Percussionist and composer Billy Cobham was born in 1944 in Panama, has Nigerian roots, grew up in New York and learnt his trade with jazz legends Thelonious Monk and Stan Getz. He later worked with musicians including Miles Davis and John McLaughlin. Today he is an international star musician. The film accompanies him on a musical expedition leading from western jazz music through Brazilian rhythms and their African origins to a music project with autistic people. Mika Kaurismäki: “I wanted to show the meaning that rhythm and music mean have for people. To achieve it, I shot some sequences in Switzerland, where Cobham lives and where he works with autistic people in a psychiatric institution. I shot another sequence in Salvador, where Cobham jams with an African rhythm group. That’s a very impoverished area. That was about showing the role of music in such social surroundings. Then again Cobham plays with a big-band in Finland. This is not a film about Billy Cobham, though; it is rather a scientific expedition accompanying Billy Cobham.