BACKGROUND OF HABIB

Grew up as a kid in NYC. Lived as a teenager with Ruth Ellington,Steve and Michael James,Reggie Golson and with Elvin Ray Jones and his wife at the time, Shirley "DeFranco" Jones whose brother was from Elmont Queens where I grew up as a child. On Long Island, I also lived near Huntington where John Coltrane raised his family in Dix Hills and is buried in Huntington on route 110 in Pinelawn Cemetary. After spending years going to VanGelder's Studio in Englewood Cliffs, I met Lee Chester Marcus and Marvin Louis Smith,Buster Smith and so many others. Elvin was my first major influence on the drums and McCoy Tyner and Walter Bishop, Jr. on the piano. Jimmy Garrison was my mentor on bass and so the story goes that after being exposed to all these things and having the music planted inside of me, MARVIN BU GA LU SMITH, my friend since those early days, and I, started to go to FOCUS 2 on 73rd St. off Amsterdam Ave. in NYC and every Monday, we played with Walter Bishop Jr. Rodney Jones, George Coleman, Haasan Dawkins, Buster Williams,Herbie Hancock, Juan Quinones,Evelyn Blakey,Art Blakey's son young Art Jr. and so many others too numerous to mention. There are so many stories. Years ago, I played with Walter Booker Jr. and his wife Bertha Hope. Booker passed away several years ago and I miss him so much. He was also a major influence on my drumming and helped me channel my efforts into combining drumset and hand drums into one idea along with developing some compositions harmonically for drum only groups. One of my other influences was Bernard "Pretty" Purdie who I performed with on many occasions in his group and made a video with him,Mike Torrsone and Sal Giorgiani. I was a member of The Hugh Brodie Cosmic Ensemble and recorded on several of His CD's and can be seen in press releases and articles at hughbrodie.com and many other googled pages using my name,Hugh Brodie's name, African Drum Circle names and generally searching Jazz Drum Sites. Most recently after many years of recording and not releasing The Melting Pot Drum Group, I,along with Tom DeSteno and Marvin Bu Ga Lu Smith, are entertaining offers from some of the major Jazz Festivals to perform along with some of the original members of Melting Pot and some new,younger players that we have all been an influence on. The experience has been amazing and rewarding spiritually. I travel much and do record often. I can't listen to my own music for at least 6 months to a year because I can't stand the way I sound compared to others. I know I am extremely self critical but I also have learned to eliminate my ego so my spirit doesn't suffer and block my creativity and flow. This was a lesson I learned from Elvin Ray Jones and most recently from a Nigerian drummer friend of mine, Emeka Inganou. The world is in terrible need of peace and it's up to all creative artists to spread the love and joy they have through MUSIC,THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.
Steve is a long time drummer/percussionist who, as a child was raised in Jazz. He attended school with Stephen Daniel James,Duke Ellington's newphew and Ruth Ellington's son along with Reggie Golson, Benny Golson's son. Steve was friends with Elvin Jones since Elvin's first marriage to Jonny DeFrancos sister Shirley who also lived on Long Island in Elmont. During the 1960's, Steve attended practically all John Coltrane's sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ produced by Bob Thiell of ABC Impulse. Many of those sessions were tremendous learning experiences for Steve as the music penetrated his soul deeply, never to be forgotten, always honoring John,Jimmy Garrison, McCoy and Elvin for their "Big Brother" love for Reggie Golson, Steve and Steve James. Today Steve has performed with and recorded on Hugh Brodie Cosmic Ensemble and played concerts with Bernard Purdie, Joshua Breakstone and so many other's too numerous to mention here. In his early 20's, he became close friends with Marvin BU GA LU Smith and Kevin Jones as he was living in The Englewood, NJ area. He is currently listed in All About Jazz and has a membership on Facebook.
The Melting Pot Drum GroupDrummers create a harmonic drum group with Timpani Bass Player
This group started out accidently becoming a drum group. During 1992 in June,Reggie Workman, Steve Habib and Marvin Bu Ga Lu Smith were talking about a performance at Visiones in NYC. The result was Habib and Smith co produced the session and it was recorded by Jon Rosenberg and Thomas Tedesco. CeCil McBee was the bass player along with Kirk Lightsey on piano,Kevin Lager,trumpet,Jim Finn soprano/tenor and Marvin Bu Ga Lu Smith on drums. Both Habib and Smith arranged all the music and some original work Habiba by Kirk Lightsey and The Peacemaker by Cecil McBee were also part of the original recordings of the 5 day festival. Marvin's original name for the group was The Experience but it evolved into Melting Pot Drum Group as everyone started to motivate us to form an all drum group that could play songs without other instruments. Thomas DeSteno and Tom Tedesco took an interest in the concept and recordings were made with everyone from Hugh Brodie on soprano/tenor and Steve Cohen on piano along with Kevin Jones and many others all over a period of time from the start of The War during 2001 right up to the present time. The group did perform in Montclair's Luna Space with Thomas DeSteno,Marvin Bu Ga Lu Smith,Steve Habib and Tom Tedesco and was very well received by a large audience. Little has been done to promote the group and their concept and most of the players have been involved with other projects as hard times have forced everyone to do whatever they had to do to survive. The group is ready to go now. An example of the group's instrumentation protocol is Habib being the bass player,walking and doing what a regular bass player would do but Habib uses Timpani and floor tom toms as a bass player. The group sounds like it has a conventional bass player. Today, Melting Pot Drum Group is an entity that many bands have wanted to add to their trios,quartets,quintets or larger groups,having an entire self contained drum unit that adds multi dimension to the drum line as opposed to having only one drummer to enhance swing. The group will be performing at its first major Jazz Festival event in the fall of 2010. More will be said about this in the next few months.