The title of this rather extraordinary book translates as “The Unexpected Destiny Of The Fly Swatter” and the photo on the cover immediately reveals that it’s about the usage of drummers’ brushes. Readers may know the author, Alain Gerber, as an acclaimed writer of fiction as well as a prolific writer on jazz, but an earlier book (Deux Petits Bouts De Bois) revealed another identity – as a modest jazz drummer.
Inevitably then, this book includes reflections on his own early use of brushes and attempts to achieve certain effects but the book has a subtitle which translates as “A Celebration Of The Celestial Brush-Players Of Jazz With Shelly Manne As Point Of Comparison”. This of course means that a great deal of the book is taken up by comments on recordings by Manne and by many others as well. These are set in contexts of when Gerber acquired the recordings and what his reactions were, so he is a constant (and welcome) presence in the book with his extensive vocabulary and detailed explanations of his thoughts about performances by more drummers using brushes than I’ve bothered to count. The result was a curiosity on my part (as another modest jazz drummer) about some of the unfamiliar music discussed which is surely a compliment on his commentaries.
Useful too are a concluding selection of 60 recommended performances with brushes by a few dozen different drummers and notes on the huge variety of brushes that manufacturers have made available. This book is therefore a fine and typically Gerberian achievement. But that means of course that the author may not be a virtuoso in the field of brush-playing but is certainly a virtuoso in the use of language. Any prospective reader therefore should have either excellent contemporary French, or a willingness to frequently consult a dictionary, or a skill in guessing the meaning of words that are unfamiliar. If the first applies, no problem. In the other two cases the effort should be rewarded.
Le Destin Inattendu De La Tapette À Mouches, by Alain Gerber. Frémeaux & Associés; pb; 250pp. ISBN 978-2-38283-230-1
