Press Democrat Article on June 25, 2000

MASTER OF THE BEAT

Story By John Beck - Photos by Scott Manchester

A master drummer, a teacher and a wandering minstrel, more than anything Samuel Kwaku Daddy is simply a storyteller.

If he were blindfolded and confined to an empty room decorated with only an open window, just by listening he could distinguish the daily rituals and customs unfolding in his Ghanian hometown of Adabraka.

The distinct celebratory sounds of a funeral procession would tell him not only that someone had died, but possibly even who had died.

Another jubilant pattern might signify the local soccer team had won its game. By the soporific pitter-patter of the atompa drums and an unfolding drum story for the soothing of the mind, he would know someone was in need of spiritual healing.

Yet another rhythm might signify a couple had just been married or a child had been born or what name the child had been given in a naming ceremony.

For most of us, if locked away in an American suburban house like Plato's cave-dweller, it would be hard just to tell the time aside from the cacophony of car alarms at night and the symphony of weed-whackers by day.

It's this timeless cultural divide and the need to spread the communal power of his native music that has driven Kwaku Daddy all his life.

``You often hear people say, `I made this rhythm.' They didn't make that rhythm,'' he says. ``The rhythm chose them. In my society, we always feel like when rhythm chooses you, it means that is something you have to do. It's sending you somewhere.''

Driven by a drumbeat that has pulsated through 28 generations of master drummers in his family, in many ways, he had no choice but to travel the globe and spread his music.

In addition to recording 12 CDs and several volumes of folklore, his true love is teaching. Making the most of a life-time credential, he's a professor at City College of San Francisco. Every summer, he teaches classes in Sonoma State University's Excel Program. And throughout the year, he finds time to visit countless grade schools in Sonoma County.

On a recent afternoon, sitting in his open garage overlooking Petaluma Valley, Daddy, 54, demonstrated the dozens of drums he plays about five hours every day.

A naturally high-spirited man with a quick smile, when he laughs he bellows a rich, sonorous roar. When he sings, his deep chants fill the air with an almost tangible presence.

Samuel is his baptized name. Kwaku means ``born on Wednesday'' or ``Wednesday child.'' And Daddy is a common African last name.

He's a survivor with one foot rooted in the past, the other testing the future. He plays the synthesizer on his home computer, which he also uses to print out musical drumming patterns. When he finds time during his busy teaching schedule, he tries to return home at least once a year to Ghana where all of his relatives still live.

Late on a Petaluma weekend night, it's not unusual to see Daddy roaming from bar to bar in his green BMW, toting an unlit half-smoked cigar in his hand as he drops in to see friends and listen to different styles of music.

Tapping his fingers and rapping his palms on the three-foot wooden atompa drum resting between his legs, he explains the beat: ``Right now I'm calling attention so people hear that something is happening.''

The tempo quickens with escalating volume. ``Hear that? In African society, when you hear something like this that's not an everyday rhythm, when you hear that you know it's important.''

The bowed, carved wood of the drum comes from the wa-wa tree. The head is tightly stretched goat skin.

``The drum is an extension of you,'' he says. ``When you're playing the drum, it's you.''

At its core, West African drumming is built around intricate polyrhythms as individual drummers play separate rhythms overlapping in harmony.

Like a symphony conductor, the master drummer guides and varies the overall musical pattern, but there is so much more to being a master drummer than merely orchestrating.

``The master drummer must be able to play a story,'' he says, making it sound simple.

His head is filled with hundreds of tales like ``The Night the Giraffes Danced'' or ``Adjoa and the Gorilla'' that he shares with anyone willing to listen.

Wherever he's teaching, his mission is the same: ``I want them to know about the connection we have with the rest of the world and the universe,'' he says. ``What I know is not mine, but it's given to me so that I can show them and they can take it on their way.''

Most of the time, his audience can't help but be infected by his contagious style.

``He brings incredible enthusiasm to the program,'' said Greer Upton, director of Sonoma State University's summer Excel Program. ``The man is filled with charisma. He uses humor when he's working with the kids, and he has great respect for them; he doesn't talk down to them.''

Teaching summer classes for the past 10 years, Daddy shares African songs, drumming techniques and the art of storytelling. He also brings in jazz and rap recordings to demonstrate how traditional African music has influenced modern music.

``The kids learn respect for an ancient culture,'' she said. ``It's great for American kids to be exposed to that.''

Teaching on many different levels, whether to elementary school kids or college kids who deconstruct the rhythms like avid ethnomusicologists, he once taught playwright/actor Sam Shepard how to play the drums.

``When I play sometimes I have 900 kids and I say, `For the next 45 minutes let's just picture Africa, let's just go there.' And we sing African songs and dance, and they're not shy, they love doing it.''

He began beating the skins when he was 3. By the age of 5, he was practicing eight hours a day as an apprentice to a master drummer.

``Every Saturday we would have about 100 drummers in the house. It was like a big concert. And they would play music of giving thanks, music of praise, music of remembrance, music of folklore and proverbs. So we were taught all of that.''

Growing up in a large circular compound, he was raised in a family of 12, surrounded by dozens of families of different ethnicities.

``I can always see the red dust, the red sand we would play in,'' he said. ``Green grass and red dust, the colors of Africa.''

On his father's side, he is descended from a tribe of Amazon women warriors from Dogbo, Benin. His mother's family was renowned for its tradition of storytellers and musicians from Labadi in Ghana.

By 14, Daddy was crowned a ``master drummer'' by the traditional drumming society, a division of Ghana's House of Philosophy. He began playing in front of thousands of people, performing with both traditional drumming ensembles and occasionally with an African jazz band.

As his reputation spread, traveling throughout Ghana and into Nigeria became an inevitable part of his mission.

``You become like a wandering minstrel,'' he said. ``You take a story here and then you pick up a story and bring it back.''

Sometimes he was paid in money, other times a grateful audience of market workers would reward him with a bounty of fresh mangos, guavas, papaya, or avocados.

The oral tradition of swapping stories still continues today each time he returns to Ghana.

``When I go home now, I will sit down for days just talking about America.''

Likewise, when he teaches classes he shares the same stories his mother once told him and the anecdotes that mark his travels.

When he was only 16, Daddy left Ghana and journeyed to England to play in a jazz band. Arriving in London when Beatlemania was sweeping the nation, he remembers ``I was watching the Beatles playing Wembley Stadium on television and these people were screaming and running around and crying. I was thinking what's going on? I don't play for people to cry.''

In 1968, he wound up in San Francisco, by way of classical training in Italy and aboriginal studies in Australia. He met Dizzy Gillespie at the Great American Music Hall when the jazz great called him on stage (introducing him as ``Joe Frazier'') to play a 20-minute conga solo. It turned into a tryout, and judging by the audience, Daddy passed. He would tour for the next several years with the band, playing the Monterey Jazz Festival as well as ``all the Playboy Clubs'' nationwide.

His transition to jazz was as primal and natural as the urge to pick up the drum for the first time. While growing up in Ghana, he had listened to radio songs by Louis Armstrong (who often traveled to Ghana), Paul Robeson, Chuck Berry, James Brown and Fats Domino and Otis Redding. He even remembers jitterbugging to Little Richard.

``Playing with Dizzy I found it very easy to get the connection,'' he said. ``Jazz came to me very naturally. He and I would play ``Night in Tunisia'' and so many songs. And I realized that a lot of things I was doing were already there.''

He went on to tour and record with renowned performers like Buddy Rich, Quincy Jones, John Abercrombie, Paul Winter, Randy Westin, later co-headlining concerts with Santana, Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh.

If there's one thing he has yet to accomplish it's a musical anthology tracing the roots and evolution of rhythms from Africa to America.

But more than anything, he wants to make sure his family's traditions are passed down so that the legacy of 28 generations doesn't die.

These days in Ghana, reggae, rap and the native highlife music (often modernized with drum loops) are much more popular with youth than traditional drumming.

Unmarried, Kwaku has an 18-year-old daughter who lives in Europe. His hopes rest solely on his nephews who are just beginning to pick up the drums.

``Otherwise it's gone,'' he says, his fingers tapping restlessly on a goatskin drum. ``And the tradition will die.''

But even if no one in his family carries on the legacy, he can still be proud knowing he passed on the spiritual music of his homeland to thousands of children, college students and fans around the world.

``I firmly believe the rhythms are within all of us,'' he says. ``You just have to learn how to release it. It's as simple as the heartbeat.''