In 2006, percussionist, producer, and educator Jim Roberts
takes to heart the words of activist
Jody Williams, who started the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines when she said, "if you’re involved
in something and you want me to know about it, don’t come to me until you’ve
done something about it,”
Roberts took the challenge. He devoted years to doing
something, crafting The Tao of Time (release: October 26, 2018), a concept
album as diverse and unexpected as his wide-ranging musical influences.
Inspired by peace activists and other agents of change--the wonderful Peace
Pilgrim’s words, for example, create a pivot in the album--The Tao of Time
explores the nature of time, history, human experience, and how the past can
but does not have to determine the future.
“As a drummer, people often expect you to just do drum
pieces, not the kind of things I’m doing here. When I began working on this record,
I had a bigger vision,” says Roberts. “But I knew that I couldn’t leave the
drums out. Drums, time and language are synonymous. It’s all part of the
process.”
Roberts’s bigger vision unfolds over the course of
interlocking vignettes guided by raucous
time-traveling seafarers, Captain Time and his Craic crew; clever covers
(Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues,” Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” along with set
of variations on its themes); and original pieces tackling war and peace, past
and future, life and death, and the nature of the universe. Though Roberts
urges listeners to engage with the darker side of existence on pieces like
“Soul Power ” and “When Will Peace Come,” the destination is ultimately hopeful
and forward looking, as the words and sounds ask us to be “All That We Can Be.”
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