Jerome Cooper. Look into his eyes; he means it. On this 20 minute long song, "Bert the Cat", he's playing balaphone, chiramia, bass drum and sock cymbal. Here's what he has to say about his instruments:
The chiramia is a wind instrument. It is played with a double reed. Mine have six stops (some have three, four and two). They are from Mexico. To me, the chiramia is my voice synthesizer. In Mexico, some musicians play it along with their drums. In my performance, I use two, mostly played individually, but sometimes together. Through the years, I have given them names. "Slim" is the name of my chiramia with the harsh sound to it. "Big Mama" is the name I gave to the chiramia with the mellow sound. "Repooc" is the psychic name I’ve given my balaphones, talking drums and cymbals (African), snare drums and tom-toms (American). My bass drum is assigned the name of "OM," and my high-hat's name is "Julio." People who are familiar with my music from the 60’s and 70’s know that I played piano as a secondary instrument. During the period of the Revolutionary Ensemble, I would play the drum set and then go over to the piano. The problem was external duality. When Yamaha and Casio came out with the electronic keyboard and drum synthesizer, it became part of my drum set (i.e. bass drum, snare drum, high-hat, cymbals and electronic tonal rhythmic activator). "Emorej" is the name assigned to my Yamaha. Look at it this way – some musicians give names to their instruments (i.e. B.B. King’s guitar "Lucille"). Or you can look at it another way – a lot of drummers carry and play percussion instruments (i.e. gong, whistles, bongos, etc.). I do the same thing except all of my percussion instruments are synthesized into one instrument.
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