The monkey made me do it

My brief but illustrious career as a RAWK STAR

Drums are fun. I somehow managed to forget how much I liked them after my high school marimba/tom-tom solo stint until my friend Kris convinced me that samba dance lessons would be the next fun thing for us to explore. We went to classes for a couple of months and had a great time doing the odd barefoot hopping and shaking that constitutes sambafication, but I found myself messing up on dance steps that I knew I could do and getting constantly distracted.

The distractions were the three drummers that came along to accompany the dancers every week with their magician's-hat drum bags that kept spewing out a seemingly endless variety of instruments. Everything from miniature tambourines with no jingles that were hit with sticks to a giant staff that looked a bit like a bow with a small gourd and a stick to hit it all with (berimbaus for the curious). I'm still a little confused how that one ever came about. Like, one day, some guy is sitting on the side of the road with nothing but a stick, another bigger stick, a cord, a small dried gourd, and some musical inspiration? I wonder how many other configuations he went through before magic struck. Gourd on head, cord wrapped between his hands, sitting on the two sticks crossed at a 30 degree angle. One stick up his pant leg, the other stick whacking it while throwing the cord-tied gourd at cars passing by.

(No, it wasn't that the drummers were cute. They were the kind of white world music listening neo-hippie people that I see all the time playing hackeysack and talking about reggae without ever really knowing any black people. Nice folk, though. If you like pachouli.)

I watched them play their grab bag of percussive fun while my feet wandered off into a mix between a waltz and the running man, and decided there and then to drop the dancing and start drum lessons. I joined a samba drum class and immediately fell in love with the complex rhythms (SO much more difficult than any of the jazz or classical I'd played in the past - and that's saying a lot) and tried out every single instrument I could get my hands on. I played the tamborim (the mini-tambourine) and deafened myself (those little buggers are LOUD), I played the agogo (2-toned bells) with gusto and the tan tan (conga-ish), pandiero (larger tambourine type thing), and a million ones whose names have faded, but didn't find my true drum love until I strapped on the biggest, lowest, baddest drum that samba has to offer - the Surdo (pronounded "ser-doo"). It rocked. The larger ones can make a room vibrate when played at full volume and I rarely played it at less than an ear-popping pitch (hey, if you've got the power why not use it?).

I played it almost exclusively for a couple months in the class, and then was approached by the instructor to join a band that he was starting up. We were about 30-40 percussionists plus anywhere from 10-30 dancers and we started playing parades and festivals all around Seattle to high acclaim. There's something about that many people rocking out to a samba beat that makes onlookers move in time whether they want to or not! We started getting choreography amongst the drummers and I learned how to flip my mallets drumline-style as well as keep a beat while twirling (NOT EASY with that giant drum! I swear it was bigger than an end table). We had costumes for many of our events, anything from large headdresses akin to Carnival wear in Rio to bodysuits painted with skeletons for a giant citywide Halloween party. We played private parties, the solstice parade in Fremont, a church (they wanted to hear "I can see clearly now" so we developed a great samba version), professional soccer games, war protest marches, and the last year I was there they started a long-running gig with Bumbershoot (Seattle's big music festival) where we do two parades a day for the four days of the festival. THAT was interesting! I give it my all when performing, and even with gloves, padded straps and leg bumpers I was a wreck by the end of the second day. None of our other gigs had lasted more than 3-4 hours, and playing full-on for 3 hours twice a day killed me! By the end of the last day, I could no longer extend my fingers past the claw that I tried to use to hold my poor, abused mallet. It took two days of soaking my hand and stretching to get my fingers to unkink again. But I still have my performer's pass!

The group is still going, though I dropped out when I went back to college in 2002. I still see members of it, and hear all about how they're now playing gigs out of the country and still rocking local events. They've invited me to join again but I've since gotten some conga drums that are calling my name (hello, new adventure...)

posted by LadyJay @ 10:05 AM