Bored Drummers - Songlines Soapbox

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.



Drummers: we love ‘em. They are – quite literally – the heartbeat of much of the world's music, whether they’re holding down an ensemble in a groove or whipping up the audience with a frenzied battery. There are few more intoxicating experiences than those led by polyrhythms blasted from drum-skins, and for that, drummers, we humbly thank you. But over the past decade or so, I’ve slowly become aware of an on-going epidemic that is sweeping the rhythmic community with frightening effect… I'm talking of course about the plight of Bored Drummers in Quiet Sections of Concerts. It really is a worrying trend. The most easily infected are kit drummers who play in bands, but players of single drums and percussion sets are definitely not immune.

You may have noticed some of the symptoms yourself. They manifest whenever the tempo slows and the ensemble quietens to a hush; maybe it’s during a subdued solo, an introductory a cappella section, or perhaps a stripped back mid-piece breakdown that renders a drummer's usual soundcraft unsuitable. Without a strong pulse to solidify, the drummer starts to get bored and, in an effort to keep their attention on the job at hand, they start to make vague, indistinct noises with their kit or whatever they have close to hand. The first indications of the Bored Drummer are fairly basic and innocuous: rumbling on the tom-toms, using soft beaters to create a wash of cymbals (the more bored the drummer, the more cymbals are involved; bonus points if they’ve managed to sneak a gong onto the stage), or tinkling on a strategically placed set of chimes.

But from those initial inklings of the condition, the possibilities are endless. It can take many eclectic and eccentric forms. Anything that can make an interesting yet still essentially non-descript sound is fair game: cowrie shells are rattled, spring-based contraptions are used to imitate thunder, cymbals are sounded with violin bows, all manner of rainsticks, maracas and home-made bell trees are shaken… I’ve even encountered musicians picking up and dropping heavy chains just to have something to do. The really out-there go so far as to entertain themselves with unpitched wind instruments such as conches, bullroarers and whirly-tubes. Maybe you haven’t noticed this habit yet, but you will now I’ve mentioned it. And you’ll notice it every single time it happens.

Where does this strange phenomenon come from? I guess it’s rooted in the big Late Romantic orchestras with their huge percussion sections – the composers needed to entertain their musicians through multi-hour works, and so littered them with frequent timpani rolls and cymbal crashes. But I think this current strain dates back to small-band jazz. In the early days, jazz drummers could get away with shuffling on a snare with brushes in the quiet bits, but eventually the long ballads and unmetered solo sections of more progressive styles rendered the drummers’ keen technical abilities temporarily surplus to requirements. From there, the boredom only increased, and the phenomenon of random percussive twiddling started to spread.

“It adds atmosphere!” the drummers will no doubt be quick to plead, from all the way back there on their little platforms. And sometimes it does, if their contributions are subtle enough, employed sparingly and judiciously by thoughtful and skilled musicians. But that’s not usually the case, is it? More often than not, it offers little more than vague, contextless white noise that – if anything – gets in the way of whatever atmosphere is being created, especially if the audience’s attention is diverted from that atmosphere towards the ostentatious percussion the drummer is now brandishing.

I’m sure you’ll agree, the problem of Bored Drummers is clearly a worrying trend. So how can we fix it? Well, some solutions have already begun making their way onto the stage. Lately, some drummers have been given a little keyboard or Kaoss pad, with the task of adding a drone, ostinato or other synthesised atmosphere to these quieter moments. It won’t work in every scenario, but it’s much more welcome than the current state – although it does come with the added danger of allowing a drummer the dangerous capability of full scales. Can you imagine the carnage? God forbid.

Maybe the solution could be to offset the quieter moments with more loud ones. Let’s hear more drum solos! We don’t seem to get as much of these nowadays, and a tasty solo is always fun. If we have more of them, maybe we’ll tire the drummers out so that they won’t need to use their bottled-up Animal-esque energy during the quiet bits. Or maybe we can all chip in and give them all a small handheld games console that they can whip out during more subdued moments to entertain themselves (ideally with headphones attached)? I don’t know.

To any drummers reading – we care about you, we need you and we appreciate your contributions to music all over the world for the past 7,500 years. We want you to be safe, and we don’t want you to be bored. Keep doing what you do best: creating thick topiaries of thumping bombast and crashing cymbal, or else an intricate filigree of complex polyrhythm. And when things slow down and take an introspective turn, put down that extravagant home-made noisemaker or whatever other doohickey you’re reaching for. Let the music breathe and the atmospheric mists rise unmolested by crinkles, rattles or chimes. Don’t get struck down by the Bored Drummers in Quiet Sections of Concerts illness – we’re all here to support you and protect you and keep you doing the Music Gods’ work. Now, we’ll see you next time you’re on stage, and we look forward to hearing your art. Stay well, stay healthy. And maybe you can keep a shaky egg, for very special occasions only.


Photo: Drum kit, by Ewan Topping. Used under licence CC BY 2.0.

The Place of Live Recordings - Songlines Soapbox

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 133, December 2017.



On April 7, 1968 at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, Nina Simone performed a new song called ‘Why? (The King of Love is Dead)’. Written by bassist Gene Taylor and taught to the band just that afternoon, the song was a response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, which occurred just three days earlier. It is a 13-minute exploration of sadness, anger and solidarity, performed by the immaculate Dr Simone. It pulsates with emotion and power. The song was never recorded in a studio; it didn’t need to be. The show was recorded live and this first rendition was perfect. It has become known as one of Simone’s greatest pieces.

I have been playing that song almost daily over the last few weeks, so of course it’s right at the top of my mind. But I’ve also been listening to some not-so-good concert albums lately too, and these joint experiences have got me thinking about the place that live albums occupy in our record collections.

There have been amazing live albums through the years that have become essential additions to any collection; some concert-recorded versions of pieces have even become definitive over those from the studio – Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman No Cry’ is a prime example. But when you think about it, the live recording is a rather strange phenomenon.

It’s because the quality of live albums can hardly ever stack up to that of studio albums. First of all, the musicianship on display at a gig is rarely at the same standard. In a studio, an artist can spend days recording the same pieces over and over again and that will necessarily yield near-perfect performances, but if you have just the one chance and one take to record a concert, then the rough edges of a performance will be there to hear forever. And then there’s the sound quality: until recently, live recordings have usually sounded far inferior to those made in-studio. An exciting stage presence and a large, unpadded room makes setting up microphones a less precise science than in the controlled environment of a recording studio. It means that the end results are often noisy or muddy-sounding, instruments don’t sound as sparkly as they should do, and lyrics are harder to discern. That’s not even mentioning the dreaded feedback that still manages to find its way onto albums now and then.

Nevertheless, we love them. The live recording has an enduring popularity. Many artists release live material at some point, whether as an album, as bonus tracks or as special downloads. If they never get released, there are always bootlegs floating about. So…why?

Watching an amazing concert is one of the pinnacles of being a music fan. When everything lines up just right – the music is excellent, the crowd is up for it and the chemistry between the artist and their audience is flowing – it is simply a sublime experience. It’s the reason why the received wisdom is that most bands have to be seen live to fully understand their music. It is natural, then, that both artists and fans want to capture and relive this feeling in some way. But surely reliving only works when the listener went to that specific concert (or at the very least, the same tour). What about everyone else?

It may well be something deeper than our conscious opinions on the quality of art. Maybe live recordings trigger a more instinctive reflex of our animal brains; a subliminal reaction to the unnaturalness of multi-tracked recordings. Perhaps our brains recognise the ‘uncanny valley’ aspect of a piece of music made by musicians who do not occupy the same physical or temporal space as one another. The live album is a reaction against that: music as it was meant to be made ‘naturally’, a group of people communicating communally with each other through sound and song. It is, as humans tend to strive towards, an authentic (as opposed to synthetic) experience.

And humans love to be part of something. It’s one of the thrills of being at a great gig. Audience and artists all experiencing the same moment together, collectively and socially, and that’s a special thing. Live albums can’t replicate it thoroughly (you can’t get that unique heat or smell of a close crowd, especially if they’re in dance mode), but it does let you imbibe some of that same feeling, receiving an amount of that same connection to the artist in their most heartfelt moments. It tells some quiet part in the back of your brain that you are part of this very special group who understands this music in a very special way.

For all their flaws, it could be that we just like it that way. It’s those imperfections that make it sound natural and communal to us. The latest album of a shall-remain-unnamed West African artist was stitched together from material from several dates of a tour. Listening to it, I realised that something about it seemed not quite right. I’d heard all of the pieces before and I felt I knew these versions. These were live recordings, but the sound quality was so good, the audience so quiet in the mix and obviously the best takes used that it didn’t have the live vibe at all. The tracks just sounded like re-recordings of those I already knew.

It seems to me like we crave that imperfection. To err is human, after all. When we hear that not every note is spot-on, when the sound is a bit off and there is a slight bubble of crowd noise in the background, it reassures us that the musicians are real people, and that our emotional connection to them and their music is well-placed.

So, basically: live recordings have to be bad to be good. Within reason, obviously. But so what? Let’s revel the bizarreness of our human brains and enjoy good music, bad or otherwise! After all, some of it may be the best recordings ever made.


Photo: Nina Simone, by Victor Pineda. Used under licence CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Fuck Guitars - Songlines Soapbox

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 113, December 2015.



A few pieces of wood, six strings and a handful of twiddly mechanical bits – put them together in the right order and you have an instrument that has arguably had a greater impact on music in the last 100 years than anything or anyone else.

Since the modern guitar came about in the mid-18th century, it has become the most widespread instrument in the world, being adapted to play almost every kind of music and acting as a catalyst for the development of new genres – from delta blues and reggae to flamenco and palm-wine – and of course many, many types of rock music.

2015 marks the 60th anniversary of the two guitars, bass and drums set-up, and that standard rock guitar band formula is going as strong as ever. In fact, it has become so ubiquitous that when the UK’s biggest music festival features headliner that doesn’t follow that format, more than 100,000 people will sign a petition of complaint.

It’s not hard to see how this global instrumental explosion came about – guitars are portable, they can be very cheap, it’s easy to learn the basics, and we almost all grew up listening to the guitar greats of the last century. Guitar culture is now well and truly ingrained.

Guitars are used in traditional and neo-traditional music almost everywhere, sometimes together with local instruments, sometimes replacing them – for example, Tuareg guitar bands are famous in our circles, but it’s very rare to hear a traditional tehardent or imzad. Closer to home, British folk clubs are now mostly the reserve of voice and guitar, with the wonderful array of folk instruments falling by the wayside. Well, I don’t like it. The guitar has been king for too long and it’s slowly wearing away at the world’s glorious diversity. I’m sure you all agree with me. But complaining won’t help. What we need is a plan.

Now, under my glorious leadership, I will propose a global guitar ban. I know, I know, it’s not going to be very popular, but it’s for your own good, got it? Not forever, let’s try it for 25 or 30 years and see where things end up. A guitar-free generation. Let’s make it acoustic, classical and electric guitars for now. Bass guitars would probably have to fall under the umbrella too. Non-standard guitars, including pedal steels, Mohan veenas and the like, are a bit of a grey area, and probably exempt, although further consultation would be required on this.

Guitar records are of course perfectly acceptable, it would be indecent to ban the legends; their influence deserves to live on. Hopefully, viewing the guitar oeuvre in retrospect will cause the best music and musicians to rise to the top, allowing us, as a people, to forget the most mundane output.

The idea is not to get rid of guitars because of some mean-spirited and petty gripe, it’s simply a means to an end. If all goes well, this could usher in a new dawn of musical creativity! People would no longer be shackled to the guitar and children would no longer grow up thinking that ‘musician’ means ‘guitarist’ – a world of instruments would open up to them, interest in a wider range of timbres would flourish, and with it an appreciation for more varied music.

Perhaps there would be a revival of older, less guitar-oriented styles. Folk and brass music would be reenergised in Britain. People would return to and reinvent the roots of what has become guitar music in many cultures. A cappella song would blossom all over the world. And as these other styles are rediscovered, so too a whole variety of older, dying or extinct instruments. The all-purpose guitar is out, let’s find more individual, unique and exciting instruments – there is such a wealth of sounds out there for former or would-be guitarists to embrace, so pick up something new and experiment! Bassists could switch to a double bass at a pinch, but why not opt for something more creative? How about using a guimbri, a bassoon or take the lead of Terem Quartet and take the contrabass balalaika to new heights?

With luck, by the time guitars are reintroduced, the musical landscape will have changed for good. Guitars will integrate themselves as an important but by no means necessary instrument in the newly and widely diverse scene. And then we’ll have, y’know, world peace.

As you can see, there would be absolutely no downsides to this plan. Well, maybe a few. All the experimentation will produce unexpected results, and these could be amazing! But on the other hand, we could see the guitar band replaced by spoken word recited over gamelan played entirely on electric accordions. Such is the nature of unpredictability.

Maybe guitars will just be replaced near-wholesale by another instrument – piano, perhaps – and the period of proscription would just be waited-out, the guitar and guitar music eventually continuing their global dominance for decades to come. It may even be worse: the (let’s face it) inevitable uprising and overthrow may well lead to a guitar revival, meaning even more ubiquity and homogeny.

So, do we reckon this is a good idea? Do the pros outweigh the cons? Will you join me in a global musical revolution against the tyranny of the guitar?! Well, for now, I guess we’ll have to let the UN decide…but watch this space!


Photo: Smashed Guitars, by Eva Rinaldi. Used under licence CC BY-SA 2.0.

Cover Versions - Songlines Soapbox

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 104, November/December 2014.

Well, it started out at WOMAD. I was chatting with Songlines’ dear respected editor-in-chief, Simon Broughton, and we were both watching The Jolly Boys. Lovely, sunny mento music to dance away a balmy summer afternoon. Talking about the band, Simon mentioned that “they were veterans when I started” – and indeed, they’ve been going solidly for sixty years…not too shabby! It struck me as very odd, then, that they closed their set with a cover of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’. Their most recent bout of fame has come through their cover of this song on YouTube. Don’t get me wrong: they do a lovely version, it worked well within the set and the tune lent itself to mento better than I would have expected. But while it’s understandable that artists would play their most well-known piece at the end of their set, for a band with a history of more than 60 years’ worth of original Jamaican roots music, it seemed a bit of a shame that their ‘crowning achievement’ would be a cover of a British soul song that they recorded just a few years ago.

It got me thinking about the wider use of cover versions of popular Western songs within world music. When you set your mind to it, there are loads of them, from the popular to the obscure, and from the musically successful (such as Rachid Taha’s ‘Rock el Casbah’ and Fanfare Ciocărlia’s ‘Born to Be Wild’) to the frankly terrifying (Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’ ‘Oh Susannah’ – see above), but that’s the same across all music. When covers are done well (or at least, marketed well), they can really help their artists edge towards the mainstream, if not necessarily break into it, as can be seen in the case of Rachid Taha and even projects such as Rhythms del Mundo, which saw Western pop acts record their own songs backed by Cuban musicians, including some of Buena Vista Social Club.

It’s natural that listeners gravitate towards what they already know, and nowadays with YouTube related videos, Spotify recommendations and Pandora Radio (in the US and the antipodes), it’s so much easier for someone who would perhaps not be regarded as part of the ‘traditional’ world music target audience to latch onto something ‘the same but different’, rather than a song title in a different language from a place they’ve never heard of. The usual argument is that it helps to broaden people’s tastes, and while I’m sure that that is true to some extent, I must ask, how often does it really work? How many people only know Rachid Taha as ‘that guy who did the Arabic version of The Clash’? Rhythms del Mundo was a commercial success, but did any of the Cuban musicians gain any popular recognition as a result of it? There will be many more people who are familiar only with the cover versions than those who delved further into the other music of these artists, or even further into the traditions from which they arose.

The problem here is that these covers risk turning into ‘click-bait’ – banking on the bizarreness of a Romanian brass band playing hard rock to grab the attention of some more listeners. It’s as if the performers are being presented in the same way as a freak show – marvelling at unfamiliarity rather than substance. A telling quote comes from Kenny Young, the mastermind of Rhythms del Mundo: “the idea came to me like a bolt: musicians from Buena Vista Social Club with Western artists and good songs”. Evidently, Cuban songs weren’t good enough.

Questions need to be asked of the intent behind these tracks and whose choice it was to perform them. If the artist chooses to cover a piece because they enjoy it or think they could do something interesting with it, well that’s one thing, but if the main motivation is to gain widespread attention, isn’t that rather a sad state of affairs?

Artists from world music genres should be allowed to use the market in any way they see fit, but if this is the case, it shows the wider flaw in the way music is marketed, and effectively encapsulates the struggles that world music deals with in this market. Nor can we really say that artists shouldn’t be using their music in such a way – after all, Western artists perform covers too (although they are rarely used in the same novelty way as ‘world’ covers are) and non-Western artists playing them isn’t new either. When Western pop music started to become popular around the world, local cover bands became incredibly widespread, and were the vehicles for many world music superstars’ formative experience and exposure. If we dictate what music ‘world’ artists should play, we risk forcing the musicians into the cul-de-sac of exotic curiosity, only allowing them to play music that we in the West seem ‘appropriate’ for their cultural background, exposing an underlying neo-colonial attitude. It’s all very muddy.

I think that overall, we have to draw the same unsatisfying conclusion that we seem to come up against when approaching anything to do with world music (including the ever-lasting debate over the term itself): it’s not great, but it’s probably what we’re going to have to put up with for the moment. While playing covers of Western popular music is one of the only ways that world music acts can gain any sort of mainstream recognition in the West, the artists and their marketeers will exploit this, and it’s very hard to blame them. All that can be done, for the moment at least, is to enjoy these covers for what they are – usually good, often fun and sometimes completely bizarre pieces of music – while we come up with the magical solution to unconditionally offer our favourite musicians from around the world the attention they deserve.