Drums and Symbols : Bakra Bata’s Cultural-Minded Themes Range From Personal to Global

Michael Shantz is out to change your mind about steel-drum music.

Shantz is the artistic director and founder of Bakra Bata, an eight-member steel-drum troupe that not only plays the breezy island music most people associate with steel-drum bands but combines it with dance, theater and masquerade.

With a background in film and theater, Shantz formed the group in Seattle in 1984 with the goal of fostering community-based celebrations of the arts--or as he terms it, “promoting carnival arts.”

“What we’re doing is integrating several art forms to provide a soundtrack that expresses what’s going on all around us,” Shantz said recently by cell phone while on the road in Colorado. “We incorporate a variety of themes about greater moral issues, but they’re simple and straightforward. We use symbolism in skits featuring masks, costumes, pantomime and the like to create a kind of narrative story line without any dialogue. . . .

“It’s the idea of everyone coming out and partying together in a very positive way, where people who maybe have no particular [creative] calling participate in street music and dance,” he said. “I’ve found that it’s tremendously therapeutic for people who feel a part of a public celebration.”

Shantz, who plays a variety of percussion instruments including the Brazilian berimbau, Nigerian gan gan (or talking drum) and steel drum (or pan), is joined in Bakra Bata by five other percussionists and two dancers. The group, which plays tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, has a variety of material ranging from serious-minded and global to the more personal and playful.

During the soca (for soul-calypso)-tinged number “Where Are You Going,” for example, a masked dancer called Soo-May is a kind of trickster figure representing jealousy.

On the lighter side, “T.F.O. (Things Fall Over)” features the gan gan during a good-natured Kpatsa dance from Ghana. “Pan in ‘A’ Minor,” another soca number, includes a dance rhythm from Brazil called xaxado (pronounced sha-sha-doo) that deals with the social progress of women.

Bakra Bata has over the years included male and female members from Africa, the West Indies, Brazil and the U.S. Shantz said the current troupe, which is predominantly American, has had its authenticity questioned.

“Although our music and dance has roots in Caribbean, African and Brazilian traditions, we’re a distinctly American group,” he said. “But people want to pigeonhole what we do.

“It seems we’re constantly confronting stereotypes about both masquerade and the instruments that we play,” he said. “Like that [perception] of who’s supposed to be drumming . . . maybe Cubans or Africans, but not Americans. Or how a funk beat signals only black music to some people.

“These biases,” he said, “which are reinforced by the corporate rules of consumerism, exist because so much of the media and marketing machinery dictates what is acceptable within the mainstream American music scene.”

“I’m interested in creating music that sidesteps all that, where people can’t draw racial, gender or special-interest lines,” he said. “America is a melting pot of so many different cultures and ethnic backgrounds--so by our very nature there exists this incredible diversity. With Bakra Bata, I’m just attempting to express what I feel are some accurate perceptions of our social climate.”

Bob Slater, the new programming director for the San Juan Capistrano Multicultural Arts Series, said: “Bakra Bata is unique to what we usually present because they epitomize the synthesis of cultures that is ongoing throughout the world.”

Slater succeeds Sundarajan Mutialu, who resigned to form his own Multicultural Arts Society in May. “We have a responsibility to present art that speaks out not only to what is unique about other cultures, but also how differing cultures impact each other in positive ways,” Slater said. “This group celebrates the idea of a global community.”

So what should concert-goers expect from Bakra Bata’s performances on Saturday?

“I hope we entertain them and provide an uplifting experience,” Shantz said. “I would be delighted if the audience leaves feeling stronger, more positive and a bit more joyful about struggling through the life we all have to struggle through, if only for a brief while. I mean, if they’re able to be enlightened and have moments of profound revelation, that’s great too. But I’ll settle for making them happy for five minutes.”

* Bakra Bata performs tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real. 7 and 9 p.m. $3-$6. (949) 248-7469.