Salin at Dakota Jazz Club, Minneapolis (June 30, 2025)

What a treat it was to head to the Dakota, especially on a sleepy Monday evening where most residents are Up North for a long holiday.

The Dakota is a favorite venue of ours, and where else can you see a Thai drummer, influenced by the rhythms of West Africa, playing her own version of funk and soul with a jazz sextet that had the audience’s attention by the first song.

Salin, aka Salin Cheewapansri, is the Thai drummer. Born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, she tried the piano before switching to drums, busking on the streets at an early age to heavy metal and grunge.

By her teens Salin was picking up gigs as a session drummer. She then went to the United States for college, studying journalism, but spending her free time playing drums. She moved to Montreal because of a boy and started to study anthropology and also explore African and Thai rhythms and the underlying roots they shared. From there, the start of a musical career.

Salin was joined on stage by Maxwell Miller on bass, Jordan Peters on guitar, Jordan Pistilli on keys, Josiane Rouette on trumpet and flugelhorn and Alexandre Dion on tenor sax and flute. The evening featured songs from Salin’s latest album Rammana, kicking off with “Current” a song that featured rousing solos from Rouette and Dion as Piistilli floated along with psychedelic waves as Peters kept the whole thing grounded with a West African lick.

Then a turn to a smooth jazz vibe with “Painted Lady” with Peters starting off with a haunting guitar intro with Rouette adding a somber tone on flugelhorn, which led to laid back solos with Miller on bass and Pistilli on keys.

One of the problems of fronting a band from behind a set of drums is the inherent nature of the supporting instrument. Unless your name is Art Blakey, who can take over a whole song (“A Night in Tunisia”) like an erupting volcano, most bands offer their drummer one or two quick solos in a night. And for most of the evening, Salin kept within the framework of her band, feeding her mates with a syncopated beat that had a defined hitch, yet propelled the music.

Salin then told the audience she was going to feature a song from her native country, which was the self-titled song to her latest album. She talked about the cross-pollination of musical cultures and how the underlying sounds of Afrobeat are so similar to Thailand’s Mor Lam. She told the audience that it was the ocean that was the conduit. “And in my theory it’s like we all have different colors and speak different languages. But we all can experience music the same way.” She added “Rammana” celebrates that connection between cultures and even invited the audience to sing along even if anyone in the audience hardly knew the language.

By the end Salin got the crowd up on its feet for a little dancing, then moved everyone to cheers with a drum solo that was ferocious, yet contained, still grooving.

Always save the best for the last.