Tosin Aribisala
1. Being from Nigeria, what drew you to the drum set? What is your background with the traditional drums of your homeland and how often do you work with them?
Tosin: Initially, I started playing the traditional hand drums, shekere, agogo, clave and other local percussion instruments. Those were the common musical instruments within my reach both in the school bands and church choirs back then. There was not a lot of drum sets around then, except in some professional bands. Other place I could watch the drum set played was on the TV. Eventually I had some access to the drum set and decided to give it a try until it became my main instrument.
2. In listening to your style one can hear all your influences come out in a melting pot of African rhythms, jazz, and blues. How long did it take you to come up with that mixture to create what is truly a unique style of drumming?
Tosin: My background with the traditional percussion instruments informed my polyrhythmic approach to the drum set. This polyrhythmic idea is a sort of fusion, a way of me combining different rhythmic palette. Furthermore, before I got into jazz, I explored a lot of West African music, and a lot of Caribbean musics, which are musical cousins of African music. That was how the whole fusion of different styles started forming up for me.
Beyond that was my exploration
of North American music: R&B,
Blues, Rock, Jazz, Hip-Hop and Country music. Having delved into all these styles during my formative years, plus the fact that I have worked with different bands playing different styles of music, which I was able to fit into quite well, it’s easy for me to say that those experiences were contributing factors to how sound and style of drumming.
3. Your drum set has one of the most colorful sounds I have ever heard. To me, it is a mixture of a jazz kit with African drums. In many of your videos you don’t use the same type of drumheads throughout your set up. How do you approach getting your sound?
Tosin: Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, I like to get a warm and round tone on the drum set just because I am used to the sound of the local Akuba hand drums that I played a lot of while growing up. The drum is tuned in the mid-range, which is a bit lower than the congas, just like how the congas are lower than the bongos. Other ways to explain this tuning range is like comparing the bongos to the soprano sax, congas to alto, and the Akuba drum to tenor/alto sax. So, in tuning, I consider different ranges from a melodic sense, and seeing the toms on the drum set as an extension of the Akuba hand drum and a mid-range bass guitar.
4. Your ability to orchestrate rhythms around the drum set is brilliant. Knowing that you are also a singer and composer, how much did that impact your drumming style? Would you say that this broadened your rhythmic vocabulary since you also have a melodic and harmonic background?
Tosin: By the time I started to write music and singing, my approach to drums had taken a new twist. What do I mean by that? As a composer, I started to see the drum set as an accompanying instrument more than ever before; hence less drum rolls and crashings on the cymbals because I work on every detail of every instrument that I have in a song. Every note must count and be accounted for. Every note on one instrument is intertwined with another instrument and so there is a purposeful playing.
5. Your hand technique is most impressive, your feel on the drums is outstanding and your musicianship as a singer and composer is most impressive. How much music education did you receive overall? How were you able to become the true Renaissance man when it comes to your diverse musical background?
Tosin: I am a lifelong learner, and as such, I learned from everyone and everything around me. I learn from old and new recordings in various styles of music from different regions around the world. That’s the natural approach I have so far. On the academic approach, I studied music theory as a minor in college. But outside college, I am always very much given to studying every time just to improve upon my skills in order to be more sound and more established.
6. You have an amazing ability to weave through all the rhythms as you make the drum set an authentic part of an African percussion combo. How do you approach playing with a percussion ensemble?
Tosin: It is quite seamless for me to adapt to a percussion ensemble simply because that was the background I came from. Thus, my thinking is always in that direction when I am playing with or without a percussion ensemble. There is a concept of playing that I call the “inner accompaniment” (or the real “ghost notes”). What do I mean? Let’s say I am playing the drum set with no accompanying percussionist around, I have a lot of gaps to fill as the main percussion player in order to establish a solid groove and drive for the music. So, what I do is try to imagine what an accompanying percussionist may have been playing in my head. That way, I am able to construct a solid groove and feel on my drum set. Those notes that nobody hears are what I consider to be the “inner accompaniment” or “ghost notes” (not the conventional definition of ghost notes, which are subtle notes that others can hear. Anything ghostly is not seen or heard with the physical senses. That’s why I would rather use the term softer notes in place of ghost notes, concept-wise.
7. What advice would you give to someone who wants to work in a worldbeat/instrumental format?
Tosin: First of all, such person
should check out recordings of the
genre between the 1970s and the
end of 1990s. Why these decades? Those were the years that worldbeat really gained worldwide recognition, with a lot of the exponents of such genre inspiring a lot of artists in the West. For instance, Cameroonian Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” inspired Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Starting Something” chant. A lot of intersections of worldbeat music between Africa and the West really took place at the time. These include hosts of international festivals that feature different world music artists from Africa.
For inspiration, artists to check out include Manu DiBango, Ray Lema, Papa Wemba, Angelique Kidjo, Femi Kuti, Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela, Kassav, Cesaria Evora, and Baba Maal to name a few.
For instrumentation, consider having some percussion instruments at the core of the ensemble, as African music is heavy on rhythm, and everything else rests on top of the rhythms.
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