His next pivotal position came in 1982, when trailblazing saxophonist Archie Shepp asked him to join his band. Smith toured the world with Shepp, and both the music and the money were good. "[Shepp] would hand us a roll every week and it'd be, like, $1,200," he remembers. "Man, back then that was crazy money." Despite the lucrative slot, however, after five years Smith and Shepp parted ways, and the drummer, who was for a time married to a European woman, moved back to the New York area. One night in 1987, while watching a friend play at a venue on Seventh Avenue, between sets Smith wandered across the street to Sweet Basil, where Sun Ra was performing. "I'd just seen Sun Ra play in Italy, and I was talking to [Sun Ra saxophonist] John Gilmore and he said, 'Man, you gotta do a tune with us!'" says Smith. "So I sat in for a tune and after the gig, in the dressing room, Ra comes over to me and says, 'Hey, Bugalu, I got something for you, man,' and he hands me a bill. Back then, when you sat in for one tune a bandleader would sometimes give you a $20 bill, just being nice, you know? So I just thanked him and stuck it in my pocket without looking at it. And he says, 'You didn't look at, did ya?' So I reach my hand back in my pocket and take it out—and it's a $100 bill! Ra just looks at me and smiles and says, 'I'll see you tomorrow, man.'" And so it was that Smith joined Sun Ra and his Arkestra, drumming with the legendary band until 1992, the year before its iconic leader left the planet.
Smith made his solo debut with 1992's Be Impartial to Yourself (Independent), a live set featuring pianist Kirk Lightsey and bassist Cecil McBee, and not long after landed in the Hudson Valley, where his dynamic playing and persona made an immediate splash as he began to move away from touring and concentrate more on leading and sitting in at jam sessions. "I can still go to Europe and make top money, but I don't go as much now," says Smith, who currently runs a Thursday-night session in the Bronx. "You get tired of living in and out of suitcases all the time."
"Before the Beatles came along, jazz was the biggest music," the musician says, shaking his head acrimoniously. "Now it's all rock and hip-hop. Charlie Watts, to me he ain't that great. But just because he's in the Rolling Stones they give him the Grammy and he gets a million dollars. And meanwhile, Elvin Jones don't get nothin'. Man, I just don't understand that." To punctuate his point, Smith hops behind his drum kit, which sits, pride of place, in the center of his apartment, a chaos of clutter swirling metaphorically around it. He plays a plodding, dead-simple, four-four rock beat and then stops. "How on Earth could something like that be better than something like this?" he says, before launching into a syncopated, dazzlingly intricate pattern colored with nuanced, caressing taps on his opening and closing hi-hat cymbals. He stops and shakes his head again. "You know what I mean? I just don't get it."
Smith's other main move of the last few years has been into teaching, which, besides covering bricks-and-mortar drumming techniques, sees him focusing on more abstract concepts like "the Timing of the Drum," a philosophy based on the idea that, according to his press bio, "rhythm in music follows the universal rhythms of life." One of Smith's current students is 22-year-old Josephine Cuevas, who commutes from Queens to study with him and has toured Europe with the musician/instructor as well. "Studying with Bugalu has been amazing," she says. "I first met him when he was running jam sessions in Poughkeepsie two years ago. My boyfriend at the time had been to a couple of them and was always telling me, 'You gotta go and see this guy!' So I went, and it was crazy but very inspirational. [Smith] asked me if I wanted to study with him and I said yes. It's been a real spiritual journey, learning about Buddhism and about being connected to the universe through the drums."