Beats Antique

Beats Antique is an American experimental world fusion and electronic music group, established in 2007. The trio consists of David Satori, Zoe Jakes, and Tommy “Sidecar” Cappel. David Satori, born in Burlington, Vermont in 1979, developed a diverse musical background, studying music performance and composition at the California Institute of the Arts. His journey included forming the experimental group The Funnies, releasing two albums, and touring sustainably in an eco-bus. In 2003, Satori moved to San Francisco to join Aphrodesia, an afro-beat group, with whom he toured the U.S. and West Africa, culminating in a performance at the New Shrine in Lagos with Femi Kuti. This experience led him to produce Aphrodesia’s 2007 album, *Lagos by Bus*. Satori’s global musical influences are central to Beats Antique’s sound.

Zoe Jakes, a lifelong dancer with ten years in jazz and ballet, began belly dancing in 2000. Her style merges traditional belly dance with elements of tango, popping, and Indian dance. Jakes toured with the Yard Dogs Road Show for five years, performed with the Extra Action Marching Band, and toured with The Indigo Belly Dance Company. She also joined Bellydance Superstars in 2005, a dance company produced by Miles Copeland. Her collaboration with Satori started with experimentation using Ableton Live. Tommy Cappel, born in Fairfax, Virginia in 1973, grew up immersed in music due to his music teacher parents. He began playing drums at age six and studied at Berklee College of Music, focusing on studio drumming, jazz, and world music. His studies included transcribing African and Arab drum patterns, which broadened his rhythmic understanding beyond jazz. After Berklee, Cappel worked in New York City across various genres before moving to San Francisco, where he produced hip-hop and electronic dance music and connected with Jakes through the Extra Action Marching Band.

Beats Antique officially formed in San Francisco in 2007, originating from Zoe Jakes’s proposal to her manager, Miles Copeland, to create an album. Copeland supported the project, leading to their debut album, *Tribal Derivations*, on his CIA record label. This album was designed to complement Jakes’s distinctive dance styles. Their second album, *Collide* (2008), achieved commercial recognition, charting in the top 10 for most downloaded artists in the Middle East and World Dance categories and top 20 for electronic albums on Amazon. Subsequent releases included *Contraption Vol. 1* (2009), featuring collaborations with Jamie Janover and LYNX, and *Blind Threshold* (2010), which included John Popper of Blues Traveler. *Elektraphone* followed in 2011, supported by an extensive 26-city tour. The group continued to release music, including *Contraption Vol. 2* (2012), *A Thousand Faces: Act I* (2013), and *A Thousand Faces: Act II* (2014), the latter two featuring artists like Alam Khan and Les Claypool. In 2014, Beats Antique embarked on the “Creature Carnival” tour with Shpongle and Emancipator, which led to their live album *Creature Carnival Live* (2015).