Baba Feted

Baba David Coleman knows the importance of timing. Sunday night, as always his was impeccable — he was just released from the hospital the same day and mobile enough to join 200 of his admirers at a benefit concert in his honor at Neighborhood Music School, where he has taught percussion for many years.

Musicians rallied to raise money to help the beloved drummer and teacher with his medical expenses. Coleman has been diagnosed with Bueger’s disease.

Master drummer Louis Bauzo was on hand to embrace Coleman’s hands and talk about the old days. They met in the back-to-Africa movement in Brooklyn in the early 1970s; Coleman counts Bauzo as one of his own teachers.

Bauzo is a member of New York City-based Osere Irunmole Atilu Atorin, a percussion troupe that performs Yoruban ritual music. Coleman played for many years with the group.

Shown (right to left) are percussionists Stanley Ross and Thomas Biato. According to another of its other members, Richard Byrd, the name translates from Yoruba as: ​“We come to perform for all the spirits of heaven with drum and song.”

Click on the play arrow to hear the first number the group played Sunday night in Coleman’s honor. It’s called ​“Esu”; Byrd said the Yoruban words call on the owner of the crossroads for permission to cross over to the deities or the spiritual entities. That crossroads owner for the concert’s purposes was Baba David Coleman.

The two other groups playing are also bands, based here, with whom Coleman has been long associated: Mikata and the Afro-Semitic Experience.

Afro-Semitic set list included ​“The Road that Heals the Splintered Soul,” which he wrote with Warren Byrd; ​“Water From an Ancient Well” by Abdullah Ibrahim.

The first was chosen for obvious reasons, as it concerns healing, said David Chevan. And the second because it’s ​“a deeply spiritual piece that speaks to the soul of the drum part of the band.”

According to Coleman’s son, Olu Manns-Coleman, Baba’s health got better just in time, although his release from the hospital was with several amputated fingers. ​“It won’t be the same, but he’ll be teaching,” the son reported.

The younger Coleman, who teaches percussion in Cleveland, said that there have always been two parts to his father’s teaching. In addition to the technical and musical side, ​“jis connection with people can continue 100 percent, even if the actual music lessons will be somewhat different. I think that’s what people will be coming to.”

Simon Mathews, a student of Coleman’s from West Haven, bears that out. He said he’s been studying with Coleman since first grade and wants to be a professional drummer himself. ​“He is the most generous person in the entire world. We pay for a half hour and we stay to play and talk for about an hour and a half. I learn more than drumming.”

Click here for Randall Beach’s appreciation of Coleman’s contribution to generation of student musicians in the Greater New Haven area.

Those who want to contribute to the fund for Baba David Coleman can do so online here. (Follow the tabs.)