We had a great time drumming at the San Francisco Day of the Dead procession. Since we're a smaller group, we had to find quieter open spaces to play - and would end up being the "personal band" for whatever ghouls happened to be along. We caught up with the stilt walkers on Mission, and here we're playing right over the BART openings to get a bigger echo, as the stilt walkers danced around us. It was a great night.

Pictured drumming are (LR) - Amanda, Amy, Teflon and myself.
Photo by John Curley (here).

To Amy, Christine, Amanda, Chops, Teflon and Hank - thanks for the drumming!

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p>(If you subscribe to this blog via feed-reader, you might have missed the announcement that we'll be playing for the SF Day of the Dead procession, and you can join us. You don't have to drum to come along, but if you want to, drop into a class!)

People often ask me why I decided to start a bucket (and trash-bin) drumming group. The simple answer is this:
* it's cheaper to equip 10 drummers with buckets and trash bins than it is to get actual drums.
* if we are playing on buckets and incorporating club rhythms, it's very explicit that we're not trying to be a traditional percussion group, but that we are creating something new.
* I wanted to run a percussion-heavy performing group... to feed my own need to play drums.

The longer story is here.

In case it's not obvious, the origin of Orkest Asfalto owes a lot to Bahia, Brazil. I've never had any significant experience with traditional U.S. drum corps; my personal percussion training is mostly afro-carribean drumming on congas. But I had spent some time in Brazil and was enamoured with the Bahian blocos like Olodum and Ilé Ayé. These 150-drum-strong groups would rehearse every day all day, it seemed, and I would wake up from my afternoon nap in the hostel to hear distant drumming echoing off the steep 500-year old cobblestone streets. For a percussionist of any stripe, that gets under your skin.