Drummers Grove

On Sunday, June 11, I went to Prospect Park to watch the drummers in Drummers Grove. Each Sunday African drummers gather on a half-circle of stools and create music. Others join in by dancing. A woman who was selling fish sandwiches nearby spoke of the drumming as a spiritual experience, and indeed there is an altar in the middle of the half-circle. The woman said that on the previous day the drummers had been at Coney Island for a really big drumming experience and people made offerings on the altar. That's all I know about the religious aspect of the drumming.

Not all the African drummers were in fact African. A few were white, and from time to time white women would join in the dancing. The whole activity is very open. In addition to the seated drummers, bystanders would contribute to the music with rattles or western instruments. The western instruments (a flute, a sax) added improvised melodies that would glide for a while on top of the drums' rhythms.

At one point a guy who seemed to be in authority said something and the music wound down, but for the most part it continued uninterrupted for hours and there was little sense that this activity was controlled by anything but the music itself.

I had a digital camera with me, so I made three video clips of the event (I keep avoiding the word "performance," which would not be appropriate to the drummers' relationship to the others). The camera is basically built for stills, and I had never used the video feature before, so the clips are not at all professional.

Here is the first of them:



And here is the second:



And finally, here is the third:



If you had asked me if I would sit for a long time and listen to just drums, I would have said no thanks, I need more musical stimulation than that. But this music is very involving, and I enjoyed it very much.