Tuesday Night Tunes: Drummers From Home

Drummers From Home play the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic on Tuesday, July 21, as part of the museum's summer concert series, Tuesday Night Tunes. The series is now in its 11th year, with performances taking place in the museum's anchor yard—or moved indoors to the Small Craft Gallery if the weather doesn't play along.

Drummers From Home is a collective of five drummers brought together by a shared love of African and world-beat rhythms. The group is built around Wayn Hamilton, a founding member who's been active in the Halifax music scene for years, and his son, Khalifa Jallo-Hamilton, who started playing the djembe at age five. Joining them are Robert Leek, whose playing draws on Caribbean and African rhythmic influences; Ayo Aladejebi, whose style is rooted in Nigerian Yoruba traditions; and Sobaz Benjamin, a Grenada-born musician based here in Halifax. The five of them are known for their chemistry and the percussive interplay they build on stage.

It's a percussion-led set, so the focus is on the rhythms rather than a melody. With five drummers playing together, the sound comes from the way they lock in and push off one another, and the different traditions each one brings to the group. The whole thing is free, and since it's part of Tuesday Night Tunes, it's one of the museum's regular summer dates. The show is at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, 1675 Lower Water Street, on Tuesday, July 21.