the drum circle diaries: plugging in

For the next year I’ll be conducting fieldwork on drum circles and chronicling my experiences/findings/photography here. Enjoy!

In the beginning all we could feel were the vibrations. They emanated through the medium of the beach, dropping in amplitude with distance from the epicenter, reduced to a dull pulsation as they reached my bare feet. With me were housemate B and our mutual friend J, the only one of us with any serious proficiency in hand drumming. We had a djembe, doumbek and a pair of bongos, respectively representing West African, Middle-Eastern and Cuban percussion traditions. Though on the beach, such affiliations are deposited outside the circle like shoes on the doorstep of a Japanese home. Ethnic identity is deleterious to the function of the circle, and the selectively permeable membrane soundly rejects it. The drum alone is granted passage as its symbolic meanings are deconstructed, laying bare the more relevant internal properties of volume and timbre.

the Treeman gets to jam

It was after seven when we arrived, and the circle had already been maturing since midday. Venice Beach was undergoing its daily metamorphosis from an arena for weirdness as a commercialized spectator sport into a habitat for the truly bizarre. Venice after dark can be intimidating. We had intended to sit apart from the circle to warm up, but there was no resisting its influence. The gravitational well around the circle seemed to steepen with each step forward. As the energy coalesced we found ourselves running towards it mindlessly, as if in free fall. It is a curious thing, this force of attraction that no scientific instrument can measure.  A force exerted not only on the body but also upon one’s faculty of awareness, so that within a certain radius it takes extraordinary effort to attend to anything other than the circle itself.

traces of a fire-dancer

The drum circle is unlike other social gatherings. In fact I have trouble categorizing it as a social gathering at all, unless the definition of the social is expanded beyond the behavior of organisms. For the acting agents in this “society of sounds” are the not the actual human drummers, but their creative energies. It is the sounds themselves who interact with each other, who form groups and social structure, who conform to the will of the masses and enforce hierarchies. Yes, identity is always constructed, but never as distinctly, as transcendently as inside the anarchic drum circle. The drum circle  identity does not even strive to be human. When I first walked into the fray and sat down with my drum no one acknowledged me.  Not out of disrespect, but simply because my material body never registered on their awareness. Not until I Dropped Out of the physical and Plugged In to the aural-energetic plane was my presence was felt. I was no longer a person. This took deconstruction of identity to a whole new level. I now existed as the crisp rat-a-tat of

diagram of drum-consciousness

syncopated accents. “Oh,” my neighboring sounds (Mr. Snare Drum and the Egg Shaker Twins) seemed to say, “there you are. Welcome to the circle.” They subtly altered their volume and cadence to clear some space for me, Danny Doumbek. Now, things aren’t quite as clear cut as I’m presenting it. It’s only a model, and states of consciousness are subtle things. Usually it takes more than a drum to entirely transcend the body. Still, there’s a Society of Sound out there, trust me. All you have to do is Drop Out and Plug In.

The happening didn’t last long; the cops showed up and broke up the party only an hour after we arrived. We watched the exodus from a lifeguard stand some ways down the beach. Everyone moved in unison until the very end, slinking onto the boardwalk and towards the darkness beyond, towards wherever these people come from.

the police decide that drumming is TOO much fun

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