The Elysian Fields

While the other Stomp clips show percussion instruments made from bits of this and that, this clip goes a step beyond and really gets into the "use everything in your environment as an instrument" thing. It should be especially entertaining for anyone who ever worked in a commercial kitchen, whether or not they realized the musical potential of everything around them, or for anyone who ever put together a set of drums from pots and pans:



Despite that this likely comes from Stomp Out Loud - and it was confirmed that yesterday's clip did, as well - I'm going to highlight a third Stomp DVD today: Pulse: a Stomp Odyssey so as to further broaden your horizons, especially if you already have that first disc! =)

...and that concludes the set of international percussion...

I suppose some of you saw this coming ~ I didn't. It seems inevitable, though, to end a set of clips featuring percussion with a few clips from a production dedicated entirely to percussion.

The original set was just intended to feature Habib Koite & Bamada and some Uakti, and then Bamboo Orchestra was pointed out to me. As I collected those clips and lined them up, I realized some daiko ~ something I've liked for over a dozen years ~ would do nicely in this set. While searching and gathering for some great Japanese percussion, I couldn't help but notice the links for clips to Stomp [stomponline.com], which bills itself as a "Combination of percussion, movement, and visual comedy" and if only one third of that really fits the theme, it was enough to get me to watch. Of course, they also bill the show as "the international percussion sensation" ~ and that is, exactly, the theme.

Where the folks in Bamada and the daiko ensembles use traditional instruments of Mali and Japan, respectively, and Uakti combines traditional instruments of Brazil and elsewhere with engineered creations of PVC and other materials, Stomp uses anything and everything as an instrument. Although there is design behind it, there is much more of an improvisational feel to the bits of flotsam and jetsam that make up their instruments. More than that, they make use of their whole environment ~ anything within reach of a drumstick, hand, or whatever becomes a percussion instrument.

Here's the opening from their DVD, Stomp Out Loud: