The Drum Circle
One year ago today, somebody told me the most obvious thing in the whole world: that I should go to a drum circle.
Why hadn’t I thought of this? I love to play music. I love to play drums. I love to spontaneously create unknown music with others. It's not like I'd never heard of a drum circle, but I'm not sure that I had ever encountered one in its moment - and I had certainly never brought a drum.
I was given the tip - Sunday afternoons in Madison, at Olbrich Park, by the sledding hill, and the lake. It is run by, or cared for, or balanced upon, a man named Elmore. I was in a mood to recklessly take such good advice, and that very next Sunday, I packed up my drum and drove the beautiful hour to the drum circle.
Allow me to introduce my drum. It is a conga. It is long and smoothly convex, with textured wooden staves and aged metal hardware. The head is skin, eleven inches, emblazoned with a delightful suggestion: Toca.
I was gifted this drum, as I have been gifted almost every instrument in my life, by a friend. This was my first ever hand drum, a gift from Ashley, who saw it at the Octagon Barn Sale one year and thought of me, her drumming friend. It came with a stand, three slender metal legs that raised the drum head to my standing stomach - and that is how I learned to play.
There are several sounds one can make with a conga: a ringing tone, a pinging slap, various muted pitters and patters. But my favorite sound of all is the resonant bass, made with a cupped and open palm striking the dead center of the drum. It suffuses the air at length, enlists the very ground in wobbling syncopation.
I retrieved this drum, with stand, from my car, and joined the circle, implying its furthest extent on the far side, in the sun. Everyone else was seated, I self-consciously observed, and there was not another conga in attendance. Most had djembes - an African drum, with a concave body, and broad head, capable of several tones and an exultative ping on the rim. Others had various frame drums, tambourines and ratchets, all manner of percussive sound. The drumming commenced, begun by the man I now knew to be Elmore. I let it circle a while before joining in with a resonant, low thud, on the One.
That’s really all you ever need to do when playing music. No matter the instrument, no matter the tempo, no matter the song, all you need to do is meet us on the One. And this low and resonant note, melodic in its way, well - it really ties the room together. I listened to my fellow drummers, found another beat, another point of resonance and emphasis, and made a rhythm.
When playing in the drum circle, I brought with me the four step process for group music making in the barn: Listen, Notice, Co-respond, Repeat. Whatever I play, I repeat, incessantly, reliably. I hope that others better know their way by my fixed presence - I hope that's not too much to say. It is, in fact, the role of the rhythm section in a band, to be the anchor, be the foundation, and I found that it is also the role of the bass note in a drum circle.
I mentioned I was standing, and when I stand and play, I can't help but move. My hands, of course - I'm drumming after all - but also, then, my arms, my shoulders, and my head, through hip and leg to tip of toe, bouncing to the rhythm. I feel like a metronome. I find that it helps, when playing so very little. When playing just the One, and maybe one beat more, it helps to be engaged in all the quickness that is implied by the rhythm. The roar of the djembes, led with astonishing talent by Elmore, supply all those beats, the fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a half, metered time in all its richness. And I must only meet them at that designated time, upon the One, and maybe more. I make vibration in my body with every partial beat, that I may meet the One exactly where it falls, and not a fraction of a fraction of a moment late or soon.
A drum circle, it turns out, has dancers - and they perform an important role. We are making a rhythm, and rhythms are meant to move us. We need to see the evidence, that we are making a rhythm capable of movement, capable of moving others to dance. I found that, standing at the drum, I fulfilled this role as well. I did not even feel my self-consciousness rise up into my belly. I let myself be, with a smile.
And oh, are there moments to smile about! The twists and turns that rhythm takes, as a period of questioning development bursts triumphantly into groove. I exult, I wear it upon my face. And I see that others see me, and break into smile as well. It felt good to play this role, to be with these people, here and now. What a wonderful group of people this is, open and beaming - and most of all, Elmore, quiet and kind, skilled and intuitive, leading us in sung song and in each new rhythm.
After two hours of playing under the sun, I was elated, I was exhausted, I was hooked.
I have returned frequently, every week or three, as I can spare the drive to Madison. I continued in the winter, when the drum circle moved, cacophonously, into a church basement. And in the year that's followed, I have sampled a number of other drum circles in my travels.
In winter, I went home to California. I'd gotten myself a conga there, too, and found for it a stand, and went to the Venice Beach drum circle, supposedly the longest-running drum circle in the country. The differences were remarkable. There is no leader there, no Elmore to call the tune. Any may propose one, and at times, several competing rhythms are proposed at once, overbearing each other into nonexistence, until one proves victorious.
On Venice Beach, the drum circle goes into the night, with fits of ululations rising from the crowd as the sun sinks inexorably into the Pacific. Someone lights a fire - illegally, of course - made of nothing but cardboard boxes and dried sage, flickering shafts of flaming chemistry in all the colors of the rainbow. There is some strange sense of threat there, after dark, a sense that there are drugs, hard men, crazed wanderers, troubled characters in the midst of their own complicated novels. I met these people, beamed at them, guileless, and played on.
Just last week, I found myself in New Orleans, chasing down a hurricane, standing on the shore of Fairhope, Alabama, to face the 80 mile per hour winds, to be stung by the sand and threatened by the trees. There is, of course, a drum circle in New Orleans, at Congo Square, in Louis Armstrong Park, with spectacularly skilled drumming by local folks. It's a drummer's city, New Orleans, as a drummer told me later that night during a set break on Frenchman Street.
I came in cautiously, not knowing what history I was walking into, and having with me a drum I'd never played, a small djembe slung over my shoulder, poorly tuned and of uncertain quality. And so I played along, unobtrusively, on the edge. I scooted to the side when some guest of honor had arrived, an old and frail man who, in his youth, had led this circle. He was guided by his family, applauded by those assembled. He had with him a drum, which he could scarcely play, such friction in his bones. He could not scream the notes, as once he could, he could scarcely land the One.
How many times must he have hit the One in his life? And yet now, it eluded him. I wondered, is this my fate? Is this the fate of all, in time? To be able to hear the music, to feel the rhythm, to know what is and what could be, but with a body, with an instrument, that cannot comply? I hope that when I find myself, aged as he is, that I will still go, to sit and listen and feel, to let the rhythm vibrate me, though I be made of stone.
At one point, in a break in the action, I stepped away, as I am wont to do, to wander and to stretch, to be with myself a while. I found myself standing before a sculpture, a panel in relief, depicting humans, chanting, dancing, and, yes, striking a drum. The plaque made known what I suspected: that in this spot, half a thousand years ago, enslaved humans had some Sunday rest, and came here, to drum and sing and dance - and thus the name, Congo Square.
I returned to the circle, with the descendants of those drummers, singers, dancers of half a thousand years ago. I stepped into the center, with the dancers and my drum. The music grew and greatened. I played a simple rhythm, and all at once it opened, in the sky above us, a connection to what is pure and good, bathing us in joy. A joy that platonically exists, is available to us all, even in the midst of any suffering - to say nothing of the meager quantity that I have, or, God willing, ever will, experience.
The dance intensified. The drummers threw back their heads in ecstatic glee. Up went a shout, and on I played.
I spoke to many people as the drum circle ended, and received from one a compliment, whose simplicity I shall not forget: “I stood that.” Speaking of me, and my drum, and the simple way in which we interrelate. “I understood what you were doing. I understood what we were doing. I listened to you. I noticed you. I co-responded to you. And, in the repetition, something happened.”
With this year of drums behind me, underneath me, at my side, I wish to host a drum circle. It is a token of my gratitude, for this phenomenon in which we all can participate, and which I have found, at long last, in my life. And, what the heck - we’ll do it in the corn maze. This Saturday, as the sun sets and the moon rises, let's have ourselves a strange and wonderful time in a strange and wonderful place.
Repeatedly,
Twin Crix
