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For seven years already Chris Burki is ®chestra's percussionist. By chance he got to know that sounding the drums was fun just by beating on a couple of rolled up magazines:
"Infuriating my dad, as a twelve-year-old late-bloomer I drummed all his pocket dictionaries to pieces on music by Otis Redding. My favourite 'snare' was a turned upside-down biscuit tin with a few coins on top. Not until I was eightteen years old I bought my own drum set and played along with Barney Kessel's and Django Reinhardt's music.
I played in a number of music groups with, among others, Wout Pennings and Frank Boeijen. Early Seventies I came in contact with popular and traditional music from West Africa and I started to take lessons of a Guinean master drummer on djembe. I completely dedicated myself to African drumming, as I had to find out what drove my abdomen up the wall.
At that time I became a member of the street music group Kladderadatsch, with which I gained musical experience during a period of fifteen years.
Meanwhile I got to know Cuban percussion and took lessons of good old Martin Verdonck. En passant I was a member of the mariachi group Mexico Lindo for a couple of years.
In the course of time I started to give workshops at home and abroad. At present I'm also working as a teacher. It's a very pleasant job, after all, teaching is much like performing.
I've grown up with pop en soul from the Sixties, however, since then my musical preferences have reached out to all the world's swing and beauty.
My musical armamentarium consists of African and Latin percussion instruments: from djembe to doum-doum and from quinto to maraca. These last two are my favourites and with respect to the other instruments: don't maind, as long as it zoundz."
Recently, after a performance of ®chestra, the most beautiful compliment Chris heard was spoken by a wise woman from Sarajevo: "You must be happy people, because you succeed in making forget others their everyday distress".