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Is there a "rhythm-making deficiency" in your life?

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I was listening to some extraordinary new music the other day with two of my best friends. After one particularly hypnotic composition had ended and segued into silence, it was a particularly breathtaking moment. When we finally exhaled, and breathed into the space between the tones, we began to share our experience. It seemed that each of us heard different things, yet wound up having a remarkably similar experience.

It got us thinking about how difficult it is to use words to describe music ... but it can be done. Perhaps you can recall something you've read that gave you additional perspectives and insights on a particular composition. I know I have. And that's why I have always passed along words from other writers when I find them inspirational, instructional, interesting or thought-provoking.

What We Didn't Learn in School

Funny, most of what I'm referencing is not taught in schools, by and large. Sure, we're taught about little black dots written on rigid black lines by (typically) dead white European males. In Music Appreciation classes we may learn about the formal structure of different classical styles, like Baroque, and how to analyze aforementioned structure, and especially, the melodic line.

But rarely did we find ourselves actively participating in the event, and feeling ourselves part of a living, breathing organism.

The increasing popularity of drumming circles is vibrant proof that more and more folks are discovering what they've been missing. There is, say some, an instinctual hunger to participate in rhythm making that goes back many thousands of years ... a historical fact that is finally getting "confirmation" via scientific measurement.

One of the most passionate cheerleaders for the power of rhythm is Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. In a recent interview in our award-winning local paper, Pacific Sun, Hart spoke about his background, his work with the Library of Congress, and his new band Bembe Orisha.

Hart has been involved in preserving world music (The Endangered Music Project) and spoke of his long-time interest in the prehistoric and shamanic roots of drumming.

"We now know that women were the first drummers. Archaeologists have found miniatures of large cylinder drums in Neolithic caves. The only thing they could be doing would be possession trance. Because it took large drums to drive the trance.

The mother goddess cultures of Europe came down to the sub-Saharan African countries. And that's where the rhythm flourished - it's all in my book, Drumming at the Edge of Magic".

Q: Do you think the use of the drum to create trances, altered states, goes back to the very beginnings of drumming.

MH: Let's qualify this. It's before drumming. Drums signify membranophones. Membranes came later. First, there was rhythm. Rhythm on stones, bones, chests, hand clapping, vocal incantation. I'm trying to give you 25,000 years of history that took me 20 years to research.

In his book, Hart writes, "From the age of 10 to 40, all I did was drum, incessantly, passionately, painfully. For a long time the drum took over everything I had. It had all my attention. The call of the drum was the one constant in the life of such chaos that my head aches just remembering it."

In the interview with Katy Butler, he continues: "I was so deep into it that I let my family life go. I didn't bathe, I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. All I was doing was going into the archaeological record, trying to find this...and drumming and drumming. I was lost in it. Because there's a danger to all this. It's addictive.

"...We are all rhythm animals. We crave rhythm...the main beat is laid down by the heart and lungs. And when the rhythm goes off, when we are not in rhythm with ourselves, we have disease.

"When we are healthy, that's good rhythm. When the rhythm is not so good, we fall into an arhythmical event, which is disease. We are not pumping, we are not moving, we are drinking too much, etc.

"So to have a life full of good rhythm--forgetting music--is really the key. Music and rhythm just tune us. That's all that's really for.

"It's like what was given to us by the gods to keep us stress-free, in tune, happy. You cannot play music with someone and hate them."

The social and cultural implications of that realization is enormous. The research that Remo Drums and others are doing is helping to remind us of the individual, psychological and emotional benefits as well. Of course, most anyone who has been involved in such work, or play, already knows this ... it's just that it hasn't been statistically quantified enough yet to make this kind of rhythm-based music education an integral part of every school program--even if the rest of the music programs, which in many cases are already cut out, are not reinstated.

As part of my graduate work and to get my credentials as a public school teacher, I worked in a number of contexts in which I led drum circles. This was in l969-73, before they had a name. I got to witness a lot of the beneficial effects of making rhythms together in senior centers as well as with every age group from kindergartner through college. (In fact, the folks who had the most difficulty were the faculty, especially the music teachers.)

Hart summarizes his findings: "We are rhythmically imprinted before we even hit the air. At seven, eight months, you are hearing your mother's heartbeat, beating a giant tattoo, bang-bang, bang-bang, 24 hours a day. You are in a dark, watery world filled with a giant bass drum.

Then you come into this other world with all of these rhythms and all these sounds, all these colors. Consider! So of course we are in love with music and rhythms, why wouldn't we be. We are born of rhythm."

And then he makes quite a strong statement, which I invite you to respond to in my discussion group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stevenhalpern/ (especially if you're a classically trained musician or enthusiast):

"The earth, the planet, is a rhythmic creation. Melody is not universal, that's a lot of poppycock. The one thing we do share is rhythm. That is a universal. Not melody, not harmony, but rhythm. That's what's so attractive, and powerful, as a medicine and as an elixir of life, really. It is such a mystery."

Food for thought, indeed. As Linda Richman might say, "Talk amongst yourselves." Or at least pause to consider whether there is a "rhythm-making deficiency" in your life. And if so, what steps you can take, what group you might join, to remedy the situation.

In my next newsletter, I'll be sharing some listening suggestions to take you deeper into the music I referred to in the first paragraph--and how you can hear a preview for free.

Stay Tuned,
Steven Halpern

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Steven Halpern is the leading composer of music for healing and "sound health". His latest releases are Chakra Suite, an expansion of his New Age chakra-balancing classic, Spectrum Suite and Transitions: Music for Solace and Comfort. Hear samples at www.innerpeacemusic.com.

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