Billy Cobham and Asere Fall 2008
22/10/2008

Where: A tour of the Untied Kingdom

When: October 2 through 25, 2008

Activities: Workshops with Autistically impaired, Workshops as a unit and of an individualistic nature.

What has been the message: For the Autists, it’s about finding a way to connect. For others it’s about the group being is as good as it’s weakest link.

Asere and I are about 5 years old now and continue to collaborate and grow as would any band that is committed to working together and achieving the ultimate objective in performance: Making Music.

At the beginning of October we put in couple of days gearing up for this project by testing the equipment we would use on the tour. From past performances, I learned that one of the essential yet missing elements in the band presentation was our inability to consistently hear one another. When I first joined the band we did not have an effective Front Of House engineer and we did not have a monitor engineer. It seemed no one considered this to be of major importance enough to work towards achieving this goal. But, over the past few years, as we continued to increase our collaborative projects I am able to see the growth in progress that we’ve made. The end result is reflected in this present group of performances that we are currently involved in.

A band of this nature is pretty much the same as any group that has a chance to take root and grow. The aspect of Time is a major factor as is the group’s ability to accept and convert information developed from within with collective effort. This thought has been reconfirmed to me through having the opportunity to grow and contribute along with the members of Asere. Since my Spanish skills are almost non-existent the only way for us to work together is to play together. As proof of our achievements, to date, there are three cd’s and a dvd available to reflect our activities. When I say “Time” it’s not just the idea of “time well spent” but the development of synchronicity within the group. This is like a sixth sense that can be evidenced through the group performance and another reason why we have become more successful. Listening and understanding what is happening between us makes it easy to translate our thoughts into music. This is also based upon similarities in our sociological background and, again evidenced in our collective performance. It’s great to be involved in a group where the creative juices are always flowing because it is clear that the payment for the development of new material is more time spent together in performance. Throughout the tour this has been clearly evident and our audience has grown as a result. It has been a major plus for us to have performed in the provinces of Great Britain so that we could spread our musical ideas around the countries we’ve been exposed to. It’s a very special time for me and Asere as the lessons learned and re-learned can never become too valuable. I believe that some of the points that I have described above are at the foundation of musical creativity and it’s development.

To be able to continue to build upon our base is now the next trick to turn. Part of the process involves what we bring to the “table of creativity” the next time we meet.

Bill C.


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