‘Black Panther’ is at Kimmel this weekend with Philadelphia Orchestra and the film’s drummer playing the live score
Massamba Diop will play the same talking drum he played for the movie’s original score.
This weekend, the Philadelphia Orchestra will perform Black Panther’s Oscar-winning score while the 2018 movie plays at the Kimmel Center. When guests hear the unforgettable beats signaling T’Challa’s arrival, they will see onstage the same drummer who created that sound for the King of Wakanda.
Massamba Diop, an internationally renowned master of the talking drum from Senegal, is the featured soloist playing alongside the orchestra. The talking drum, also called the tama, is one of the oldest forms of communication that worked like a telephone between tribes in West Africa. Diop holds the drum under his left arm while hitting it, beating it with a stick in his right. Chords surround the hourglass-shaped instrument and Diop controls the pitch by squeezing or releasing them in between his arm and torso. At Verizon Hall, he will play the drum he used when recording for both Black Panther movies.
The talking drum typically presents royalty or signals major announcements, which is partly why it appealed to Black Panther composer Ludwig Göransson. Diop remembers when Göransson asked about how he speaks through the drum: “‘Massamba, can you say the name of T’Challa?’ And I said yeah, I can say the name of anybody,” Diop said. “Anytime T’Challa comes out...you hear the drum go Ta-cha-la! Ta-cha-la!”
“T’Challa has the percussive sound of the tama…the noble character and communicative power of a drum from so long ago,” said guest conductor and actor Damon Gupton, who is based in Los Angeles. “Then you have these sinister [hip-hop] grooves and bass patterns that highlight his nemesis, Killmonger. It’s a really clever use of character in the music.”
For Gupton and Diop, the primary challenge for any movie screening performance is timing. A click track monitors and controls the tempo, ensuring that every punch gets the right sound at the precise moment it’s needed.
During the final battle, one part was “clearly sped up in the recording on the soundtrack, and playing it live is almost impossible,” Gupton said “I mean, it’s not Petrushka hard or Rite of Spring hard, but it’s certainly challenging [and] it goes by fast and furious.”
Improvisation was at the core of the percussion in the movie. Diop said that when he first started performing the score live, one challenge was to relearn sequences that he had originally improvised on the recording. Diop will still improvise live, naturally. “You have to be willing to go with a great spirit of improv when you have a player like Massamba,” said Gupton. “He’ll always throw a nice curve, something that you have to listen for, respond to.”
Philadelphia Orchestra will perform “Black Panther” at the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, 300 S. Broad St., Phila., 215-893-1999 or philorch.org. A portion of the ticket proceeds benefits United Negro College Fund Philadelphia.