BS: drums and drum circles

Subject: drums and drum circles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 03:18 PM

I will admit this is partially posted to see some controversy, but in a friendly way....

I like drum circles, when they are the primary activity. But I have too often seen them be disruptive of other activities, sometimes literally for hundreds of yards around.

What are other peoples feelings?

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Bert
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 03:32 PM

We'll I've got an OBLONG drum and I like that too. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 03:37 PM

but bert, can you remember where you left it?

FYI - the reason I asked this question is that drumming seems to be becoming more and more popular, but it requires FAR more distance between venues then most acoustic instruments. (Well, bagpipes excepted, but last weekend the drum circle made even a pair of pipers hard to hear).

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Bert
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 03:41 PM

Yep;-) it's in the music room. I used to keep it in the living room and EVERYONE who saw it had to play it.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Froodo
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 04:37 PM

Well, I live in Berkeley, so maybe I'm biased. Seriously though, it's very relaxing to be walking down the street and here the music from the drums, which could be hundreds of yards away. It's sort of like the music is just coming from the Earth. Very organic. I dig 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 05:32 PM

Me, too. I love Powwow season...could sit there and listen all day and night and not get tired of it. Love to drum, too.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 05:41 PM

But would you want a drum circle next to you if you were trying to fiddle or play tinwhistle?

Or would you want to go to a festival and have a drum circle going on for four hours while you were trying to sing shanties?

don't get me wrong, as I said at the beginning, I LIKE drums. I will admit, I prefer singing, or just about any other instrument, but it's not that I don't like drums.

I will also admit that with one or two exceptions, every drum circle/jam/whatever I have heard has been being performed in conflict with other performances. Drums win every time. Somehow this doesn't seem right.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: SDShad
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 05:47 PM

kat's right about pow wows. The music is amazing. There's one here in my hometown this weekend, actually. Along with a night of Puccini at the University, a Haydn mass at our church Sunday morning.

Oh yes, it's quite jetsetting in South Dakota these days,

Chris

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: GUEST,Sophocleese, I will get my cookie back....
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 06:04 PM

MMario, I understand what you mean.

A couple of years ago I was at the Hillside Festival in Guelph. Lots of people were wandering oround with small djembes but nobody was carrying a tin whistle. Drums and drum circles can be great and wonderful. Saturday and Sunday at the festival began with a drum circle in front of the main stage and they were fantastic. On the Saturday night I snuck into the volunteer's camp ( please don't tell anyone!) to listen to the apparently legendary campfire jams that can go on there. Every single music jam had to compete with the sounds of two different drum circles. One man went and asked a third circle that was forming to stop because they started up in the middle of somebody else's song and drowned it out from several tents away. So for me drum circles are like sessions with fiddlers, great in small doses but you need a two by four to get their attention and point out that other types of music also exist. I think its the Borg/Dalek gene showing up."Resistance is futile, we will assimilate!"

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 06:09 PM

well, the ones I've been to were always separate, so I guess I was lucky. Also, at the powwow, they work to achive a balance between the singing voices of the drummers and the drumming.

At a women's musical retreat I went to years ago, the drumming circle went on all night but was distant from the "quiet' camp; people had a choice of being in it or not. Seems to me some people just need more manners or a lesson in being considerate and sharing the time and space. Funny, I have never seen this problem at a powwow.

SDShad! WOW, Puccini and a Powwow AND Haydn! Wonderful!

kat

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: SDShad
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 06:14 PM

Ayup, and for the Haydn, I'm an actual participant! S***-kickin' bass singer and 49-song lover, thass me!

C.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Vixen
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 06:25 PM

Well!

This one caught me when I have about two minutes, so here's my two cents worth!

At Falcon Ridge Folk Festival last year the drum circles were so disruptive performers on the main stage requested that somebody tell the drummers to get quiet during performances. The drummers that time were gathered at a drum vendor's booth a good distance away. The same thing happened later on the workshop stage. And at night, even in the quiet areas, the drumming was disruptively loud. Two problems with this--acoustic instruments like guitars and whistles, outdoors, cannot compete with drumming. Also, drummers seem to be over-imbibers, which seems to affect their senses of rhythm, so their output gets progressively arrhythmic, dyfunctional and annoying. They also don't go to bed until around sunrise. I say, give 'em their own festivals about 6 miles away from everything else. One or two small hand drums or bodhrans in a song circle are one thing. 10 groups of 20 drunken fools banging on loud instruments are worse than a nuisance. They are close to justifying homicide.

My $0.02! So flame me! This is one I have no moderation for!

V (grinning savagely as she rustles off to class!)

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 09:18 PM

My problem is that I'm on the fence. I would love to sit and listen to the drums jamming. I DO love 'em. But I would also like to be able to hear the other performers, or in at least one instance, would have liked the audience to hear *me*. the powwows sound fantastic.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 09:38 PM

Mmario, there used to be some fairly good ones on the CT River when we loved out there. You might check for a listing on the web. if I come across any I will let you know. I do have an out of date book an old woman put out every year listing all the ones across the US.

Also, the Sundances out here are incredible to go to. We are usually close to the only *whitehides* who attend. The powwows are neat because they always have an open friendship or blanket dance when anyone can join in. Lots of fun and very uplifting spiritually, at least for me.

Anybody that beats upon a drum so much as to be that obnoxious is not in *tune* with the instrument, if you ask me, based on my experiences. They can be used in a frenzied and harsh manner to relieve anger/stress/rage etc. BUT that shoudl be done in a respectful setting, with regard for the space and others around it. I would consider it a travesty and disrespectful to just beta as hard as one could on a drum, esp. just to be loud and obnoxious. The Native Americnas I've known treat their drums as sacred objects, the voice of the Mother, give it a name and always a very careful of its care and use.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: MMario
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 09:47 PM

kat - I am aware of that, and, as I said before, have on occasion been absolutely enthralled when I have had the pleasure of listening in. But a crowded fairgrounds with other acoustic events happening nearby is NOT the time or place. The "offical" drum circle last weekend wasn't the problem. It was the people who just jammed without courtesy. But the management seemed to be reluctant to cut them off, possibly due to connotations. They DID eject the unauthorized piper.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Chris Seymour
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 10:12 PM

As someone who has listened to numerous simultaneous groups of drunk and/or stoned drummers within a few yards of each other at the Philadlphia Folk Festival, I can only say I wish I'd been to a powwow so my perspective on drummers, drumming and drums was not so jaundiced.

Of course, I play the banjo, which is nothing but a drum with strings stretched over it, and I play frail it, which is basially hitting the thing. And there are plenty of people who hate my instrument.

Nevertheless, I'd sooner a bagpipe chorus than a drum circle most days of the week!

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: rangeroger
Date: 30 Mar 00 - 10:37 PM

The drumming at Music Festivals can become extremely obnoxious.It is a shame that a legitimate form of musical expression can be so intrusive to other forms of music.
At Stawberry,one year,it became so bad that the drummers were using the porta-potties as their medium.Several main stage performers complained and it was stopped.Peacefully I might add.
There are many excellent jams at the festival where a lot of the performers wander around and take part.They can die a sudden death when the drums start up.Management has tried to set aside areas and times where drum circles can play and some of them are quite good to listen to.
As for loud obnoxious drunks,it doesn't matter what instrument they play.They are still loud obnoxious drunks.
rr

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 01:14 AM

Sorry, Mario, I should have known that you knew that.

here are a few links for powwow schedules:

http://www.the-rez.com/powwow1.htm

this one is for all over the world: http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/events_and_news_items/powwows_and_other_events/

and, this one has a short explanation with pictures of some fo the places we used to go to: http://www.nativetech.org/Nipmuc/powwow.html

Speaking of drumming, have any of you ever heard or seen a band called Afro-Celt Sound System? Just saw them on "Later with Jools Holland", on BBC America and I really liked the blend they had of the two cultures' music. Lots of different drums blended well with whistle, accordion, pipes, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 04:53 AM

There are 3 drummer stories in today's UK papers which seem to fit in the good news/bad news category depending on your viewpoint:A mass simultaneous drum by thousands of musicians (sic) is planned across the UK, I think for charity. A soul singer was saved from choking by his drummer who knew the Heimlich manoeuvre ( as opposed to the Buddy Rich manouevre which was a punch in the mouth!). Phil Collins, worth 300 million pounds, is suing two near destitute & ageing members of the Pheonix Horns for return of long term royalty overpayments totalling 300,000 pounds.
I make no judgements!
RtS

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Mooh
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 08:12 AM

Please forgive me if I digress a little.

I love drums, from John Bonham to pow-wows and beyond. I've played various stringed instruments for 35 years but only started them because I wasn't allowed to have drums (too noisey in the house) when I was a kid. (It's okay now I'm quite dedicated to my guitars.) The real problem in public performance of drums is that the venue needs to be sensitive to all the performers and performances, and so very often festivals and the like are not arranged with sufficient space/insulation between acts. A guy with a harp (no I don't play harp)cannot compete for ears with a hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, drums, or anything amplified. The solution is space and compromise balanced with time slots and seperation. Once last year, at a folk(!) festival, I had to compete (I hate that word when used with music) with five other amplified stages in a single city block. One of the other stages at the time was playing some sorta karioke (sp?) disco Irish pub song thing, with a wannabe crooner. I briefly pondered a life in prison before I surrendered to the absurdity of it all.

My point is this, get involved in the organization of public performance if you have the talents, all the well-intentioned folk in the world can't arrange a good performance if they don't know how to do it.

Enough venting for now. I'm thinking of buying some drums...

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: SDShad
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 08:54 AM

Miz kat--

Where (or more to the point, how), do you pick up BBC America, he asks tangentially.

And since when is Jools Holland a Teevee host?

Chris, a Squeeze fan from way back, and who dug Afro-Celt even before he consciously realized their whistle-player was a former Pogue

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Midchuck
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 09:12 AM

1) People who play drums loudly at folk festivals should be asked politely, once, to stop. If they do not, their drumheads should be slashed. If they protest, they should be shut up in a small room with all the banjo players at the festival, unless it is decided to be merciful and only beat them brutally instead.

2) There is no "e" after the "g" in "judgment."

Stay tuned for further absolutist pronouncements.

Peter. (Jeezum, I hope I got that "pronouncements" right or I'm going to catch all kinds of...)

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 09:14 AM

Righto Peter, wouldn't want the antinouncements after you....

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: MMario
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 09:20 AM

yes! I've seen/heard some Afro-Celt and was fascinated...

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: Peg
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 09:51 AM

Afro-Celt Sound System rules! Why can't I find a band like that to sing in?

re: drumming, well I go to pagan gatherings a lot and sometimes the drumming is amazing and magical and powerful and sometimes, it's not. Depending on the festival's size and shape, and who is there, it can often become a bunch of loincloth-draped weekend warriors who believe bigger and louder is better and who would not attend a drum etiquette workshop if their lives depended on it and who think just because they have memorized a few rhythms they are then competent drummers...some of these folks do not even have a decent sense of rhythm and it can be quite painful. The veterans, old-timers, Native and African drummers usually shrug and allow that it is an open thing and anyone should be welcome...but some of these boisterous yahoos ruin it for the rest of us... I am a light sleeper but, over the years, I have grown accustomed to faling alseep to *good* drumming...but bad drumming is a bane, a pox, a plague, a curse...

One older guy who has been in the pagan community for many years tells a wonderfully funny "creation myth" about our community and the auspicious beginnings of gatherings in the old days (i.e. the 1970s); at the end of almost every sentence he intones "...and there were no drums."

peg

Subject: RE: BS: drums and drum circles
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Mar 00 - 12:35 PM

Had that "judgEment" call with a teacher once. According to my overweight dictionary, with the E is a British spelling, so perfectly acceptable, IMO. I want to see an antiannouncement, please, please!**BG**

SDShad....out cable company, AT&T, used to be TCI, has offered BBC America as part of their digital package for about a year now. It and the SciFi channel are the only things which make it worth having, although they've both been running a lot of repeats lately.

I hardly ever wtach Jools Holland, but his show has been on since we got digital. Tad too young to remember anything about the Pogues, and sorry, don't know who Squeeze was, BUT I really DID love the sound of Afro-Celt SS, as did Rog.

Peg, love the story!