Paco Séry Remembers His First Years Behind the Kit in Abidjan
Some interviews linger because nothing dramatic happens on the surface: no grand revelations, just a man remembering a street. Paco Séry spoke recently about the years before Europe, before Magma, before the studio sessions that put his name on other people's records. He talked slowly, pausing now and then to reach for a French word, then carrying on in English.
Abidjan in the 1970s was a working port city with music running through it like heat through a corridor. Horn calls from the taxis, the rattle of handcarts, taped rhythms from the back of a market stall — a young drummer heard all of it and learned which sounds belonged on a skin and which belonged beside one.
What follows is a rare conversation about his early days: the borrowed instrument, the paying work, and the moment he understood that playing for money and playing for himself are two different crafts. It resonates with anyone who has wondered whether a first drum is a life sentence or a passing phase.
The Drum That Belonged to Somebody Else
His first instrument was not his own. A relative left a drum in the family home, and Séry treated it the way a beginner treats a borrowed bicycle — obsessively, slightly recklessly, checking it constantly to see whether it still worked. The skin was patched more than once. He learned to tune it by ear before he could read a gauge, and he learned to play with the hands long before anyone introduced him to sticks.
Abidjan fed him constantly. Family gatherings meant live percussion at close range, in a room where the only way to be heard was to be precise. There was no conservatory routine, no weekly exam, no metronome; there were neighbours, cousins, and the assumption that a person who claimed to play should be able to hold a room down when the singing started.
He speaks about that period without sentimentality. The city taught him that rhythm in West Africa is not decoration under a melody. It is the architecture. You build the room first, and the song walks into it.
Playing for the Hotel Band
Money arrived through the hotel circuit, and Séry remembers the economics of it clearly: a small retainer, a share of the bar takings on a good night, cash in an envelope at the end of a set. Bands played for the expats, for the businessmen on assignment, for the aircrew with three days on the ground and no idea where they were.
It was unglamorous and it was school. He learned how to play a set list, how to read a room that was half-talking, how to keep time without thinking about it. A drummer who cannot hold a groove in a hotel lounge at midnight will certainly not hold one on a stage in Europe, he points out.
There was also the market side of it. Small drums, cymbals, strings, pedals, all of it traded in the open air where the price was negotiable and the goods were visibly used. He learned the value of a well-kept instrument from dealers who could see a cracked hoop from three metres away.
The Move That Changed Everything
Europe pulled him away from that life. The transition was less a single event than a series of auditions, letters, and borrowed money, and Séry is careful to resist turning it into a fairy tale. He talks about arriving with very little, about the shock of a colder climate and a stricter rehearsal culture, and about how long it took to stop performing like a musician from Abidjan and start sounding like one.
He credits the drums of home with the confidence he carried into that new world. The hand technique, the polyrhythmic listening, the patience to let a pattern breathe — those arrived as luggage, and they turned out to be the most useful things he had brought.
He still returns. The city, the coastline, the language of the beat: those stay present in everything he plays, whether the session is in Paris, Los Angeles or a festival stage somewhere hot.
Where the African Percussion Meets the Jazz Tradition
Ask him how the two worlds fuse and he becomes precise. His own guide explains how he blends jazz harmony with African percussion, and the interview picks up the same thread: jazz gives the drummer harmonic information to respond to, while African percussion gives the band a shared physical pulse underneath it.
For Séry, the point is not decorative layering. A kit player has to serve the tune, and a percussionist has to serve the ensemble without disappearing into the background. He describes it as a conversation between two kinds of listening: the ears tracking chords, the hands tracking subdivisions.
Notes for Drummers Learning in Australia
The advice he offers is practical. Start with a hand drum if you can find one, he says, because the technique transfers; learn to play quietly; learn to follow a band rather than lead one. Some of it lands especially well in Australia, where the live music scene rewards drummers who can read a room.
Australian conditions have their own texture. Sydney and Melbourne run late-night circuits where the licensing is strict and the volume is policed by council by-laws, so a drummer playing a midnight set in a pub knows the curfew intimately. Brisbane and the Gold Coast have a similar weekend habit of a drummer working three outdoor gigs before a session. Drum circles and school percussion programmes spread the habit through suburbia, and the Saturday market culture — from Melbourne's Prahran Market to the Sunday stalls in Byron Bay — keeps second-hand gear within reach of young players, with GST and customs charges on imported drumheads and cymbals worth checking before an order from overseas.
He endorses Sonor Drums and Remo, and the reasoning behind both is worth hearing: hardware should disappear under the hands, and drumheads should take a beating without punishing the player.
The Catalogue and the Stage Footage
Asked what he would want a new listener to hear first, he does not name a single track. He points instead to the live performance videos, where the camera stays on the band long enough for a listener to see how little movement a good drummer needs.
The discography behind those sessions is long and international, spanning jazz, funk and contemporary work with artists whose names are familiar in Europe and increasingly so in Australian festival programming. The gallery and song pages on the site hold the same story in pictures and sound.
If you want to hear the early Abidjan material in its proper context, start with the recorded work, then watch a full band in motion. The groove tells you more than any biography.
Explore the discography, gallery and songs on the official site, watch the live footage, and reach out through the contact page to arrange a session, a workshop or an interview request. Follow his updates for tour dates and new recordings.