The Process: Are drums a time-travelling device?

About this episode

Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom explores the concept of drums as a time-travelling device and their historical significance in music and culture.

Somerset House Studios artist Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom reimagines the drums as a time-travelling device across continent, history, and bodies. A visual artist who has been learning the drums as part of an art project since 2020, Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom has long been interested in how we might reframe our perception of the drums. Its primal release of sound and movement. An ability to shape and reshape our sense of time. But what happens if we take it one step further and reimagine the drum kit as a time-travelling device? In this episode of The Process, Boakye-Yiadom explores the often-invisible histories of the drum, from being othered and dismissed as noise, rather than music, to sounding the resistance against colonial power. Why is it that drummers like Clyde Stubblefield – the most sampled drummer of all time – are often neglected in music history? And who decides what is visible? To unpack these questions, Boakye-Yiadom speaks to British Italian multi-genre drummer, percussionist and composer, Valentina Magaletti , and writer and musicologist, Matt Brennan , author of A Social History of the Drum Kit. Boakye-Yiadom works across a multi-disciplinary practice, creating…

People in this episode

Host: Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom

Guests: Valentina Magaletti, Matt Brennan

Topics covered

• drums
• time travel
• music history
• colonial power
• artistic practice

Keywords

• drums
• time travel
• music history
• colonialism
• art

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Somerset House Studios, Modern Art Oxford, South London Gallery, Wysing Arts Centre

Books & works: A Social History of the Drum Kit

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