Hyphenized Styles

April 20, 2002 was the official birth date of Taarka, a four-piece group based in the Pacific Northwest that takes Middle Eastern and other world music styles and timings and combines them with jazz. Though the band is just shy of being seven months old, the members of Taarka aren't newcomers to music, and their level of dedication to their craft and their band speaks for itself.
Separately, all four members of Taarka are accomplished, veteran musicians: James Whiton (double bass) is a symphonic double bassist and has lead many bands; Jarrod Kaplan (percussion) studied his art under Frank Katz, Mike Clark and Zakir Hussain, just to name a few, and has performed and recorded with well-known acts such as Keller Williams and The String Cheese Incident; and David Tiller (mandolin) and Enion Pelta (fiddle) were both playing in a bluegrass band, Brooklyn Browngrass, in Brooklyn, New York, before jumping coasts, yearning to expand their creative horizons.
Though Taarka has only been together a short time, the band is already starting to make a name for themselves thanks in part to their live performances - seemingly playing anytime, anywhere. At this year's Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, Taarka played out on the paved pathways of the Seattle Center for four days, eight hours a day. At the High Sierra Music Festival, in addition to three stage performances, the band set up after the main stage let out, bootlegged enough electricity from a street lamp to set up a P.A. and drew a crowd upwards of 300 people into a meadow for an impromptu, three-hour set.
In anticipation of Taarka's upcoming show in Chico at The Red Room, the Synthesis was lucky enough to catch up with percussionist Jarrod Kaplan and discuss his drumming background, how the band incorporated its many influences and what, exactly, is "seismic gypsy hypno jazz."

You've been training as a percussionist since age 15. How long were you playing drums informally prior to that, and what drew you to them to begin with?
I had tried a bunch of different instruments through grammar school - violin, trombone and trumpet - but I was never in school long enough to learn those instruments well. When I was 15, my dad bought me a drum set, and I started studying then. I guess what drew me to them was when I was 13, my friends started picking up instruments. I had a friend who got a drum set, and he was terrible at playing it. I got behind the kit, and I actually had a decent sense of rhythm at the time, so whenever me and my friends got together, they had me play drums instead of the guy who owned the kit. I was first encouraged to play drums at that point. After I moved in with my dad and got my own kit, it kind of took off from there.

How has studying under professional and master drummers changed the way you think about music?
I've been influenced by a lot of different musicians in general. I've studied with some pretty great drum set teachers and percussionists, and I've learned a lot about technique from them in terms of how to hit the drums, how to get different sounds out of the drums - different grooves from different cultures. But as far as how I've been influenced as a musician, I think I've learned more from musicians who weren't drummers. More so, to learn how to think in terms of melody and the rhythm of melody. I've basically developed my sense of texture and voicing through playing with other types of musicians - figuring out which types of drums to play where and how to be a dynamic player, how to play quietly and support soloists. That came from performing and playing with other musicians, not just other drummers.

I read that you run your own drummer's workshop. What is your approach to teaching and how does it affect the way you deal with other musicians?
I love to teach. It turns out that a lot of times I get students who are new to drumming, or who have studied a lot of traditional drumming styles and found that studying those styles hasn't helped their ability to perform or to play music with other musicians. In my workshops, I teach a lot about different techniques. I called the workshops "Non-traditional Djembe and Percussion," because I play mostly an African djembe, and I have a tendency to play a non-West African style - where the drums are from. Because when you sit down with a folk guitarist and play [that style] on djembe to one of those tunes, like a Bob Dylan tune, it just doesn't seem to fit. When I sit down with my students, I teach basic rhythms that they can use and are suited more toward popular music, or specific to the genre of music a particualar student wants to play. [I show them] different techniques that will allow them to pull the sounds out of the drums that would be appropriate.

You've described your music as "seismic gypsy hypno jazz." Could you perhaps define that term or tell us where it came from?
Seismic gypsy hypno jazz came from a statement Dave Tiller, the mandolin player in Taarka, made… The whole seismic gypsy hypno thing [breaks down into something like this]: seismic is something that shakes the earth, gypsy is kind of what we are on the road, hypno is what happens to our crowd - they get enchanted by what we do. We play very dancable, groovy music. You hear so many other groups talk about "cajun slamgrass" and all sorts of different, hyphenized styles you can come up with. [Seismic gypsy hypno jazz] just seemed really different to us and also described what we do in kind of a metaphoric way.

The band has only been together since April of this year, but you've already played some larger West Coast festivals in addition to smaller venues. How would you say the vibe is different in the larger outdoor setting as opposed to inside a bar or a club?
Playing on a big stage at a festival is nice, because it's oudoors and the view is pretty beautiful, and a lot of people who haven't seen you before get a chance to - you're playing to a bigger audience, usually. The club venue is definitely more intimate, and it's a lot of fun when you get a bunch of people together and the whole place is enraptured by the show. You can share more directly, because you can look into everyone's eyes, and they can look into yours… it's more of a crowd connection. But at a festival the energy also comes from the beauty of the environment.

Dave and Enion came from a bluegrass band, and James came from more of a jazz background, and you've mentioned that you were schooled in more traditional percussion styles. Was it difficult trying to bring all the different backgrounds together in Taarka?
Not at all. I think the beauty of the band is that we come from different backgrounds, and what we've put together is something that turns all of us on musically. It's very fulfilling as a group to be able to combine influences and come up with a completely unique sound and style. From the very beginning, when Dave and Enion came over from New York and visited me in Seattle, there was a good chemistry. We enjoyed what we were doing, and then James jumped on and took Taarka to another level. It's been working really well. It was pretty easy to combine all those things. As a young band, we're still developing our sound and our overall style, and we're beginning to collaborate. It's exciting, because I don't think we've reached our maximum potential yet, writing as a group. There's still a lot of room to grow.

Bookmark:

Comments down for maintenance.