Talking Drums

Play "Letter From Theo"
by Cindy Blackman

Cindy Blackman is petite — not more than maybe 5' 6". She's built a bit like a modern dancer: rail-thin and sculpted.

For someone so little, she makes a surprising amount of noise. Blackman is one of the few women drummers to conquer the rock world and be equally respected as a jazz artist.

When the opportunity to see and hear someone like her comes up, I jump at the chance.

Blackman performed at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola last night. The club has a too-polished atmosphere, and I've heard jazz lovers complain how Dizzy's isn't a real jazz club at all, but a soulless, corporate monstrosity — a flush faker in a town where divey walk-in places like the 55 Bar and the Village Vanguard still cradle America's important contribution to music.

But so what. I'd come to hear Blackman and see the woman whose musicianship and sheer power behind the kit has made her legendary.

Lenny Kravitz once said during auditions Blackman impressed him with her strength, her groove and her fearlessness: She doesn't hit like a girl, he said. Blackman played with him for 10 years before going out on her own. I've never heard her play, but I entered the club ready to listen and to watch.

I half expected a rock concert. But we definitely got jazz — if jazz is defined as a framework of melody and harmony fleshed out with a lot of improvisation that tries to say something.

Jazz is pretty hard to define, though. A party of four walked out in the middle of the first piece, clearly disturbed by what they were hearing.

As for me, I hope someone bootlegged the concert. From the group's first whomp to the imaginative solo flights all around, Blackman's drums were, as a recent New York Sun review put it, "in the front as well as the back, in every solo and in every written ensemble part, and they are at once the propeller in the rear of a ship and the one at the nose of an airplane."

Pretty frickin' awesome.

Her lineup:
• J.D. Allen, tenor sax
• Fionn O'Lochlainn, guitar
• Carlton Holmes, piano
• George Mitchell, bass

Blackman plays again tonight at Dizzy's. You can also catch her around town supporting her guitarist, Fionn (pron: "fin") O'Lochlainn. Go if you want to hear what Blackman herself described as "creative music." Don't go if you're expecting a more traditional set.