When Polish drummer Piotr Gwadera heard footwork for the first time, he noticed something that sent a chill down his spine. While the Chicago sound's syncopated polyrhythms were new to most listeners outside the US Midwest, Gwadera noticed something familiar: the triple metered sound of oberek, a beloved rural Polish folk dance. So he began to fantasize about a parallel history, where Polish immigrants to Chicago broke bread with the city's African American community, feeding footwork's evolution with their own ancestral pulse. This year at Unsound Osaka, Gwadera's dream (as heard on last year's brilliant 'Far, far in Chicago. Footberk Suite') is set to become reality when he plays side-by-side with footwork pioneer RP Boo, one of Chicago's most legendary figures. With Gwadera manning his minimalist "jaz" (not jazz) kit loaded with Roland drum machine samples and RP Boo on decks, it's gonna be a speculative cross-cultural experiment that melts a hole in the bass continuum.
