Drumcircle post
Drumcircle post
My first Japanese Drumcircle We went to the a drumcircle organized by Kaoru Sasaki in Hachioji, Japan facilitated by Jonathan Murray We arrived about an hour early, we were the first people there. After a little bit, Jonathan arrived. We introduced ourselves and helped set it up. This was much like many drumcircles I’ve seen Arthur do: dunduns in the center, some drums and lots of percussion. One thing that I like about drumcircles like this is that there is actually enough percussion. If I were to sculpt out percussion at the drummings that happen at my place each month, out of 40-50 people playing, less than 10 are generally playing percussion. Fact is that most folks coming to a “drumcircle” bring drums. The first big surprise for me was one of “sticker shock”. In my communications leading up to this I was told to pay the entrance fee at the door. Somehow I hadn’t fond out what that was, and when it turned out to be 2,000 yen (over US$20), I momentarily balked, but, as Gurdjieff tells in one of his stories, “I am on a spree, and am willing to pay the price, including the postage”. In our drumcircles, we encourage people to donate $5 to defray costs, and sometimes it seems that folks think that that is optional, judging by the receipts. But $5 for a 4 hour drumcircle seems like much more of a bargain when you consider that $20 for a 2 hour drumcircle is just fine, not to mention that many of the folks there spent half or more of that for the trains to get to the circle. (Public transportation in Japan is pervasive, but it isn’t necessarily cheap. $3 - $4 to take a comuter bus from the far reaches of places like Boulder or even up in the mountains seems really, really cheap) Back to the drumcircle.. It looked pretty sparse until about 10 minutes before 7, when a whole bunch of people showed up. I don’t know how many times I’ve wondered, as the starting time approached for a drumcircle that I’ve created, if anyone was going to come. As long as I’ve properly gotten the word out, it nearly always works out. For some reason, I was surprised to note that most of the attendees, roughly 3/4 of them of them, were women. While there are more women drummers at drumcircles than there were 15+ years ago, in the drumcircles I go to, more men than women drum. But I have noticed that when Arthur is in town there are more women drummers. At the risk of seeming a male chauvinist, it seems that facilitation favors a female audience. This is a good thing, and perhaps one of the strongest arguments I can make for facilitated drumcircles. I’ve been to more facilitated drumcircles with Arthur than with other Arthur-trained facilitators. It’s always a joy to see someone new because everyone has new facilitation tricks that I haven’t seen before. It’s been several years since I’ve been to a Hawaii Playshop, so there’ve been lots of new facilitation tricks created. Ones I liked (from memory, as I didn’t take notes like Arthur does :) :
During a window of communication, Kaoru and Jonathan both facilitated deep breaths leading into a groove.
Jonathan did a couple of sculpts where one side came in while the other stopped, repeatedly, stopping/starting with no overlap.
Jonathan did was a minor variation on Arthur’s sculpting out one side, having the sculpted out side applaud the other side. While sculpted out, he had that side, in addition, stand up and dance at their seats to the other side’s music. A minor variation, but very cool.
The rest of the evening was a lot of what I’ve seen before, and I’m sure that this crowd has seen. I guess the main thing that I took away from this circle was a re-affirmation of the value of facilitation in drumcircles. The community that I usually play with has been playing together for nearly 20 years, and I have had it that they are beyond needing facilitation. While that may be true, it’s nice to experience anew how much fun a facilitated experience can be for the other participants, but for myself as well. Also, at the end of the evening, Jonathan said to the group how gratifying it was to come such a long way to find family. I have to agree.