Drummer Magazine UK
Oct 2003
By Ian Croft

The Stranger's Hand: Liner Notes
Global Beats World Percussion Trio

The World Percussion Trio began life in 2002, when Steve Smith, Hakim Ludin and Karuna Murthy first encountered each other at the ‘Rhythms’ drum camp in deepest Bavaria. The week long camp takes place every other year in the picturesque town of Marktoberdorf, at the Bayerische Music Academy. Each evening when classes are finished there is an evening concert, pairing two of the tutors in a performance situation for the students and locals alike to attend. This can lead to some highly interesting and sometimes bizarre musical combinations.

Steve takes up the story:

"I had been a regular teacher at the Rhythms Camp since the early 1990s. In 2002 Geoff Cheeseman, the course director, decided that he would put myself and Hakim Ludin together for the opening nights concert. Previously, I had mentioned to Geoff that I had been studying Indian rhythms and talked of my interest in this subject. I think Geoff thought that Hakim, Karuna and I would get an opening night concert worked out faster than any of the other teachers, some of whom had never been to this camp before and therefore would not feel as comfortable as we would. That was to be the very first time we played together as a group. Marktoberdorf was the start of this new journey into the Indian rhythmic concepts for me. It actually took me two visits to the camp (2000 & 2002) and some study on the outside for me to grasp the real beauty of Indian rhythms and how I could play them on the drum set.

"As soon as I arrived at the school for the 2002 event, Hakim, Karuna and myself worked out a piece we would play at the concert, which proved to be very successful. Throughout the remaining week, I attended Karuna’s class on South Indian Rhythms and Konnakol – the Indian rhythmic language using syllables -- and then eventually I even studied privately with him. So I really learned a great deal over the course of that week. There was another concert at the end of the week, a kind of faculty grand finale if you like, with all the teachers (Dave Weckl, Chad Wackerman, Jeff Hamilton, Marco Minneman, Efrain Toro, Wolfgang Haffner, Brad Dutz, Richie ‘Gajate’ Garcia) and in the middle of that finale we played a short piece as a quartet as we included Chad Wackerman, who had also been studying in Karuna’s classes. So I guess that made it the debut of the World Percussion Quartet, we just did not know it at that time!

"By the time the week was over I was able to communicate on a fairly high level with Karuna and we had worked some nice compositions and trading ideas. Add to that the fact that Hakim Ludin is a completely unique percussionist in that he plays Afro-Caribbean hand percussion, Middle Eastern hand percussion, African hand percussion, plus, he has a very strong knowledge of Indian rhythms. Hakim is pretty unusual in that most percussionists tend to focus on one of those styles exclusively. Since Hakim is fluent with the Indian rhythms, we could use the traditional Indian rhythms as our basis for communication.

"The three of us kept in touch through e-mail and we had been wanting to do some kind of a concert and continue to play together as it is fun and musically very unique. When I was asked to play at London’s Rhythm Sticks Festival, I sent them a variety of ‘group’ choices that I play with, from Vital Information, Buddy’s Buddies, a couple of others and I also included the World Percussion Trio. They chose the Trio as they thought that combination would be most appropriate for the festival. I then went through the very difficult job of making the arrangements to have Karuna come up from India and meet Hakim in Germany and then the two of them flew to London and met me there.

"Apart from the flights, I also had to deal with accommodations, which was a challenge as the festival provided no budget for it. Fortunately, we ended up staying at friends houses for a few days, allowing the project to get it’s first real outing to the public beyond what we had already done in Germany. Karuna and Hakim arrived the day before the show.

"We spent a few hours rehearsing and we developed a pretty long piece that we would perform together. It was an Indian style drum composition that had quite a lot of prearranged composition and room for improvisation, trading and ultimately ended with more drum composition. When I say Indian Drum Composition, it means that in a very literal sense. The music and all the rhythms are composed and the melody is implied as much as we can on technically ‘non melodic’ instruments, but with melodic shapes to them. We then play the compositions so that we are rhythmically in unison and we imply the melodic shape that goes along with those rhythms. It sounds very impressive to hear these compositions played with two, three, or more drummers in unison.

"We structured the concert so that it started with Hakim playing solo percussion, then Karuna playing alone on the Tavil, before I did my thing on solo drum set. We then played together as the trio to end the concert and I think that judging by everybody’s reaction to what they heard, it would be fair to say the concert was very successful."

The World Percussion trio is now something very close to Smith’s heart and is not going to be a musical dimension that he will happily drop.

"We are talking about trying to play some more concerts and Karuna does have some connections in Dubai, which seems to be a very supportive community for Indian music. I know Zakir Hussain, who I play with in the "Indian/Jazz" group called Summit, plays there often. If we can arrange something for Dubai, then we are close enough for Karuna to also arrange something for India, maybe later this year, or early next year, we will just have to see what happens. Failing that, we will all get together again in Marktoberdorf in August 2004 for a week of teaching and I have no doubt that at that point, we will play some more concerts."

Whilst Steve is telling me this information, I can hear his mind going into overdrive and fathoming out ways to bring this unique project to events around the world, for both drummers and percussionists alike to enjoy. The drumming community can only benefit from such imaginative and daring elements coming together and Smith should be supported at every turn in bringing the World Percussion trio to the worlds stages.