DRUMMING AND THE NEW TRIBES by Pashyo Sarkin

I like to travel and am a passionate djembe player. Drums are not so easy to travel with, though. A good djembe is rather heavy, has a delicate skin. If you like to travel and drum, your best option is to buy a drum wherever you go and make connections with the local drumming scene around the drum shop. Right from the start you get connected.

Drumming moves your energy into ecstasy, brings you back into the groove of life and gets you out of the confinements of your mind into the vastness of the hear and now. It may also bring interesting people into your life.

Through drumming I met my husband Sel, through drumming I made new friends when I moved to Los Angeles, through drumming people can see more of the real me and feel my energy. It was drumming that broke the ice between my husband’s teenage son and me, his step-mom. It was drumming that made me a welcome guest at native Indian music gatherings and helped me survive the coldness of the winters in Montreal.

What a surprise to notice that people play the same African rhythms in different parts of the world. In Montreal people meet Sunday afternoons at Mount-Royal Park in the middle of the city to drum and dance. It is very well organized, has great musicians and is a pleasure to listen to. Here in Los Angeles – since it’s a spread out city - drummers meet at Venice Beach, at Griffith Park and at Leimert Park. In Berlin they drum in the Hasen Heide and at the Tiergarten. I am pretty sure that in every major city of the world people gather in the summer for outdoor drum circles.

Traditionally dances, songs and music define the culture of a geographical area, of an ethnic group, of a nation. Music and dances are expressions of a people’s uniqueness. Their rhythms are particular to their culture. African rhythms sound and feel different from Cuban or Arabian rhythms. They function in different ways. The rhythms from Ghana have a distinctively different flavor from the rhythms of Guinea or Senegal, although they are all part of West Africa. In Ghana itself the rhythms of the Fanti tribe sound different from the rhythms of the Gha tribe. I have heard that a master drummer in Guinea from one village cannot easily play with the people of a different village. He just doesn’t know the rules of their drumming tradition.

On the other hand an international world tribe of drum enthusiasts has developed. People form all walks of life join in drum circles: From the beaches of Goa to mansions under the Hollywood sign, from the dessert gatherings of the Burning Man Festival, to City Parks all over the world. Wherever the environment tolerates that kind of noise drum circles make, they mushroom into existence. May be drum teachers are sought out to teach the basic skills, some interesting rhythms to start from or how to become the best solo player in town, but the rest is up to everyone’s creativity.

Drumming has become a party language, a language of ecstasy and of self-expression, a language that connects those who want to go beyond the confinements of their societies and escape the passivity of just being a consumer of entertainment products. We are rediscovering the shamanistic qualities intrinsic in drumming. We experience that the drum carries you easily to spaces beyond the mind, to some deeper levels of your being. No drugs needed! And these spaces can be shared with others. What a gift!