Blending native percussive instruments with contemporary, unconventional materials, Cyro Baptista is redefining the role of the modern drummer by bringing rhythm back to the communal language it originated from. Layered over innate patterns, his experimental techniques and instrumentation, often of his own invention, Baptista adds thrashing beats and piercing whistles to create a chaotic collage grounded in a steady, rhythmic pulse. To further delve into elements of community expression, his own band, Beat The Donkey, is based on drums and rhythms but incorporates various styles of dance, colorful attire and audience interaction to transform a typical room into a momentary tribe.
Since arriving in New York over twenty years ago, the Brazilian born Baptista has become a world-renowned musician, playing with everyone from classical composers and jazz bands, to major pop stars and rock acts. With humble beginnings on the streets of New York City, he spent years as a subway performer, and street musician before some of the world’s most respected musicians began to call on his unique talents. Through the 1980s and 90s, experimentalist John Zorn teamed up with Baptista on numerous projects, as did Brian Eno, James Taylor, Wynton Marsalis and David Byrne. When Paul Simon toured in support of his critically acclaimed “Rhythm of the Saints” album, he called upon Cyro to strengthen the heavy percussive backbone that recording was built on and later invited him to appear on the Concert in Central Park. In 2000, he toured Japan, Africa, Europe and America with Herbie Hancock, and a year later toured the U.S. with Sting. Then, when Trey Anastasio decided to bring his solo band into the studio in the Fall of 2001, he asked Cyro to lend his expertise. A connection was made, and he joined the band for their Summer 2002 tour.
Never one to sit still, he is currently working on numerous projects, including shows with Yo-Yo-Ma’s Brazil Project, John Zorn’s Electric Masada, and of course his pride and joy, Beat The Donkey. In his heavy accent and with contagious enthusiasm, he spoke with Glide about his musical history, Beat The Donkey and being followed by rabid Trey fans in the middle of the desert.
When you came to New York City close to twenty years ago, you started out playing as a street musician?
I came [to America] with a scholarship to study at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, and it was great, because they had amazing musicians teaching there. Then I came to New York City, and I had [only] $70. I said, ‘before I can go back to Brazil, I gotta spend this $70 in New York’. And it’s still going! (laughs)…it stretched a lot. But the beginning was [tough]…I used to live in the subway. It’s funny you’re asking me that, because usually when I give interviews today, and I start to say, ‘oh, the beginning, it was in the subway, and playing the corners,’ people don’t want to listen to that. They want me to say ‘oh no, I came here, and I met Paul Simon, and then Sting…and everything was so magical and incredible!’ (laughs). People prefer that I say that.
What instruments were you playing back then?
It’s funny, because in the beginning, I started playing the berimbau in the street. I don’t know if you know it, it’s a bow and arrow Brazilian instrument, but anyway, I ended up meeting this group of percussion players that were playing in the street. They had a Volkswagen van, and they would go to Washington Square. So I was walking in the street, and I heard this sound (sings a beat) and I think, ‘oh my goodness, what is that? I need to meet these people!’ So I met them…and nobody had any money. So we used to play in front of the theatres on Broadway. When the theatre opened the doors [after the show ended], 2,000 people would come out and we would be on the other side [of the street]. And it would start to be a big show in the street, until the police found out, and they would put some in jail and beat the shit out of us (laughs). Drum is dangerous! But also in the street, we got a record contract. And at that time, the best club in New York was the Mudd Club. And they gave a contract for us to play there, and they rented a loft for us, so it was good in the end.
Is that when you first met John Zorn?
A little before. I did the first thing with Zorn, this composition called “Cobra.” It’s a collective, performance thing. And that’s when he was starting to put that together, over 22 years ago. I did over 30 albums with him. A lot of soundtracks for movies, and features and Japanese pornos…we did everything. The next thing I’m doing with Zorn is the Electric Masada in Europe. And that’s just amazing. This band with [John] Medeski, Jamie Saft, Marc Ribot…man, this band is amazing. I think it’s one of the best things Zorn ever did.
Well you’ve got quite a few projects going on right now, even playing with Yo-Yo-Ma, but most of your immediate attention seems focused on refining your own band, Beat The Donkey.
Yeah, my main thing now is doing my own work with Beat The Donkey. I’m being a fanatic with that. I want to even buy a bus for it! (laughs) But it’s been great. We went to Bonnaroo, then we did a tour, and the response has been so great…I’m so happy. And there aren’t any assholes in the band! (laughs)
Beat The Donkey is more than just musicians. There is a great deal of performance art incorporated into the show as well.
Yeah, it’s a performance. It’s like a theatre thing. I always wanted to do theatre.
You’re touring with the band now, but do you hope to eventually bring Beat The Donkey to perhaps an off-Broadway theatre?
I don’t know. It’s like everything I learned with Zorn, and when we started this movement called Downtown Music. I like to start things. Now that I’m getting older, I’m discovering the best moment is when you start something. It’s like the first kiss. No other kiss is gonna be better than the first. The first kiss you give your girlfriend is the one you’re gonna remember (laughs). The first thing is the challenge. Because my work…I play with Zorn, and other people, but usually I don’t play with people for a long time. I play for one or two years and then I move on and I play with somebody else, and I like that. I don’t like to be stuck, and repetitive, like show business. This helps me in one side, but on the other side, I don’t know if what I do has a lot of commercial value (laughs). And Broadway…the little bit of experience I have…you do the same thing ever night, and it’s a big scheme, with people who invest the money, and I don’t know…it’s not very attractive to me.
It seems a possible route, as Beat The Donkey draws many comparisons to Stomp and Blue Man Group, both of which have gained success from their own theatre residencies.
I love Stomp. The first time I saw it, I thought it was great. And Blue Man, they are kind of my friends. Those plastic tubes that they play, I did that in 1969! I think the people from Blue Man, they weren’t even born then (laughs). And like, who invented Stomp…it was two English guys, but if you see Stomp, those aren’t English bits. It has many Brazilian strengths to it, and uses the Third World as a source. And I don’t have anything against that, cause the Third World also plays rock ’n roll, but don’t say that what I do is Stomp, because I did this since I was born (laughs).
Do you also feel what you do is different from those acts because they are regimented, and Beat The Donkey is more improvisational?
Yeah, definitely. Well, they went to a scheme with off-Broadway, and I think it’s great, what they do, because they open up a big door for percussion, and people accept percussion as more than the sticks you buy in the store. You can invent, and everybody can be a percussionist. But to see people who play in Stomp or Blue Man, they don’t even have any identity. You don’t know who they are. They can change every week. They can put another person in there anytime. I remember once my sister, she’s a biologist, and she went to live with [a native tribe] in Brazil. It’s a very forbidden place, only researchers can go. And I asked her to bring me back an instrument, because nobody can go there. Then after six months she came back, and she brought me the most ridiculous gourd with a piece of teeth in it that you would shake. And I said ‘what is this man?, I thought you were gonna bring me a flute or something…or a big drum or something?’ She said, ‘look, that’s what they place with. When it’s six o’clock in the afternoon, 2,000 of them get together in the center of the tribe, and they shake this instrument, and it’s an amazing sound.’ They don’t say, ‘oh, he’s the musician’…everybody [in the community] is the musician. And that’s what we are. That’s the idea that I want Beat The Donkey to be for people. Show them that everybody can do it. And we have this kind of ritual thing instilled in all of us. But we are doing so many things alone…like the computer, and watching TV, and we are forgetting to get together, and it’s a ritual that not long ago we used to do together.
Are you trying to bring percussion and rhythms out from the background where it typically is, and make it more of a communal language in the forefront?
It’s funny you ask that for two things, because when I first started Beat The Donkey, I was signed with Blue Note. I had some sketches for Beat The Donkey, and I brought them in and I said, ‘look, you guys signed me, and this is my next thing.’ And then I played it, and they said, ‘oh, this is beautiful, but it’s just percussion. It has no melody, it doesn’t have harmony.’ And I said ‘look, maybe I’m the only one, but I listen and I hear melodies, and harmonies in the whole boom-boom-boom together.’ But the guy didn’t see it that way. And that was good, because I started to make more songs with Beat The Donkey. But when I went to Bali…I went three times to Bali, and with the Gamelan music, the percussion is in the front, and the melody is in the back. And the melody doesn’t have all this rhythm we have here. I remember we were in this place, and they started to perform for us, and they start kind of improvising, and the percussionist stops and says to the other guy in the band, ‘what are you doing?’ The guy says, ’I’m improvising’ and he says ’no, you don’t improvise, we improvise, go to the back!’ And I thought, ‘wow! This is what I dream of all my life!’ (laughing) And percussion is something that is part of the everyday life, especially in Brazil. Like the instruments can be anything you have in your house, and the sounds from nature…everything. So it’s always been a part of my life, and that’s why I wanted to bring it to Beat The Donkey. And it’s been really fun, because then I started to play with Trey [Anastasio], and he’s kind of opened this market that I never knew existed, the jambands. And I like it very much.
What has playing with Trey, and performing for that particular audience provided you, being an artist who was previously unaware of their existence?
The first thing that I like is that they are totally out of the system. Like, when we talked about doing off-Broadway, and stuff like that. I don’t believe in a formal way to learn music. And these guys, they are like that. Suddenly I see all these kids, and I’m the oldest person there, and they don’t depend on record companies. Those guys are millionaires, let’s be honest, but they don’t act like pop stars. In the two years that I’ve worked with them, not for one minute did I feel like I was working for them. And I can bring my compostions in as a sideman and they rehearse and they record them, and I never saw one record company go in there and give suggestions. They’re not depending on selling albums, they sell shows for these people who follow them anywhere. We are in the middle of the desert and we stop the bus to pee or something, and you see these cars behind the bus…‘oh, Mr. Cyro, I have a present for you.’ I’m like ‘what is this, we’re in the middle of the desert, it’s midnight!’ ‘Oh, I already saw 26 shows or something!’ (laughing) It’s crazy!
Being a sideman for Trey, you are given the freedom to create, but he also sets structure for the band through his conducting.
Yeah, he does his conducting thing. When me and Peter [Apfelbaum], we came to play, he was doing that, and he’s really good at that now. And this guy [Trey]…in the beginning I said, oh, this is a rock ’n roll guy.’ But he’s not man! This guy can compose classical music. I brought him some tunes, and he made the tunes look amazing. He has many horn lines in his head. He wants to play jazz. And he’s a kid [compared] to me (laughs)! And they are open to play anything. I remember when I played with Sting, back two years ago, he was trying to do this like world music, because of September 11th, and he did a video or something, but suddenly the record company came and said, ‘oh, this is not sexy enough, it needs to go back to be rock ’n roll.’ And the next day it was rock ’n roll, and it’s bullshit, not world music. I mean, they have an image that they are looking for. It’s not that I don’t like Sting, I think he’s an amazing singer and what he does, but that’s what I like in this jamband thing. They are opening a new door. They are making a transformation. Not just musically, but it’s a social thing. They don’t have to go to work for record companies, and those companies are all dying. And you see something like Bonnaroo. And I’m not a big fan of festivals, because I think I did so many playing jazz that they start to look like a supermarket, but Bonnaroo was kind of special. I think more than musically, but like the American thing to do this. That’s the thing with America, it’s a young country. And when they do this kind of thing, I don’t know if it’s my imagination, but it looked like everybody was really peaceful, and they have respect for each other. Especially in this moment that we live, it’s good that we have young people getting together in the name of peace and to listen to music. It was great, I had a great time.
Well last year you played Bonnaroo with Trey’s band, but this year you brought your own band. That really shows how much this whole genre is really growing and opening itself up to different sounds.
Oh, the thing is really growing. I’m still kind of scared of festivals, but for me everything is about music. I don’t joke about that. You need to go to the stage, you need to do the sound check when you have the opportunity to do a sound check. And with a show like mine, it’s very hard. And when they have like a million bands playing one after the other, it’s the nature of the business for festivals. But even though it’s hard, we had a good time. I can’t complain about anything. I think everyone there was having fun.
