To better understand how the drummer perfected his craft I begin by asking about his first contact with rhythm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat did your early musical education or initiation look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, my father is from The Democratic Republic of Congo and he met my Mum who is from New Zealand in Kinshasa when she was at the tail end of her early overseas experience and they got married and decided to have me in New Zealand. In Africa my father ran a bar \/ restaurant \/ music venue and performed fairly regularly so he was an active musician but when he moved to New Zealand he really came into his own in that regard because there were barely any African people in New Zealand, let alone musicians, so it was quite a unique proposition for a lot of people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A good healthy percentage of New Zealand musicians would have played in his band at one time or another and he\u2019s had a pretty constant rotating cast of musicians for over 30 years now. So music was never something that was forced upon me, it wasn’t like: \u201cYou must take up this instrument and you must practice eight hours a day!\u201d<\/em> It was more just like a thing in my life in the same way that I imagine for an average British kid football would be a thing. It was part of my dad. My dad did it and it was around me and I was allowed to join in. He would take me along to these African drumming classes so there was definitely a lot of learning through osmosis just by being there (because you know, there was no babysitter!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did you graduate to the drum set? And how did you meet jazz?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was 14 I got some formal drum lessons, which is relatively late for a professional musician but I guess I had been raised around music so I understood how rhythm worked prior to actually starting to play the drums so it was just a matter of learning the technique and the coordination. Then around 16 I was asked to be the percussionist in my high school Jazz Big Band and we went to this national high school jazz competition and that was my first exposure to jazz music. There were lots of other musicians around the country my age who were better than me, and I was like \u201cOh wow! I thought I was good. But now if I really want to make music my thing, I’m going to have to start getting a bit serious practicing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So I set my intentions towards going to The New Zealand School of Music which is the most prestigious jazz school in the country and is also in my city of Wellington. At the same time, I was actively playing with a lot of musicians in the scene, who were older and (musically) fitter than me and more established. I started doing random pickup gigs with groups like Fat Freddie\u2019s Drop or gigs at local bars because I was available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did you go from jazz to beatmaking?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2010 I got into The Red Bull Music Academy which was in London that year and that was a pretty formative experience when it came to the world of music production. I had lecturers like Flying Lotus who taught me quite a bit about electronic drum programming which was really useful. I did quite a bit of work with Hudson Mohawke too so it was pretty good exposure into electronic music production after being more of a formal jazz student. And then after that I spent some time in New York getting my ass kicked in jam sessions and kind of realizing how far I had to go as a musician, and then after that, I was in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n