|
|
||||||||||
For a lively experience, Drumfest can’t be beatDrumfest
2005 is a look inside Matthieu Keijser’s headHalifax
Herald - November 5, 2005 It’s a dreamworld in there. And the jungle is full of drums.Keijser’s passion for percussion is more infectious than the avian flu.He’s not happy unless he floods the stage at St. Matthew’s United Church with drums and drummers, singers and dancers, hand-clappers, even jugglers, and a brace of brilliant break-dancers, as he did Friday night in the first of two Drumfest evening performances.The second show is tonight at 8 p.m. The show is a bit of a marathon — three hours without a break — but it’s just like the weather. If you don’t like it, wait five minutes.With nearly 25 acts, you can’t miss an experience or two of rhythmic euphoria of the kind which has been known to keep dancers on their feet for hours before the music stops and they drop like stones.Keijser emceed the show, took part now and then, but especially opened it with the fundamental rhythm of life, the thump-THUMP of our hearts — all beating out the same riff beneath all those colours and shapes and sizes, accents, orthodoxies, warped thoughts and idealisms.We all clapped it like we had been hearing it all our life. No matter who you are, there is an instrument for you in the Drumfest mix which included first nation frame drum, bodhran, tabla, ric, darabuka, cajon, castenet, udu, djembe, dundun, kangogi bell, bata, conga, clave, pipe, drum set, marimba, xylophone, bells, tympani, surdo, tamborim and tamboura.And just when you thought there were no more varieties possible, Dani Oore shows up with his oorofhone, a PVC variation on the didgeridoo shaped like an upside down Greek letter pi, its squeals and squalls and squawks a perfect accompaniment to the amazing break-dancing of Jake Evans and his friend Roger Sparks, who threw themselves around the stage like frenzied spaghetti. Everyone will have a different list of highlights in such a show.One for me was Mark Currie’s dramatic demonstration of the bodhran, played in a darkened house with a light behind it showing both his hand/finger motions on frame and skin and the twirling dance of the double-ended beater.The rhythms, cross-rhythms, phased rhythms, fascinatingly projected, were as articulate as a Shakespearean soliloquy.A lively set by El Viento Flamenco and an extraordinary Cuban song with three udu (spherical pots with a deep, rounded boom of a sound played by Keijser, Tony Tucker and Keith Mullin), three singers (Lisa Lindo, Shelly Fashan and Deanna Sparks) and an Irish flute (John Goodman) paid homage to the tango. spedersen@herald.ca |
||||||||||
| JOIN
SAMBA NOVA |
||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
