world musicians. He lives in Washington Heights with his wife, Mary Gray, an administrator at Juilliard, and their daughter, Georgia,
who is 6.

Down the street is Spencer Corona, also 6, going on 7. Georgia and Spencer hung out at the same playground.

First, the kids found each other. Then the parents did. Spencer’s dad, Jim, also is a musician, and works for Paul Simon as a technical assistant. Every inch of space in the Haddad apartment is occupied by instruments, many of them designed and invented by Haddad, working with
a sculptor.

Last fall, Simon was working on a new album of songs and struggling to make the percussion sound right. Jim Corona happened to be playing a demo CD, made by Haddad, of pure percussion. Simon stopped to listen for a minute.

“What is that?” asked Simon. “That’s my neighbor,” said Corona. “Tell him to come down here,” said Simon.

Haddad does not travel light. At the first rehearsal, he arrived with 17 cases and hundreds of instruments. In time, he pared it down. “What is that thing you just played?” Simon would ask. Haddad would answer with a name that he gave a hybrid invention — the Hadgini. “I don’t think so,” Simon would answer. They would move on until the right tool in the Haddad arsenal was found.

“He is a master, you know,” says Simon. “A very, very, well-schooled drummer. He understands drumming intellectually, rhythmically, emotionally.”

At one of their first meetings, Simon asked Haddad about his roots. “I’m third-generation Lebanese, born in Cleveland, and I’ve lived a lot of places in the world,” said Haddad. “I don’t have a name for the music. It’s just who I am.”

Soon, Haddad had introduced Simon to another percussionist, Steve Shehan, a Cherokee-Irish-American who was reared in Paris. They hooked up with the drummer Steve Gadd, who has played with Simon for years. Simon put aside the album of songs to start the tour, which included a performance last night in Holmdel, N.J., and will go to Jones Beach tonight and tomorrow. “We rehearse every day,” said Haddad. “I heard the last tour was 160 dates or something, and they had rehearsal 160 times, including the last night. He is not complacent.”

They rolled across the country in two big buses, one for nonsmokers, the other for people who stayed up all night and played, most of the drummers. In Simon, the drummer of exotic style found a way into the world of popular music. “I’ve been teaching young people,” said Haddad, “and I know for sure that they can always get next to music that transcends idiom. His music straddles all these worlds. James Brown said, ‘People gotta dance.'”

They had gone through Detroit when the Yankees were playing there, and Simon and David Cone, the pitcher, met and talked about performing with the knowledge that neither man’s game was infinite. And so they ended back in New York on Tuesday night, for the peak concert of the tour, pairing Simon with Bob Dylan. Simon was relaxed, scatting some lines, breaking up words and playing with them as rhythms, singing as well as he ever has. “I have nothing to say other than how much joy there is in life — and to grasp it,” he said. “That’s it. Because there’s JFK Jr.”

The music was triumphant and joyful, the lyricism of Simon’s language sent into the sky with rhythms and horns. Haddad pulled out the Hadgini, a ceramic drum, for “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” and then, for “Mrs. Robinson,” a Hadgiri, a tambourine hybrid that Haddad built from instruments used in North Africa and southern India. When they played “Trailways Bus,” from Simon’s musical, “The Capeman,” he took out the large brooms to play the drumheads with “a bright attack, but still let the bass sounds of the drum come through,” said Haddad.

By the time the show was nearing an end, when the band was blowing through “You Can Call Me Al” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” the entire audience was up and dancing. His gaze played along the aisles.

There. She was standing in her mom’s lap. Georgia Haddad knew her dad was hunting for them, and she had been waiting for her dad’s eyes to lock into their seats. It was near midnight, and she was tired and has been a little under the weather. But she found his eyes, and lifted her hands into the sky, blowing double kisses.

And clear across the stage, behind the great Paul Simon and the marvels of musicians playing with him, the double kisses found their mark. Having touched his magical boxes of air all night, Jamey Haddad now lifted his hands over all the clever gadgets, and waved, sending one sound past all the din and excitement of thousands of people, the flutter of wings, landing directly on her seat.

(Original Publication Date: 07/29/1999)

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.