The Back Beat

Original - Oil on canvas wrap

48" x 24"

This painting is the first of a series of musical pieces inspired by a juried show at the Hammonds House Museum Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. The theme of the show is to be "From Songhai to Symphony Hall". As I researched to find out a bit about music in the Songhai people of Africa, I discovered that it was once the greatest empire in all of Africa and greatly influenced by Islam. The music is centered from one particular instrument called a Njarka. It is a large gourd with a small hole carved into it and attached by a long neck with one string. This instrument is used to center the basic beat of all other instruments that were used in the development of music in the Songhai region. This basic one string and one beat brought to mind something the great Dizzy Gillespie once said, that "without a back beat, you ain't got no jazz" And here is proof that there has always been a back beat in our early history of music all the way to today.