How many street performers would you say you’ve seen in your entire lifetime?
For the most part when we’re walking through the city or trying to get to work, we don’t really get to stop and interact with what we see around us. Although there are plenty of incredibly talented musicians out there busking on the street, not all of them catch our attention—or in other cases, we don’t always have the opportunity to stop. Fortunately, with the rise of YouTube, some of these buskers can get more of the recognition they deserve.
The drummer from today’s video is definitely one of those examples.
The video was posted by William Wei, a filmmaking account which documents all kinds of international travel.
Although many of the channel’s other videos are essentially travelogues, Wei must’ve been stopped in his tracks one day at his many destinations when he came across a street drummer with a handful of upside down paint buckets. Like a few other onlookers, he stopped and set up his camera to watch the performance.
As it turns out, it’s a lucky thing that he did!
The video begins with the drummer setting the rhythm and drumming on two of the buckets with two sticks.
From there, he establishes a basic groove by drumming on the ground and the buckets at the same time. If you watch closely, you can see that he also manipulates one of the buckets on the ground with his foot, tipping it up and down to change the sounds that it makes! For the first minute or so, all he seems interested in doing is creating a solid rhythm.
After that, though, things start to get pretty complicated.
At about a minute and a half in, the man starts drumming in double time!
Though the rhythm is the same, the crowd is watching a little more intently now. After switching out a couple of his buckets, he starts in again. After a moment he’s down to just two buckets and is hammering out an incredible rhythm between them—at one point, he even tosses a stick in the air, flips it and continues without missing a beat!
After a few more tricks, it’s time for the grand finale.
Once the crowd has a pretty clear sense of what he can do, he decides to take things into overdrive.
At the very end, he drums the fastest he’s drummed yet by hammering away on just two of the buckets. After that, he clears everything out and only has one bucket left. On this last one, he drums his absolute fastest yet! At the end of it all, he does a few more flip tricks and stops. Although it goes without saying, the crowd bursts into applause!
As it turns out, though, this drummer is somewhat notorious around the world and on YouTube.
Though the video we’ve mentioned so far has some 142 million views, it isn’t even posted on the drummer’s actual channel!
The drummer in the video has a YouTube channel of his own called Gordo Drummer. As it turns out, Gordo is based out of Sydney, Australia though he has busked in all kinds of locations around the world. Though he has plenty of videos on his channel to explore, one of his own most successful clips features him drumming on only one bucket the entire time.
This one has about 15 million views and is just as impressive as the other one.
Just like the other clip, it begins with Gordo getting the rhythm down and establishing a groove.
After that, there are all kinds of variations and flip tricks and crossovers before he’s ready for a big finale. As he gradually increases speed, this one also ends with a truly blistering drumming finale and a round of applause from everybody who happens to be watching!
Although busking is clearly pretty hard work, sites like YouTube and other social media outlets can help propel these talented musicians to greater success.
While there’s the obvious help of checking out Gordo’s channel and subscribing, he also has his own online PayPal link for anyone who wants to donate money to him that way! Needless to say, he’s a very talented performer with plenty to offer the world… and we’re going to be watching his videos over and over again.
Congratulations on all the views to Gordo Drummer! Check out the original video below:
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