JOE CHAMBERS is one of the last survivors of the clutch of great bop and post-bop drummers, a brother percussionist of Max Roach, Art Blakey, Philly Jo Jones, Roy Haynes and Tony Williams.

Born in Stoneacre, Virginia, in 1942, as a young man Chambers was a regular drummer of many of the classic ’60s Blue Note albums with sessions led by saxophonists Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and Sam Rivers, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, pianist Andrew Hill and vibes nonpareil Bobby Hutcherson.

He was also an essential component of the Max Roach all-drums ensemble, M’Boom.

Now an ever-active octogenarian, he is still producing powerful and innovative sounds alongside new generations of young jazz troubadours. 

On his latest Blue Note album Dance Kobina, he joins Congolese ngoma drummer Eli Miller Maboungou and Latin percussionist Emilio Valdes with a group of Montreal-based musicians in that “City of Saints” (the title of one the album’s tracks), creating an intercontinental sonic mixture.

I ask him about his childhood: did he come from a musical home? 

His father was a butcher and writer, and his mother a beautician who sang and wrote lyrics for songs.

“My three brothers and sister all played instruments. I was setting up pots and pans to hit at five years old, and started formal lessons at seven. We had a childhood band, and by the time I was a teenager I was already into jazz.”

What about his breakthrough into records as a Blue Note drummer? What were the most significant albums he played on, in his opinion? 

Saluting the great recently passed Shorter, he chooses two of his finest albums: Schizophrenia and etcetera, and also Sam Rivers’ Contours, McCoy Tyner’s Tender Moments and Hutcherson's Components — all jewels of their era.

As for M’boom: “It was a learning experience for all of us. We were all pretty good drumset players but we had to learn properly how to play timpani, mallets for marimba and vibes, hand drums like congas, bongos, African djembes and idiophones including maracas, claves and shakers.”

Does that mean that to him jazz was fundamentally a percussive music? 

“All the great players, the great improvisers, derived their inspiration from the drummers behind them,” he asserts.

“But jazz is a musical form that blends African and European musical elements whose intrinsic ingredient is improvisation.”

I ask him about Dance Kobina and its African title: “African music,” he replies, “is essential to most everything I do in music, even composing.

“What we call the blues is an African retention — certain tribes in Mauretania have scales and modes that represent colours.”

He talked about the unity of all music and how he had always gravitated towards “music of syncretic cultures — Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil. It’s in my blood!”

Dance Kobina certainly radiates this human amalgam. The choice to include the Joe Henderson composition of 1969, Power to the People, reflects “a time of significant civil unrest,” giving the album a now-times reflection of protest and resistance in the months following George Floyd’s murder.

Chambers’ determination to compose and produce new music is relentless.

Despite his years, his youth and fire as both drummer and composer are as powerful as ever.

He’s now working on a theatre piece. “It combines music, song, dance and spoken word. And I’m working on coming to London in June as I’m writing it.”

So watch out for him and the message of musical and percussive unity that comes everywhere with him.

Like Chambers himself, it never grows old, never diminishes, but grows more full of life with every year. Just listen to Dance Kobina.

Dance Kobina is released by Blue Note Records, bluenote.com.