Berkeley’s Unique Derique clowns with high-tech hambone.
The body percussion style known as hambone—drumming your chest and thighs with your arms—was created out of necessity by African-Americans who had their drums confiscated by wary slave owners. Through hambone, slaves were able to communicate and express themselves. Although something of a lost art, hambone is almost single-handedly being kept alive by Berkeley’s own Unique Derique, aka Lance McGee. While attending Berkeley High in the late ’70s and early ’80s, McGee was studying circus arts and playing drums when he noticed some neighborhood kids hamboning near his house. Transfixed, McGee began to study hamboning in earnest and soon it became the mainstay of his burgeoning one-man circus clown act—a gig that since the mid-’80s has taken him unicycling, juggling and hamboning all over the world. Career highlights include opening for Sammy Davis Jr. and appearing on the Arsenio Hall Show. These days McGee still performs, but he also teaches circus arts to children from Oakland’s Prescott Circus Theater and is studying to be a drama therapist. I caught up with him recently to see if he could give me some tips on my technique.
Paul Kilduff: You entertain a lot of kids. How do you make hambone funny?
Derique McGee: With hambone I’m playing my body doing this percussive thing with the microphone. Things are going wrong with the microphone—it’s too tall, it’s too short, it keeps moving, it never stays in one place. Then when I get that set, I start to do the body percussion and get a little groove going and do Donald Duck sneezes—“awk-chuwp.” And then I try and do my armpit up and down in a flapping manner and I realize that I forgot the prop that I needed that goes under my armpit so I grab a rubber chicken that’s got a built-in horn inside and I take that and I try and play that under my armpit at the same time that I’m trying to do hambone. It’s awkward. It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd. And then eventually I bring somebody up out of the audience and have them do that.
PK: You teach at Oakland’s Prescott Circus Theater—what’s that like?
DM: I love doing that. They all do hambone almost as well as me, fourth- and fifth-graders. And we’ve got 30 kids this summer. They do a great show.
PK: How did you become the world’s chief revivalist of the art form. Are you on a mission or something?
DM: It came out of slavery and African drummers were not allowed to play drums because they could communicate with the drums and drums were being taken away. And so it involved body percussion and singing and ritual. Because I learned hambone as a child in Berkeley, when I got into clowning I thought, “Wow, I should do a funny routine with body percussion.” I’m always looking for the humor in the skill. I love doing hambone and I love making the historical connection. It was a way of communicating but more so it was a way of maintaining resiliency through the horrible experience of slavery. It was a way of getting their groove on at night, coming together, singing rituals, praying, honoring the ancestors and using rhythm percussion because there was no drum. And you know by actually playing the body through rhythmic percussion, after you do it for like three to five minutes you’re actually tapping into another frequency. So it has a lot of healing components to it.
PK: What do you mean another frequency?
DM: By repeating a rhythmic pattern after a few minutes your heart starts to slow down. It’s almost like you go into a meditative state and there’s a way of doing affirmations or meditations. By tapping your thighs in a certain rhythmic pattern for a while, you can actually meditate on something or be thinking about something, which puts you in another state of consciousness and then you’re focusing energy into that. There are a lot of these things that people don’t really know much about but they’re very powerful.
PK: So, lower your blood pressure through hambone?
DM: Well, if I’m playing real fast it goes up. I tell the children that everybody is a drummer because no matter what music you like, when you hear it and feel it you start popping your head a little bit. It makes you want to get up and dance and for me hambone is the same way. Hambone is the body drummer in me getting my groove on.
PK: Do you come from a hambone family?
DM: I lived in Berkeley, 15 years old, going to Berkeley High, coming out of my house and some kids in the neighborhood were slapping their thighs and chest and I thought, “Oh, my God, this is awesome.” I used to play drums at that time so I was intrigued—you got to play beats on your body without a drum set. I’d never heard of hambone and then I eventually learned the history of it.
PK: So these were just some kids on the corner?
DM: Kids in the neighborhood standing next to a tree just jamming. After I got into it my father said, “Oh yeah, we used to do that as children.” My grandfather said, “Oh yeah, we used to do that back in the day.” People in our age group—especially black folks—if I’m doing some hambone people come up to me and go, “Man, I used do that when I was a kid. I remember my uncle used to do that back in Texas or New Orleans, back in the South.” It’s an old pastime that resonates with people.
PK: Are you the only professional hamboner? Or, is it hambonist?
DM: Hambone is sort of a lost art form. It’s kind of an awkward thing to do with the body. Step-dancing in the black colleges is much more popular because you’re not bent over in the way that you have to be to do hambone. You have to bend your chest over your thighs a little bit.
PK: How much performing do you do a year?
DM: I make most of my money teaching. But that was my choice. If I really wanted to get out there and keep doing the cruise ships I could do that, but it’s not what I really want to do and I do like being home and working with children and role-modeling for them and being there as a supporter.
PK: What’s with your musical body suit?
DM: In my show I have this body suit called “ham tech.” It’s a wireless bodysuit that has sensors built into it and as I play hambone I’m triggering electronic drums. It allows me to play electronic body music. I call it ham tech or technical hamtronics.
PK: You’re a high-tech hambone.
DM: What a way to make a living! I love it. I got a keyboard built into the bodysuit that’s preprogrammed. I got James Brown songs chopped up where I hit one sensor and it goes, “I feel good, da da da da da da da.” And then if I hit the other sensor it goes, “Like I knew that I would, da da da da da da da.” And then I go to the audience and I tell them which one to hit and they help me play the song.
PK: Have you patented this suit?
DM: I haven’t. I think I built my first suit in ’88. And I remember about 10 years later they came out with a toy thing. But you know, nobody’s really interested in strapping this thing on their body. I’ve got dance leotards with sensors wired into the suit and it’s technical just getting dressed for it. It takes 20 minutes to get ready in that thing. It’s not easy. So I was never really worried about patenting it. I just felt like if a person took the time to really build one, be creative and not do my material . . . do your thing and enjoy. My ego’s humble.
PK: You play your own body, basically.
DM: Yeah. I beat myself up literally—in the context of drumming.
PK: I remember first hearing about you in the ’80s when you were touted as the “Celebrated New Vaudevillian Derique McGee.” And now you’re the “Funny and Unique Derique.” Has anything substantially changed?
DM: The material doesn’t really change very much. You’ve got to remember that as a clown you spend so many years practicing and fine-tuning the physical skill and finding humor in it that it becomes your trademark in a way and you don’t change up like standup comics can. It’s a different kind of comedy.
PK: Does your act have anything to do with what’s called hip-hop circus—the blending of traditional circus skills with hip-hop and break dancing?
DM: Yeah. Unconsciously. In the collective unconsciousness whatever’s going on in the vibe of music of what I’m seeing Cirque du Soleil bring to the table or what I see the San Francisco Circus School [doing]. I see that same material. I’m not directly part of it but on some level I am. It kind of happens just with the evolution of the music and me combining technology with my clowning. Keeping clowning on the edge a little bit. It’s a mix of traditional with high-tech.
PK: Did you create the suit?
DM: I did about half of it. A friend showed me a version of his suit with drum triggers when I worked with the Flying Karamazov Brothers, a juggling group. And he juggled and had sensors on his arms. I was in one of their shows at the Lincoln Center—“The Comedy of Errors”—and this was back in like ’87 and he showed me his suit and I thought, “I have to build a hambone suit.” I learned how to build a lot of the sensors and then found the company that could put up some of the wireless stuff for me.
PK: With these crazy gas prices do you just unicycle everywhere?
DM: I have a bicycle. I need two wheels. Forget the one wheel. Bike and BART. Be Beep. Instead of the BB King, I’m doing the Be Beep thing.
PK: The unicycle. Is it an under-appreciated form of transportation?
DM: It’s not very practical. It’s a workout because your legs are constantly moving. You don’t get to coast like on a bicycle. That’s why I ride the bike. I get to coast. I’m tired of working out. I’m not getting older. I’m getting better.
PK: You can’t really go uphill on a unicycle either right?
DM: You can, but it’s a lot of work. My high school years? Sure. I went up Lombard Street. Once. Just for the thrill. But I don’t need that thrill. When you get older you create different thrills.
PK: I know you’re very busy with performing, teaching and studying to be a drama therapist, but if Obama calls on you to entertain at his inauguration, would you go?
DM: I’m down with it. Ain’t no drama with Obama.
____________
Suggestions? E-mail Paul Kilduff at PKilduff@sbcglobal.net.
The Kilduff File Archive
Age: 44
Birthplace: San Francisco
Astrological sign: Libra, life in the balance. Happy and sorrow, man. That is me.
Favorite pizza topping: What a question. Damn, you’re messing with my head. I need to go see my drama therapist.
Mideast peace plan: The Middle East starts right here in my own backyard. My plan to work with my community in Oakland as a psychologist in schools—that’s really my Middle East plan. I need to be right here as a black man working with people of color who are really struggling and having a hard time.
