LOS ANGELES TIMES CALENDAR WEEKEND
Joining the circle
June 19, 2003

By Susan Carpenter, Times Staff Writer In an unbridled display of free-spirited pandemonium, they shout and dance and beat on everything imaginable - cowbells, congas and timbales; West African djembes, Middle Eastern doumbeks and Jamaican kettledrums; water bottles, buckets, milk crates, cardboard boxes, pots, pans and skateboards. If it were possible to play a kitchen sink, some percussionists would do it. The call of the drum is that loud. Anyone who walks Venice Beach on a Sunday hears it: bongos thumping, whistles blowing, hands clapping, people yelling - that thick clump of
dancing, drumming humanity that is the Venice Beach drum circle. A community free-for-all that attracts hundreds every weekend, it is among the country's oldest, largest and best-known drum gatherings. Observing such a spectacle from afar, the uninitiated might be inclined to dismiss it as a load of Iron John hooey or new-age mumbo jumbo - a hippie holdover catering to those who are stuck in
the '60s. But step a little closer to the circle and you'll see surfers and skaters planting their boards in the sand so they can pick up a bongo, tourists shedding their sweatshirts to dance. There are students and professionals, rockers and ravers, beach babes and beach bums - all of them joining the throng. The Venice Beach drum circle "brings everybody from everywhere, every instrument, every age, every skill level, every religion, every everything," said Sondra Tatum, founder of a Web site devoted to the circle, venicebeachdrumcircle.com. "People you wouldn't see associated together on the streets are sitting next to each other.... It's like putting a Bentley next to a Volkswagen. Everybody is equal." Drum circles aren't just for hippies anymore. They speak to a societal cross-section, and that cross-section is coming together in the numerous drum circles, both new and old, that exist around the region. Musically, they cover the globe - from Latin America to the Caribbean, Africa to the Middle East. But they all serve a common purpose: connecting one human being to another, beat by beat. Whether they're chaotic outdoor gatherings or intimate and indoors, their many shapes and forms are drawing a more diverse crowd, which is leading not only to a revival but a movement of sorts. Building to a roar It's 12:30 on a Sunday afternoon, and the Griffith Park drum circle is just getting underway. A small cluster of bare-chested men is pounding out rhythms in the shade while an older gentleman calls out, "Salsa!" Already it is loud, and there are only seven people. By sundown, the group will swell to 70, creating a cacophonous roar of drums, bells and claves that can be heard deep inside the park. Nearly every Sunday, this is where you'll find Joseph Tiu, playing his congas for four hours straight. "It's a good release from a 9-to-5 job," said Tiu, who also plays his djembe nearly every Saturday at Venice Beach. "I feel the need to go every weekend, and if I don't go, I can't wait to go the next week." Tiu, 41, is an architect who lives in Hollywood. Seven years ago, after his wife gave him a hand drum, he joined the Venice Beach circle, oftentimes playing so hard that his hands bled. He had played drums in a high school band, "but I gave that up, went to college, became responsible," he said,
taking a break from the players in Griffith Park, whose Latin rhythms grooved in the background. Tiu is an experienced musician, but the beauty of the drum circle is that no experience is necessary. Primal and instinctive, drums are the lowest common denominator of music. Nearly everyone at some point in life has been an inadvertent percussionist.If you've ever tapped your foot on the floor or bounced a pencil off your desk, you've done it. Drumming is just as easy. Simply slap your hand to the skin and - presto - you're a drummer. "We are rhythmical animals, and drumming is the most simple thing that we as strangers can do together to communicate," said Arthur Hull, the Santa Cruz-based "rhythmical evangelist" who is seen as the father of the modern drum-circle movement. Hull, 57, travels the country facilitating rhythm-based events for corporations, community groups and anyone else who's interested in communicating with a beat. He is also a signature series artist for drum manufacturer Remo, which hosts several different types of weekly rhythm circles at its percussion center in North Hollywood. "Rhythm is the mother tongue, and it's in us when we're children," said Hull, who claims he started drumming in the womb. "One of the worst aspects of what has been suppressing the expression of rhythm in the general population is the belief perpetrated by an obsessive music teaching system that says you have to be a musician or a drummer to express yourself rhythmically, and that is absolutely untrue."
Thanks to Hull and other "guerrilla rhythm revolutionaries," as he calls them, that teaching system is beginning to loosen its grip. The Internet and immigration are also contributing to what Hull calls the U.S. "rhythmical revolution" by increasing exposure to other cultures and their music. Although drumming is intrinsic to Native American culture, that is not the case with the United States as a whole. Our country is one of the few
cultures in the world that is not intuitively tied with rhythm. According to Hull, that's because America was founded on Anglo-Saxon beliefs and a puritanical religion that is not music-based. From China to Malaysia, Cuba to Brazil, Africa to the West Indies, the majority of other world cultures are imbued with rhythm. Their cultures evolved out of an intimate relationship with nature, where rhythms, songs and dances were patterned after the movements and sounds of animals. The summer solstice Drum circles have existed since man learned to beat on logs with sticks. In ancient African civilizations, tribes used drums to communicate with each other, sending messages from one village to another with an alphabet of beats. They used drums in rituals to celebrate planting and harvesting, marriage and fertility, birth and death. On the summer solstice, taking place this
weekend, they help ring in the new season. The modern drum circle is simply a celebration of life. Those who regularly partake go to play and to listen, to express themselves and to meet others, to laugh, to dance, to pray and to heal. "When I heard the calling of the drums, I felt better already," said Tatum, who started going to the Venice Beach circle in the '70s after she was
diagnosed with breast cancer. "Even if you're not going through a major surgery, if you just broke up with your boyfriend or you got fired, you can
go to the drum circle and feel better. You can't help it." Marcus Tucker, a middle school English teacher, started a Sunday afternoon drum circle in Laguna Beach four years ago. "People come because they have this almost tribal need, this internal, intrinsic need to let themselves loose and be free, to let these rhythms flow out of them, and I have that need also," said Tucker, 44. "I had to have a place to drum to let this thing flow." He started letting the thing flow seven years ago, after his father died and Tucker inherited his set of congas. But after going to the Venice drum circle, which he found too unstructured, and others, which he found too regimented, he decided to start his own. "I wanted something in between," said Tucker, whose circle is distinctive in that it encompasses a variety of multiethnic beats, from reggae and hip-hop to Latin and African. At Tucker's Laguna Beach circle, the different rhythms are all played on the same drums, even though each specific ethnography is associated with very specific types of instruments. Djembes, ashikos, ngomas are of African descent; congas and timbales are Latin and riqs Middle Eastern. The term drum circle is a bit of a misnomer. They're really mixed-instrument circles - with not only drums but bells, shakers, keyboards, whistles and horns. The ebb and flow To listen to a drum circle is to hear the ebb and flow of various rhythms. Someone starts with a beat, the rest of the circle picks up on it, and a few players solo on top, giving it texture. Eventually the beat breaks down or dies out and a new pattern emerges. The goal is to get to "the magic place ... when you are lost in the rhythms and you are being played by your own drum, as well as by the drum circle that you're in," according to Hull.
Getting lost in the rhythm isn't restricted to the drummers. Singers and dancers also enter the fray, usually at the circle's center. All circles are somewhat different, though they fall in to three general categories: anarchic (where there are no leaders and no rules, like the one in Venice), culturally specific (where the drummers play beats from a single ethnic source, such as in Griffith Park) and community (a facilitated circle like DrumDance Journey in Santa Monica). Meeting the first Sunday of every month, DrumDance Journey takes place in the evening and indoors, on the second floor of the Church in Ocean Park. The room is lighted with candles. A ring of chairs is arranged in front of the altar. In its center are Richard Parissi and his djun-djun, the double-headed African bass drum that is considered the circle's heartbeat. Parissi beats a simple rhythm and speaks into a wireless headset, gently intoning the group to "give in to the drums" and "let the drums carry you away." A spiritual counselor, Parissi started his monthly circle a year ago because he believes in the power of drums to connect people to their emotions and with each other. "It's really important to create a safe space so ... if people want to cry, they can cry. If they want to get loud and express something loudly they can, and it won't be a place where people are looking at them and ridiculing them," said Parissi. Indoor drum circles are more introverted than those that take place outdoors. On the most basic level, outdoor circles are louder. Unrestricted by the confines of a room, they attract more players, and the more drums there are, the louder it gets. That's why so many of them take place on beaches, where the ocean's crashing waves help dissipate the sound or, some would say, noise. Drum circles, like the one in Venice Beach, have had run-ins with the law for disturbing the peace. It is precisely the loudness and largess of the outdoor circle that attracts many drummers. The outdoor circles also tend to attract more onlookers, appealing to players who like an audience. But not all players like the attention. Mesmera, a Silver Lake belly dancer, used to run her Middle Eastern "dance and drum jam" in a park but moved it indoors because "we had to hold back," she said. "Just as it would start to feel wonderful ... then here would come waves of people with video cameras." Circles have tacit rules It's easy to understand why. Mesmera's dance and drum jams are colorful affairs, a mass of fluttering veils and finger cymbals. They are "filled with the sounds of coins jingling from the hip belts," said Mesmera, whose circles are as much about dance as the drums. "There's a lot of fringe flying, lots of hair flying. We get very impassioned." Generally speaking, drum circles are quite welcoming, though figuring out how to join can be confusing. Wandering up to one, you won't find a list of rules for how to behave. There are, however, some unspoken guidelines. According to Hull, players should sit in the circle so they can see everyone without blocking anyone else's view, listen before they play and join the "fundamental groove" before attempting to solo. Tiu, the architect, would add another rule: "Don't tell another drummer how to drum," he said. Just let them pick one up and hit it. * * *

Susan Carpenter can be contacted at susan.carpenter@latimes.com.