Between the drums in the Tozo mobile

Sure, she could become a drummer in Claudia de Breij’s band, if she promised to get her driver’s license and buy a car. Percussionist Michelle Samba was still living in Groningen at the time. Fortunately, the band also had a truck that could hold the drum kit, because it took her three years to get that driver’s license. For other assignments she traveled by public transport, day in and night out with all her drums on a trolley.

When she finally had her own car, she did one gig and then the first lockdown started. The dream band life came to a standstill, but the Renault Scenic became a second home, permanently filled with percussion.

She barely fits in herself Tozo mobile, named after the self-employed support from the corona crisis. She is a collector and chaotic, a difficult combination. A large part of her collection of instruments is in the trunk and on the back seat, under a blanket for camouflage. For example, she has a huge drum from a barrel organ that she has repaired so many times that at one point it was just tape. Then she bought an identical second one. So now there are two huge drums in the car.

Other instruments are in an anti-squat studio in Amsterdam North, where she has to lift the drums through a restaurant kitchen and then through a warehouse with a shopping cart. Part of it is also in her apartment in Kalverstraat, where she cannot come by car.

Many instruments are with friends. Samba sees lending as a solution to her forgetfulness. For example, she recently gave her drumsticks to the guitarist to make sure he took them to the gig. But yes, then she had another assignment in between where she arrived without sticks. “I told the technician there that I like to play drums with other materials, so if he had strange sticks. In the end I played with two iron bars with which he was making a stove.”

During the lockdown, the Tozo mobile fueled her entrepreneurship, she went on the road as a one-woman band. She still travels alone a lot. In the traffic jam she practices tambourine or other small percussion, to the hilarity of other road users. Sometimes she drives along a beach or a lake and can’t help but stop. Then she builds up some drums and plays for herself, for the environment, for the moment. In any case, she always plays for the moment.

Dawn

If she slides a little, her seat can recline flat. That is sometimes necessary. Last summer she played at Down The Rabbit Hole in the band of singer Anne-Fay. On the way back, her eyes closed. In one of those truck parking lots, she put her head between the drums and pulled the camouflage blanket over herself. At dawn she rode on.

People regularly drive along, sometimes even six fit in the Renault. Or not really, but still. Most of the time, however, Samba is alone with her drums. Bales do. She has a romantic view of band life. Her musical career started at the age of six with a band in a covered wagon. If she succeeds, she will one day buy a Volkswagen van that she will have painted by all the artists she knows. Her own band bus, a moving Utopia.