Los que lo convirtieron en arte: Stomp, Barbatuques, Keith Terry y compañía

Stomp: bins and brooms

Stomp was born in Brighton, England, and premiered at the Edinburgh festival in 1991. Three years later it reached New York and ran until 2023: almost thirty years. Its idea is simple: everything on a street makes a sound. Brooms, bins, lids, plastic bags, lighters. And the body, of course. These two videos explain how they do it, hands and feet first, bags second.

How to Stomp: hands and feet

How to Stomp: bags

And the opening scene of their film, "Stomp Out Loud". Notice how many different sounds they get out of a broom.

Stomp Out Loud, opening scene

Barbatuques: the whole body sings

Barbatuques is a group from São Paulo, Brazil, founded in the mid-nineties by Fernando Barba, who died in 2021. They are twelve people and carry no instruments: claps, chest, snaps, mouth, whistles and stamping, and they sing on top. They played at the closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympics and on the soundtrack of the film "Rio 2". They are the world reference for what is called body music.

Baianá

Barbapapa's Groove

Tum Pá

This Brazilian TV report shows how they teach body percussion to children.

Report: meet body percussion

Keith Terry: the one who named it

Keith Terry is a jazz drummer from Texas. In the seventies he played in a tap dance group and realised his drum patterns could move to claps and feet. He coined the term "body music": "music you can see, dance you can hear". In 2008 he founded the International Body Music Festival, which has travelled to Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, Ghana, Italy, Greece and France. Here, a solo of his at the festival and a fragment of his course.

Keith Terry, festival solo

Fragment of the "Body Music" course

Steve Reich: a concert piece with claps only

In 1972 the composer Steve Reich saw flamenco hand-clappers in Brussels and wrote "Clapping Music": two performers, one twelve-note pattern, and one of them moves one eighth note ahead every few bars until they meet again. It is a concert piece played all over the world and it can be done in class. Here, for five.

Clapping Music, for five

Mayumana: the show

Mayumana is a company from Tel Aviv founded in 1996. Its name comes from the Hebrew for "skill". It mixes dance, song and percussion on boxes, buckets and floors, and has given more than five thousand performances in thirty countries. It is the closest thing to Stomp there is, with more light and more choreography.

Mayumana, "Pop Art"

Santi Serratosa: the reference from here

Santi Serratosa is a Catalan drummer and music therapist. He trained with Keith Terry and Fernando Barba, created his own method and directs a body percussion "big band", the SSM BigHand. His tutorials are in the 3rd and 4th-year chapters. Here, a Catalan secondary school playing one of his pieces, to see that students your age do this.

"Quan calla la ciutat", by the students of INS Santiago Sobrequés

And his full performance on Billie Eilish's "Therefore I Am".

Therefore I Am, by Santi Serratosa

And the pen guy

Lennie Simo, "Lenstrumental", is the Instagram creator who plays a whole drum kit with two pens. He has his own chapter in this book.

Classroom activities

• Analysis. Watch "Baianá" and answer in writing: how many different sounds can you tell apart, which part of the body makes them, who keeps the pulse.

• Compare. Stomp and Barbatuques do similar things with different means. What does the object (the broom) give that the body does not, and the other way round.

• From the street to the classroom. Each group brings an object from home that makes a sound (a bag, a box, a bottle) and gets three different sounds out of it. Then one bar with each.

• Review. Write a one-minute review, like a newspaper one, of one of these videos. What you liked, what you did not, what you would copy.

Key vocabulary

• Body music: Keith Terry's term for music made with the body.

• Object percussion: rhythm with everyday things; what Stomp does.

• Phasing: one voice gradually moves ahead of an identical one; the idea behind "Clapping Music".

• Timbre: the colour of a sound; what tells a clap from a chest hit.