Roy Wilfred Wooten (born October 13, 1957), also known as RoyEl, best known by his stage name Future Man (also written Futureman and known to fans as Futche
) is an American musician, inventor and composer.
He is best known as a member of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a majo ...
and
bluegrass quartet
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, along with
banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
ist
Béla Fleck,
harmonicist Howard Levy, and Roy's brother, electric bass
virtuoso Victor Wooten. His primary instrument is the SynthAxeDrumitar, a
guitar synthesizer
A guitar synthesizer is any one of a number of musical instrument systems that allow a guitarist to access synthesizer capabilities.
Overview
Today's guitar synths are direct descendants of 1970s devices from manufacturers (often in partners ...
he has customized to play drum and percussion sounds, but he also sometimes plays a standard
drum kit
A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...
and other conventional percussion.
Life and career
Born in
Hampton, Virginia, Roy Wooten was raised in a military family and therefore traveled frequently. He is the second of five sons born to Dorothy and Elijah "Pete" Wooten. He graduated from Denbigh High School in
Newport News, Virginia
Newport News () is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 186,247. Located in the Hampton Roads region, it is the 5th most populous city in Virginia and 140th most populous city in the U ...
in 1975. He briefly attended music classes at
Norfolk State University upon graduating from high school, and then embarked on his professional music career. He and his brothers moved to
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...
, Tennessee in the mid-1980s.
All of his brothers are musicians. The oldest, Regi, is a guitarist and teacher in Nashville. Roy Wooten, Regi, and his three younger brothers, Rudy (1959–2010) (saxophone),
Joseph
Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the m ...
(keyboards), and
Victor (bass guitar), performed as The Wooten Brothers in numerous musical venues in the
Hampton Roads
Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's ...
area of southeast Virginia during the 1970s.
Wooten is a six-time
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pre ...
-winning performer with
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. For the Flecktones, he plays the
Drumitar, a novel electronic instrument of his own invention, and occasionally performs vocals as well.
More recently, Wooten has developed a new electronic instrument called the RoyEl,
which resembles a piano but plays notes not found in the traditional western music scales. This instrument is based on the
periodic table of elements[ and the ]golden ratio
In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities a and b with a > b > 0,
where the Greek letter phi ( ...
.
In 2005, Wooten pleaded guilty to income tax evasion, after having been indicted on charges in 2001 that he had not filed or paid taxes between 1995 and 1998. He was affiliated with the Washitaw Nation, and before his guilty plea had been judged possibly incapable of assisting in his own defense after filing incomprehensible sovereign citizen paperwork with the court.
Solo work
Like the other members of the Flecktones, Wooten has worked on various solo projects during his time off from the band. On his own Wooten often dresses up as a pirate and uses the pseudonym "RoyEl", also the name he gave to the keyboard instrument he invented. Wooten's solo albums are experimental and incorporate diverse musical genres and concepts. On ''Evolution de la Musique'', for example, he infuses classical music with jazz elements, especially improvisation
Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...
, and spoken word.
Among extra-musical influences, Wooten describes Pythagorean numerology and Vedic mathematics as influencing his compositions.
See also
* Afrofuturism
References
External links
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Future Man
1957 births
Living people
American jazz percussionists
American jazz drummers
African-American drummers
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones members
Grammy Award winners
Norfolk State University alumni
20th-century American drummers
American male drummers
21st-century American drummers
Jazz musicians from Virginia
American male jazz musicians