tony vacca, “streetwise”
from: rhythm and flow, 2008
Tony Vacca: balafon, dun-djun, snare drum, rattles; Tim Moran: saxophone, Derrik Jordan: electric violin: Jo Sallins: electric bass; Steve Leicach: djembe; Massamba Diop: tama drum.
Using giant West African balafons, twenty tuned gongs, djembes, djun-djun, talking drums and an outrageous percussion drumset, Tony Vacca creates a unique blend of rhythm, word, and drum that has come to be the signature of his work.
Tony and Massamba Diop, the tama (aka talking drum) percussionist who has played with Baaba Maal for decades, created the Senegal America Project www.tonyvacca.com/page-one bringing Senegalese musicians to the ears of the western world while reaching out to those in need in Senegal. I was lucky enough to join Tony, Massamba and others (shout out to Jean Butler, the organizer extraordinaire of these trips) for a week in Senegal in 2011. We brought soccer balls and shirts to schools, painted classrooms, held a blood pressure and other health issues screening day in Guinaw Rails (the “other side of the tracks” in Dakar) and enjoyed the beauty of Sobobade (founded in the 1970s by Haitian Gérard Chenet).
I first heard Tony when doing radio at WCUW, playing the music of Tony and Tim Moran. I first saw Tony and company live at Mechanics Hall on New Year’s Eve many years ago. A wall of gongs and a stage full of drums of all kinds. He’s a poet, a percussionist, a bringer of West African music to the western world. If there’s a whiff of patchouli in the air, turn around; Tony’s probably in the room.
-Valerie Sampson-
