Drum Circles
Drumming at community events is helping to bring things towards a better balance. The intellect is a great tool, but you don't connect with any community, human or natural, through the intellect, it happens through other aspects of a person's being, and percussion helps facilitate this connection.
Ideally a circle that creates, builds, or reinforces community will involve the whole range from singing to rhythmic chanting to wild drum jams.
I am really glad to see the preschool classes that are being offered. People's worldview gets set very early, and even if people spurn their childhood, their early experiences lay like seeds waiting for them to remember the best of their childhood. It is very important that we not only plant positive seeds, but plant seeds that can grow and help connect people with healing experiences. These seeds can be planted at any age, and we should continually plant them, its just easier to plant them in young children.
I haven't figured out yet how to clearly verbalize what happens when a person listens, drums, or dances to a drum circle. I do know it fills a missing part of our lives, and heals wounds caused by the mechanical culture surrounding us.
Here are some sources for the percussion aspect of the circle.
Join the email group [Seattle-drum-jams] and connect with the Puget Sound area drumming community. Get announcements about jams, classes, and other activities related to the drumming community.
The Seattle World Percussion Society helps sponsor the World Rhythm Festival, and runs a great web site. Their pages for classes and circles are focused on the Seattle and Puget Sound area, but their links page has many links of international interest.
This is site is the closest to a central listing (that I know of) of local resources for Seattle and Western Washington, and a central listing for world resources.
In John's words "Celebrating Percussion Traditions From Around The World." John's Music is focused on the hand drumming community, and has a wide selection of drums, percussion, CDs, books, and classes to support this community. The shop is near Green Lake a few minutes from I5 in Seattle.
by Arthur Hull
This is the amazing book Arthur Hull has written on facilitating percussion events and circles. Even if you never plan on facilitating or sponsoring a drum circle, reading this book will help make your drum circle experiences richer and more rewarding.
Be sure to get the version of the book that comes with a CD inside the back cover. Besides demonstrating many of the rhythms and techniques described in the book, it is great to listen to when its been too long since you were at a drum circle.
This is the link to the web supporting Arthur Hull's projects to evangelize drum circles and the resources to support them.
Check out his web site.
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Last Updated: October 22, 2001