A drum circle needs a ring of people, some drums, and one person brave enough to start. Within a minute there is a pulse. Within five there is something nobody planned. It can go on for hours and nobody is in charge; the rhythm leads and the circle follows it. Children join with sticks and pans. Someone starts singing over the top. That is the sound of the land after dinner on most nights it is open.
The land keeps drums: djembes, frame drums, a few big ones, gifted or made, kept dry in the sound temple and out at the fire when the weather allows. Nobody has to know how to play. The circle teaches by ear.
Drum circles also mark things. The moment a gathering opens. The moment a fire ceremony begins. The land’s rituals grow out of what people do more than once, and the drum circle is the thing they do most.
Related words
- Ecstatic danceFree movement to music, without alcohol, talking or performance, as a practice rather than a party; often at sunrise, outdoors.
- Medicine musicSongs, often simple and repetitive, made to be sung together in ceremony and at the fire, for their effect on the people singing rather than for performance.
- ToningSustaining simple vowel sounds with the voice, alone or in a circle, for the physical and emotional effect of the vibration.
Join the circle