Drummer and percussionist Hamid Drake has made many sojourns to New Orleans and is usually associated with creative jazz saxophonist and educator Kidd Jordan. The Chicago native is a traveler both musically and physically, having studied an array of rhythmic and melodic cultures with an emphasis on nations in Africa and the diaspora. First gaining recognition behind the drums in jazz combos, he has increasingly turned his attention and vast skill to the frame drum, a simple instrument of many voices.

On Sawt-e-Sarmad, which is a “Sufi term referring to the sound which intoxicates man,” the master is joined in a frame drum duo by New Orleans percussionist Jeff Zielinski. The album’s conversation is primarily between these two instruments with Drake providing meditative vocal chants and Zielinski adding textures with congas and a gong.

The drummers’ first collaborations were at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center’s presentations, the inspiring “Celebration of the Drum” and “Sacred Drums.” Thus they were prepared to enter a New Orleans studio to capture the “spontaneously composed” material on the album. On “Ether,” the quick-fingered Drake produces a sound similar to that of a drum roll played on a snare. Other techniques, like rubbing the drum head, offer complementing tones.

As can be imagined, Sawt-e-Sarmad—with its ancient, meditatively spiritual nature—is an unusual album. Experiencing a frame drum performance live—and especially the stunning hand work of Drake—is far easier to grasp and appreciate.