We’ve all seen the bad Hollywood version. In every B-western or Tarzan serial, eventually someone hears drums beating in the wind and pronounces the natives restless. Stereotype perhaps, but an apt description of the Primal Connection.
Part band, part community-service agency, the eight-man improvisational percussion jazz ensemble has been more than restless. In the last two years its members have gone from informal lakefront jams to a national endorsement contract and radio, TV and headlining slots all over the city. They set up a drum school in Rogers Park, funded in part by the world’s largest manufacturer of ethnic percussion instruments. Soon they hope to take their djumbes, caxixi and multicultural message into the Chicago public schools–to help teach math.
The members are black and white, Latino and Irish, Christian and Jewish; a personal trainer, a postal worker, and a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photographer with three books to his credit. They range in age from their 20s to a cryptic “well over 50.”
“We’re using the first instrument,” says Jerry Grant, a Naperville electrician’s apprentice and, at 27, the Primal Connection’s youngest member. “Percussion is something that is common to all cultures, and we are all cultures working together. I think we’re a group that’s very reflective of this city.”
It’s that example of tolerance and diversity that’s most important to the band. “People see us and they’re blown away,” explains Carlos Cornier. “We’ve won their hearts and minds because they can look at us and see themselves.”
A week after their first paying job, they won first place in the Hispanic Music Hall of Fame Star Search. WTTW-TV stopped in a week later to tape one of their practices for a “Wild Chicago” segment. They have played everything from street fairs and gay bars to the Art Institute to the Chicago Police Department’s annual beach party. Advertising giant DDB Needham just recruited them for a public-service campaign for the Chicago Park District.
Yet for all the unexpected professional success, the Primal Connection’s first concern is trying to give something back to the community.
Drawn to the drums
Fred Leavitt, the group’s elder statesman, met Grant at a Lincoln Park street fair in 1989. The two soon began spending summer afternoons performing on the lakefront near Addison Street. Among the crowds that inevitably gathered were future band members Rick Purro and Rahsaan Benjamin.
“I was way, way down at the other end of the point,” recalls Purro, “and I heard these drums in the wind, for just a second, then they would fade out. So I started walking down in that general direction with a bunch of other people. When I got there I just jumped in and started playing.”
Silas King was on his mail route when he first heard the group playing at a street fair in Rogers Park. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees and glasses cocked back on his head, he resembles a young Ray Charles as he jokingly recalls his first encounter with the Primal Connection.
“I had just got this software that was supposed to help you pick horses, and I was waiting for the Racing Form to show up at the Howard Street newsstand when I heard these drums.” Investigating, he was shocked to see Benjamin, to whom he had given beginner’s lessons at the American Conservatory 25 years earlier. Benjamin, recognizing his former teacher in the front row, called him to the stage for the next song.
“I didn’t know he was going to pull me up there, I just wanted to say hi to the guy and cut out,” King says, laughing.
Other members came on board as casually. Cornier, having given up drumming, sat in with them once at a party. Scott Lamberty was directing a cable show on which the band appeared.
When Latin Percussion, the world’s largest maker of ethnic percussion instruments, approached the group about an endorsement contract, they got the manufacturer to donate instruments for their drum school in the Howard Theater. Every Tuesday afternoon, band members give free lessons to neighborhood children. Now, instead of plastic paint buckets, they’re using real drums.
“It’s free drum lessons, a chance to perform on stage and 10 bucks,” quips band member Manny Bances, referring to a $10 stipend the children get for participating in the program from Peoples Housing of Rogers Park, another sponsor of the school.
The right formula
Though learning to tell the difference between a guanguanco rhythm and a capoeira has its cultural merit, there are more pragmatic lessons being taught with drums.
The Chicago Algebra Project is a local offshoot of a national curriculum started five years ago by former math teacher Bob Moses. The curriculum begins acclimating children to algebraic concepts as early as 6th grade. Having completed freshman algebra by the end of 8th grade, the students are better prepared to enter a college prep math sequence in high school. The curriculum has been adopted in 27 schools citywide to date.
For those who never understood algebra to begin with, the connection between it and drumming may be just as elusive. But drum language is as mathematically complex a communication form as Morse code, Braille or semaphore signaling. Even the simple open and slap strokes in hand-drumming are used to help students visualize binary number codes.
“It’s not really teaching algebra per se,” says Leavitt. “It’s more about opening up their minds to the mathematical concepts they will need to understand to master it. The kids will learn to make drums. That’s where they need to start using the math to figure out how big a piece of skin to cut for the head, whether it should be square or round, and where the stress points have to be.”
Cleetta Ryals, community development coordinator of the Chicago Algebra Project, says the Primal Connection’s first foray into the classroom was, “Absolutely fabulous!
`I had asked Fred and a couple of members to just come in and see what we were doing. The kids really made the connection between math and drumming quickly, though they didn’t think they would.”
Leavitt, buoyed by the overwhelming response from the students, hopes to have the drum curriculum implemented nationally. “I’ve got a big stack of paperwork to go through now,” he says. “We need to sit down and define exactly how our program matches theirs.” With major funding from the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation, Toshiba America and CNA Insurance, the program will put little strain on already-tight school budgets.
Club dates, math tutoring and drum school aside, every Saturday the Primal Connection returns to the place where it all started. Weather permitting, Leavitt, Grant, King and friends drag their congas, steel drums, marimbas–anything that makes a noise when struck–down to Addison and the lake for informal practice sessions. And still, curious crowds gather.
“It sounds corny, but music really is the universal language,” says Lamberty. “And the basis of all music is rhythm; it’s something everyone responds to on a very basic level.”
Manny Bances has a simpler summation.
“It’s just hard to ignore a bunch of guys with drums.”
