Masters of Groove
Duke Ellington gave us the throwaway line, “There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind”. You could say the same for groove: music either grooves, or it doesn’t.
Of course, in both instances the verdict is subjective. And yet more often than not there is a consensus, there’s something about the beat that makes you want to “get up offa that thing,” as James Brown so unsubtly put it.
In this issue of Rhythm, top drummers offer their advice on how to improve your groove. So by way of introduction, let’s touch on some of the terms often associated with the notion of groove.
Far and Wide
In any discussion of groove, words like ‘feel’, ‘pocket’, ‘swing’ and ‘funk’ crop up. A good groove is said to appeal to the emotional and physical rather than the intellectual. That is really Western European musical snobbery – we can ponder the complexities of rhythm and groove just as deeply as harmony or melody. But, certainly, a great groove has an uplifting quality that often evokes a positive emotion of pleasure. Groove brings a smile to your face, you can’t sit still, you are impelled to sway and jig about in some curious fashion which we humans call dancing!
As drummers, we study the milestone beats of overtly groovy funk masters like the drummers of James Brown – or Zigaboo Modeliste, Tiki Fullwood, Bernard Purdie and Mike Clark. But groove has a vastly greater reach. You can get that urge to dance from an Irish jig or a Scottish reel, a New Orleans rag, early rock ‘n’ roll, a Motown anthem, even a machine-based club track.
Correspondingly, the drummers who taught us to groove are gathered from far and wide. Out of Africa came Tony Allen, from Jamaica came Carlton Barrett, from Brazil came Airto Moreira. The best-loved drummers in every field have a unique personal groove, be it ‘Papa’ Jo Jones in Count Basie’s swing orchestra, Art Blakey in bebop, or John JR Robinson on a thousand studio dates.
