A Brooklyn Drummer Finds His Beat In Senegal

Ben Herson flew to Dakar, Senegal, in 1998 on a quest for a drumming teacher. His imagined guru never materialized, but at a city market he found stalls featuring Senegalese hip-hop albums, snapped up two cassettes, and became fixated on one with a driving, modern sound.Mr. Herson was impressed by more than the West African polyrhythm that has enchanted fans of Omar Pene, Youssou N’Dour, and Orchestra Baobab. The hiphop lyrics were laced with political and moral messages. While many American rappers (with notable exceptions like Kanye West) have drifted toward rhymes about women and cash and away from those addressing social problems, their counterparts from Senegal rap passionately about their values.Mr. Herson, who performs in New York as a reggae drummer, resolved to give the musicians a wider audience. In 2001 he made another trip to Dakar, and using a hard-disc recorder, a laptop, and a few microphones, he captured an album’s worth of songs, which became “African Underground Vol. 1: Hip-Hop Senegal,” released under Mr. Herson’s label, Nomadic Wax. He celebrates the record release with a party at NuBlu, on Avenue C, on Friday.Upon arrival, he had no idea how to find artists, but coincidentally met up with the rapper Shiffai. “In Senegal, as soon as you get introduced to one person, you know everybody,” he said. “It’s like a chain of Christmas lights. Before you know it, you know the whole scene.“It was me, my cousin, and no budget,” the 29-year-old said about putting together the CD. His recording-engineer cousin helped with the production process. “It’s a miracle this album got from point A to point B.”Even, intense beats – clocking in at 92 a minute – ground the album, with layers of alternately smooth and gruff rapping in both French and Wolof. The artist BMG Slam speaks against police brutality as sirens wail in the distance. Shiffai mourns a friend and fellow emcee who was killed while on a religious pilgrimage. Some of the tracks have fewer immediately identifiable African elements. Because it was the artists’ first chance to be heard outside their country, Mr. Herson said, they likely chose songs with which they thought more people could identify .Since putting together “African Underground Vol. 1,” Mr.Herson has traveled to Senegal once more, recording enough material to fill two additional volumes. Now that the performers are more comfortable with the prospect of international exposure, he said, the music sounds more traditionally African. Mr. Herson also brushed up on his production skills. A former first-grade teacher, his production techniques became polished enough to teach the subject part-time at a middle school in the Lower East Side, a job he does when not touring with his group, Dub is a Weapon.Mr. Herson began playing with drumsticks at age 7, while growing up in Newton, Mass. Born with low-range hearing loss, he could play the drums more easily than instruments that require the identification of tonal nuances. Despite that, he became a more serious music student at 14 and took an Afro-Cuban drumming course taught by Senegalese immigrant Abdoualye Sall.He introduced Mr. Sall to his mother, a folk singer and teacher, and she used him when performing. Mr. Sall became part of the family, attending weddings and bar mitzvahs. Mr. Herson’s first visit to Senegal was to accompany Mr. Sall on a family trip.“It was totally unlike anything I thought,” he said of Dakar. “It’s both incredibly beautiful and incredibly ugly. The smells are wonderful and the smells are disgusting. A Mercedes passes you and behind you is a cow. There’s an Internet cafe and sand on the street.”Mr. Herson returned to America, where he was studying Caribbean culture at Hampshire College and seeking a unique research topic. Lots of scholars had picked apart the implications of reggae and other Caribbean forms – so he changed direction and wrote about Senegal’s hip-hop scene and its influence.His work culminated in a paper called “Fat Beats, Dope Rhymes and Thug Lives: Youth Politics and Hip Hop in Dakar.” In it, he noted that Senegal’s oral tradition has given added weight to musicians’ lyrics. Hip-hop artists began speaking out about political problem during in the late 1990s; in 2000, rappers used their words to sway voters toward an opposition presidential candidate, who won the election.This summer, Mr. Herson plans to go to Dakar again. This time, he’s leaving his equipment at home. “Everybody that I know is pretty much in the same neighborhood, and from the moment you wake up, everybody’s around, drinking tea, listening to radios, reading newspapers, talking,” he said. “It’s just a different pace of life. I want to get back into it.”Mr. Herson’s next goal: bring his emcees to America – a trying process now that restrictions on visas have tightened. Shiffai received a student visa and moved to Brooklyn. He sometimes plays the Bowery Poetry Club, during its international hip-hop night, “The Mic Goes Global.”The next step in building a bridge between the continents? Producing a Brooklyn/Dakar all-star track.

A Brooklyn Drummer Finds His Beat In Senegal

A Brooklyn Drummer Finds His Beat In Senegal

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