The avant-garde percussionist tells a mean anecdote and proves himself a joyfully chaotic gardener in this delightfully entertaining documentary
What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer. Except that this delightfully entertaining and idiosyncratic music documentary ought to banish the stereotype of drummers as talentless thickos. It’s also one of those films you can happily watch without having a jot of prior interest in its subject.
Just as well, because few will have heard of Milford Graves, the avant-garde jazz percussionist. In archive footage of a noisy performance with other 1960s pioneers – this film is too cool for subtitles to tell you who’s who – there’s a woman in the audience with her hands clamped over her ears, face a rictus of pure agony. I’m with her on a lot of his music. But Graves, now in his 70s, is a raconteur par excellence. As well as the drumming, he’s a multi-hyphenate, dabbling in gardening, herbalism, healing and acupuncture. Oh, and he once invented a martial art, and his basement is filled with mad scientist machinery to measure people’s vibrations.
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