It might just be coincidence, but there seems to be a trend among Brazilian drummers - at least the ones I listen to - of taking African or Afro-Caribbean bell patterns, and shifting the emphasized notes from where we college jazz program graduate gringoes would play them. You might remember seeing the post on Kiko Freitas playing the Edu Lobo tune "Vento Bravo". This time around it's former Hermeto Pacoal and current Hamilton de Holanda drummer, Marcio Bahia, who I've written about before. Along with bassist Eduardo Machado, and pianist Gil Reis, the trio released an album last year called simply, "Em Tres". There are two similar grooves here, mainly differentiated by what's going on in the right hand. The groove itself is in 9/8 or 3/4, and feels pretty much like your standard Bembé minus one beat. Bahia plays the Bembé pattern pretty much by the book on the ride cymbal throughout the first section. But in the second bar, much like Kiko Freitas does on "Vento Bravo", he then shifts the bass drum to the third 8th note of beat 1.
The next section has a very cool little twist to it. For the most part the bass and snare drum parts stay the same, save a few extra ghost notes. But, now moving to the hi-hat, Bahia plays quarter notes in the right hand (or in his case, the left) and accents every other note. So although the main groove is only two measures long, it now takes four bars to resolve.
I don't have a link that I can post, but the album is on Spotify if that's you're thing.
Pedro Velasco has been keeping me busy with this Machimbombo stuff. He's really inspired by many different styles of African music (particularly Malian) and is showing up to rehearsals with a lot of interesting 6/8 and 3/4 stuff. So, on the one hand I'm just trying to continue to come up with new groove ideas in 6/8 so that I'm not constantly playing the same thing on all of his tunes. And on the other hand I'm trying to get a little deeper into African rhythms that I'm not familiar with. If you're a regular reader of this blog then I'm sure you're aware of my disdain for the term "Latin" in all it's vagueness, so believe me when I say that the hypocrisy is not lost on me when I use the equally vague term, "African". But I'm working on it. So here's a groove I've been fooling around with. Apparently the parent rhythm originates in Cameroon, but in this case we're looking at a drum set orchestration by Will Kennedy on the Yellowjackets tune "Capetown". Will calls it "Magabe" or "Mugabe", but a little Googling shows that the real name appears to be "Mangambeu". The basic groove (as Will plays it) looks like this:
Now, I've notated it the way he counts it in, but I can't help but wonder if it would be more accurate to notate like so:
Again, I'm no expert on this rhythm, but it seems to be characterized by three things: 1. This shuffley hi-hat pattern, which presumably is derived from a bell pattern:
2. The low sound - in this case a bass drum - emphasizing beats 4 and 5
3. A high sound on the upbeats
Here it is in context with three quarters of the Yellowjackets and Will using one of those weird tilted drum racks that I didn't think any drummer ever used.
