The Meters — First Steps

If James Brown's band gave the world tight, sparse, on-the-grid funk, The Meters gave the world the opposite: loose, broken, swinging funk rooted in the New Orleans second-line tradition. The drummer was Joseph "Zigaboo" Modeliste, and the most distinctive feature of his playing — the thing that immediately marks a groove as "Zigaboo-style" — is what he does with the snare.

Most funk drummers play a backbeat on 2 and 4. Zigaboo often doesn't. He plays the snare on 4 only, fills the space between with ghost notes and rim hits, and lets the kick and hi-hat carry the rest. The result is a backbeat that feels delayed, a bar that breathes differently, a groove that swings without swinging in the jazz sense. It's also the rhythmic DNA of New Orleans drumming going back a century — second-line parade-drum patterns, Bo Diddley's variant of the same idea, and a thousand records out of New Orleans share this skeleton.

What Makes It "Second-Line"

Second-line refers to the parade tradition where a brass band leads (the first line) and a crowd of dancers follows, drums in tow. The drumming style is loose, syncopated, and emphasises the "and"-of-2 and the "and"-of-4 as much as the downbeats themselves. When that approach gets translated to a drum kit, you get this lesson — broken backbeats, kicks on unexpected 16ths, and ghost notes everywhere.

Exercises

1 — Basic Zigaboo-Style Groove

4/4 · ♩ = 88

Snare hits on 2 and 4 (a normal backbeat for now) but the kick is doing something Zigaboo-flavoured: 1, the & of 1, and the a of 2, then 3 — a syncopated front half of the bar. Hi-hat keeps a 16th carpet underneath. This is the "normal" version of a Meters-flavored groove; the next exercise removes the snare on 2 to reveal the broken-backbeat trick.

2 — Broken Backbeat (Snare on 4 Only, Ghosts Between)

4/4 · ♩ = 88

Now the only loud snare is on beat 4. Every other snare in the bar is a ghost note. This is the Zigaboo-flavored skeleton — the backbeat appears once per bar, late, and the rest of the bar is texture. Listeners' ears expect a snare on 2; not getting one creates the slight forward lean that defines this style. Keep the loud-vs-ghost ratio dramatic.

3 — "Cissy Strut"-Flavoured Feel

4/4 · ♩ = 92

An 8th-note feel reminiscent of the "Cissy Strut" vocabulary — kick on 1, the & of 2, and 3, and the snare on 2, the & of 3, and 4. The push between 2 and 3 (snare on the "and" of 3) is the New Orleans signature. Played with confidence and a slightly behind-the-click feel, this is recognisably that kind of funk. Keep the hat 8ths even — let the kick and snare do the syncopation.