For two hours on a rainy Tuesday night in Durham, a group of 20 locals ceased to be businessmen, retirees and students--and became, instead, African drummers.
At local drum shop Music Explorium, master drummer and former Rusted Root member Jim Donovan led Triangle residents through a rhythmic workshop on West African djembe drums, one of many workshops he regularly conducts around the nation. The pattering of hands on goatskin filled the cramped room as a hodgepodge group of eager Westerners pounded out--with mixed success--ancient African rhythms.
But the night was about more than just cultural learning--it was also about personal and community development. At several points, Donovan challenged the drummers to clear all other thoughts from their heads, to focus only on the sound of the drums. At evening's end, he invited them to embellish and deviate from the traditional patterns to create something all their own. "Listen," he told them. "Figure out how to make the group better."
Donovan's sessions are part of a growing number of hand drumming workshops and drum circles that seek not only to educate but also to rejuvenate the mind, body and soul and to encourage cooperation and community.
"I really believe that drumming is one of the most immediate tools to reflect on yourself what it means to have presence," said Donovan, adding that "presence" is a focusing method used to achieve personal harmony.
Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this wave of rhythm-making have been schoolchildren. Lowe's Grove Middle School in Durham offers a world music drumming course as an elective for students.
"It's a phenomenal team-building class," said Debra Molnar, the course's teacher. "If you're able to drum with someone that you don't necessarily care for, you might get another side of that person."
At Duke, adjunct lecturer Bradley Simmons' courses on West African and Afro-Cuban drumming are popular alternatives to traditional classes.
"It's a great release during the week," said senior Clare Sackler, who plays in the Duke Djembe Ensemble. "I've kind of fallen in love with it."
The widespread popularity of hand drumming in the U.S. stretches back to the 1990s and Arthur Hull, who founded a company called Village Music Circles. According to its website, the organization "offers a variety of accredited programs that use rhythm to explore and inspire group empowerment, leadership and community building."
Village Music Circles trains drum circle facilitators and conducts workshops at schools, churches and even corporations such as Microsoft and Motorola.
In contrast to traditional African drumming, which often carries ceremonial or religious connotations, Hull's approach puts an emphasis on how drumming can benefit people and communities. The rhythms used aren't rooted in African tradition; instead, the playing is much freer and more improvisational.
This non-customary approach has drawn criticism from some purists who liken it to cultural plagiarism, Donovan said. "Some say you're doing a disservice to the [African] culture with drum circles," he said.
Others, however, applaud community drum circles as a way to bring people together and to learn the lessons collective drumming has to offer.
"Many people can have different functions but one objective-it's the most profound secret that we can borrow from African drumming," said Robert "Igbo" Johnson, a professional drummer who plays with Duke's African dance classes four days a week. "People from all over the world are united by the heartbeat of the drum."
Johnson, who began studying African hand drumming in 1967 as a way to explore his cultural heritage, said he's not surprised that corporations are interested in drum circles as a team-building technique.
"I think it only serves to make people a lot more buoyant and more sensitive, and it can certainly bring more fun to what could be a very tedious process," he said. "Americans need more fun."
Johnson sees drum circles in the context of a larger surge of interest in African music in the U.S., which has been fueled by the multiplicity of African recordings made available to Americans in recent years.
In the Triangle, regular drum circles are commonplace, often comprised of people for whom drumming is a completely new experience.
Cathy Kielar, who facilitates monthly drum circles at Music Explorium, said she views them as part of a human craving for engagement with others. "I think it's people wanting to get together in the community--they're tired of being isolated in front of the computer or the TV."
For Donovan, preserving cultural traditions while helping people connect with themselves and those around them is the ultimate gig.
"We are benefiting from a tradition that's hundreds and hundreds of years old, and it's giving us something that we're starving for," he said.
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