Hand-Making the Instruments to Hand Down the Sound

Juno Lewis removes something glistening from its terry cloth wrapping as tenderly as a parent might lift a newborn from the crib.

The squat, cylindrical object he holds aloft is a sculpture of sorts--gold- and silver-colored metal interspersed with mahogany in dramatic, geometric designs.

But it also is a drum, the kind that might be used in a marching band, and the centerpiece of a line of drums that Lewis calls “the first truly American-African musical instruments ever made.” They look the way African-American music sounds--a fusion of the traditions of two cultures.

Strewn about Lewis’ workshop are more of his creations, each strange looking and more exotic than the other--a horn that looks like a saxophone grafted onto a trumpet, a trumpet with not one but many bells jutting out in all directions, a table-like device that when tapped with rubber mallets sounds like giant, melodic raindrops plopping into pools of water.

Lewis has spent the last two decades perfecting the design of the instruments, while teaching music and crafting traditional African-style drums at his Pasadena home. Earlier this year, he began hand-making his special line in a tiny workshop in Leimert Park, occasionally--but only occasionally--giving an outsider a peek.

“You can never be too careful,” he says slyly to a visitor, like an inventor protecting a patent.

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Lewis--born Julian B. Lewis in New Orleans 62 years ago but known simply as Juno--designed and made his first drum at the age of 7, using only a chisel and a knife. At an even younger age he made his own toys.

Something of a prodigy, he taught himself to sculpt by squeezing mud as he played on the banks of the Mississippi River, nine blocks from his childhood home.

Long before the 1960s, when large numbers of black Americans began turning to Africa for cultural sustenance, Lewis had steeped himself in the strong African art and musical traditions that surrounded him in New Orleans.

Forty years ago, he moved to South-Central Los Angeles, where he opened a school of drumming and performed with his own Caribbean-style bands in some of Hollywood’s swankiest restaurants and hotels. He also has performed alongside some of jazz’s best-known names.

In 1965, the late, legendary saxophonist John Coltrane invited him to participate in a Los Angeles recording session.

The result was one of Coltrane’s last and most popular albums, “Kulu Se Mama,” named for a long musical ritual that Lewis wrote in honor of his mother. The piece--which features Lewis singing in a Creole dialect and playing conch shells as well as his own handmade instruments--takes up a full side of the album.

“My drums were the only drums Coltrane would allow used,” he recalls while reminiscing in his new workshop.

James Newton, who teaches music at UC Irvine and who has his own jazz quartet, describes “Kulu Se Mama” as “monumental because it bridged the gaps between African and Creole music and jazz and moved it all forward.”

Proceeds from “Kulu Se Mama” were supposed to be used help to build a center of African-American arts for Lewis, according to the album liner notes. But after Coltrane died in 1967, that never happened, Lewis says.

The dream of a place in Los Angeles where he could teach young people music and instrument-making lay dormant until last year, when in the aftermath of the riots it was revived as an effort to build a factory.

“Everybody is talking about creating jobs for our youths. Well, this is a perfect way to do it,” said Lewis, referring to his idea.

He hopes to use the prototypes he is building to attract backers.

Ayuko Babu, a community activist and jazz aficionado who came of age in the 1960s enthralled by Coltrane’s music, is a Lewis supporter.

But he is pragmatic when assessing the odds of the factory ever being built.

Lewis “has a good chance if he hooks up with the ministry of culture of Burkino Faso or Ghana,” said Babu, referring to two West African nations that have been supportive of the cultural projects of African-Americans. “They have an emotional and intellectual stake in the development of Juno’s drums, while most people here are only interested in the commercial thing.”

That is not to say, Babu added, that the dream is unimportant.

“We have lost our understanding of manufacturing instruments,” he said of African-Americans. “Juno is one of the few people who has kept the tradition in the States.”

Lewis’ workshop is a clutter of completed and half-made instruments.

It is dominated by a huge mounted saw that his father gave him half a century ago. He has lugged it around the country ever since.

Nearly every object in the workshop has a history.

The thing that looks like a silver African mask is actually a trumpet mute that Lewis designed in honor of the late Dizzy Gillespie. The mute mimics Gillespie’s head with the cheeks blown out like two fat melons.

Lewis got his idea of multi-belled horns, he said, from watching the stances of musicians such as Miles Davis, who seemed to blow their instruments in every direction except straight out in front of them.

To talk about music with Lewis is to enter a realm where sound, as he puts it, disappears “into invisible cups in the air.” His descriptions sometimes become so abstract they are impossible for the non-musician to follow. Often sounding like poetry, they are laced with folk aphorisms and history.

Drum making, he insists, is not a profession, but a sacred calling.