Beats Antique

Formed initially to craft soundtracks for Miles Copeland’s Bellydance Superstars productions, Beats Antique unites David Satori on guitar, saz, viola, and percussion, Sidecar Tommy Cappel on keys, toy piano, drums, and percussion, and Zoë Jakes as belly dancer, composer, and arranger. Their sound fuses Middle Eastern grooves, Balkan wedding music, flamenco, French Gypsy jazz, hip-hop, dub reggae, and additional Eastern tonalities, all anchored by electronica that resonates with club audiences while also attracting world-music enthusiasts. Each member arrived with an established record of inventive projects.

David Satori entered the world in Burlington, Vermont, on June 6, 1979. Exposure to his brother Michael’s guitar playing prompted him to begin lessons at age twelve. By seventeen, while still at Burlington High School, he was performing in the experimental garage outfit Bubble Tribe; Michael played bass, Satori handled drums, and a neighborhood player explored unconventional textures on electric banjo. Later he turned to his grandfather’s violin, absorbing Gypsy fiddle traditions alongside Indian and Middle Eastern approaches, and recognized parallels between North African music and that of Mali, deepening his interest in global styles.

After graduation Satori enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts near Los Angeles, completing a B.A. in music performance and composition. There he encountered further world-music traditions and, during his final years, launched the experimental instrumental quartet the Funnies. The group toured in an eco-bus powered by recycled vegetable oil and issued two albums, The Funnies and Masters of the Universe. In 2003 Satori relocated to San Francisco and joined the ten-piece Afro-beat ensemble Aphrodesia, touring the United States and participating in their journey to Nigeria aboard another eco-bus. The trip ended with a performance at the New Shrine in Lagos, constructed by Femi Kuti, son of Afro-beat originator Fela Kuti. Kuti sat in with the band, an experience that shaped its 2007 album Lagos by Bus, which Satori produced.

In 2007, while in Los Angeles and dating belly dancer Zoë Jakes, Satori met Miles Copeland, Jakes’s employer at the Bellydance Superstars show. Satori had already produced music for an instructional belly-dance DVD featuring Rachel Brice; Copeland, impressed, inquired about an album of contemporary belly-dance material. Satori proposed blending electronic experimentation with traditional belly-dance melodies, received approval, and the trio entered a studio to record its debut, Tribal Derivations. Jakes, acquainted with Sidecar Tommy through the Yard Dogs Road Show traveling hippie circus, recruited him into the project.

Tommy Cappel was born in Fairfax, Virginia, in 1973. Both parents taught music, so he grew up immersed in sound; his brother played drums along with heavy-metal records, and Cappel eventually inherited the kit. By age six he was performing in a rock band with friends, and in high school he added piano, percussion, marimba, and timpani. He supplemented his brother’s prog-rock collection with their father’s jazz recordings, broadening his palette. Discovery of the Meters’ New Orleans funk convinced him he would remain a musician for life.

During the 1990s Cappel studied studio drumming at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, exploring New Orleans jazz, bebop, modern jazz, and world music. One instructor transcribed African and Arab drumming patterns for drum kit; Cappel assisted and absorbed non-jazz rhythmic concepts. He began investigating hip-hop, Balkan music, Arab music, and Latin rhythms. After graduation he moved to New York and performed with rock, jazz, reggae, and jam bands, attending free sessions at the downtown café the Bell alongside figures such as Karsh Kale and associates of Bill Laswell. These encounters sparked experiments merging live playing with hip-hop and dub-reggae effects. When several musicians he knew relocated to San Francisco, Cappel followed, producing hip-hop artists and electronic dance music there. He joined the Yard Dogs Road Show, formed a rapport with Jakes, and accepted her invitation to Beats Antique.

Tribal Derivations was shaped around Jakes’s distinctive dance approach, which merges traditional and tribal belly dance with tango, break dance, and Indian dance elements. On the follow-up Collide the trio pursued broader directions. Drawing from San Francisco’s multicultural music community, the band sought inspiration across North Africa and the Middle East. Members of the Balkan punk group Brass Menazeri supplied exuberant horn lines that complemented French Gypsy jazz violin, flamenco handclapping, Romanian wedding music, hip-hop, jazz, dub reggae, and additional strands. Recording for the next album began in early 2009, and with a name like Beats Antique the only constraints are imaginative ones; the band has indicated that ragtime, Hawaiian, blues, and further historical genres may appear on future releases.