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The Earth’s Heartbeat is My Own
By KATHLEEN THOMPSON
Last summer, in the midst of a period of feeling unsettled and disconnected, I bought a djembe. I found myself wandering around Toko Imports, a drum store in Ithaca, New York, looking for a drum. I had no idea what kind of drum I wanted, but as I told the owner, I just “needed a drum.”
As these words spilled out of my mouth, they surprised me. “I need a drum??” Did I say “need”?
I have never before needed a drum, wanted a drum, played a drum. Drums are loud. Hell, drums are percussive and I prefer meditative. Not to mention the fact that I have a quirky, some would even say an unconventional, sense of rhythm. My piano teacher, in a fit of exasperation, once had me march around her studio clicking two sticks together saying out loud, “A one, and a two, and a three, and a four. A one, and a two, and a three, and a four.” And I was forty-five years old at the time.
“What kind of drum do you need?” Tom, the owner, asked.
“I don’t know,” I confessed.
He looked at me. “Here’s what you need.” He went to the back of the store and produced a drum with a beautiful carved, wooden base, about two feet tall.
“This is a djembe,” he said, pronouncing it gem-bay. “It’s an African drum.”
Tom then explained the difference between African drums and Latin drums.
“The Africans believe that the heartbeat of the Earth is brought up through the drum by the drummer’s hands. That’s why the movements of the drummer’s hands pop up off the drum into the air,” he explained.
“Latin drummers believe the heartbeat of the universe is pulled down into the drum through the drummer’s hands. That’s why Latin drumming is done with hands close to the drumhead.”
He illustrated these techniques first on the djembe and then on a conga. I was entranced.
Another customer entered at that point and Tom left me, saying, “There are many djembes here of this size. The drumheads are made of goat hide. Go find your goat. You will know it.”
I walked tentatively along the row of djembes. I touched them all. I didn’t pound them, I “petted” them. Some skins were mottled, others flawlessly white. Some even had goat fur around their edges.
I kept coming back to one. It was soft, with a little brown stripe down the center. My hands liked it. My heart liked it. This was my goat.
Tom returned. “Find it?”
“Yes. It’s this one.’
He played a riff of beats on it. “This is a good one.”
He took my picture with a Polaroid, holding my goat. Everyone who has ever bought a drum there has their picture hanging on the wall.
Back home, I began to play it. Tentatively at first, but I soon learned the bass, the tone, and the slap. When I played my drum, I became calm. It seemed to put my head in sync with my heart and my heart in sync with the pulse of the day.
As I continue to play, I notice I gravitate toward the same rhythm all the time (much to the extreme annoyance of anyone within earshot) but it seems natural, this rhythm, and intuitive, and distinctly mine. It’s like I’ve always known it, always had it in me somehow. I recall what Tom said about how the drummer’s hands pull the rhythm out of the Earth through the drum, and I wonder if I’ve somehow managed to tap into my own private artesian well of beats, my own personal rhythm.
Now, a year later, I finally get why I needed this drum. Playing my drum settles me down, grounds me, entrains my heartbeat with the rhythmic pulse of everything around me. It allows me to get down with my bad self, jam with it, rock out with it. When I play it I feel like I’m part of the band, part of the tribe.
And I am.
Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga in Mansfield, Pennsylvania. You can contact her at (570) 660-5873, www.yogamansfield.com, or Yogamama@mountainhomemag.com.
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