mick laBriola

May 2nd 1941 Kingston, Jamaica. Percussionist, conga drummer, singer and music historian.

Devon worked with Bob Marley touring in the late 70’s and recorded on Bob Marleys Confrontation album. Now living in Rogers, MN. Devon currently lectures and tours throughout the USA.

May 2nd 1977

People come to websites, reading bios, trying to figure out who someone else is. Said website owner makes a bio, tries to put impressive things there, drop names, list accomplishments. Then perhaps judgements are formed, opinons made and such by you, the reader.

Well, I don’t like those bios really…it has never sat right with me (I understand some may need to create such bios for various purposes…not slighting you all). And I could make it all up and you wouldn’t know the difference!

I am Curtis….a drummer.

But I am much more than that I suppose. I make music first and foremost, but that is just a means to try and figure “IT” out. Music as a career is second to music as a vehicle for growth and exploration. In my own creations and travels I try and gain more insight into who I am, what I am doing and try and to foster love, understanding, truth, wonder and excitement for being alive.
Hopefully, in the process I will keep the rumble in my stomach to a minimum and have some kind of roof over my head.

I was born on May 2, 1977.

My childhood was great. My family is amazing. I have an amazing wife and a daughter that I cherish every moment. If I am unhappy, I have only myself to look to for the reason.

I taught myself to play the drumset at 14 and now I travel the world, following my curiosity for rhythm, culture, spirit, what makes humans do what we do.

I’ve spent years studying the musical culture of Ghana and South India and count some of the best in those worlds as my mentors. Trichy Sankaran has been my mridangam guru since the beginning I can’t be thankful enough for that.

I compose my own music, I play mbira with one of Canada’s best mbira players, I co-lead a Ghanaian drum & dance ensemble, I lead my own Afro-Indian-World-Jazz group (that genre exists…I made it up), and collaborate with various Indian, African, jazz, and “other” musicians in Vancouver and beyond.

I’m born and raised in a small Newfoundland town called Carbonear, but now live in Vancouver, BC on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

There is a school in a Ghanaian village with my name on it. I like to help people with the power, potential and advantage that I have in my life and where I was born and what I was born into.

I’ve been to school…BFA from York U.
It was a good time, I met my guru. But it didn’t make me the musician I am today. No school can do that.

I also have a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of British Columbia.

Please take some time when you have it to see some pictures and read some of my experiences from around the world.

Listen to some of my own music as well if you please. I think I’ve said enough in this space.

Peace and Love,
Curtis

Richard Arnold “Groove” Holmes (May 2, 1931 – June 29, 1991) was an American jazz organist who performed in the hard bop and soul jazz genre. He is best known for his 1965 recording of “Misty“.

Holmes’s first album, on Pacific Jazz with guest Ben Webster, was recorded in March 1961. He recorded many albums for Pacific Jazz, Prestige, Groove Merchant, and Muse, many of them with Houston Person.

He died of a heart attack after battling prostate cancer, having performed his last concerts in a wheelchair. One of his last gigs was at the 1991 Chicago Blues Festival with his longtime friend, singer Jimmy Witherspoon.

Shirley Valerie Horn (May 1, 1934 – October 20, 2005) was an American jazz singer and pianist. She collaborated with many jazz musicians including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Toots Thielemans, Ron Carter, Carmen McRae, Wynton Marsalis and others. She was most noted for her ability to accompany herself with nearly incomparable independence and ability on the piano while singing, something described by arranger Johnny Mandel as “like having two heads”, and for her rich, lush voice, a smoky contralto, which was described by noted producer and arranger Quincy Jones as “like clothing, as she seduces you with her voice”.

Shirley Horn was born and raised in Washington, D.C. Encouraged by her grandmother, an amateur organist, Horn began piano lessons at the age of four. Aged 12, she studied piano and composition at Howard University, later graduating from there in classical music. Horn was offered a place at the Juilliard School, but her family could not afford to send her there. Horn formed her first jazz piano trio when she was 20.

Marion Walter Jacobs (May 1, 1930 – February 15, 1968), known as Little Walter, was an American blues musician, singer, and songwriter, whose revolutionary approach to the harmonica had a strong impact on succeeding generations, earning him comparisons to such seminal artists as Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix. His virtuosity and musical innovations fundamentally altered many listeners’ expectations of what was possible on blues harmonica. He was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, the first and, to date, only artist to be inducted specifically as a harmonica player.

Jacobs’ date of birth is usually given as May 1, 1930, in Marksville, Louisiana. He was born without a birth certificate and when he applied for a Social Security card in 1940, his birthdate was listed as May 1, 1923. Over the years he often gave different years, but May 1 was constant. In some other documents he filled out before reaching the age of majority he indicated birth years of 1925 and 1928, probably to appear to be of legal age to sign contracts for recordings and club work. After reaching the age of majority based on a birth year of 1930, he consistently gave his birth year as 1930. In the 1940 U.S. Census, his mother Beatrice reported his age at 14, making his birth year 1925. A few months after returning from his second European tour, Little Walter was involved in a fight while taking a break from a performance at a nightclub on the South Side of Chicago. He apparently sustained only minor injuries in this altercation, but they aggravated the damage he had suffered in previous violent encounters, and he died in his sleep at the apartment of a girlfriend, at 209 East 54th Street in Chicago, early the following morning.The official cause of death on his death certificate was coronary thrombosis (a blood clot in the heart); evidence of external injuries was so insignificant that the police reported that his death was due to “unknown or natural causes”, and no external injuries were noted on the death certificate. His body was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery, in Evergreen Park, Illinois, on February 22, 1968.

The star system GK Per is known to be associated with only two of the three nebulas pictured. At 1500 light years distant, Nova Persei 1901 (GK Persei) was the second closest nova yet recorded. At the very center is a white dwarf star, the surviving core of a former Sun-like star. It is surrounded by the circular Firework nebula, gas that was ejected by a thermonuclear explosion on the white dwarf’s surface — a nova — as recorded in 1901. The red glowing gas surrounding the Firework nebula is the atmosphere that used to surround the central star. This gas was expelled before the nova and appears as a diffuse planetary nebula. The faint gray gas running across is interstellar cirrus that seems to be just passing through coincidently. In 1901, GK Per’s nova became brighter than Betelgeuse. Similarly, star system T CrB is expected to erupt in a nova later this year, but we don’t know exactly when nor how bright it will become.

Mabel Bernice Scott (April 30, 1915 – July 20, 2000) was an American gospel music and R&B vocalist. She lived in New York and Cleveland before arriving on the West Coast blues scene in 1942. Mabel is probably remembered more for her 1948 hits “Elevator Boogie” and “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus” than for her 1949–1951 marriage to the featured piano player of “Elevator Boogie”, Charles Brown of Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers.

Mabel Scott was born in Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of Rachael and Thomas Scott. By 1930, she was living in New York City with her mother.She developed her singing voice in church, eventually forming an all-girl gospel group, the Song Cycles. Around 1932 Scott began singing at Harlem‘s Cotton Club with Cab Calloway‘s Orchestra and the dancing Nicholas Brothers.

Percy Heath (April 30, 1923 – April 28, 2005) was an American jazz bassist, brother of saxophonist Jimmy Heath and drummer Albert Heath, with whom he formed the Heath Brothers in 1975. Heath played with the Modern Jazz Quartet throughout their long history and also worked with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Wes Montgomery, Thelonious Monk and Lee Konitz.

Heath was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, and spent his childhood in Philadelphia.His father played the clarinet and his mother sang in the church choir. He started playing violin at the age of eight and also sang locally. He was drafted into the Army in 1944, trained with the Tuskegee Airmen, graduating as a 2nd Lieutenant pilot, but saw no combat.

Gary D. Davis (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), known as Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Gary Davis, was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and blind since infancy, Davis first performed professionally in the Piedmont blues scene of Durham, North Carolina in the 1930s, then converted to Christianity and became a minister. After moving to New York in the 1940s, Davis experienced a career rebirth as part of the American folk music revival that peaked during the 1960s. Davis’ most notable recordings include “Samson and Delilah“^[3] and “Death Don’t Have No Mercy“.

Davis’ fingerpicking guitar style influenced many other artists. His students included Stefan Grossman, David Bromberg, Steve Katz, Roy Book Binder, Larry Johnson, Alex Shoumatoff, Nick Katzman, Dave Van Ronk, Rory Block, Ernie Hawkins, Larry Campbell, Bob Weir, Woody Mann, and Tom Winslow. He also influenced Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Wizz Jones, Jorma Kaukonen, Keb’ Mo’, Ollabelle, Resurrection Band, and John Sebastian (of the Lovin’ Spoonful)