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The Drum: A History. By Matt Dean. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012. [vii, 463 p. ISBN 9780810881709. $45.] Illustrations, bibliography, indexes.
Matt Dean is a working drummer based in London who has written instructional articles for a number of magazines. In this, his first book, he aims to provide a comprehensive history of drums and drumming from ancient times right up to the latest innovations in both popular and concert music, and the results are decidedly mixed.
The strongest section is the 135-page chapter on "The Modern Drum Kit." With a little expansion, this could easily have been published as an independent volume. Dean begins this portion of his history in the vaudeville pit, where the need to save space and keep the number of paid players to a minimum led to the development of ingenious arrangements of several percussion instruments so that they could be easily played by a single musician. From these practical beginnings, Dean traces the development of the set as it was used in swing and jazz; rock and roll (of the 1950s variety); skiffle and beat; rock; pop; funk; disco; heavy metal; fusion; hip-hop, jungle, and drum and bass music; and finally reggae. For each genre, he describes the characteristic styles of drumming,...