Thirty years ago Keith Terry had the light bulb moment that would
make him an icon in the Bay Area music scene. He was playing drums for
Jazz Tap Ensemble when he suddenly became keenly aware of the way his
own body reverberated. Terry realized that any sound he could make with
sticks and a trap set could also be achieved by slapping his body. By
clapping the soft part of his palms, he’d imitate the sound of mallets
hitting a snare. He’d get a dry echo by rattling the bones of his
chest, or thwapping the spongy part of his cheeks. He’d grind his
knuckles to get the sound of something being scraped clean. He’d tap
the soles of his shoes. He became, in Cook and Coles’ assessment, a
human hambone.
“It was a dance that had its own inherent soundtrack, which I really
love,” Terry said in a recent phone interview. Over three decades he’s
compiled a vast repertoire of stage routines and served as a one-man
rhythm section for various groups, most notably the a cappella sextet
Slammin’ All-Body Band (which also features a beatboxer). He’s created
a surprisingly complex sound palette and given body percussion a sense
of technical rigor. Last April Terry received a Guggenheim Fellowship,
which helped him launch a project he’d dreamt about for years: an
international body music festival.
Probably the first of its kind — and definitely a change of
pace for Oakland nightclubs — the body music festival will
feature a sampling of world groups that Terry might never have known
about, had it not been for the miracle of YouTube. Among them are
Turkish duo KekeCa, which bases its material on folk rhythms that often
occur in odd meters (try 13 or 17); two Inuit throat singers; and the
Brazilian ensemble Barbatuques, whose members whose orchestrated body
slaps as their only instrumentation. Judging from Terry’s descriptions
they seem like a strange bunch, particularly the throat singers, who
apparently sing into each other’s mouths. Balinese composer Dewa Putu
Barata will round off the bill with a specially commissioned
kecak piece, which features vocalists intoning Gamelan rhythms.
The event kicks off December 2 with a spate of teacher training
workshops, at which Terry and friends will demonstrate their new
“codified” language of body movements (wherein they use claps and
shuffles to impart rudimentary facts of geometry or language arts).
Other highlights include an open mic at Oakland’s Club Anton (Dec. 3),
a lecture at the Oakland Museum of California (Dec. 4), and subsequent
performances at San Francisco’s Theatre Artaud. For a full schedule,
visit Crosspulse.com
