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Robby Ameen ;
Swinging Impurities
To hear drummer Robby Ameen tell it, some
fragmentation can be a good thing for music.
“Ten years ago you would do an acoustic
jazz record or a funk record and there was this
dichotomy,”Ameen said. “But those categories
and boundaries don’t exist anymore. Certainly
as a drummer, you can express yourself and be
just as profound playing a straight eighth-note
rhythm as a funk rhythm as long as it all still
swings. That’s a positive development.”
A veteran of recordings and live performances
with Ruben Blades, Dizzy Gillespie,
Paul Simon, Dave Valentin, Kip Hanrahan and
Eddie Palmieri, Ameen brings considerable
experiences to bear on his debut as a leader, Days
In The Life (Two and Four). In keeping with his
borderless view of music, Ameen’s disc plies
Latin with metal, fusion with funk, along with
Afro-Cuban beats. Though his music is arranged
through a Latin lens, it doesn’t end there.
“I didn’t want to make a pure Latin jazz
record because everyone is mixing so much up
now,” Ameen said. “There is so much information
now and everybody loves playing so many
different styles. Sure, my music leans in the
Afro-Cuban tradition, but you can be super
funky in the Afro-Cuban tradition and in
acoustic jazz, too. It’s a very New York-sounding
record in that sense.”
Ameen surrounds himself with some of New
York’s most adventurous players on Days In
The Life, along with West Coast keyboardist
John Beasley. The group navigates Ameen’s
twisting, turning, deceptively odd-metered
arrangements with the ease of a top-flight jockey.
The disc’s time twisters include “Una Muy
Anita” (4/4 cha cha cha), “Sound Down” (“an
Afro-Cuban 6/8 with straightahead jazz,”
Ameen explains), “Ceora” (a super slow
guaguanco) and “Baakline” (an Arabic dumbek
groove played in 7/4). Ameen also creates a
metal-meets-New Orleans hybrid in
“Skateboard Intifada,” projected via a barrage of
warring cymbals, double bass drum attacks and
a polyrhythmic approach.
Before arriving in New York City in the
early ’80s, Ameen worked his hometown streets
of New Haven, Ct., learning conga, timbale and
bongo rhythms from former Cal Tjader
conguero Bill Fitch. As a high school student, he
spent uncounted hours riding the bus to
Middletown, Ct., where he studied with New
Orleans drumming master Edward Blackwell.
“Ed had taught something extremely heavy:
‘Unorthodox Stickings,’” said Ameen, who
went on to graduate with a degree in literature
from Yale. “He’d have you play around the
drums and instead of sticking it the comfortable
way you’d stick it the uncomfortable way. It
swung differently because the movement would
bring out the dance in the rhythm. For instance,
if you’re playing triplets with the downbeats on
the rack tom and remaining notes on the snare,
the logical stocking is RLR-LRL. But Ed made
you play it RRL-LLR-RRL with the first left of
the triplet on the rack tom and right of the second
triplet on the floor tom. When you sped it up
it created a lurch in the rhythm which gave it a
different kind of swing. I still do that.
“Jack DeJohnette said he thinks of rhythm
like clothes falling around in a washing
machine,” Ameen continued. “Clothes are going
around at the same tempo, but other clothes are
falling or making sounds and hitting the basket
at almost random times. It’s an interesting way
of thinking about groove. The tempo is still there
and it’s even, but where you might be accenting
or bringing ideas out might not be as regular as
playing two and four. In my music, that all
comes out. ”
—Ken Micallef
JONOTHON MOVER
24 DOWNBEAT March 2010