A MARCH TO BEAT OF HIS OWN DRUMS

Ask musicians to describe their music and nine out of 10 will answer, “I don’t like being labeled.” Steven Traugh, leader of Supercussion Plus, has the opposite problem: He fervently wishes he could find an appropriate tag for his ensemble that virtually defies categorization.

Perhaps the best way to start would be to describe Supercussion Plus as a percussion ensemble-big band-rock orchestra that bridges rock, jazz and classical music.

But even that wide-ranging appellation doesn’t fully cover all the musical sources tapped by Traugh’s band, composed of nearly three dozen musicians who play more than 60 instruments on their recently released “Supercussion Live & Elsewhere” album.

“The initial reason for doing our new record was to have something to send to people who might be interested in booking us. The group has a hard sound to describe if you’ve never heard it before,” Traugh, 35, said during an interview earlier this week in the living room of his Montebello residence.

Supercussion Plus was based at Santa Ana College for three years and still draws the majority of its members from Orange County. The band will give its first local performance in almost 18 months on Saturday at 5 p.m. as part of the three-day Santa Ana Music Festival this weekend in Birch Park at Third and Ross streets.

Because it is an extended percussion ensemble, Supercussion Plus frequently employs African, Cuban and other Third World rhythms in its music. And because of its non-standard instrumentation, most of the group’s selections are either composed or arranged specifically for the band by Traugh, who earned degrees in applied percussion and composition from West Virginia University.

“We are taking folk traditions and developing them in ways that haven’t occurred before,” Traugh said. “As a composer, I try to maintain the original flavor (of those traditions). Yet I also want to create something that has the signature of the composer rather than just imitating something someone else has done.”

Traugh, a music teacher at La Merced Intermediate School in Montebello, has instituted a number of highly praised music education programs in the Montebello Unified School District. He received the 1983 Bravo Award as Los Angeles County’s outstanding arts educator, presented by the Performing Arts Council of the Los Angeles Music Center.

When he’s not working with students, Traugh divides his time between composing, conducting periodic percussion workshops for the Music Center and rehearsing or performing with Supercussion Plus.

The ensemble has evolved into its present configuration over a period of several years. The idea of building a large percussion group grew out of Traugh’s experience in the mid-’70s working with the Pittsburgh Symphony on his “East African Symphony,” for which he received a composition grant in 1974 from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“As any lesser-known composer can tell you, it can be difficult dealing with symphony orchestras. They are so busy, you can expect one or two rehearsals at best. Since this piece used a lot of African rhythms that were foreign to most symphony players, I could never get anything close to what I had in mind when I wrote the music. Supercussion came into existence primarily as an outlet for me to get my own music performed,” he said.

While working on the symphony, Traugh came to California to do research in UCLA’s ethnomusicology archives and decided to stay. “I went back East just long enough to get the piece played by the Pittsburgh Symphony and then came back here,” Traugh said.

“Southern California is not a difficult place to pursue your art or to get work. But it’s a tremendously difficult place to surface,” he said. “Not just because of the number of people or artists working here, but because of how spread out everything is. You may be the hottest thing in Santa Monica or Newport Beach, but nobody knows you in the Valley.”

Simultaneously leading percussion ensembles at Santa Ana College and in the Montebello Unified School District, Traugh decided to augment the conventional percussion ensemble instrumentation with guitars, brass and wind instruments, synthesizers and, most recently, with four vocalists.

The group’s album, released in April, showcases the ensemble’s versatility in pieces ranging from the nearly 21-minute, multitextured “Chaconne Afrinique,” written by Traugh, to the Caribbean flavor of Ramsey Lewis’ “Jamaican Marketplace” to the Latin jazz-rock in Traugh’s “Latido Del Corazon.”

“The interesting thing about this group is that I’ll get letters after performances and one person will say that a certain piece was the single, profound event of the concert for them. Another person will say the same piece was too long or didn’t hold their interest,” he said.

“At one recent concert we did all love songs--a lot of old-fashioned Gershwin tunes. Some people loved it and others absolutely hated it. But I think it’s all right to be controversial, because it means that you’re taking chances. We try new things, try some old things, and sometimes they don’t work,” Traugh said. “But the point is that if people were moved enough to write letters--whether they loved it or hated it--they were involved.”

LIVE ACTION: Tina Turner will play Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Oct. 5. Tickets go on sale Monday. Tickets will also be available Monday for Irvine Meadows shows with the Kinks and Cock Robin (Aug. 24) and a Christian music concert headlined by Petra (Aug. 17). Tickets for New Order’s Aug. 23 Irvine Meadows show go on sale Sunday. . . . Tickets also go on sale Monday for Squeeze’s Sept. 27 date at the Pacific Amphitheatre. . . . Dave Mason returns to the Golden Bear on July 27. . . . Jeff Pearson will be at the Crazy Horse Steak House on July 29.