Of Drum Groups and All-Night Jams
A Guide to Hand
Drumming:
African Drumming, African Drum Groups, All-Night
Jamming and Trance Dance
"The
Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world
with drum, dance and chants. Afterall, we have already
corrupted the world with power and greed....which hasn't
gotten us anywhere - now's the time to corrupt the world
with drum, dance and chants."
--Babatunde
Olatunji
Starting
a Drum Group
A bunch
of us where I live have been playing African drums now for
six years. This is nothing by African standards; but you
do what you can. The first workshop happened here, sparking
our engagement ever since, and a number of excellent teachers
have passed through the area boosting our skills periodically:
notably Fatala and Alpha Yaya Diallo. Three of us have taken
Olatunji's week-long workshop at Hollyhock: for me providing
the biggest jump in skill and understanding.
Gradually
we've learned to work with multi-part rhythms. Each part
by itself is easy to learn, in these traditional African
and Latin pieces. But the timing between the parts creates
the dynamic tension which drives them, and the difficulty
in mastering as a group. Still, four or five of us through
regular weekly practices brought a half-dozen selections
up to performance level over the course of three or four
years. After a public performance at the local fall faire
in September 1994, and a studio taping session soon after,
we finally lost steam and fell apart, and have met only
sporadically since, with turnover of half the core group.
Why?
Part
of it has to do with individual energies and priorities,
but part of it has to do with the nature of what we were
attempting. A month of intensive twice-a-week practices
before that fall faire, and the attendant pressure to perform
well at the time, caused some of us enormous anxiety that
carried over afterward. I flubbed a couple of notes in my
own part once or twice, and felt terrible about it-even
though people in the crowd (you could hardly even call them
an audience, wandering around the fair grounds doing their
own thing) never noticed. Our subsequent studio session
came off perfectly. A local guitarist, probably the best
musician around, had the best advice to offer: mere proficiency
at the rhythms is not enough to engage an audience. We played,
at best, like machines. That kind of music would work okay
for trance or ritual but for a contemporary crowd, whether
listening or dancing, you need the added dynamism of a soloist,
which we lacked with our inexperience.
The
Friday Night Jam
During
the last six years a number of the local neophyte drummers
have attempted to breathe life into and out of that longer-lived
institution, the Friday Night Jam. Haven of Elvis officionados
and Credence Clearwater hacks, Willie Nelson impersonators
and would-be-Dead-heads, the Friday Night Jam has lived
by one rule: anything goes. Unfortunately for my taste,
the "any" part of it sometimes gets lost in the
Standards shuffle. Which is to say, group improvisation
is hard to do well. When it works, however, it's dynamite,
true inspiration, golden. It can even redeem the most tired
of oldies, given an injection of altered lyrics, rhythms,
and original solos.
The chronic
problem at the Friday Night Jam has been to amalgamate the
Afro-Latin drums and percussion with the western guitars,
accordion, piano, harmonica, and their associated forms:
primarily straight-ahead four-four. The drummers generally
want to lean the beat over to the offbeat, the syncopated,
the reggae. Reggae has been a convenient meeting ground
because the compromise is simply found in the regular upbeat.
But more than that is the issue of a controlled, recognizable
"song" versus an extended, authentic and moveable
jam.
Drum
energy works best in waves, without restrictions of straightjacket
lyrics, measures, predetermined chord changes. You can put
it all together in a great package, if you're Santana or
Olatunji. For us amateurs, that challenge takes work and
practice as a group, and these are not appropriate to the
looser anarchy of the jam. Even the oft-attempted "Let's
take turns and go around the circle for starting something"
is hard to maintain consistently in that venue. So success
is left to chance, to who shows up and the mood they're
in, to the phase of the moon or the health of the crop or
the status of one's lovelife, to how many drums can support
each other for the occasional detour down Africa lane. It's
all about listening, and sharing leadership, and these are
qualities that don't come to us easily or automatically.
The biggest
obstacle in this culture comes from the worship of the guitar
god. The lead guitar calls the shots: sets the melody and
mood, determines the volume (easily overpowering drums with
a twist of the amp button, or toning them down if there's
no amp until the life goes out of them). It's true that
rhythm is fundamental and so a single percussionist can
take any song and shift its character, ruin it or drive
it to new life. But in terms of group dynamics, the guitarist
is generally preeminent, by default. Everyone looks to them
for the next song, waits for them to retune, and depends
on the structures that they have memorized and are offering
as a well-furnished boat for everyone to ride in. What the
drummer offers is support: this is what is expected. For
a drummer to share or take the lead is not expected or easily
allowed. Conversely, it's hard for other musicians used
to taking lead melodic parts to learn to settle for supportive,
truly rhythmic roles.
So lately
the jam is in decline. Lately there haven't been many drummers
showing up, because when we do, we're held back by the inertia
of low energy, low volume, and low creativity. We, like
the other musicians, are aging, or have a lot of distractions
on our minds, or are afraid to boldly take the loose reins,
or have simply given up trying-for now. But as always, it's
different every week. Who knows what stranger or visitor
will show up this time, or what random collection of hideaways
will decide to come out and celebrate this full moon? When
it fails it's deadly dull, and a Friday night wasted. But
when it clicks, and moves into magic, there's nothing like
it in the world.
All-Night
Drumming and Trance Dancing
We
had our fifth annual All-Night Drum this year. Different
every year: and always a special event, a highlight. February:
when everyone needs a boost of some kind, a rift in the
cold gray routine, and this does it like nothing else. Here
the drums have reign for a full 24 hours. One rule: keep
the beat going. Whoever shows up, by word of mouth or friendly
notice, shows up. It's a jam all the way….
Notes from
the first annual 24-hour drum:
We arrived
at the hall, called in the four directions, chanted, beat
the steady 210 of the shaman's drum, Michael and Walkin
and Jane and Rowena and I, and a guy from New Denver: gettin
in the mood. Then began a good rolling rock in the forming
circle, with a jazz beat offset by Ken. Julie, Lars, Doug
all showed up and joined.
From
there, a pastiche, a roller-coaster, a trading of percussion
toys, a sharing of drums, ongoing beat. Peter, Michael M.
show up, go like crazy. Later, Julie and Jane with Peter,
Doug and New Denver, cohesive and driving.
Sometimes
it didn't always "work." During the most high-energy
jamming, as between Michael and me, or me on the good djembe
and Nigel on the yew, I'd be self-centered, loud and improvisational.
Julie and Nigel later would say they'd look for the quietest
drum, to play to that; or that the loud "stuff"
was overbearing, impenetrable, lost on a jag. Lars remarked
that traditionally African drummers didn't play free of
the forms until age 30, after fifteen years of practice.
"Yeah," I replied, "but we've been listening
to jazz for twenty years."
Miles
Davis said, "There are no mistakes."
Walkin
said, "It's all good."
Into
the night, the evening and night.
Michael
lays down, Julie and I take it up. Me on the big bass, her
on the djembe, steady, slow, and powerful. Michael says,
"that was the best music I've heard in Argenta."
I say, "that's what I thought hearing you guys play
when I lay down to sleep."
Of course
I didn't sleep.
When
we lay out in the circle on the mats and benches, we took
rattles and shakers in our hands, to keep the beat. At one
point only I was up, with the sticks. Then New Denver relieved
me, and he took up the slow bass djembe.
Toward
morning we made strong black coffee and got into some grooved
jamming. Alternating with slow breathers. At one sparse
point Doug said "It feels like some Buddhist colony."
Okay,
I thought, and set up a sustained 210 on the yew drum, chanting
Om with New Denver beside me, Doug cross-legged on the mat
opposite. Jane nearby; Julie wandering, Lars and Michael
gone, Ken asleep or out. It took off--the rolling drumstick
beats, the billowing group voice.
Nigel
walked in, dumbstruck. Later he said, "It felt like
a church, a sacred space. You guys were egoless, totally
spaced out. You'd gotten rid of everything, burned it all
away." He took over the driving force on the yew drum,
eyes closed and grooving from then on, the last four hours.
"I figured you'd need the energy boost by then."
When
it's over, we drift outside in the sun on bright morning
snow. And the ravens pick it up and carry it on: quork,
a quork-quork…qu-qu-qu-qu-quork…
Trance
Dance:
It began
as a one-time event, intended to create "community
ritual."
But we
immediately scheduled another one three months later; and
after that one, realized we really needed to do this every
three months, at each midpoint between solstice and equinox.
There
is a minimum of preparation and instruction beforehand:
learning the steps, from a West African dance; and the rhythms,
locally generated by drummers experienced with West African
patterns. The key for both dancers and drummers is consistency:
to go all night with the same steps, the same rhythms. In
this repetition and commitment comes the opportunity for
trance. Forgetting oneself in the power of the whole.
Even
with solos, which are permitted a single dancer and drummer
at a time when the dancer feels moved by a pitch of excitement
to break free and go into the circle, the impulse and flight
is guided not by ego but by sheer union with the high energy
created: the gathering vortex released.
We go
eight hours, breaking bread together at dawn, or sharing
fruit. There has been an amazing display of endurance by
all involved, with everyone going at it steadily, hardly
any breaks, a little snack or drink of water, a brief loosening
up and then back in. Afterwards there is sharing of how
it was, what happened, how it might be better next time.
In February
we had thirty-five dancers, eleven drummers, and three digeridoo
players miked to match the volume of the drummers' sound--calling
back and forth from opposite ends of the hall, with the
dancers circling in between. The low frequencies and voiced
tones of the diges gave us all an added dimension of transport
to other realms.
But ultimately
the experience is not one of escape or exotic adventure.
There are no drugs involved. It's more a grounding, a bonding,
a building of community energy. Personal transcendence comes
in the form of union with group spirit and with the spirit
of rhythm itself. Stretching personal boundaries to the
limits of the sacred space. Leaving the banks to ride the
river.
