Endless Loop: Rhythm talk with Makaya McCraven, Kassa Overall, Alexander Sowinski

Three leading drummer-producers make for a great hang at North Sea Jazz

With Makaya McCraven (left) and Kassa Overall (right), North Sea Jazz 2022.

“I think drummers are really the most common philosopher[s] in the universe.”

Kassa Overall dropped that bar in the middle of “Endless Loop,” a panel I organized last summer at North Sea Jazz, with Makaya McCraven and Alexander Sowinksi.

Pausing for just a moment, Overall expanded on the idea:

Because the drum is, like, the oldest joint. We all got a drum beating in us, right? We’re actually keeping time until we stop, the whole time. So we all can relate to that joint. But if you think about the loop, you’re talking about cycles. If you think about a waveform, which is a chord — like a perfect fifth is a certain polyrhythm, I forget what it is, like two over three or three over four — you’re talking about the cycle, the law of polarity. And you can really get deep with something like that, because you also have cycles in humanity, right?

At this point he drew a parallel to trendlines in fashion and culture, before reeling it back. “You gotta make something that’s timeless,” he urged. “Your loop has to be infinite; like, it has to be hot forever. We’re still listening to A Love Supreme, you feel me? You’ve gotta make sure that what you’re making informs the zeitgeist, the moment, but also isn’t tied down to it, so it can be hot for our grandkids.”

End of sermon. “I feel like that was a fire answer,” he added.

I’m thinking about this exchange today because Kassa Overall just released a killer new album, Animals, on Warp Records. A brilliantly destabilized yet fully embodied amalgam of hip-hop and contemporary jazz, it’s the strongest dose yet of his personal vision as an artist. Listen to a track like “Make My Way Back Home,” and you’ll hear Overall rapping about therapy and self-medication alongside a yearning hook sung by Nick Hakim. There’s a good chance that Theo Croker’s overdubbed trumpet part will call up bittersweet echoes of Roy Hargrove, which is surely by design.

“Endless Loop” originated with the idea that Overall, McCraven and Sowinski are all hyperfluent in the rhythmic foundation and sampling traditions that link jazz and hip-hop — a reciprocal loop, if you will. I had a hunch that all three drummer-producers would have terrific insight on the subject, and they went above and beyond the call.

The nature of the beast at North Sea Jazz is constant movement: everyone is always dashing from one commitment to the next. We started the panel without Overall, because he was finishing up a set across the compound with Croker. Then, halfway through, Sowinski had to bounce to make his set with BADBADNOTGOOD.

But the unintended consequence of this shifting was a welcome looseness in the convo, which made it feel less like a public discussion than a clubhouse hang. Listen to Overall’s arrival on the panel, roughly 16 minutes in, and you’ll know what I mean.

In my remarks, there’s an allusion to some wisdom McCraven had already dropped. It should be no surprise that he has considered this subject from myriad angles, and fashioned his own distinct point of view. Sowinski articulated an idea about the metabolism of influence in an online era, and the way in which music creates a space for discursive possibility. At one point I brought up Dan Charnas’ book Dilla Time, which Overall said he’d digested as an audiobook on a cross-country drive; we got to some good places there, too, about imprecision and how pulse is inherently personal.

If you’re a paid subscriber at The Gig, keep scrolling to hear the entire panel, which runs some 40 minutes. (A partial soundtrack for your Memorial Day road trip? Good company on a neighborhood dog walk? You make the call.) Obviously I’m biased, but I think it’s an illuminating window onto a musical topic that couldn’t be more relevant today. And as I hope you gathered from the excerpt above, we had some fun.

If you’re a free subscriber, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little taste. A few pertinent links before you go: