Ignacio Berroa Interview

Here, Master latin Jazz drummer Ignacio Berroa talks about his drumming experience, influences and more:



Courtesy of the fine folks at Bosphorus cymbals.

Also, another nice interview and some footage here from Ignacio Berroa's band playing at the Jazz Standard courtesy of the Vic Firth website:

http://www.vicfirth.com/artists/berroa.php

I've blogged about Berroa's drumming before, but he is really a drummer worth checking out. I highly recommend his album "Codes" which made waves only a few years ago:



Ignacio Berroa first came over from Cuba to play with Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1980. At the time, Gillespie exclaimed that Berroa was: “The only Latin drummer in the world, in the history of American music that intimately knows both worlds; his native Afro-Cuban music as well as Jazz…”

Things have certainly changed nowadays (drummers Francisco Mela and Dafnis Prieto come to mind) but Berroa was truly a pioneer in latin Jazz drumming during the late 70s and early 80s and is still playing really great these days. I admire the fact that he can play ride cymbal with such a dynamic sense of swing and then switch to clave-based rhythms (and then mix the two!) with such authority.