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0000017c-60f7-de77-ad7e-f3f739cf0000Arts & More airs Fridays at 7:50 a.m. and 4:20 p.m.Theme music: "Like A Beginner Again" by Dan Barry of Seas of Jupiter

Body Percussionists To Perfom, Hold Workshops In SW Michigan

Keith Terry and Evie Ladin at a performance in Toronto
Mike Melnyk

Body musicians EvieLadin and Keith Terry are coming to perform and teach a series of workshops in Southwest Michigan, April 5th through April 8th

Evie Ladin has her roots in Appalachain musical arts. She's a clogger, step dancer, and plays a mean clawhammer banjo. You might remember her from the old-time band The Stairwell Sisters, who appeared on A Prairie Home Companion. WMUK's Rebecca Thiele spoke with her by phone:

Evie_Ladin_long.mp3
A longer interview with Evie Ladin

REBECCA THIELE: Evie, your childhood seems to be a story all on its own. Your mom was a folk dance instructor and opened up your New Jersey home to several traveling musicians. What was that like?

EVIE LADIN: Well, it was pretty...I can't say what it was like at the time, because you're a kid you know and how you feel about people traipsing through your space, but as an adult of course I've really come to appreciate how many people we had the opportunity to meet and spend time with. And it was actually...my mom was a dance teacher, but my father fell in love with old time music in New York City in the late 50s and he was the person who raised us the most. And he was a really - music and dance was very important to him. He had a steady day job and he never did play music, but he knows the repertoire inside and out and he's always dancing. And so not only is the connection between music and dance very strong, but the whole idea that it's really what people do and it's a participatory thing. And so we just had the great fortune to be around a lot of amazing artists.

I mean, it's the first instrument. Before anyone was making instruments they were just using their bodies to express musical ideas.

THIELE: You also play clawhammer banjo. For our listeners who might not know, what is the difference between clamhammer banjo and just someone playing the banjo regularly?

LADIN: That's an interesting distinction because clawhammer banjo is actually the original style of playing banjo that came out of Africa into the Americas. And your hand is sort of shaped like a claw and there's a lot of down strokes with your fingernails. And then over the years up-picking styles developed. And then of course when Earl Scruggs started developing his particular three-finger style of doing rolls in bluegrass, that kind of transformed the genre to now - like you said - 'regular banjo playing.' That's what most people think of is the bluegrass style, but the clawhammer and also the style of dance I do are both a little bit of an older style. But it does absolutely exist today in the scene.

THIELE: When you have a beat in your head, how do you translate to the body? How does that come out?

LADIN: In a variety of ways. Keith would probably answer this differently than I would. We both have different creative processes. And he really comes from a jazz background and he's developed a methodology of mapping out the body called 'rhythm blocks' and he has a way of exploring these sounds. And I, on the other hand - I really like the fact that the human body is a very sonic, expressive experience. And growing up clogging and doing all manner of foot percussion and then moving that to the body, I really do a lot of exploration of the sonic qualities - as does Keith. You know, that a brush is different from a clap. There are different ways of clapping all over the world that you can get different sounds. For Keith it came right out of the drum set, so all the different sounds of the drum set he can get from different places and areas on his body. So it's a very musical exploration. And for me, I also - the movement. The way it moves and the choreography, the way it moves in space and of course including the voice and melody and harmony and lyrics is very important. I'm also a songwriter and write a lot of material and have a lot of traditional material that I work with. And I really like seeing how the vocals...and especially as you're dancing, how it involved breath control and things like that. And over the years, having both of us explore body music traditions throughout the world, has really given us a lot of information of how to perceive and play with the sonic body, a musical body. I mean, it's the first instrument. Before anyone was making instruments they were just using their bodies to express musical ideas.

American_Dance_Culture.mp3
WEB EXTRA: Evie Ladin answers the un-answerable question

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