Tino Derado - Kumbaya

Topic: Jazz - Title
Cool jazz musicians in the 1950s minimized the role of rhythm. [1] The next generation rebelled by incorporating Latin meters, usually Cuban or Brazilian. [2] Tino Derado’s six-and-a-half-minute version of "Kumbaya," mentioned in the post for 18 March 2018, opened with a minute long drum solo. When he recorded it with his own group in 2000 he labeled the album "Latin Jazz." [3]

The album’s notes listed two drummers, but did not indicate if they played together or on separate tracks. Neither fit the mold of someone inspired by Gene Krupa. Jamey Haddad wanted a drum after he heard Arabic ones at Lebanese gatherings in Cleveland. [4] Satoshi Takeishi played in a brass band when he was in junior high in Japan. [5]

Derado didn’t use a vocalist like Rigmor Gustafsson. By 2016, when he was playing "Kumbaya" in a Berlin jazz club, he had dispensed with the saxophone as well. Instead, Robby Geerken played the opening drum solo on congas. After forty-five seconds, the string bass joined him. Derado begin playing a few notes on the piano thirty seconds later, but did not start the saxophone theme until another thirty seconds had passed. During the remainder of the performance, the congas took over the role of the piano as the sustaining instrument for the piano, bass and drum set.

Some might take Derado’s use of drums as the reason he called the piece "Kumbaya." However, that would assume all drums were the same, when in fact congas were not African. They developed in the poor settlements that grew around the cities of western Cuba after the abolition of slavery in 1886. Olavo Alén Rodriguez argued the shapes on some early ones suggested African models, but also said congas served the same function as indigenous wooden sound boxes called cajones. [6] The tall barrel-shaped drums appeared in clubs in this country during Prohibition when Havana casinos were defining the taste of American tourists. [7] Dizzy Gillespie introduced congas into jazz in 1947 as Latin instruments. [8]

Performers
2000
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloist: Billy Drewes, saxophone

Instrumental Accompaniment: Tino Derado, piano; Ben Street, acoustic bass

Rhythm Accompaniment: Satoshi Takeishi, Jamey Haddad, drums

2016
Vocal Soloist: none
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloist: Robby Geerken, congas

Instrumental Accompaniment: Tino Derado piano; Andreas Lang, string bass

Rhythm Accompaniment: Diego Pinera, drums

Credits
Composer: Tino Derado

Notes on Lyrics
There were none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Tino Derado
Tempo: fast

Basic Structure: homophony with solo congas accompanied by rhythm instruments

Notes on Performance
2016
Occasion: 2 September 2016
Location: A-Trane club, Berlin

Microphones: floor mikes for the congas; the video camera did not pick up the other instruments as well

Clothing: the men wore black for dark gray long-sleeved shirts or jackets

Notes on Movement
2016
The conga player moved his head when he was playing, often rotating it, and sometimes throwing it back. The bass player also moved his head as he played, especially when his right hand was particularly active. Derado and the drummer’s heads move up and down toward the end. Derado stood a couple times to adjust his position, while the drummer remained still while he played.

Notes on Performers
The conga player, Robby Geerken, was born in Berlin where he started to play the instrument when he was eleven-years-old. He apprenticed with José Luis Quintana Fuerte, then entered the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. [9]

Derado’s father was a particle physicist from the Croatian city of Split. [10] His mother was a biochemist. [11] They married in the United States in 1965, and returned to Munich in western Germany [12] where Derado was born in 1970. [13] Although he studied classical piano as a child, he believed his family’s mixed cultures made him open to other forms of music. [14]

After his years at Berkee College and the New School, mention in the post for 18 March 2018, he worked as a sideman in New York. [15] He returned to Germay in 2009 to lecture at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. In 2014 he became a professor at the Musikhochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hanover. [16] He called his 2016 band Somnambulist.

Availability
Album: Aguacero. Perun Records. 2000.

YouTube: uploaded by Ralasan o123 on 15 February 2016.

End Notes
1. Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Style Sheet. "Cool." Jazz in America website.

2. Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Style Sheet. "The Breakthrough Year into the Contemporary Period: 1959." Jazz in America website.

3. "Aguacero by Tino Derado." CD Baby website.

4. Joanna Connors. "Acclaimed Percussionist Jamey Haddad Shows Us His Basement Studio in Oberlin, Full of 1,000 Drums and Other Instruments." The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer website. 9 December 2012.

5. Nuno Loureiro. "Satoshi Takeishi Interview." Clean Feed website. 10 December 2008.
6. Olavo Alén Rodriguez. "History of the Congas." AfroCuba website. November 2002.
7. Wikipedia. "Havana."
8. Alén.
9. "Stephan Geerken." Global Music Academy website.
10. German Wikipedia. "Ivan Derado."
11. German Wikipedia. "Thea Derado."
12. Wikipedia, Ivan Derado.
13. German Wikipedia. "Tino Derado."
14. "Bio." Tino Derado website.
15. Tino Derado website.
16. Wikipedia, Tino Derado.