An Interview with Dr. Leah Bowden

3:15 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Scoobert Doobert back here with Love Music More, and I'm joined with Dr. Leah Bowden. Welcome to this podcast. So excited to talk to you.

3:25 Dr. Leah Bowden Hi, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be on.

3:29 Luke F. Walton I'm really excited because as you can see behind me, I've got a drum kit here. I'm not very good at it, but it is like my favorite instrument, despite not being very good at it. So I'm very excited to talk about your musical journey and kind of what drew you into music, what drew you into drums and percussion, and then what continues to drive you, what continues to make you passionate about music.

3:48 Luke F. Walton But yeah, so first, I'd love to kind of Ask that question like what drew you to drum kit? What drew you to percussion? What was like I want to play this in particular

4:00 Dr. Leah Bowden Okay, well, let me start by introducing who I am now, and then I'll check back into

4:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

4:05 Dr. Leah Bowden the

4:05 Luke F. Walton love it

4:06 Dr. Leah Bowden origins. Okay, so I'm a percussionist and drummer. In other words, a musician. I'm also a music educator, music scholar and community.

4:19 Dr. Leah Bowden organizer I should say and all of these things are very connected for me because it's not just about making music but it's about how music can be used to build community how music can be used in ways that are healing and constructive for individuals and communities right so

4:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

4:45 Dr. Leah Bowden And I've been doing it quite a while. I got into music very young and it's hard to say exactly what my motivations were, except that I was a very active child and very enthusiastic and needing hands on, needing creative outlets. And so I was very much into experimenting with music and other forms of art. creativity from a young age. I started on piano.

5:16 Dr. Leah Bowden But when I was 12 or so, a bunch of my girlfriends wanted to form a girl band, as we called it. And I just knew that I was going to be the drummer.

5:30 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:30 Dr. Leah Bowden I don't know why. It was kind of like in line with my personality. I was a little bit hyper. You know, the drumming, I just knew it was going to be therapeutic and like calming for me somehow. And I started. then my friends unfortunately didn't stick with it but but I did and

5:49 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:50 Dr. Leah Bowden I had already a lot of experience on piano so I kind of had a musical understanding already you know how to read music how to deal with different repertoires and things you know somewhat so it wasn't like a brand new thing when I switched to drums Um, but yeah, like from that time, it just, it was just so.

6:16 Dr. Leah Bowden So healing, especially during that very, you know, important phase of development, like the coming of age thing when you have a creative outlet, especially like something that's very physical that you can hear and feel and like be in the moment, you know, those

6:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

6:33 Dr. Leah Bowden things were really great at that age and that that feeling of healing and and self-expression just. stuck with me and I just wanted more of it and that hasn't changed.

6:49 Luke F. Walton I love that. And I also love what you kind of talked about. One of the things that I love most about drums is, yeah, the physicality. It doesn't require like an electric guitar where I need the amp. I need all of these things to kind of like make it sing or a keyboard where, you know, you're just kind of it's nothing until it's breathed into like a sound.

7:06 Luke F. Walton With drums, you are physically manipulating space, smacking something and then the dynamics of how much you're hitting or you feel the resonance come back at you. to you and i think

7:16 Dr. Leah Bowden Mm-hmm.

7:16 Luke F. Walton that that is such a visceral instrument and it's an old instrument it's like vocals and drums like who came first i don't know but you know but it's like elemental to the human spirit i love that

7:28 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, and even if you can barely hear or can't hear at all, you

7:32 Luke F. Walton Yes,

7:32 Dr. Leah Bowden can still

7:33 Luke F. Walton so

7:33 Dr. Leah Bowden experience

7:33 Luke F. Walton true.

7:33 Dr. Leah Bowden drumming.

7:35 Luke F. Walton Yes. And I think that that's a really, that's a cool thing that I don't know, you know, people don't realize, not everybody realizes that about like the deaf community enjoying music festivals. And, you know, you'll see people who are hard of hearing where, yeah, you can, you still feel the music. It's still, it's like there's so much that you can get out of music.

7:55 Luke F. Walton music um and you know arguably greatest composer of all time beethoven lost his hearing um there You're are all these

8:02 Dr. Leah Bowden going.

8:02 Luke F. Walton different yeah it's great it's and there's so many different ways to experience music and none of them are wrong one of my favorite um songwriting uh people that i that i worked with he was hard of hearing um it didn't stop him at all it didn't you know it was

8:17 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

8:18 Luke F. Walton It

8:18 Dr. Leah Bowden Exactly.

8:19 Luke F. Walton makes sense.

8:19 Dr. Leah Bowden And that's just one example of the ways that drumming is just so accessible.

8:23 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

8:24 Dr. Leah Bowden You know, it's an easy sell.

8:28 Luke F. Walton he stopped but

8:29 Dr. Leah Bowden you know

8:30 Luke F. Walton it's like a hard instrument

8:30 Dr. Leah Bowden it's

8:31 Luke F. Walton yeah

8:32 Dr. Leah Bowden a hard answer but it's an easy sell like if you want people to come out you're like there's gonna be drums you know it's a percussion show or you just put out some gongs where people can see them and everyone gravitates toward it they're like what is that they want to touch it you know it's like instant curiosity whenever drums and percussion is involved visually

8:54 Dr. Leah Bowden and everything else culturally you know where where do those things come from you know what's the story I mean people ask that about all instruments but with percussion and especially with percussion ensembles which I also do you know there's just so many stories on the stage all at once you know and people pick up on that right away

9:16 Luke F. Walton and it's it is visceral you see the percussionists pick up like 30 different instruments throughout

9:21 Dr. Leah Bowden Mm

9:22 Luke F. Walton the

9:22 Dr. Leah Bowden -hmm.

9:22 Luke F. Walton course of it you know there and it's like oh what is this big gourd with like balls on it or like what is this you know different kind of shaped shaker and then they're going on the tiny bongos and then big old congas and like what you know and it's it's all happening so quickly in a lot of the audience especially in a

9:42 Luke F. Walton In a full band setting might not be able to perceive everything that's going on percussion because sometimes it's kind of buried but in percussion ensemble it is front and center and I think that's a beautiful thing that I think more people should experience and that's really you know I'm excited to dig more into kind of what you're what you're working on there and what you've done in the past.

10:01 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, for sure. And I try to bring that element into pop projects too, you know, adding layers of percussion and adding that visual element and, you know, showcasing that in performance can work in a lot of different settings.

10:15 Luke F. Walton I agree. And like one of my favorite artists, Gilberto Gill, you

10:20 Dr. Leah Bowden Yep.

10:21 Luke F. Walton know, and he's kind of having a moment to I'm hearing more of his music around and it's like for people that don't know it's easiest way. The easiest way to describe him is like Brazilian Michael Jackson.

10:33 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

10:34 Luke F. Walton So cool. And I think that there is a lot of opportunity for percussion to, you know, shape the way that music sounds and feels in a deeper and richer way, especially as more cultures are connecting as more genres and underrepresented or under, I don't know, focused on.

10:55 Luke F. Walton musicians and musicians from history too are kind of bubbling up I think that that will influence where we're going in the future in really incredible ways

11:06 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, and I think another element of all that as a music scholar would be the difficulty that people have in even talking about percussion or like they're they I think it's there's not much scholarship, not much written scholarship on percussion, for example, compared to other instrumental groups and other music.

11:29 Dr. Leah Bowden music history and I think part of that is like you know composers they don't even know how to write for a drum set for example right like like it's it's almost like a secret language you know and there are many secret languages that are affiliated with specific folkloric drum traditions right and I think that element is also present with with drum set just because of

11:57 Dr. Leah Bowden the the way that it relates to the body and you kind of have to be a drummer to really understand um how the drums work like the nuts and bolts of playing them and I think that's part of part of why so many composers struggle to even create drum parts you know like I often tell them if there's somebody that's that's notating something or creating an arrangement I say you know like please don't fully notate the drum part because it's not going to probably be playable

12:24 Dr. Leah Bowden you know uh just put like the accents that you want um indicate the style you know if you've heard something else and you want to have a point of reference that's great you know or you can just say mambo or whatever like latin i'll figure it out i'll make it sound good but like if you try to fully notate it like you can like i can read it but it it's probably not going to sound as good as if you just give me an idea of what you want and let me just um provide that you know like because unless they're a drummer

12:50 Luke F. Walton Yes. Right.

12:51 Dr. Leah Bowden Right.

12:51 Luke F. Walton So true.

12:53 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

12:53 Luke F. Walton And if they are a drummer, they'll probably know the edges of their limitations and they'll know when to be like, yeah,

13:00 Dr. Leah Bowden Right.

13:00 Luke F. Walton do this because

13:00 Dr. Leah Bowden Right.

13:01 Luke F. Walton And I don't know.

13:01 Dr. Leah Bowden I think it's in scholarship that it's getting better, like more more music writers are figuring out how to write about percussion without doing it in like Orientalist types of ways or whatever, like like being more sophisticated about using language to describe percussion music. I think it's recently getting better. I actually. I actually have a few books here that

13:23 Luke F. Walton Cool, cool

13:24 Dr. Leah Bowden are all awesome recent books. This one, Rhythm Man, came out last year. It's about Chick Webb by Stephanie Crease. And Chick Webb is more one of the more mysterious figures of early jazz and responsible for a lot of the ways that popular music now sounds globally, you know, and there wasn't much on his life before. So this is new, really exciting.

13:48 Dr. Leah Bowden this book Warren Smith autobiography crossing borders and playing with pioneers also really cool I'm in the acknowledgments because I uh help him with his archives um

14:01 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

14:02 Dr. Leah Bowden and he's played with everyone and everyone from like John Cage and Harry Parks in the 50s through like um pop icons like Aretha Franklin he toured with Barbara Streisand he was Janice Joplin's arranger and he also played like Gil Evans Miles Davis had his own Max Roach and Umboom which is my research.

14:21 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

14:21 Dr. Leah Bowden So this is a really fabulous little book about percussion and then this one's a few years old, Kick It, A Social History of Drum Kit, also

14:31 Luke F. Walton Cool.

14:31 Dr. Leah Bowden recommended. Recommended

14:34 Luke F. Walton love it yes

14:35 Dr. Leah Bowden reading from

14:36 Luke F. Walton i love that dr

14:38 Dr. Leah Bowden Dr. Drums. Yeah, my nickname is also Dr. Drums.

14:42 Luke F. Walton drums

14:42 Dr. Leah Bowden So yeah, Dr.

14:44 Luke F. Walton that's

14:44 Dr. Leah Bowden Drums's recommended reading.

14:45 Luke F. Walton very good that's very good no and i and i i think that like you're saying there's such a um there's such a misunderstanding with um percussion and with styles and um so much i don't know out there that is so reductive um that kind of makes it be like here is is the clave. Maybe actually, could we go back? So say that somebody doesn't know anything about percussion.

15:09 Luke F. Walton They just think it looks cool on stage and it makes them want to dance. Could you help me break it down to some of the essential elements so that when they see it next time? they might be able to latch onto something and be like,

15:38 Dr. Leah Bowden I mean, it all depends on the specifics of the music. I

15:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

15:43 Dr. Leah Bowden mean, if you're talking about salsa or

15:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

15:45 Dr. Leah Bowden Afro-Cuban music,

15:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

15:47 Dr. Leah Bowden I mean, oh man, there's so much. I mean, just clave, the social history of the clave. I mean, technologically speaking, claves

15:58 Luke F. Walton Yes.

15:59 Dr. Leah Bowden come from ship pigs. They

16:02 Luke F. Walton Oh,

16:02 Dr. Leah Bowden were

16:02 Luke F. Walton really?

16:03 Dr. Leah Bowden actually

16:03 Luke F. Walton I

16:03 Dr. Leah Bowden the

16:03 Luke F. Walton didn't know that.

16:03 Dr. Leah Bowden pigs

16:03 Luke F. Walton Okay.

16:04 Dr. Leah Bowden on slave ships.

16:06 Luke F. Walton Oh

16:06 Dr. Leah Bowden So

16:06 Luke F. Walton my gosh,

16:07 Dr. Leah Bowden that

16:07 Luke F. Walton yes.

16:07 Dr. Leah Bowden was what the actual objects were at one time. So, you know, there's always like very real histories tied to these objects. So with Afro-Cuban music, you have to talk about the diaspora. So this is African diasporic music, and it's very much intercultural.

16:32 Dr. Leah Bowden So we have the element of the drum being a threatening thing in early in the early Americas where it was banned for fear that enslaved Africans would use the drums as part of revolts, right? And there were revolts that happened anyway, and very few of them actually used drums, but a couple did.

17:00 Dr. Leah Bowden And then there was places where drums were allowed to be played by enslaved people or freed.

17:08 Dr. Leah Bowden people of African descent and and uh those places primarily were um like on the island of Cuba there was more drumming allowed so um so theoretically there might be more of a connection to um African rhythms but not necessarily because people also use their bodies to um you know tell the stories like there's a lot of body percussion or found objects so like um

17:36 Dr. Leah Bowden folkloric rhythms can be preserved without the instruments necessarily right in secret but it does help to have physical drums and to be allowed to make music publicly right

17:50 Luke F. Walton Yes.

17:51 Dr. Leah Bowden So it's just a different situation. And there's also the Congo Square in New Orleans where there was some of that was allowed. And so these places in New Orleans being a port city. So there's so much cultural exchange going in. It's not only the African diaspora, but we have Asian diasporas. We have Native Americans and their music cultures. We have the music cultures of European.

18:16 Dr. Leah Bowden peoples in the Americas and then also another thing about salsa is that it it also had so much development in New York City

18:28 Dr. Leah Bowden Right. So there's like so much many different cultural elements going into that. So you can't really pin it down to any one thing, but just to be aware that it's a multiplicity of

18:41 Luke F. Walton Yes.

18:41 Dr. Leah Bowden things. And yes, these rhythms are used for dancing. So I would recommend that someone that was new to salsa would watch some dancers and

18:53 Luke F. Walton Yes! Yes!

18:54 Dr. Leah Bowden And get those movements from them. I think when you hear like a Montuno, you kind of like automatically start dancing. I don't know. I've never experienced it as someone that's never heard it, you

19:05 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh, uh

19:05 Dr. Leah Bowden know, before,

19:05 Luke F. Walton -huh. Right.

19:06 Dr. Leah Bowden but maybe, yeah, watching dancers is good. And yeah, learning as much as you can about about the histories is always really interesting. There's another great book about the history of Cuba and its music. I can't remember the author off the top of my head, but maybe came out about 10 years ago. It's very long. Awesome book. um yeah so I would start start there does that

19:29 Luke F. Walton that's

19:30 Dr. Leah Bowden answer

19:30 Luke F. Walton great

19:30 Dr. Leah Bowden your question at all

19:31 Luke F. Walton yes it totally did and i love asking those kind of like bad questions because then i get great answers like that um yeah

19:36 Dr. Leah Bowden I'm like I could try yeah

19:37 Luke F. Walton no it's perfect i know it's like it's such a loaded brutal question but i love hearing because that that's what i that's what i was really trying to get to is that there's such a multiplicity of culture interchange different cities different locations coming together coming apart um it's it's like you know some of the you listen to the

19:54 Luke F. Walton The old jazz giants and they talk about how yet jazz doesn't happen without New Orleans because it combines, you know, all of these things, the rhythm of the swing in terms of like the marches and the dirges and how that, you know, you don't. So much of American music doesn't happen without that. And how do you even get there?

20:14 Luke F. Walton It's the cultural exchange from African diaspora and then like you're saying, everybody else kind of ending up in this port city that has some element of, you know, freedom-ish so you can make this

20:29 Dr. Leah Bowden Right.

20:29 Luke F. Walton music.

20:30 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, and those elements of rupture and

20:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

20:34 Dr. Leah Bowden loss and

20:34 Luke F. Walton rupture.

20:35 Dr. Leah Bowden pain, you know, are all there too in the music because music is a way of... coping with you know uncontrollables and about people figuring out how to understand themselves in the world and also redefine and take control and empowerment over you know how they define themselves or ourselves and our our communities right how we tell our stories

21:02 Luke F. Walton Totally. And I love doing that from the perspective of dance as well.

21:08 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

21:08 Luke F. Walton Some of my favorite tunes that are in Spanish, when you learn the lyrics, they're incredibly sad. There's tales of suffering, but the music is so uplifting and joyous and it's that contradiction.

21:21 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

21:21 Luke F. Walton That's the contradiction of life. Life is hard, but life is beautiful and it's all wrapped up in the same song. And I think that that is just such a cool.

21:31 Luke F. Walton I undercelebrate it, especially in, you know, the kind of like top 40 world that we live in, but it's growing and it's cool to see it growing. Yeah.

21:42 Dr. Leah Bowden Mm-hmm.

21:42 Luke F. Walton So I would love to talk about kind of your musical journey once you get into college and then kind of studying pedagogically and becoming a doctor. So,

21:54 Dr. Leah Bowden Sure.

21:54 Luke F. Walton yes, so I would love to kind of talk about the international percussion ensemble that you started El Otro Lado during

22:04 Dr. Leah Bowden Oh, sure.

22:05 Luke F. Walton your graduate studies. Kind of like what motivated you to create that ensemble? What was kind of the impetus? And then what were some of the challenges, highlights, experiences from that?

22:16 Dr. Leah Bowden So speaking of like cultural exchange and like experimentation, living

22:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

22:21 Dr. Leah Bowden traditions, I have long been influenced by Max Roach. He went his work was the subject of my graduate studies. But long before that, in my undergrad, I was working with George Marsh, who is a really innovative educator who's developed this, this technique called inner drumming and

22:44 Luke F. Walton Okay.

22:45 Dr. Leah Bowden that's kind of like embodied mindfulness it combines um elements of tai chi which is uh his you know physical practice or whatever his um yeah how he works out and

22:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah.

23:00 Dr. Leah Bowden also drumming and like moving energy in the body so like getting technique but also creating flow and melody and um he was very influenced by max roach who's like widely acknowledged as being uh one of the most melodic drummers ever um who who who changed um the role of drums or who helped change it from a more rhythmic

23:25 Dr. Leah Bowden a groove oriented thing to something that had a broader palette of of expression including melody texture timbre really uh emphasizing the element of world percussion too um so hey let me just think what was i what was the initial question i'm addressing right

23:45 Luke F. Walton We

23:45 Dr. Leah Bowden now el

23:45 Luke F. Walton were talking about El Otro Lado and kind of

23:48 Dr. Leah Bowden otro

23:48 Luke F. Walton the impetuses.

23:48 Dr. Leah Bowden lato okay how we how we got to that okay So, yeah, I was widely I was experienced or I was influenced by Max Roach for a very long time and I was in grad school years later working with Anthony Davis, who's incredible mentor.

24:06 Dr. Leah Bowden And he said, you know, you're into all of these jazz idioms, you also play chamber music, percussion ensemble music and solo percussion. Why don't you look at Max Roach and Oomboom, which was his percussion ensemble that he created in around 19.

24:32 Dr. Leah Bowden 69 or was it 79 69 I believe um so I said okay and then I started looking into that and I realized that there was almost no scholarship on boom boom despite Max Roach being this huge figurehead of jazz history in American music extremely important person Um,

24:57 Dr. Leah Bowden and I said, what's up with that, you know, and that kind of plays into the idea that drumming is hard to write about, like, people don't, they hear it and they're like, okay, cool, the end, you know, so there weren't any academic studies as far as I could tell.

25:12 Dr. Leah Bowden All I could get was the press releases at the time, all of the things that had been published about them because they were touring nationally and internationally. like for 25 years or so. So anyway.

25:29 Dr. Leah Bowden I dove into that he helped me get in touch with three of the original or two of the original members Joe Chambers and Warren Smith whose autobiography I just showed you

25:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

25:38 Dr. Leah Bowden as well as Eli Fontaine who joined later rest in peace and I was able to interview the three of them and start start working on creating this study this ethnographic study of boom boom because it just kind of needed to be done I didn't really need to do such a

25:55 Dr. Leah Bowden such a scholarly project since I was a performance doing a performance degree but I just really got into it and connected with especially Warren Smith but also Joe and Eli so anyway through that work I ended up getting a hold of some of the original boom boom charts that were written by the different members including Roy Brooks Omar Clay

26:22 Dr. Leah Bowden uh Warren and Joe and so I I was able to get those charts put into the library at UCSD um they were not circulating or available before and a lot of percussionists have been interested in playing that music you know um

26:38 Luke F. Walton Totally.

26:38 Dr. Leah Bowden so In the interest of doing justice to the music, because I, you know, as a performance major, of course, I'm going to also play it, I put together this international band. Why? Because Oom Boom.

26:52 Dr. Leah Bowden I guess I'm going about this story kind of backwards, but they came together as kit players who were tired of being at the back of the band, who wanted a broader range of expression, who wanted better acknowledgement, who wanted to elevate the status of jazz culturally, of the black avant-garde,

27:14 Dr. Leah Bowden who were doing some of the same things sonically as the European kind of descended. composers and performers and that eurocentric circles were

27:26 Luke F. Walton Yes.

27:26 Dr. Leah Bowden doing of course there's intersection between them but not enough acknowledgement and I think they kind of got a little bit pigeonholed so they wanted to really bring that up you know and you know show it as also being high art and you know deserving of recognition so they started creating their own repertoire of music just for percussion

27:48 Dr. Leah Bowden And they had like a whole orchestral setup, you know, with xylophones, marimbas, vibraphones. They had a melodic saw. Yeah, they had timpani. They had tubular bells, everything. And it was this crazy experience that they put together. So I wanted to play this music.

28:09 Dr. Leah Bowden I wanted to also show that kind of cultural exchange, that element of encounter that happens not only through the instruments coming together, right, and their stories and all that mystery there, but also the different players and their backgrounds.

28:25 Dr. Leah Bowden They were mostly African-American men, so they had that in common and they were jazz musicians, but they came from different parts of the country and they needed, they wanted that African element.

28:36 Dr. Leah Bowden which they didn't have because the diaspora had cut them off you know from knowing the real folkloric traditions of Africa so the way that they got connected was actually not through hiring an African musician but hiring a Latin American musician I can't remember what the first one was, but they ended up with Ray Mantia. They had a guy for a while, it didn't work out.

28:59 Dr. Leah Bowden But they ended up with Ray Mantia for a very long time. And because the African element, you know, is perceivably so much stronger in like Central and South America, that's that was a more direct connection, you know, to some of those rhythms.

29:15 Dr. Leah Bowden of that hemisphere so that encounter brought it to that level so for me I wanted to create a new and different experience because I wasn't trying to do an imitation or whatever so I did my own arrangements and I happen to be somebody who works a lot in Mexico and I have a lot of contacts and friends down there I like to do some

29:42 Dr. Leah Bowden teaching and working with students in Mexico too so I just thought like you know it'd be really cool to do this cross-border thing to have this bring this encounter element really into the foreground and so that was me that was how I presented the music if

29:59 Luke F. Walton I love

29:59 Dr. Leah Bowden that makes

30:00 Luke F. Walton it.

30:00 Dr. Leah Bowden sense

30:00 Luke F. Walton It does.

30:01 Dr. Leah Bowden definitely

30:01 Luke F. Walton It does. And I love the fundamental San Diego nature of that as well, being a border town. It's very cool. uh

30:11 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah,

30:11 Luke F. Walton yeah

30:11 Dr. Leah Bowden for

30:12 Luke F. Walton so

30:13 Dr. Leah Bowden sure.

30:13 Luke F. Walton how did you end up so that's that's the impetus that's how you formed it and then um so now so now you're finding players you're finding people to join this ensemble you're arranging um and then how do you what's your what's your first performance what was the first time that you kind of took this out and and shared it with the public

30:31 Dr. Leah Bowden Well, this band did a live concert at UC San Diego, which was recorded and documented. And this was my one of my concerts for the doctorate in musical arts degree. So that was the only concert that we did with that specific lineup.

31:03 Dr. Leah Bowden release I would love to book the band again you know

31:08 Luke F. Walton Mm

31:08 Dr. Leah Bowden um

31:09 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

31:09 Dr. Leah Bowden and maybe and maybe that'll be the case I currently play with another percussion ensemble that's called the forest um now and that's actually based in New York City so um and it's mainly touring you know it's not like we do gigs all the time

31:27 Dr. Leah Bowden because we have to travel but we do like a couple tours a year and we've played a lot of this same music plus our own compositions but it's in the spirit of Umbum, the Art Ensemble of Chicago,

31:40 Dr. Leah Bowden you know also Eli Fontaine's Percussion Discussion and some of the stuff that Joe Chambers has done since Umbum and there's some other projects as well but of bringing together that kind of like timbral mix of percussion ensemble and doing it mostly acoustically.

31:59 Luke F. Walton Cool.

32:00 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah,

32:00 Luke F. Walton It within

32:01 Dr. Leah Bowden and within the spirit of experimentation with everybody involved as a cooperative and everyone being like performer, composer, improvisers, just in general, everyone just being all around musicians, right?

32:16 Luke F. Walton yes, triple threat.

32:18 Dr. Leah Bowden Right. Although I don't really think of it as different things, you know, music is being compartmentalized by

32:27 Dr. Leah Bowden uh academia academia by the music industry because we need ways to like sell things and to like organize students into programs but in reality music is all of these things at once and yeah it's I don't really think oh right now I'm performing now I'm improvising now I'm composing you know like it's not like that it's just like I'm musicing

32:53 Luke F. Walton exactly exactly and and i think that that's that's part of us you know getting cut off from even the recent past of like classical composers and you think it's all regimented and you have to play it exactly like the papers like they didn't y'all they were

33:06 Dr. Leah Bowden they didn't

33:06 Luke F. Walton improvising

33:06 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah they

33:06 Luke F. Walton their own pieces yeah right

33:08 Dr. Leah Bowden exactly yeah yeah that whole thing of reproducing scores like a museum is like an invented tradition but i mean all traditions are invented so okay i mean i guess that's valid too It's just as valid as anything else. It was invented by people who used it to serve their own purposes. That's how traditions are. But for me, it's less interesting than when I get to have a creative voice as well.

33:32 Luke F. Walton Yes. And speaking of that, the role of improvisation when you are arranging for a group like this, how do you build that in and how do you kind of like play with that give and take just like jazz where you kind of have like set sections, you have room. room for players to express themselves a little bit more like how do you kind of navigate that in your pieces

33:53 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, so my work with El Otro Lado as well as with the forest, and I see them kind of on a continuum of my work in percussion ensemble genre, I guess. I don't know if it's a genre. Configuration.

34:11 Luke F. Walton configurations yeah

34:12 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, we use more a little bit of the lead sheet some of it's like lead sheets right so there'll be a melody harmony a groove and improvisation sections but then on top of that there'll be other sections like it's not it's like more complex than like just straight out of a real book but

34:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

34:33 Dr. Leah Bowden it's it's it's the same kind of idea of a lead sheet a lot of the time there's also pieces that

34:40 Dr. Leah Bowden have just like written instructions where you know this do this then do that then do this and do that or um like little cells right like a there'll be one cell with a rhythm and a groove and then after a certain thing happens you go to the next one or there's a queue or or whatnot um we don't tend to use like

35:01 Dr. Leah Bowden extra heavily notated stuff and not that we couldn't like we we can but it's just not really how we want to spend our time we have to think about uh our strengths so

35:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:12 Dr. Leah Bowden just to create a roadmap of some kind that gives you the form and then every time it's different and you're trusting in your collaborators to be able to make musical decisions and not everything like maybe somebody will all of a sudden be playing a flexitone out of nowhere because they thought that sounded good it's not necessarily in the score and that comes also with with playing together and trying things and seeing what works and just picking the right people to work with

35:41 Luke F. Walton I love that. And then in terms of like cuing. Is that is that that's kind of like going around the circle or is that is like the band leader kind of like kind of progressing or a combination of both?

35:53 Dr. Leah Bowden When you say going around the circle, do you mean like everyone gets solo or something

35:56 Luke F. Walton No,

35:56 Dr. Leah Bowden like

35:56 Luke F. Walton yeah,

35:56 Dr. Leah Bowden like

35:56 Luke F. Walton sort of like,

35:57 Dr. Leah Bowden like

35:57 Luke F. Walton like, like,

35:58 Dr. Leah Bowden in a quartet

35:58 Luke F. Walton right. Yeah, exactly. But more like more like, are you passing the baton of, you know, who's deciding form length or who's going to the next section or is there more of a central band leader, so to speak, that is determining, hey, let's move to the next stage of that that roadmap.

36:14 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, so with El Otro Lado, that was like a little bit less collaborative. I was musical directing for that. So I chose like there'll be a timpani solo on this piece or like a xylophone solo on that piece. And it's not we're not trying to be totally egalitarian because aesthetically that might not. sound quite as good or like the way that we are maybe egalitarian is not is not super super obvious you know like

36:42 Luke F. Walton Okay.

36:42 Dr. Leah Bowden you

36:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:43 Dr. Leah Bowden know sometimes when you go see a jazz quartet they do like the same solo

36:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:46 Dr. Leah Bowden order it's like the the pianist and then the guitar and then the you know bass and maybe the drums or maybe not or maybe we trade fours or maybe we don't um so definitely not yeah definitely not like that um in this case but yeah so i just i just kind of spread it around and

37:01 Dr. Leah Bowden then I had other priorities because I was presenting a recital for a degree so I had to also like showcase myself like in a certain way because

37:09 Luke F. Walton For

37:09 Dr. Leah Bowden that like

37:10 Luke F. Walton sure.

37:10 Dr. Leah Bowden required um but I also didn't want to do that in a way that didn't vibe with the group so it I also didn't make that super blatant or crazy but Then moving on with the forest, which is a percussion, is a totally cooperative percussion quintet and that one was formed deliberately so because the five of us wanted that and that that's a group that features Andrew Jury, Leslie

37:36 Luke F. Walton Oh,

37:36 Dr. Leah Bowden Mock,

37:37 Luke F. Walton wow.

37:37 Dr. Leah Bowden Michael Wimberly and Gustavo Aguilar. and we so we also will kind of trade who's the musical director right

37:49 Luke F. Walton Cool. Okay.

37:49 Dr. Leah Bowden so so this is something that can shift and again it's not like everyone solos every song in the same order yeah so so we just yeah we passed the baton in terms of who's in charge and that's exactly what they did what Max Roach did with

38:04 Luke F. Walton Okay.

38:04 Dr. Leah Bowden Boom Boom right he

38:05 Luke F. Walton Yes.

38:05 Dr. Leah Bowden got all these musicians who by the way were a lot younger than him him

38:09 Luke F. Walton Mm

38:09 Dr. Leah Bowden so

38:09 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

38:09 Dr. Leah Bowden right

38:10 Luke F. Walton Right,

38:10 Dr. Leah Bowden so he's

38:11 Luke F. Walton right.

38:11 Dr. Leah Bowden he's smart he's smart he's keeping it fresh he wants to know what the kids are doing they were at least 15 years younger like the older the oldest other members of oom boom were 15 years younger than max and then they even got younger members than that right and the forest is also intergenerational we have uh leslie i think is in their 20s still so

38:34 Dr. Leah Bowden they might be 30 now I don't know I'm in my maybe they're still in their 20s I'm in my 30s and then the other three are I think in their 40s 50s and 60s you know so like so like um I also really enjoy that intergenerational collaboration being in any position whether I'm working with young people or people older than me kind of like approaching middle age now it's like oh I'm in a different position generationally this is interesting

39:01 Dr. Leah Bowden thing you

39:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

39:01 Dr. Leah Bowden know yeah. but that's also like a really cool thing about music is that it can allow people to connect also across ethnicities cultural backgrounds gender differences whatever and and generational differences which to me recently has been interesting

39:19 Luke F. Walton Pardon the interruption. I just wanted to invite you guys to check out my merch store. It's a great way to support the pod and rep it. We've got love music more merchandise. We've got Scoobert Doobert merchandise. And I'm super, super excited to announce we have a vinyl record coming very soon. My very first one. And I can't wait to share it with you.

39:38 Luke F. Walton It's going to be called I like the letter I and we should have it in hand like mid to late June. So definitely, you know.

39:46 Luke F. Walton start bookmarking on your calendars it's a amazing way to support the pod and also a great way to get some you know vinyl records like I have behind me immortalize the music and and also yeah rep the pod get some shirts and stuff like that so check out scoobertdoobert.pizza to learn more and visit the merch store And that

40:07 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

40:08 Luke F. Walton whole universal language, I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it is very real. And one of the things I do really like about percussion ensembles or percussion drum kind of duets is how viscerally you're able to hear the musical conversation. There's always a musical conversation going on depending on whatever the arrangement of the combo or whatever is. But I think it's just easier for the audience to get it.

40:35 Luke F. Walton oh they played a rhythm and then they played a rhythm back and then now they're improvising on that rhythm and they pass it over you know like this person's doing the grid and this person's doing it so on top and now they flipped um i think

40:47 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

40:47 Luke F. Walton that that's like it's an easy way i think just as even if you're not a trained musician or whatever to be like oh i understand the concept of musical conversation

40:56 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah. And, um. is that what you just said brings up two thoughts one has to i just wrote this down but one has to do with the question of universality which is a very complex question by the way i don't know if i necessarily agree with it music being

41:11 Luke F. Walton Push back,

41:11 Dr. Leah Bowden universal please. language yeah

41:12 Luke F. Walton Hit me.

41:13 Dr. Leah Bowden and then in that okay but let me first say the shorter thing what you just said about um passing things around or whatever we realized in listening to or in learning more about our audiences right because you because they're not like necessarily trained musicians they're going to be hearing things differently from us and that brings up all the question of universality right um

41:33 Luke F. Walton Yes.

41:33 Dr. Leah Bowden but we learned sometimes you have to let an idea go on for longer because people are dealing with so much new information sonically

41:43 Luke F. Walton Yes.

41:43 Dr. Leah Bowden like new timbres new textures new combinations of different timbres into you another new timbre you know and and different rhythms and patterns like people don't necessarily hear it if it goes by too quickly we might hear it because we do music all day and we obsess about it and so we hear things in that way but yeah I've learned do things longer and I think that's good advice for a lot of musicians who have very highly developed ears to remember

42:18 Dr. Leah Bowden that um it takes people maybe an extra few seconds than you might think um to to hear what's going on so you can stick with an idea and make sure it's going to be heard um yeah and then so yeah the question of universality we all hear differently we all see differently so it depends on how you define that right like so you could say it's you it's not because

42:44 Dr. Leah Bowden everyone interprets things in their own way but you could also say that it is if anything is like either if it's possible insofar as it's possible to be universal at all right

42:55 Luke F. Walton Yes.

42:56 Dr. Leah Bowden because

42:56 Luke F. Walton Yes.

42:56 Dr. Leah Bowden like we all see differently too um so I guess that it just depends how you define that and obviously when you go to listen to musics that you've never been exposed to

43:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:08 Dr. Leah Bowden from a totally different culture um you you you hear something gamelons is what it says yeah

43:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:16 Dr. Leah Bowden gamelons amazing um you

43:18 Luke F. Walton It's so

43:18 Dr. Leah Bowden hear

43:19 Luke F. Walton tough.

43:19 Dr. Leah Bowden it yeah like i i don't know is it universal or not like you know i mean i talk to my students about this all the time um it it

43:32 Dr. Leah Bowden I mean, I guess like language isn't or is it maybe it is too because you understand tone like you get something out of it.

43:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I get that. Well, also, I mean, the language part is the thing that makes it sit a little bit better with me because language, even both of us speaking, you know, I'm assuming that English is your first language.

43:52 Dr. Leah Bowden It is

43:52 Luke F. Walton So we have a certain level of, you know, cultural and we're both San Diegans, there's like a jumping off point by which our language might be more accurately conveyed to one another. However, there is some fidelity loss, regardless of how much we have in common, be it vocabulary or culture. And then as you as you lose vocabulary and culture similarities, or even the similarities of concepts of like religion.

44:20 Luke F. Walton and or mind body or soul or all these things like now it becomes more difficult you say the same word and it's packed with different context um and so like i agree with you but like language will never be universal and so that's why i feel like the idea of like music is is as efficient ish as uh as language would be um should you uh you know attempt it cross-culturally um there's

44:45 Dr. Leah Bowden But like, for always example,

44:46 Luke F. Walton going to be fidelity

44:46 Dr. Leah Bowden I teach world music and I'll... And

44:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:48 Dr. Leah Bowden I'll play my students like a clip of a. i'm a i'm a ua i think that's how you pronounce that ua um funeral and i don't tell them what it is

44:59 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool.

45:00 Dr. Leah Bowden because yeah

45:00 Luke F. Walton Yes.

45:01 Dr. Leah Bowden because it's actually like a big party right

45:03 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:03 Dr. Leah Bowden and i'm

45:04 Luke F. Walton Right.

45:04 Dr. Leah Bowden like what do you guys think is going on here like you know is it a birthday you know like is it a wedding and none of them none of them really ever guess funeral unless they're familiar uh with west african cultural practices uh and everyone once in a while they're like like it's in general i'm like but um you know so like

45:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

45:25 Dr. Leah Bowden is

45:26 Luke F. Walton I know

45:26 Dr. Leah Bowden that really

45:26 Luke F. Walton what you mean.

45:26 Dr. Leah Bowden universal if you if you totally interpret

45:28 Luke F. Walton Yes.

45:29 Dr. Leah Bowden it as being something totally different no

45:31 Luke F. Walton Right. No, that's a really good point. Yeah, if you raise somebody outside of major and minor scale, would they be like, that one's happy, that one's sad?

45:40 Dr. Leah Bowden no

45:40 Luke F. Walton Probably not,

45:41 Dr. Leah Bowden no

45:41 Luke F. Walton I don't think.

45:42 Dr. Leah Bowden and if you play if you like play orchestral music for someone that's never heard it they think it sounds terrible

45:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right. Right, or like... like are you like horses like chariot racing or whatever if you don't have like the million movie scores that use that to associate it in your brain as horses and galloping

46:01 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, right.

46:02 Luke F. Walton like yeah it's it's like but you could associate it with a million other things oh like that's a that's a waterfall it's falling you know like i don't know you can create your own associations or like gamelan music like Tonality, Tonality, the idea of dissonance versus consonance. Are those things baked into the human psyche? I don't think so.

46:23 Dr. Leah Bowden no no no but i mean they in gamelan music they use uh rhythmic we share rhythmic similarities like they have this system called irama which uh basically subdivides everything in two right so it's like there's the big beat which is like 64 then there's another one

46:42 Dr. Leah Bowden 32 and then 16 and then eight and then four and then two and then one right so double this process of doubling which we also have in western music so um there yeah uh yeah i would just say is music universal like kind of kind

46:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

46:57 Dr. Leah Bowden of sort of sometimes maybe it's more it can be cross-cultural or it can be a bridge you know um but i wouldn't say with absolute

47:08 Dr. Leah Bowden certainty that it's necessarily universal but I also don't think anything is universal so

47:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah, well, maybe that's the most yeah

47:14 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah like I teach cultural relativity like because that's you know you you do this podcast in a way to promote the value of music and um also the humanities and the arts right and so I emphasize the same thing in my teaching like because I work I do general education um

47:33 Dr. Leah Bowden a lot of the time and so that's a lot of that is just reinforcing why the humanities are important even if you're not a musician and hoping that the students will carry that sense of value into their lives somehow you know fingers crossed

47:48 Luke F. Walton Yes, and be able to step outside of themselves to some degree and be able to recognize, yeah, even concepts like universality. But what I was going to say is I think that that might be the most universal sense of it all is that. the Einstein quote, God does not play dice. It's like, actually, yeah, he does.

48:04 Luke F. Walton And the more we look at the universe itself, the more we recognize kind of our place in it is not that of preeminence or domination. It is like, rather, we are just part of this. That doesn't invalidate us. That doesn't mean that we don't matter. It's not doesn't shouldn't throw you into existential dread, but it should instead make you like rethink what it is to be.

48:25 Luke F. Walton in the humanities and that that's what I like about this subject even if you're not playing a musician I like playing music just the act of participation and attending concerts and just soaking this in I think can fundamentally change the way your brain works change the way that you you know kind of interact with your culture and other cultures

48:45 Dr. Leah Bowden Well, yeah, I mean, we know this from neuroscience, like our brains are constantly reforming their neural pathways, like even as we speak right now. So like, anytime you hear a melody, it changes how you hear the next melody.

48:55 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

48:56 Dr. Leah Bowden Right? Even if it's in a tiny way, it changes how I'm going to play on my instrument, you know, what types of things have been processed through my ear brain connection, you know, recently.

49:09 Luke F. Walton and drums is the ultimate i think that's part of

49:12 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah,

49:12 Luke F. Walton the reason why it's so freaking hard for people to play is that your brain has to change like there you

49:16 Dr. Leah Bowden right

49:16 Luke F. Walton can't just logically understand what the drummer is doing and then go do it

49:22 Dr. Leah Bowden no exactly it's an embodied practice and so that's a challenge for the composers and everybody they just they just don't know how to do it and yeah like drummers and secrecy you have to learn from another another drummer and when I teach my I teach world music one of my topics and when we go over Africa we talk about different drumming cultures and like drum languages and

49:43 Luke F. Walton Hmm

49:44 Dr. Leah Bowden how yeah if you want to be a drummer you have to go where the drummers are And you have to learn from them.

49:53 Dr. Leah Bowden And so like, yeah, there's no particular universal language per se, but the only constant in the universe is change and our ability to shift and change and, you know, try to develop some distance from ourselves and understanding that we all create our own realities.

50:14 Dr. Leah Bowden through the way that our five senses work that is actually I guess a universal experience right that we all create our own our own realities and in understanding that and it helps us relate to other forms of expression including music

50:28 Luke F. Walton I agree. And I like the, I don't know, kind of mythic nature of that concept, too. Like I was reading a quote from Paul McCartney and he was talking about someone in Liverpool learned how to play a B7 chord. chord and he didn't have any so they took the bus to go discover this magic and they took it back and they showed all their friends this is a b7 chord like

50:50 Dr. Leah Bowden Take

50:50 Luke F. Walton i

50:50 Dr. Leah Bowden work

50:50 Luke F. Walton mean you know it's a good chord right and think about what the beatles would be without a b7 chord you use that thing a crap ton but i love the idea of like i have this sorcerer knowledge kind of thing and like i'm gonna go there i'm gonna grab a little bit of it and take it back and then i can share it with someone else and um

51:09 Luke F. Walton in the face of like the internet where you feel like all knowledge is open and yes

51:13 Dr. Leah Bowden No, it's encoded. It's encoded knowledge. You have to decode it.

51:19 Luke F. Walton and the loss of fidelity thing like we were talking about there's a difference like i i appreciate us being able to have this conversation through technology that's wonderful but i do think that we would be having an even deeper technology a deeper conversation without the technology

51:33 Dr. Leah Bowden Mm

51:33 Luke F. Walton we're just

51:33 Dr. Leah Bowden -hmm.

51:33 Luke F. Walton in the same room hanging out and even if we took away the whatever impact of having microphones and and an audience you know we'd have an even deeper conversation still and so that's it's funny how it's so easy to take the mimesis take the um the thing

51:52 Luke F. Walton uh that ends up being transmitted and treat that as the real thing versus the intimate personal knowledge that something like drumming like that embodied practice um can help recenter you and uh question question all of that

52:08 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah I mean that's one of the things I love about being a musician that primarily works in acoustic modes although I love the mallet cat the mallet cat is really cool but you know

52:20 Dr. Leah Bowden like uh it's it's right there you can't have a technical difficulty with the drum i mean you i guess you can break a head or something but like it's it's just right there and you just hit it you can feel it um you can't be on your phone while you're playing drums because your hands are full you

52:36 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yes.

52:37 Dr. Leah Bowden know

52:38 Luke F. Walton and

52:39 Dr. Leah Bowden you

52:39 Luke F. Walton you

52:39 Dr. Leah Bowden have

52:39 Luke F. Walton you to have

52:39 Dr. Leah Bowden be in your body right

52:41 Luke F. Walton to be present otherwise you're gonna suck and it's so i there's maybe there's some drummers that are good enough maybe you probably are but for me i gotta be like fully there otherwise my time's just gonna start doing this drifting up and down if

52:54 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah no i no i felt it's hard you know even in music that's quote unquote easy i don't think any music is easy because you have to bring that focus to it yeah

53:04 Luke F. Walton yes and it's so interesting how it's it is very zen is in where um i don't know if people have ever done those um like blowing things where there's like a ball and a tube and you don't want to blow it too hard because then it'll hit the other end of the tube you don't want to blow it too soft and the ball will come there you just try to make it hover in between and i feel like that's what uh playing music is for me if i'm too focused if my face is pinched and i'm like really like i am a real musician doing musical stuff i don't play

53:33 Luke F. Walton in a captivating emotional effortless way if i am too lackadaisical i am all over the place and i'm sloppy it is that sweet spot right in between where i am present but not you know pinched that that's where i actually sound good and it's hard to find it's so easy

53:49 Dr. Leah Bowden Oh,

53:49 Luke F. Walton to drift

53:49 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah.

53:49 Luke F. Walton on You either side

53:50 Dr. Leah Bowden have to check in with your body regularly, but not in a way that you become so obsessive that you become tense.

53:58 Luke F. Walton yeah it's a good way that's a really good way and it's crazy how much i didn't like i had these sections i'd play a solo or do something especially in music school i wouldn't breathe it took a teacher to be like yo dude you haven't taken a breath for the last like 20 seconds you know it's like what's

54:13 Dr. Leah Bowden Yep.

54:14 Luke F. Walton wrong with you yeah

54:16 Dr. Leah Bowden I know. I know. You should try inner drumming.

54:19 Luke F. Walton i should i should i've gotten better at it but it's it's still it's a it's a constant um it's constant effort and uh

54:27 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, just breathe normally.

54:30 Luke F. Walton yeah right

54:30 Dr. Leah Bowden It's hard enough. It's hard enough. Just breathe normally. You don't have to do anything fancy. Just breathe normally.

54:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And you get so much better. I think it's similar with like athletics too. You know, people, they get two in their head, go too far off or the people that don't practice technique, they don't, they get hurt. It's that sweet spot in between where you're loose, but you're focused, you're intense, but you're not like overdoing it, exaggerating that. Yeah, I'll check out interdrumming.

55:00 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah and and part of it is also practicing for safety like I also work with dancers and they do certain things where they train as if they're going to fall right so like one way that people roll their ankle common injury so you practice putting weight in that direction and how you're going to deal with it if you do fall so that it doesn't happen and same thing with drumming too right like working on getting all these motions to be really fluid

55:27 Dr. Leah Bowden um so that you're not putting crazy pressure on your joints um and things like that uh is is really helpful because we all have bodies then that's not gonna change

55:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. And it's so easy to think that someone else is just. like immortal or imperfect because you see them and you're like wow they just play they play three gigs a day it's no problem but you don't know that they're dealing with tendinitis and carpal tunnel and all these other things like nobody's

55:52 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

55:53 Luke F. Walton nobody's perfect it's just people

55:54 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

55:54 Luke F. Walton can cool

55:55 Dr. Leah Bowden And they might be meditating and visualizing too and using those tools. I mean, those are really great tools athletes use meditation and visualization. It's great for musicians too. I recommend.

56:07 Luke F. Walton i i love the comparisons with I don't know sports science or sports psychology with with music because we're we're doing two very similar but very different things of connecting with your body and your mind and it's yeah

56:19 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah i get that from george and the inner drumming for me it's swimming that i use for my kind of full body exercise is so good for the joints too like you know it's it's gentle but also amazing workout um but it doesn't have to be that there's all kinds of ways But yeah, it's important to stay in shape to

56:38 Luke F. Walton I agree. Yeah.

56:39 Dr. Leah Bowden be a musician. Yeah.

56:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

56:40 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah.

56:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

56:41 Dr. Leah Bowden Because

56:41 Luke F. Walton No,

56:42 Dr. Leah Bowden your body is really what is your instrument, really.

56:45 Luke F. Walton yep. I really let myself slip for a while where I was like, I was going to grad school, I was doing all the things. And yeah, I had a lot of inflammation, everything was harder.

56:56 Luke F. Walton You know, took me years to get back to back where I like feel good about my body, but Just doing those little things now everything else gets easier. So I recommend it too. It's it's difficult and it should take a long time because that's how it works. But yeah, just the act of doing really helps everything else.

57:16 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, like especially after like after you're 30 and older you you don't really have a choice like working out it's not optional you know if you don't do it there's going to be consequences like within a week it

57:30 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah and then the inverse consequences are brilliant because you end up getting in like a positive feedback loop rather than a negative feedback loop and it gets easier as you do it the next day rather than it gets harder to start

57:43 Dr. Leah Bowden gets easier you get younger

57:46 Luke F. Walton yeah

57:47 Dr. Leah Bowden you get happier yeah for sure but yeah it's definitely hard getting back into it when you get too busy and three weeks go by and you're like oh crap i'm out of shape for

57:55 Luke F. Walton Yep, seriously. No, and the hardest thing is restarting and forgiving yourself for being human and then just starting again is very difficult to do. But yeah, hopefully that gives some people some good vibes to know that everybody deals with that. you know take

58:15 Dr. Leah Bowden it Yeah.

58:15 Luke F. Walton from this podcast and

58:16 Dr. Leah Bowden Oh,

58:16 Luke F. Walton yes

58:17 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah, it's it's hard. But try to let go of like self blame and guilt, you know, just yeah, just to get back into it. I don't know.

58:29 Luke F. Walton yes so i have i have two final questions the first one before uh we do the big question is uh

58:36 Dr. Leah Bowden Exactly.

58:36 Luke F. Walton I'd love to talk about just San Diego real quick. So I grew up in Bonita and then kind of like La Costa area. And then I went to USC for music and then I came back to San Diego. I'm just curious about your kind of like San Diego journey, your connection with the community there. And I love hearing about the cross-border stuff. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about Dago.

59:01 Dr. Leah Bowden Definitely. Okay, yeah, there's so much more like I really enjoyed going to school at UC San Diego, which is where I went.

59:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

59:08 Dr. Leah Bowden I studied with Steve Schick. Also, like I mentioned Anthony Davis, I did work with Mark Dresser and Steph Richards, all amazing. One of the best things about San Diego was the local community. And from early in my grad studies career, it was important to me to be doing work off campus. So one of the bigger projects that I did was called Voices of Our City Choir.

59:35 Dr. Leah Bowden And that is a performing ensemble, a professional performing ensemble for people experiencing homelessness. And that was something that I helped to start along with Steph.

59:46 Dr. Leah Bowden Steph Johnson and Nina Deering RIP and we started that group in 2015 and so it's become like a resource and social platform for a lot of our unsheltered neighbors here and the choir has actually been in a PBS documentary they made it to the semi-finals of America's Got Talent so I was like their original board president because they needed someone to do that but also their drummer you um and

60:13 Luke F. Walton Cool.

60:14 Dr. Leah Bowden so that was a really great process of like getting to know people from all kinds of different backgrounds and just really helping uh people help themselves right because when we we were out volunteering because it was summer and there's heat waves and people needed water and we were giving out bandanas and bananas and stuff and that's when we realized that a lot of people were also musicians a lot of the unsheltered people were musicians just like us

60:39 Dr. Leah Bowden and like not to conflate being an artist and being extremely poor but we are ourselves like one or two steps away from homelessness sometimes uh

60:50 Luke F. Walton Oh,

60:50 Dr. Leah Bowden being

60:50 Luke F. Walton yeah.

60:50 Dr. Leah Bowden the these precarious careers so there was a lot of empathy uh there um so anyway that was one of my bigger projects that i did here and one that i'm currently still doing is called baby bushka and baby bushka is an eight piece peace all female virtuoso band that does our own versions of the music of Kate Bush. And that's been a band since about six years. We have toured nationally and internationally.

61:24 Dr. Leah Bowden And so that's a really important project to me and the community here. Also just I live in City Heights.

61:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

61:36 Dr. Leah Bowden So I had like a a communal type of house here for about 10 years or so and that I left and came back not too long ago because I've just been going back and forth um

61:52 Dr. Leah Bowden I love city heights,

61:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

61:54 Dr. Leah Bowden really,

61:54 Luke F. Walton City Eyes is awesome.

61:55 Dr. Leah Bowden really amazing community here, super diverse. Yeah, so City Heights is like my neighborhood in San Diego. Does that answer your question?

62:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah, that does. I lived in North Park for a while. I absolutely loved it and then it got too expensive for me, but as

62:15 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, well,

62:15 Luke F. Walton it goes.

62:16 Dr. Leah Bowden I've always done house shares. Yeah, so I have a house share here again that's different. And I also have a house share in New England because at the moment I have an adjunct professor at Springfield College. So I'm there during the academic semester.

62:31 Luke F. Walton Cool. Love

62:33 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah,

62:33 Luke F. Walton that.

62:33 Dr. Leah Bowden but that's super part-time, so I still perform and tour even during the semester because I only teach one class in person and the other one's online. So, yeah.

62:43 Luke F. Walton Cool. I love

62:43 Dr. Leah Bowden What

62:44 Luke F. Walton the blend.

62:44 Dr. Leah Bowden I do.

62:44 Luke F. Walton No, it's great. And I love this too because I know that we have some of our audience that's like kind of younger looking at what our careers in music really like. And I love hearing kind of about that tapestry of, you know, this is how you make it work.

62:59 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah i i mentor a lot of young musicians today and uh you know it's common advice like if you can do anything else besides music probably you should do that you should i would encourage you to do something else because you can make more money and you'll be able to have like a family and like uh you know own property maybe or something but like um if you feel that you must be a musician then by all means be a musician because that's what happened to me you know uh

63:26 Dr. Leah Bowden uh it wasn't necessarily the most financially smart thing to do um

63:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

63:31 Dr. Leah Bowden and yeah so as an independent artist and freelancer I also do a lot of work in Los Angeles with bands that will contract me for like a gig or two or a short tour or whatever um you really have to do all the work you have to be your own manager you have to be your own promoter you have to be your own agent a lot of times I mean

63:55 Dr. Leah Bowden sometimes you can get an agent if you're lucky but um the majority of musicians don't even have that and for me as somebody who's also a scholar you know I I'm totally independent and I do a lot of work I probably make five dollars an hour at the end of the day um but you know it's just that's just part of it I

64:16 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

64:17 Dr. Leah Bowden wouldn't have it any other way so but yeah it's definitely a tough road you

64:24 Luke F. Walton yes yeah i know gone are the days where you know you'd get on like michael jackson's tour and he'd give you like 150k retainer and you know you just wait for the next tour

64:34 Dr. Leah Bowden know I'm still waiting for Beyonce to call me like

64:37 Luke F. Walton Hell

64:37 Dr. Leah Bowden she yeah. does like she does like to hire all female bands more people are doing that now a lot of the gigs I get are because people want not because they want female drummer but that's like one of the things and then they end up hiring me not like there aren't other women to choose from right so I'm not saying that's the only reason but you know it's becoming more of a thing where people want to have women in their bands and I

65:03 Dr. Leah Bowden I

65:03 Luke F. Walton Definitely.

65:03 Dr. Leah Bowden love that because I've been in so many bands where I was the only woman for so many years that now that people are prioritizing that a little more, it's cool. It's exciting. Yeah.

65:17 Luke F. Walton I agree. I agree. Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go into the podcast screen, right? You click on the dot, dot, dot on Spotify.

65:38 Luke F. Walton Under there, it says rate show and you go and you click it five stars. If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms and all this stuff.

65:45 Luke F. Walton stuff to share it out with the world i know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots and a five star it would really help us out and it helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff thank you so much and here's the rest of the episode okay so the big question uh this is this is the one that this is the one we like to kind of end every pod with so the show is called love music more and the segment's called love music

66:14 Luke F. Walton music why this is just an opportunity to kind of like speak to somebody that is considering starting music or you know somebody that might be down on music right now and just kind of tell them why you keep doing it why do you love music why does this nourish your soul and your community and why are you so passionate about it even in in the face of you know economic realities and and everything else like why do you keep coming back to it why do you love it so much

66:40 Luke F. Walton And why do you want to do this for the rest of your life?

66:43 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that question. So let's start with why do I love music? The reason I love music, I think, is because of the way that it combines mystery and accessibility. Right. These are things that you'd think would be like opposed to one another, but really they're not. Right. That combination of mystery and accessibility is endlessly stimulating for me.

67:13 Dr. Leah Bowden And as somebody who has had the fortunate experience of having great musical mentors, they've really instilled in me this.

67:24 Dr. Leah Bowden sense of having like a continuous learner mindset a lifelong learner mindset so because of that combination of mystery and accessibility there's always something to learn there's always something to be curious about whether that's on my own part or maybe thinking through ways of connecting with others or learning about how other people hear things versus how I do or there's there's just always so much to learn it can be overwhelming and even distracting sometimes but that's you

68:03 Dr. Leah Bowden that's why I love it and that that mystery of not only drums and percussion but all music like there's always something we don't quite understand about it right it's not any one thing and it's not even a physical thing and I mean I'm not saying there isn't physical objects associated with music we got instruments we have vinyl we have you know these technologies we're communicating through right now so there's

68:28 Dr. Leah Bowden There are physical objects that are part of it, but the music itself, that sound, that vibration is invisible and it's that is mysterious, you know, like this that it's just a sound wave, you know, vibrating in the air, you know.

68:46 Dr. Leah Bowden And then plus the mystery of the way that we hear things differently, the way that every instrument has a story, the way that there are millions and millions of different folkloric traditions and ways of intersecting and creating something new out of something old. It's just endless.

69:08 Dr. Leah Bowden And also that accessibility element reinforces my feeling that music is for everyone, regardless of whether or not you're going to be a professional performer.

69:24 Dr. Leah Bowden like me you can be a perform a part-time performer you can just do it by yourself you can just do it with your friend you can join a choir like music is for everyone if you're interested there's ways to do it so I would never want to discourage anyone from doing music so that's the difference between pursuing music professionally and being a musician you can be a musician and be a professional at something else you

69:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

69:58 Dr. Leah Bowden know and that's just as valid and listening to music is a form of making music too so there are people who don't play an instrument don't sing maybe they wish they did maybe they say things like I wish I practiced I never you know people say this to me all the time you know and I'm like do you make playlists

70:20 Luke F. Walton Yes.

70:20 Dr. Leah Bowden then you're a musician you know do you do you pick and choose uh what you're going to listen to you know in your free time do you share an album that you liked with somebody else you know then you are doing music you know and listeners are just important as music makers like uh you know we need both

70:43 Luke F. Walton Exactly. And each one informs the other. And I love like your your idea with, you know, asking listeners, hey, what did what did you grasp? What did you like? And then coming away with the idea of.

70:55 Luke F. Walton let's let's develop the motif a little bit more let's use a little bit more repetition let's allow for the complexity of the timbral things that we're used to to wash over the audience and then they can grasp the melodic or ideas or whatever and then we can move on um

71:10 Dr. Leah Bowden yeah

71:10 Luke F. Walton i

71:10 Dr. Leah Bowden like we might we might hear it all at once and

71:13 Luke F. Walton yes of

71:13 Dr. Leah Bowden that's

71:13 Luke F. Walton course

71:14 Dr. Leah Bowden that's fine and that's great you're like good for us you know that's we love it but they might need to hear it in sequence or yeah Oh, spread out more.

71:23 Luke F. Walton yes yes totally well that's one of the things that uh i like was the light bulb moment for me with mixing music is that i realized when stuff comes in it's got to come in loud like if it's a new idea i need to be like hey look at me over here and then it can fade in the background but it cannot just like subtly kind of creep in there where a musician would be like oh nice little pad that's smooth the listener will be like

71:48 Luke F. Walton like didn't hear it wasn't there like hey that thing you spent six hours making no one heard it you know like being bombastic and making big choices and being like listen to me this is cool and then it can fade into the background that was like a little bit of a moment for me to just uh i don't know make more accessible music i guess yeah

72:07 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, if you want them to notice it, unless you want them to not notice it and totally just be subtly affected by

72:12 Luke F. Walton right which

72:12 Dr. Leah Bowden it, because that's a mixing

72:13 Luke F. Walton is totally

72:13 Dr. Leah Bowden thing

72:13 Luke F. Walton yeah

72:13 Dr. Leah Bowden too.

72:14 Luke F. Walton totally a choice that's totally cool i do stuff like that like crazy like reverbs it's like i don't even want you to know that there's a reverb but there's a

72:20 Dr. Leah Bowden Right.

72:20 Luke F. Walton reverb kind of situation but if it's like a part it's like a hook it's a it's a new musical idea that adds this texture to this whole thing it's like play it loud play it proud get it out there um make it make it so that when a new character enters the stage it's like Just like Kramer from Seinfeld, like, there it is, can

72:38 Dr. Leah Bowden spots

72:38 Luke F. Walton of his own.

72:39 Dr. Leah Bowden in the door without knocking right um

72:41 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

72:41 Dr. Leah Bowden i love kramer yeah yeah exactly um so you know companies or whatnot when they're making a product they'll do like a what is it called when they have people try it i

72:53 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

72:53 Dr. Leah Bowden had a i just had

72:54 Luke F. Walton focus group.

72:56 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, a focus group. So like, yeah, as a creator, why wouldn't you ask somebody with different ears from you what they're hearing?

73:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Well, thank you, Dr. Drums, for coming

73:11 Dr. Leah Bowden Oh,

73:11 Luke F. Walton on here,

73:11 Dr. Leah Bowden thank you so much.

73:12 Luke F. Walton dropping all this knowledge.

73:12 Dr. Leah Bowden Thank you.

73:13 Luke F. Walton This is really fun. Anything else you'd like to add that listeners might be able to come check out a live set or catch up with you on the socials?

73:22 Dr. Leah Bowden Yeah, and maybe I'll email you this info too,

73:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

73:25 Dr. Leah Bowden but so yeah, a few things are happening. This coming up weekend, May 31st to June 2nd, I'll be playing in a chamber opera in San Diego. The composer is Carolyn Chen.

73:42 Dr. Leah Bowden That's going to be at Bread and Salt and it will sell out. So if you're interested, definitely check, get a ticket soon. That should be very exciting. It's a world premiere. world premiere um

73:52 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

73:53 Dr. Leah Bowden baby bushka will be performing again in september in san diego in la so uh so check out baby bushka and maybe follow us if you're interested in it because that's a little while off um and also doing an ireland and uk tour it

74:11 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

74:12 Dr. Leah Bowden is september into october And then if you're in New York this summer, on June 16th at the Andrew Friedman Home in the Bronx, we are doing a 90th birthday concert for Warren Smith, founding member of Max Roach's percussion ensemble, Boom Boom, which will be a concert celebrating the release of His autobiography,

74:41 Dr. Leah Bowden Crossing Borders and Playing with Pioneers, as well as the release of My Percussion Ensemble's new album. So My Percussion Ensemble, The Forest.

74:51 Dr. Leah Bowden Featuring Warren Smith and J.D. Perrin, two treasures of New York City musical history, just very amazing heavy hitters at that event. So that'll be June 16th at the Andrew Friedman Home in the Bronx. We're also celebrating Father's Day. Warren Smith is a father, grandfather and great grandfather.

75:16 Luke F. Walton Wow. Oh, yeah.

75:17 Dr. Leah Bowden um yeah and juneteenth also uh we're going to be celebrating and the very last thing this summer uh cosmo gold which is a really cool band out of la is releasing a film produced with uh by film addicts um i don't know what it's i think it's called a cosmo gold

75:44 Dr. Leah Bowden Krong I think it's called Krong and that'll be a really cool music film and I'm on percussion in that too so I'm very excited about all of these things coming up definitely

75:56 Luke F. Walton Love that. Definitely go check that out. And where could listeners like follow you or stay tuned for stuff maybe for next year?

76:03 Dr. Leah Bowden my Instagram handle is at leah b drums l-e-a-h b drums uh you can also find more information about me and listen to things on my website which is leahbowden.com but staying tuned i would recommend to do through instagram i

76:22 Luke F. Walton Cool.

76:23 Dr. Leah Bowden always post um concert announcements as well as like fun music content i make little drum trivia videos and different things i do like a percussion camp so you can get a up close and personal what

76:35 Luke F. Walton Yes, totally.

76:36 Dr. Leah Bowden what it's like being at the back of the band sometimes so yeah hope to see some of you on the socials

76:45 Luke F. Walton Well, thank you so much, Leah. Really appreciate the great conversation. Ton to chew on in here. I'm definitely gonna be thinking about this all week. So thank you for all this inspiration.

76:55 Dr. Leah Bowden Thank you too. I'll be thinking about it as well. We'll be in touch later.

77:00 Luke F. Walton Yes, please. Awesome.

77:01 Dr. Leah Bowden All right. Take care. Bye.