Friday Night Jam: Sax, Hand Drums, Rock n Roll

A how-to memoir tracing the learning curves of group music improvisation, the peaks and pitfalls of African hand drumming with electric instruments.

African drumming was booming in popularity in the 1990s but not well integrated into conventional Western music mixes. This chronicle conveys the challenge of merging diverse musical instruments, genres and personalities; of attempting to produce quality music in a venue that welcomes relative beginners, lifelong amateurs, and random drop-ins for the night.

The book offers experiential advice to beginning drummers, or to longtime musicians who have not yet had the opportunity or courage to attempt improvisational collaboration with others.

At the core of the journey is the learning of the limited individual ego, with its unique talents and limitations, to negotiate the free and structured spaces with others, to merge in the greater group striving for excellence and beyond, ecstatic union.

Nowick offers an overview of the confluence and conflict of different musical styles and expectations: acoustic/electric, world beat/rock, drummers/guitarists, perfectionists/amateurs, safe/risk, stoned/straight, standards/improvisation, men/women, fifties/sixties, tight/free. In rendering this spirit and process, the words too speak for themselves, players in the mix, jamming on the universal pulse.