Arts [ Persona ] Of Sound Mine January 2007

by Dan Shafer
Photos by Russell Byrne

Bishop Mayfield’s move from Garberville to Monterey is rewarding, as he brings his passion for all kinds of music and his belief in the common African origin of all music to the local scene.

Bishop Mayfield’s life is surrounded by and embedded in sound. From the blues vocals he belts out as the lead singer of the well-known Monterey band Red Beans and Rice to the mock radio shows he produces in his garage studio, sound permeates his existence as he teaches area young people his West African drumming and listens to the blues greats past and future.

Music has been the focal point of Mayfield’s life from a very early age. He said he can’t remember a time when music wasn’t an important part of who he saw himself as being. He began singing in the local church in his native Harlem in New York City and was singing solos before he was out of first grade. At the age of nine, he landed his first paid gig singing in an off-Broadway production of The Music Man.

Today, Mayfield is the lead vocalist for the popular local Red Beans and Rice band. He is also singing in a jazz-blues trio with vocal stylist Carolyn Shafer and keyboardist Bob Phillips. He continues to study and teach West African and Afro-Cuban drumming to young people and at California State University Monterey Bay. Plus he sings solos in local churches and is building up his repertoire of recorded fictional radio shows.

Bishop and his life partner, Becka Sheranian, live on campus at CSUMB where she’s a graduate student in multimedia technology.

Bishop is also engaged in creating local children’s choirs and drumming groups as part of his life-long love for young people and his firm belief that early understanding and appreciation of music can make a huge difference in their lives as it has in his.

Drumming is Central
Mayfield regards drumming in general and African music in particular as being the common roots of all kinds of music.

“No matter what beat you play, you can find it embedded in the African sound,” he said. “I’ve played Reggae music in an all-drum group that sounded better than groups featuring guitars and other instruments as well. You can find the sounds and rhythms of those other instruments in the drum.”

Bishop believes that all music has its ultimate roots in Africa. “If Adam and Eve are from there, then it is the origin of all that we are and all that we have.” Respectful of the power of the drum, he said, “I’ve always loved music and drumming, whether it is African drumming or some other kind. To me drums have always conveyed the spirit of the people.”

His love for drumming dates back a couple of decades. When he and Becka were living in Garberville in Humboldt County, they sponsored hundreds of performances, workshops, and lectures by dozens of West African (principally Senegalese) entertainers. Mayfield became an expert in Djembe and Djun Djun drumming, two of the predominant West African styles.

At his first drumming camp in 1995, three well-known West African drummers gave Bishop his Senegalese name, “Assane N’Diaye,” which means “he who sings.”

“The great thing,” he recalls with a characteristically booming laugh, “is that they didn’t even know I was a singer at the time. They only knew me as a drumming student.”

While he was in Garberville, Mayfield staged dozens of public events. He remembered that during the Garberville 2000 Millennium event, he was leading the crowd to the midnight countdown by singing Slippin’ Into Darkness when the city literally did that: the power went out all over town.

“People thought it was part of the act,” he said, “until the lights didn’t come back up. We finished the gig and the countdown a capella.”

Mayfield began working with children and music in the early 1990s. Beginning with African drumming and dancing, he soon branched out to add a choral format mixing drumming, choir, and dance. When he was doing this work in Humboldt County, he frequently took his students to the local radio station for a recording session.

“Those kids really loved that,” he recalled.

One of the programs of which he is particularly proud is the “Kids Come First” undertaking aimed at giving kids a place to go after school where it was safe and fun. The idea was to teach youngsters responsibility and discipline through their participation in the arts.

Mayfield remains a drumming student to this day. His primary teacher is Salinas-based Senegalese master drummer Abdoulaye Diallo, a famous musician who also teaches Hartnell College President Edward Valeau. As a result of that connection, Mayfield has led drumming groups and workshops on the Salinas campus of Hartnell.

Singin’ the blues
His rich bass-baritone voice has stood Mayfield in good stead for decades. In Garberville, he was one of a small handful of musicians who made a living with their art. That fact was made all the more remarkable by the fact that he was a black entertainer in a predominantly white market.

Over the years, Mayfield jammed and opened for some of the top musical artists in the country. A partial list includes such famous performers as B. B. King, Al Wilson, Bo Diddley, the Neville Brothers, Etta James, Buddy Miles, the Four Tops, John Lee Hooker, and Albert Collins.

“Once I was doing a benefit gig in Garberville with a couple of old cats named Aron Burton and Lester Davenport whom I knew from my days with the Albert Collins band known as the Icebreakers. They got on my case about doing free gigs. They said doing them reduced your value in peoples’ eyes. They really got on me about it,” Mayfield recalled.

“I guess I didn’t pay enough attention, though; I’m still doing my share of free gigs.”

Soon after he relocated to the Peninsula, Mayfield landed a plum gig as the lead vocalist for Red Beans and Rice. The 14-year-old group has been voted “Best Local Band” of Monterey County for the past 12 consecutive years by the readers of Coast Weekly.

It has also been honored by the Salinas Californian, Metro Santa Cruz, the South Bay Blues Society and JJ’s, a prestigious blues club in San Jose.

Red Beans and Rice plays frequent gigs not only on the Peninsula but throughout Northern California, even venturing at one point back to Mayfield’s more recent stomping grounds in Humboldt County. The group landed the prestige spot of playing at Customs House Plaza on New Year’s Eve as part of Monterey’s famous First Night celebration of the arts. The band is a six-member combo that features lots of original music, largely written by the group’s founder and leader, Gil Rubio, as well as some less-familiar standards from the world of rhythm and blues.

The band has been hard at work on a new CD scheduled for release early this year. It will be the group’s fourth CD in its history and the first since Mayfield joined the combo.

“One of the main reasons we moved here from Humboldt County was that we felt the music scene here would be more vibrant and profitable. It’s proven to be both of those and a lot more,” Mayfield said as he flashed his winning smile.

Interestingly, if it hadn’t been for California’s well-publicized crackdown on drunk driving in the early 1990s, Mayfield might well have stayed in Humboldt County.

“That law — which I understand and support fully — really decimated the bar business in that part of the state,” Mayfield said.

“You can’t get anywhere up there without driving and the police were particularly aggressive in searching out potential drunk drivers during the hours just after bars closed.”

Fictional Radio
Mayfield’s interest in sound has resulted in his learning a great deal about recording, editing, and the distribution of music and voice files over the air and over the Internet.

One of his favorite pastimes is recording what he calls a “fictional radio show” complete with fictional commercials.

“I have a bunch of cassette tapes of music I recorded live over the years, including music from some of the best performers of my time,” Mayfield explained. “I take a few of those tapes, combine songs from them with my commentary and some fictional commercials and create a full radio show, 30 or 60 minutes long.”

He has about 15 or 20 of these shows done and is now looking for possible ways to get them into distribution, perhaps as podcasts or Internet radio broadcasts with sponsorship.

“The show follows a sort of standard format,” he said. “It mimics a good bit of the midnight time slot stuff you hear with DJs who are knowledgeable about their specific music and have a real conversational style of presentation.”

His music goes back 20-30 years and, he said, “enables me and my mythical listeners to relive moments when these musicians were holding court all over the country.”

Two CDs Available
Mayfield has released two CDs. One is called If That’s What Love Is and the other is called A Softer Side. The latter is a collection of a dozen standards ranging in mood from Georgia on My Mind and Unforgettable to Unchain My Heart and the Beatles’ The Long and Winding Road. Both are available solely through his Web site at www.bishopmayfield.com.

Who are some of the musicians Mayfield enjoys listening to when he’s in a mood to hear sound rather than make it?

He said that it’s a pretty short list that includes Luther Vandross, Isaac Hayes, Barry White, Albert Collins, Smoky Robinson (are we seeing a pattern here?) as well as Aretha Franklin and Patti Labelle.

Among drummers, he counts two as world-class: Billy Cobham who, among other things, pioneered electronic percussion in the late 1960s, and famed Brazilian drummer and composer Airto Moreira.

There is at least one sound that remains an ambition for Mayfield.

“I’d like to sing the national anthem at a Giants’ game before Barry Bonds retires. His father and I were friends.” °