Royal Hartigan is a musician who has studied, lived, and performed the music of Asia, Africa, Europe, West Asia, and the Americas and African American blues, gospel, funk, hip-hop, and jazz traditions.
He has made a life focus on the sounds and meaning from world cultures, bringing new concepts to drumset and jazz ensemble interaction, including original and Indian time cycles, West African rhythms and structures, music from the traditional gong cultures of the Philippines, China, Korea, and Java, which he has adapted to drumset in coordinated independence, layers of time, timbral shading, and tonal motion. He is one of the most unique artistic, and influential drummers and scholars of our time.
His publications include Blood Drum Spirit: Drum Languages of West Africa, African America, Native America, Central Java, and South India, a 1700-page analysis of world drumming traditions (Percussive Arts Society online archives); articles in Percussive Notes, World of Music, Annual Review of Jazz Studies, Music in China, and The African American Review; a book with CD, West African Rhythms for Drumset (Manhattan Music/Warner Brothers/Alfred 1995, 2004), named one of the top 25 percussion books in percussion publication history by Modern Drummer Magazine (December 2011), and two other books with DVD, Dancing on the Time and West African Eʋe Rhythms for Drumset (TapSpace 2006 and 2009).
He is completing a new book with a DVD on African philosophy music and Jazz (2020). He has given lectures and clinics on world music and Jazz in Ghana, China, the Philippines, Japan, Europe, the Caribbean, and North America.
In an era of violence, irrationality, and division, royal works for universal consciousness and change, creating music and art as a vehicle to impact and connect with the world’s peoples.
Royal Hartigan launches two new books in collaboration with Hudson Music. The West African Eve Rhythms for Drumset is a complete, definitive exploration of West African rhythms. A 366-page masterwork explores and explains the history, traditions, instruments, people, rhythms, and music of the Eve peoples of West Africa, taking the traditionally played rhythms and demonstrating how to apply them to the drum set.
The next book is Dancin’ On The Time which is a comprehensive study of standard rudiments applied to the drum kit. The book contains hundreds of exercises split into traditional rudimental categories like ruffs, paradiddles, rolls, ratamacues, and variations. The rudiments are presented in both duple- and triple-feel, offering a lifetime study of limb independence and coordination development that can be applied to virtually any musical style.