On her Vimeo page, Yoyoka Soma, an eight-year-old-drum­ming prodi­gy, tells you every­thing you need to know to appre­ci­ate this video. Her blurb, accom­pa­ny­ing the video above, reads as fol­lows:

My name is Yoyoka Soma. I am 8 year old Japan­ese drum­mer.

When I was a just small baby, my par­ents had a home stu­dio and there were var­i­ous kinds of instru­ments. My par­ents were per­form­ing music activ­i­ties as ama­teur singer-song­writ­ers and they cra­dled me with their music. When I lis­tened to their songs and gui­tar per­for­mances, I was eager to join them and couldn’t stop beat­ing out a rhythm. That was why I start­ed play­ing the drums. The drum was the first instru­ment in which I felt an inter­est in my life. My par­ents’ music peers often vis­it­ed us to play togeth­er. I was glued to the pow­er­ful and dynam­ic per­for­mances by the drum­mers. At age 2, I was play­ing the drums as if I were play­ing with toys. At age 4, I start­ed per­form­ing at con­certs. At age 5, my fam­i­ly band “Kaneaiy­oyoka” was formed by my par­ents. We have released 2 self-pro­duced CD albums so far. Not only the drums, I also play the key­board and per­form as a vocal­ist. I com­pose lyrics and music as well.

My favorite drum­mers are John Bon­ham, Chris Cole­man and Ben­ny Greb.

As a drum­mer, I enjoy being groove, tones and try to sup­port vocal­ists care­ful­ly. My dream is to be the best drum­mer in the world. In addi­tion, I want to be an artist who can do any­thing: play­ing all instru­ments, record­ing music, mix­ing the sound and design­ing the CD album jack­ets. As I am aim­ing at over­seas activ­i­ties, I am study­ing Eng­lish con­ver­sa­tion. I want to become friends with peo­ple all over the world through my musi­cal activ­i­ties!

As HLAG [Hit Like a Girl] is a con­test only for women, I def­i­nite­ly can’t lose it. I want to be the best female drum­mer. Thanks to the great sup­port by my fam­i­ly and fans, I can con­tin­ue the prac­tice and oth­er musi­cal activ­i­ties. I want to show the best result of my dai­ly prac­tice and come out on top of this con­test!

Yoyoka’s glee­ful per­for­mance of John Bon­ham’s drum sec­tion from Zep­pelin’s “Good Times Bad Times” served as her entry for the 2018 edi­tion of the Hit Like a Girl con­test. She was­n’t amongst the win­ners this year alas. But she undoubt­ed­ly has time–plenty of time–to take anoth­er shot.

Below, you can watch Robert Plan­t’s reac­tion upon view­ing Yoyoka at work. “I know where she could get a good job.” “That’s amaz­ing, isn’t it?”

h/t Mike S.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Saint­hood and incal­cu­la­ble influ­ence aside, John Coltrane didn’t always break new ground in the stu­dio. “If you heard the John Coltrane Quar­tet live in the ear­ly-to-mid 1960s,” writes Gio­van­ni Rus­sonel­lo at The New York Times—refer­ring to the clas­sic line­up of bassist Jim­my Gar­ri­son, drum­mer Elvin Jones, and pianist McCoy Tyner—you heard “a ground-shak­ing band, an almost phys­i­cal being, bear­ing a promise that seemed to reach far beyond music.”

Pri­or to 1965’s super­nat­ur­al A Love Supreme, how­ev­er, few of the eight albums the clas­sic quar­tet record­ed for Impulse! Records cap­tured “the band’s live eth­ic.” The “fun­ny prob­lem” Coltrane had was his com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, which made the label eschew record­ing the quartet’s con­sid­er­ably exper­i­men­tal ten­den­cies in favor of “con­cept-dri­ven and con­sumer-friend­ly projects.” Now, Rus­sonel­lo writes, “that sto­ry needs a major foot­note.” A lost Coltrane album from 1963 has emerged, dis­cov­ered by the fam­i­ly of his first wife, Naima.

Coltrane his­to­ry may be rewrit­ten on June 29th when the album, Both Direc­tions at Once, gets its release. We have a glimpse at what fans have been miss­ing for the past 55 years in the soar­ing first track, “Unti­tled Orig­i­nal 11383,” above, a “brisk minor blues.” The album’s remain­ing trea­sures may jus­ti­fy Son­ny Rollin’s com­par­i­son of this dis­cov­ery to “find­ing a new room in the Great Pyra­mid.” In addi­tion to two pre­vi­ous­ly unheard orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions, the album fea­tures some very intrigu­ing record­ings.

The final track, a stu­dio ver­sion of “One Up, One Down,” was “pre­vi­ous­ly heard only on a boot­leg record­ing made at the Bird­land jazz club,” notes Fact Mag­a­zine. “One of Coltrane’s most famous com­po­si­tions, ‘Impres­sions,’ is fea­tured in a trio with­out piano,” and the album also con­tains the first record­ing of “Nature Boy,” which lat­er appeared on The John Coltrane Quar­tet Plays. (See Fact Mag for a full track­list­ing of the stan­dard and two-CD deluxe edi­tions of the album.) This col­lec­tion comes very close “to the breadth of what Coltrane and his asso­ciates were deliv­er­ing onstage,” claims Rus­sonel­lo.

It may also rep­re­sent a pre­scient­ly tran­si­tion­al doc­u­ment, as its title sug­gests. As Coltrane’s son Ravi puts it, “you do get a sense of John with one foot in the past and one foot head­ed toward his future.” After the album’s 1963 record­ing at the Rudy Van Gelder Stu­dio in New Jer­sey, the mas­ter tapes some­how went miss­ing, but Coltrane had tak­en home the ref­er­ence tape that only recent­ly sur­faced. Both Direc­tions at Once fills in a gap between the “mar­velous” albums Coltrane and Cres­cent, show­ing off the band’s dynamism in the peri­od between “spring 1962 to spring 1964” and let­ting them cut loose while stay­ing with­in famil­iar har­mon­ic forms.

Coltrane’s avant-garde bril­liance may have changed the course of mod­ern music, but some of his most for­ward-think­ing exper­i­ments can be dif­fi­cult lis­ten­ing for those unini­ti­at­ed in the rites of modal free jazz. Accord­ing to pianist and schol­ar Lewis Porter, com­ment­ing on an advance copy of Both Direc­tions at Once, the redis­cov­ered album, con­tains “a lot of that musi­cal meat” that Coltrane’s quar­tet deliv­ered to live audi­ences in the ear­ly-to-mid-six­ties, “but in a con­text that will be more acces­si­ble to a lot of lis­ten­ers.”

Maybe more con­ser­v­a­tive lis­ten­ers, how­ev­er, can find in the lost album a key that unlocks the incred­i­ble mys­ter­ies of lat­er record­ings like Ascen­sion, Med­i­ta­tions, and the wild, posthu­mous­ly-released Inter­stel­lar Space.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

George Har­ri­son of the Bea­t­les was an accom­plished gui­tar play­er with a dis­tinc­tive solo­ing style. So you might think that with a song as per­son­al and gui­tar-cen­tric as “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” he would do his own play­ing. In fact, the song fea­tures gui­tar play­ing by Eric Clap­ton.

It was record­ed on Sep­tem­ber 6, 1968, dur­ing the acri­mo­nious White Album ses­sions. Har­ri­son had been strug­gling off and on for over a month to get the song right. He first tried it with his own play­ing on a Gib­son J‑200 gui­tar along with an over­dubbed har­mo­ni­um. He lat­er exper­i­ment­ed by run­ning the gui­tar solo back­wards. Noth­ing seemed to work.

So final­ly Har­ri­son asked his friend Clap­ton for a lit­tle help. When Har­ri­son walked into Abbey Road Stu­dios with Clap­ton, the oth­er Bea­t­les start­ed tak­ing the song seri­ous­ly. In a 1987 inter­view with Gui­tar Play­er mag­a­zine, Har­ri­son was asked whether it had bruised his ego to ask Clap­ton to play on the song.

No, my ego would rather have Eric play on it. I’ll tell you, I worked on that song with John, Paul, and Ringo one day, and they were not inter­est­ed in it at all. And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song. The next day I was with Eric, and I was going into the ses­sion, and I said, “We’re going to do this song. Come on and play on it.” He said, “Oh, no. I can’t do that. Nobody ever plays on the Bea­t­les records.” I said, “Look, it’s my song, and I want you to play on it.” So Eric came in, and the oth­er guys were as good as gold–because he was there. Also, it left me free to just play the rhythm and do the vocal. So Eric played that, and I thought it was real­ly good. Then we lis­tened to it back, and he said, “Ah, there’s a prob­lem, though; it’s not Beat­ley enough”–so we put it through the ADT [auto­mat­ic dou­ble-track­er], to wob­ble it a bit.

For the impres­sion of a per­son weep­ing and wail­ing, Clap­ton used the fin­gers on his fret­ting hand to bend the strings deeply, in a high­ly expres­sive descend­ing vibra­to. He was play­ing a 1957 Gib­son Les Paul, a gui­tar he had once owned but had giv­en to Har­ri­son, who nick­named it “Lucy.” You can hear Clap­ton’s iso­lat­ed play­ing above. And for a reminder of how it all came togeth­er, you can lis­ten to the offi­cial ver­sion here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in May, 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lost Gui­tar Solo for “Here Comes the Sun” by George Har­ri­son, Dis­cov­ered by George Mar­tin

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Last month, rock band Weez­er per­formed a remark­able bit of fan ser­vice: tak­ing a request from a fan’s Twit­ter and grant­i­ng it. A user called, appro­pri­ate­ly, “Weez­er Cov­er Africa by Toto,” has been bad­ger­ing the band since Decem­ber of 2017 to do just that. The per­son behind the account is 15-year-old Mary from Ohio, who is both a seri­ous fan of Weez­er and of “Africa,” which she first heard on an episode of “Stranger Things.”

Though the band decid­ed to help Mary out, they had a lit­tle bit of fun first, trolling her and cov­er­ing “Rosan­na,” Toto’s big­ger hit (it won Record of the Year at the 1983 Gram­mys ). A few days lat­er, they dropped “Africa”…and watched as it sailed to the top of the iTunes charts. (If you’re won­der­ing, the orig­i­nal reached the top spot in the Bill­board 100 back in 1983).

Now, if you know the orig­i­nal, Weezer’s cov­er is pret­ty note-for-note. One could argue that Toto, mocked for its smooth pop lean­ings, actu­al­ly rock hard­er than Weez­er, espe­cial­ly in the song’s cho­rus.
But Mary’s obses­sion with “Africa” doesn’t come out of nowhere. YouTube is full of odd cov­ers of the song.

Here’s a loop ped­al and piano ver­sion from Peter Bence:

Or how about a choral group’s ver­sion, com­plete with a ASMR-tas­tic recre­ation of a rain­storm.

You could also watch a rub­ber chick­en have a go:

But my cur­rent favorite is this very enthu­si­as­tic Nordic met­al cov­er from Leo Morac­chi­oli and friends:

Why do peo­ple more than ever love “Africa”? When it came out it was def­i­nite­ly a hit, but over 35 years or so it’s tran­scend­ed its cheesy pop sta­tus to become a “clas­sic” of pop con­struc­tion, filled with dynam­ic changes, mul­ti­part har­monies, and a com­plex arrange­ment. There’s noth­ing iron­ic in lov­ing it.

Annie Zales­ki, in her Salon arti­cle on the song’s endur­ing pow­er, describes its world music indul­gences and its rhythm:

With­out flash or fan­fare, “Africa” incor­po­rates con­gas, marim­bas, the gong and oth­er per­cus­sion flour­ish­es, giv­ing the song a tex­tured veloc­i­ty. Under­neath it all is a hyp­not­ic groove, resem­bling a con­stant, gen­tle push — one that keeps the song pul­sat­ing for­ward. When lis­ten­ing to “Africa,” it’s impos­si­ble to stay still; the song’s innate move­ment is infec­tious.

Co-writer David Paich (Toto’s key­boardist) explained the thoughts behind the lyrics in a Grant­land inter­view, explain­ing they stemmed from his days as a Catholic school­boy and hear­ing tales of mis­sion­ary work:

I had all these things rat­tling about in my brain when I was writ­ing the song. All these thoughts about priests and young social work­ers that have gone over there, devot­ing their lives to help­ing peo­ple, and hav­ing to choose what kind of life they’re going to have — whether to keep doing this, what I’m doing here, or can I have a life, get mar­ried, have kids, and do that kind of thing. So it was a life choice mixed in with a geo­graph­i­cal fas­ci­na­tion there.

But as he also says, the line “I bless the rains down in Africa” just popped out when he first start­ed work­ing on the cho­rus. The vers­es were writ­ten after to explain the mys­tery of the cho­rus. Also: the song was added at the last minute, clos­ing off the album, which opens with “Rosan­na,” per­fect book­ends which the rest of the album can’t reach.

And final­ly, if you’re still fas­ci­nat­ed with the song, Rick Beato checks out the indi­vid­ual mul­ti-tracks on his series “What Makes This Song So Great.” By the end, you might just have the answer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Feel Strange­ly Nos­tal­gic as You Hear Clas­sic Songs Reworked to Sound as If They’re Play­ing in an Emp­ty Shop­ping Mall: David Bowie, Toto, Ah-ha & More

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.