If Ginger wants to play jazz, he plays jazz. If he wants to play rock, he starts Cream. If he wants to play Afrobeat, he moves to Nigeria. Whatever he plays, he brings his own pulse and sound. He understands the African beat more than any other Westerner. | | | | Ginger Baker playing with Cream at the National Jazz & Blues Festival, Windsor, England, Aug. 13, 1967.
(David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “If Ginger wants to play jazz, he plays jazz. If he wants to play rock, he starts Cream. If he wants to play Afrobeat, he moves to Nigeria. Whatever he plays, he brings his own pulse and sound. He understands the African beat more than any other Westerner.”
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| | rantnrave:// GINGER BAKER's life was an eight-decade-long polyrhythm, a lifelong exploration of the rhythmic possibilities of jazz, rock, Afrobeat and any number of other styles and hybrids that called out to him as he worked his way across the three continents he called home (often on the run from someone or something), making friends onstage and enemies offstage, abusing himself more than he ever abused anyone else, helping invent heavy metal (which he hated), and, because everyone needs a hobby, going broke pursuing his love of polo. Here's a classic account of his peripatetic life, which is your one biographical must-read as we mourn the death of one of the greatest rock drummers ever (he would've disputed the phrase "one of the"). Here's a 13-minute drum solo. (Bonus track: 16-minute drum duet with Afrobeat grandmaster TONY ALLEN.) Here's one of many examples of his penchant for cruelty and, lest you think a single rhythm can ever be the sum of anything, an example of him being absolutely charming in another time and place. He spent his life exploring other times and places. He was a master of time, in the musical sense of the word. And he wound up in an incredibly dark place, in any number of senses. But in the early '70s, having spent his previous few years changing the world and sealing his name in the Book of Rock with one double-bass-drum kit, one generational guitarist and two supergroups in his native London, he decamped to Lagos, Nigeria, built a recording studio and reconnected with FELA KUTI, whom he had met in London. While most of his peers were digging deeper into their rock and roll roots and branches—and often making great records in the process—Baker decided to look over the hills and far away (to borrow a phrase from a famous band of disciples he only sort of tolerated). He went rogue in the best possible way. Schooling and immersing himself in Fela and Afrobeat. Traveling to the edges of rock and jazz. Looking, for much of the rest of his life, for new musical companions to drive him forward, while he drove them even further forward, in pursuit of, well, new times and new places. I love this understated summation of Baker's "strange magic," from NPR MUSIC's TOM MOON: "Though he wasn't necessarily charming or gracious in social settings, he was somehow able to cultivate genuine interaction and empathy among musicians in live situations. He did this on stages of every conceivable size, in front of massive Hyde Park crowds and in tiny subdued jazz clubs." There were victims along the way, including Baker himself. When you've made your way through those drum solos and the decades of music that followed, JAY BULGER's (completely bonkers) 2012 documentary BEWARE OF MR. BAKER will be here to fill in the darkness. RIP... PAULINA PORIZKOVA remembers her late husband RIC OCASEK for ROLLING STONE and it is, among many other things, one of the most beautiful accounts of a loved one's death that I've read in a long time... RIP also: DIAHANN CARROLL, ED ACKERSON, MARCELLO GIORDANI, LARRY JUNSTROM and ERIC FLY. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Inside a gated compound in South Africa, one of rock’s most legendary drummers is still making enemies. | | |
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| Ginger Baker is well-known for his smashing work in Cream and Blind Faith. But the world's greatest (and most volatile) drummer didn't really hit his stride until 1972, when he journeyed to Nigeria and discovered Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. Following periods of drug-induced self-destruction and countless groundbreaking musical works, this musical madman eventually settled in South Africa. | | |
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| | | | Fela Kuti & the Africa '70 with Ginger Baker (live 1971) |
| | "I wrote this tune especially for Ginger. He doesn't smell, really. He takes his bath." – Fela |
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