Beating themselves up

WITH his legs moving like a sprinter in slow motion and his hands thumping various parts of his body, Keith Terry starts the groove with a series of sharp heel clicks, chest thumps, foot stomps and thigh slaps.

He’s joined by Steve Hogan, the master human beat-boxer who ornaments the rhythm with a stuttering figure, then locks in on Terry’s swinging syncopation. Soon four vocalists join the fray, launching into a wild version of Eddie Harris’ classic “Freedom Jazz Dance,” inspiring gasps of amazement from the North Beach audience at San Francisco’s leading jazz club.

And there’s not an instrument in sight.

The group is known as Slammin, an all-body band that brings together some of California’s most inventive singers, including Kenny Washington, Zoe Ellis, Destani Wolf and Bryan Dyer, with Hogan on beat-box and Terry, the group’s mastermind, on body percussion, rhythm dance and occasional vocals. The multigenerational ensemble combines the improvisational imperative of a jazz combo with an expansive repertoire of reggae, funk, bebop and soul.

“We all come from different places, but there’s so much overlap in terms of the sounds that we love,” says Dyer, who supplies the group with supple vocal bass lines. “Everyone’s really flexible. Everyone’s really loose.”

As can be heard on “Slammin,” the band’s release last year on Terry’s Crosspulse label, some of the group’s most exciting songs evolved from impromptu numbers, turning into finely honed arrangements of soul-drenched pieces such as Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed,” Toots and the Maytals’ “Pressure Drop” and the Miles Davis standard “All Blues.”

Until last year, Terry was a professor at UCLA, but the commute from his Oakland home became a drag. A founder of the innovative L.A.-based Jazz Tap Ensemble, Terry began developing his hybrid approach to body percussion and dance with the encouragement of legendary tap dancers like Honi Coles. In Slammin, he’s expanded his repertoire to encompass new-school grooves borrowed from hip-hop and techno tango.

The rhythm section’s cohesion -- with Dyer’s deep bass lines, Terry’s fluid bodywork and Hogan’s dazzling beat-boxing -- creates open but propulsive textures that leave space for the soloists. It’s no coincidence that Dyer is also a trumpeter and percussionist, while Hogan is best known for his work as a bassist in the Latin hip-hop ensemble Agua Libre (formerly O-Maya).

“Steve can beat-box in odd time signatures,” Terry says. “He’s got the Afro-Cuban thing down, and we share a love of classical Indian music, so we connect on a lot of different levels.”

The band originally featured vocalist Vicki Randle, but her commitment to “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” band made regular appearances with Slammin impossible. Her chair was taken over by Ellis, who injected funk and gospel fervor into the group. Wolf, who relocated from the Bay Area to Santa Monica in 2004, is also an accomplished improviser who moves easily between Afro-Caribbean projects with Omar Sosa and John Santos and performances with Agua Libre. She’s equally effective belting out R&B; as employing extended vocal techniques that can sound like a scratching turntable or a slide trombone.

In many ways Washington is Slammin’s wild card. Though revered by his jazz colleagues, he’s relatively unknown due to his lack of a recording under his own name. Once he’s on stage however, Washington is a powerhouse steeped in the scat tradition of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

Wolf and Washington were on hand when the seeds for Slammin were planted in the summer of 2002. As faculty at JazzCamp West in Oakland, they ended up on stage with Terry doing an improvised piece with several percussionists.

“We didn’t rehearse anything; we just got up and did something, and it sparked my imagination about an all-body band,” Terry says. “I just took this idea and reworked it, getting rid of the instruments.”

*

Slammin

Where: The Vic, 2640 Main St., Santa Monica

When: 8 and 10 tonight

Price: $20

Info: (888) 367-5299; thevicforjazz.com

* Also: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. (323) 857-6000.