The Top 10 Essays on Chronicles

20 months in, Chronicles is going well. I’m finally able to say what my main area of interest is, what idea ties all the writing together:

I’m most interested in the folklore and oral tradition of drummers and the drumset.

Throughout the vast majority of human history, drums were played by bare and empty hands, without feet, most often with one drum to a player. Only in the USA in the early 20th century did the drumset emerge, where ancient and evolving African traditions met stick technique from Europe and the young nation’s manufacturing savvy. And right there, in that moment of creation, that’s where the folklore comes in, the folklore and oral tradition of the drumset.

By ‘folk’ I don’t mean ‘the proletariat’, or the Sixties folk revival, but folk in the sense that we don’t know really know who, exactly, developed the stuff we all play, the beats and patterns that undergird all of American music. We really just know who popularized or perfected it, which is, of course, a lot to know.

Examples of folk practice, in order of learning and preparation:

• Traditional grip;

• Rudiments;

• Brush playing;

• Feathering the bass drum;

• Use of the hi hat;

• Tuning;

• How to play a cymbal;

• Swinging or creating a good feel— this is the ultimate folk tradition;

• Countless other little things.

Scratch the surface of any of the great drummers, living or dead, and you’ll find folk wisdom and the oral tradition. This is what powers the innovators, it’s what allows the cross-genre double agents to record classic jazz, R&B, and rock and roll, and it undergirds the improvisers. Folk drumming is where it’s at.

This is my obsession, so I’ll repeat it: those shadowy figures, and the folklore and oral tradition they transmitted, are the folks who made the music what it is. We owe them all respect.

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For instance:

Right now, I’m listening to Ben Riley with Thelonious Monk, and Ben is playing brushes on the snare drum. Brush playing is 100% folklore and oral tradition, it was just something drummers started doing because it worked.

So far as I know, not a single orchestral score called for a drummer to play brushes before jazz drummers showed the world what to do with them; no composer proposed playing a snare drum with what had been, previously, fly swatters. That’s an incredible deductive leap, to look at household tools and see the brushes that I’m going to use at my gig tonight.

At this moment, Ben Riley is soloing, using repurposed fly swatters on a modern drumset, playing variations on European military drumming that cleverly evoke the lines of bebop pianists and saxophonists while outlining the form of Monk’s composition. Nothing Ben Riley plays comes from composers, from written drum music, or from a conservatory. This is ancient to modern communal know-how, still alive today. I’m tapping into this tonight for my gig at Bar Lunatico.

Let’s hear it for Ben Riley, let’s hear it for the community that gave us this music.

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But wow, this Substack has been so much more successful than I could have imagined. There are 82 articles right now on Chronicles; some are more substantial than others, but each one is composed, edited, and sweated over, and all of them circle around and around my central interest.

In case you missed them, here are the 10 most popular articles I’ve written so far:

1. The R&B Roots of Modern Jazz

2. Archie Shepp and Philly Joe Jones

3. Swing To Bop: Kenny Clarke at Minton’s

4. Brian Hennessy’s Klook: The Story Of Kenny Clarke

5. New Video of Tony Williams with Larry Young

6. From The Archives: Five Awkward Conversations With Paul Motian

7. Tony Oxley, 1938-2023

8. Snowfall (on the origins of Miles Davis’s Miles Ahead)

9. It’s Time: Max Roach and M’Boom, 1970-1984

10. James Williams: Alter Ego

Nice cross-section of interests— I’ve got some hip readers.

Here are a few personal favorites:

• Raindrops on Roses, a deep dive on Coltrane’s original studio recording of “My Favorite Things”;

• Burt’s Eighth Notes, thinking about how to play Burt Bacharach’s music with Mark Morris;

• Max Roach at 100, Part 3, a look at his duo recordings with Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, Abdullah Ibrahim, Cecil Taylor, and Connie Crothers.

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Final promo bit: I’m playing tonight at Lunatico in Brooklyn with Stacy Dillard, Ethan Iverson, and Vicente Archer. If you’re in town, come by and say hello.

And Troy Collins at Point of Departure published this nice email interview with me, with many shoutouts to friends and colleagues:

• Troy Collins: Vinnie Sperrazza, A Family Affair