HAN BENNINK

By Keith McMullen

10 October 2000

I am worried about the fate of Fr. Junipero Serra. An enormous wooden statue of this patron saint of Ventura towers over the performance space in the City Hall atrium, gazing indifferently over the proceedings. This wooden duplicate of a 1936 casting by Finnish sculptor John Pablo Kanges is a sacred icon in this coastal mission town, and we must figure out how to protect him, because the notorious Han Bennink is coming to town. Bennink is a drummer, but no ordinary drummer. He finds his drum set limiting and prides himself in procuring other things to pound: the floor, the walls, wood, trees, sand, land, water, air, pizza boxes, string, garbage cans, any number of found objects. As a child he learned drumming on a kitchen chair. He expresses disappointment if a performance space is too clean and doesn’t have a suitable choice of found objects to incorporate into his percussiveness. He likes to demonstrate the difference between how various objects sound when struck with drum sticks. He says he likes to work himself up to a level where spontaneous things start to happen. His sticks tend to break and fly all over the place. On one occasion a stick knocked a cigarette out of pianist Misha Mengelberg’s mouth, on another one launched into the eye of an audience member, breaking her glasses. So, I’m worried about the fate of Fr. Junipero Serra. What is Han going to do when he sees a completely empty ‘stage’ with one large wooden object looming off to the side? He’s a visual artist as well, and has done some sculpting, but those have been using found objects like broken drum sets and drum sticks. When he gets worked up into that creative-expressive state, we may witness the initiation of the new patron saint of drumming. So much for next year’s City Hall grant. Jeff and I will surely end up in the slammer for sponsoring the defacing of a historical object, if not battery and assault on audience members.

Prior to his current U.S. tour, I began an email interview with Mr. Bennink. Although I tried to get at the man behind the drummer, I found him to be brief and elliptical in his responses. I’ll interject portions of the interview amidst this otherwise biographical essay.

Keith: A man in a hot air balloon lifts off the ground 300 ft. away from an observer. If the balloon's height is increasing at a constant rate of 150 ft/min, and the wind is always carrying the balloon away (horizontally) from the observer at a constant rate of 80 ft/min, at what rate is the angle of inclination of the observer's line of sight changing 9 min. after the hot air balloon lifted off the ground?

Han: Who Cares? Bye!

If we look back over the history of this mad drummer, we find rather conventional beginnings. He was born in Zaandam, Holland, the son of a local musician. His father was a multi-instrumentalist whose main gig was as percussionist in a symphony orchestra. The elder Bennink was very much into jazz, and fronted a dance band in which Han eventually played drums. In addition to dances, they played back-up for acrobats and did gigs for the army. Plus, as a teenager Han was very into West Coast cool, his first album being Dave Brubeck Goes To College.

In the 60s Bennink grew beyond his father’s band, and gained recognition as a talented and versatile drummer with a knack for hard swing. In 1960 he played in a trio backing a vocalist on a Holland-America boat line so he could get to New York and check out the jazz scene. There he heard Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Billy Higgins, Sonny Clark, Steve Lacy, and others. Upon returning to Holland, his skills evolved backing the likes of Sonny Rollin, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Griffin, Dexter Gordon, and Eric Dolphy on their tours of Holland. One of his earliest recorded appearances is on Eric Dolphy’s Last Date. During this same time he attended art school and became a successful visual artist in a variety of media from painting to sculpture. His work is represented by Amsterdam’s Gallery Espouse, and he has exhibited at the Geminate Museum in the Hague, and elsewhere. The art in the liner notes of many CDs on which he appears are of his own design.

Keith: Explain how someone might use the Replaceability Argument to justify eating
"free-range" chickens. Assume that chickens are not self-aware. Assume that free-range chickens have lives worth living. "Assume also that the birds can be killed painlessly, and [that] the survivors do not appear to be affected by the death of one of their members. Assume, finally, that for economic reasons we could not rear the birds if we did not eat them." (b) Explain why, according to Singer, the Replaceability Argument does not justify eating "persons."

Han: EAT THAT CHICKEN !
WITH BEST WISHES
CH. MINGUS

In the late 1960s and into the 70s, Mr. Bennink was an active player in the emergence of a particularly European brand of improvised music that gradually grew apart from its jazz roots in blues and swing. In Holland this music was heavily influenced by Dada and Fluxus and was thus characterized by a sense of humor and theatrics not usually seen in American jazz at that time. In 1967, with pianist Misha Mengelberg and saxophonist Willem Breuker, Bennink formed the Instant Composers Pool, an ensemble that continues to play today. Despite the theatrics and humor, Han is very serious about his art. The following quote is from a Coda magazine (March/April 1994) interview with John Corbett:

If it was only humor, that would disturb the music. And I play what I am and I do what I am because I am like that, and it never disturbs the music, it helps the music. Otherwise I couldn’t do it for that long. Sometimes when there are holes into the music you can hear people laugh, they are into the whole context, they fill that with their laugh like an opera. But how it exactly works? That is pure shamanism. I really don’t know. It’s daily life, all differences, and all rules, and you can fight with the rules at the same time. (p. 14)

Keith: Is there a scandal of the evangelical mind? If so, what are its causes? What are possible solutions? If not, why not?

Susanna (Han’s Assistant): Hi Keith - Han is en route now through the US. You can get hold of him in person on September 3 at the Knitting Factory (Instant Composers Pool) gig in Los Angeles (Tell him you're the one asking questions about balloons and chickens and he'll know).

[Aside: This gig was canceled when the Knitting Factory supplied Misha with an electric piano rather than an acoustic which is all he is willing to play, so the interview was thankfully halted, and I will meet Han for the first time when he shows up in Ventura.]

Han Bennink can be heard in a variety of settings, as he remains as active and versatile as ever. He continues to practice religiously (perhaps, sacrilegiously would be more accurate) on a houseboat near Amsterdam and in a stable or nearby meadow in the countryside. He mentions in the interview with John Corbett that when he practices in the meadow the cows gather round and chew and listen attentively. His primary ensembles are the ICP and the Clusone Trio (with Michael Moore on clarinet and Ernst Reijseger on cello), but he can be heard on a plethora of side projects including duos with the likes of Eugene Chadbourne, Derek Bailey, and Dave Douglas and a sensational trio with Ray Anderson and Christy Doran. He has also recorded extensively with artists on Germany’s FMP Records, and especially notable are his trio recordings with saxophone giant Peter Brotzmann and pianist Fred Van Hove. For a complete and very lengthy discography, as well as more biographical information and a sampling of his visual art, see:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~hbennink/index.html

To experience what the printed page cannot convey, we hope to see you at City Hall on October 20