The Pub went tribal Thursday, offering the stage to anyone who wanted to pound a drum or crash a cymbal. The free-for-all Drum Circle provided Pub-goers with a rhythmic improv act throughout the evening, while a deejay filled intermissions with strikingly appropriate selections such as “Get Rhythm” by Johnny Cash.
The Drum Circle yielded an eclectic array of instruments including the traditional African djimbe which is a drum shaped like a goblet or an hourglass. The Caribbean conga was popularized in I Love Lucy by hubby/rumba king Desi Arnaz. Those small twin drums from Cuba called Bongos. The smaller known as the macho and the larger as the hembre for the Spanish “male” and “female.”
Perhaps the most unique instrument of the night was the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal instrument from Australia. Although technically a trumpet, the didgeridoo is little more than the trunk of a eucalyptus tree hollowed out by termites (or a PVC pipe and duct tape, if termites aren’t handy). The instrument’s distinctive drone comes from lip vibrations, just like a kid pretending to be an airplane or a motorboat.
The didgeridoo can be user-friendly to beginners, perhaps a bit more difficult than the jug or washboard. But virtuosos are famous for turning that simple pipe into a lifetime accomplishment thanks to the technique of circular breathing–inhaling and exhaling simultaneously so they can play variations on the same note for over an hour without stopping for breath. If you think three hours of drums might be a bit too much, imagine a single hour of that!
A standard drum set unified the action. The mix of instrumentation was strangely complimentary for a circle formed of two to six musicians, as players came to take the stage or left to take a break. Their driving rhythms hearkened back to our roots. Listening to the ancestral sounds of the drum circle, one performer/Pub patron was left asking, “Where’s the fire?”
Although there was neither fire nor a primitive hut—not even mastodon flesh roasting on a spit, the audience seemed satisfied with the atmosphere of the drum circle. An average crowd populated the Pub that night, including visitors from as far afield as Ohio. For many, Thursday was their first contact with a Drum Circle, and they were wowed by the tight performance. When asked how the drummers could keep it together, despite never before having played with each other, one conga-ist proudly thumped his beating heart: “It’s in here!” he cried.