EDINBURGH 2022: Fills Monkey Guest Blog

Guest Blog : Fills Monkey bring new show We Will Drum You to Fringe

Sebastien Rambaud discusses Rhythm is a wordless show.

Professional Drummer, entertainer and one half of Fills Monkey, Sebastien Rambaud, writes for Broadway World about rhythm as a universal language and theatrical device.

Rhythm is everywhere!

From the beating of our hearts to the rhythm of the days and the seasons, down to the ticking of our clocks: rhythm is omnipresent in our lives from the moment we are born.

The first ancestral means of communication were through percussive rhythms and have developed to give us the diversity of music that we enjoy today.

In developing the "Fills Monkey" duo, Yann and I wanted to unite people with rhythm. The best way to do that is to find a rhythm that is so ingrained in us all. The human pulse is the most universal language. The heartbeat is a natural rhythm that easily unites us.

It's this pulse which we continue to come back to in the show. No matter how technical and elaborate our beats get during the performance, there is always this constant.

At first we were just "normal" drummers who accompanied singers in "normal" bands with a guitarist, a bass player, sometimes a pianist. We were passionate about our instruments and worked on them a lot. For years, we would rigorously work the specifics of our percussive timing - relentlessly at the metronome to be as perfect as possible. We have studied many different rhythms and styles to have the widest possible range of expression. Funk, rock, metal, jazz, Latin music, African percussion.

Then one day we had the idea of ​​creating a very particular duo. Bringing all this experience, to create the ultimate percussive theatrical explosion.

We started jamming together with our two drum kits and something really magical happened.

Our common vocabulary allowed us to communicate with our drums as one communicates with a spoken language. It was an easy, fun and organic connection of two artists. We were aware that this musical encounter was quite rare and that something had to be done about it.

So we created an entire show, the two of us, where the percussion had the leading role.

We experimented with different ways of playing the drums:

Why not play them with tennis rackets, nunchucks, or giant chopsticks?

Why not play with four arms on the same drum kit, as if it were the goddess Shiva doing a solo?

Then we explored other avenues, for example with electronic drums in which we can insert different sounds...

Why not play with the sound of a ducks quack or a dogs bark?

Why not bring in the sounds of electric guitars and play (still using our drumsticks) the rock songs we listened to when we were teenagers?

And then in the end why not invent our own instruments: At one point in the show I am in a bell suit, covered head to toe in bells; and I give a relaxing delicate melody. Not what you would expect on bells, but we like to subvert the expectation of our audience. When you think an instrument will be loud we subvert it - surprise you will large sounds from smaller instruments.

The show is a rollercoaster of musical expression.

The other main ingredient in the show is humour! The two characters we created are kind of like modern Laurel and Hardy. They both want to be the best, the strongest, the most beautiful and they launch into an impressive competition of technical prowess and ridiculousness! Everyone can relate to these two jokers who love each other but also bicker like two brothers.

And we discovered that humor was also, like rhythm, a universal language. There's lots of physical humour, making the show incredibly accessible.

Whilst touring and performing globally, it was brilliant to see that people of very different origins and ages, clapped their hands, laughed and danced along.

The rhythm and the humour breaks down barriers and borders between cultures and generations. It's incredibly joyous to see children dancing and laughing with their parents, their grandparents even.

Of course there are as many ways to groove and dance as there are cultures on earth, and our work has been to seek out and understand these subtleties; to integrate them into our show and develop the theatrical aspect.

All these different rhythms are like different accents of the same language; which is spoken by all of humanity!

Fills Monkey: We Will Drum You, Pleasance Courtyard (Grand), 4pm, 3-29 August (not 16 or 23)

Photo credit: Simon Lambert

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