Jonah David

Jonah David was born in South Orange, New Jersey on October 30, 1977. Both of his parents
had remarkable stories to pass down. His father began his career as an activist lawyer who worked with civil rights leader James Farmer in New Orleans; decades later, he won a landmark New Jersey Supreme Court case on behalf of thousands of shabbily treated tenement dwellers in the state.

David’s mother grew up in Harbin, a flourishing Jewish community in Japanese-occupied China where her Russian grandparents had traveled via the Trans-Siberian Railway to escape the pogroms. Her grandfather got rich operating a soap factory there, but lost everything after China retook its lost territories in the Sino-Japanese War and persecuted the Jews. Unable to get a visa to the United States, the family escaped to Israel, where they lived for a decade before finally making it to America.

Young Jonah was first drawn to jazz by a Preservation Hall Jazz Band album of his father’s.
“There was a drum solo on one of those tracks that I couldn’t stop playing,” he says. “I would
beat out that rhythm over and over on a chair.” His brother, who was 11 years older and into “way-out stuff” like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Grateful Dead, had a drum set but got rid of it, leaving Jonah only some drumsticks.

Gifted with a toy Casio keyboard by his parents, he wasn’t interested in any of it but the drum
effects. His mother tried to get him to study violin in grade school, but that lasted one lesson.
In middle school, he told the band director he was interested in playing drums, got handed a page from Syncopation and some sticks, and that was it. When he got to high school, the doors finally opened for him. “My friend Sean Jaffe had a drum set showed me how to play a paradiddle,” he recalls. “I was able to play it on the hi-hat and snare drum. He showed me where to put the bass drum, and the rest is history.”

“I remember coming home and telling my parents that I was going to play the drums,” he says. “I didn’t know what else I was going to do in life, only that I would always be involved with the drums.” Within eight months of getting a drum set, he says, David started playing gigs, including a weekly one at Hopewell Baptist Church in Newark with Black Jewish gospel singer and organist Joshua Nelson. “I was so grateful to grow up in New Jersey, which was such a melting pot,” he says. “I was friends with Jewish kids, African Americans, Asian Americans, European Italians, and Russians.”

In the early 80s, when hip-hop music and culture was all over the radio, he was
inspired by Rap Attack, hosted by Mr. Magic on WBLS. A turning point for David was studying for three summers at the Drummers Collective in Manhattan with such “phenomenal” instructors as Bobby Sanabria, Duduka Da Fonseca, Ian Froman, Kim Plainfield, Michael Lauren, and Mike Clark. His education continued at Rutgers University-Newark, studying with Yoron Israel. After some serious soul-searching (and inspirational words from his uncle, a doctor), he dropped biology as his major to only focus on music.

David subsequently enrolled at the New School, where another distinguished instructor, drummer, and bandleader, Ralph Peterson Jr., “gave me the hard love I needed. He told me that I needed to grow up and start being responsible for myself. Which meant stop going to the jazz scene for a while and get my stuff together.” David attended the New School for three semesters, taking time out in 2000 to tour the U.S. with ska and reggae artist King Django and Europe with the Brooklyn Funk Essentials (BFE).

In the early 2000s he became the house drummer for “Words,” an open-mic rap and spoken word series produced by Rocky LaMontagne at the Nuyorican Poets Café. There he met producer Ettienne Stadwijk. “Ettienne looked out for me and helped me develop my pop sensibilities,” says David. “He hired me for the BFE tour.” The regular gig at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe is where guitarist and New School crony Aaron Dugan, bassist Josh Werner, and Matisyahu first played together, and the rhythm section formed the rock-reggae trio Roots Tonic.

That group recorded four albums and one live DVD, three of them as Matisyahu’s backing band; Live at Stubbs (Or Music, a subsidiary of Sony-BMG) and the Grammy-nominated Youth were both certified gold. Roots Tonic also collaborated with Bill Laswell in 2006 (Roots Tonic Meets Bill Laswell on ROIR).

Afterwards, David’s career fortunes and personal life took a bad turn as he suffered through the end of his first marriage (captured on “Pretenderly” from his debut album "Waltz for Eli"). For a short time, he says, he was homeless.

In 2010, “just needing something that was stable,” he enlisted in the Navy. He was first stationed for three years in Great Lakes, Illinois, where in 2012 he acquired a
Bachelor of Music degree from the Mason Gross School of Music. He then spent three years in Washington State before going to Annapolis, Maryland, for a brief stint with the Naval
Academy’s rock-oriented Electric Brigade. After three years in Naples, Italy (2017-2019), he
served as the percussion instructor at the Naval School of Music in Virginia Beach. “There are
over 400,000 sailors in the U.S. Navy,” he notes, “and I was the only one hired to teach drum
lessons.”

He discovered a surprisingly strong jazz scene there in Virginia Beach. One of the local regulars was his old Rutgers classmate Joe Bussey. Joined by Joel Sanford, they played a weekly gig at Luce Secundo for a year. At various turns, they were joined by Jake Stith and/or Jason Arce, who had been hired for Prince’s band shortly before the pop star died.
Back in 2001, David and Stadwijk had recorded together in a band called Butta, playing break-dancing music inspired by the early hip-hop funk classics of the 70s. (The album was released by NYC underground hip-hop DJ Bobbito Garcia in 2003 on Fruitmeat Records). The two talked about doing a record for David as an artist for almost two decades.

For all his achievements and advanced knowledge of drumming (he has written two books,
Science of Time and Improvisations for Syncopation), David wasn’t confident about getting the musical ideas he heard in head on paper. “I have a limited understanding of the piano, which makes that difficult for me,” he says. “But Ettienne is such a genius. He saw there was something there, and he helped me take these ideas and craft them. We had a set of tunes and a vision of how it was all going to turn out.”

While in progress, the recording (Waltz for Eli) was delayed by the death of David’s mother in 2022. When he made it back to the studio, there were changes in the band, which led the drummer to take it slow. “I decided to start the rehearsals with just my friends. I wanted us to take our time and avoid some of the craziness of recording an album that I experienced the first time.”

As for his Navy career, advancing to the pay grade E-6 (musician first class, which he attained
when he was selected for the Naval Academy Band in 2016) was a pivotal development. “Once I got to E-6 and had a pension, I knew I could make a career of it and eventually retire,” he says. “I’m happy doing my 20 years.” And continuing his late-blooming career in jazz much longer. •

Gear

DW Drums

Sabian Cymbals

Vic Firth Drumsticks

Evans Heads

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Audix Mics

Humes and Berg Cases