Mike+and+David+Drums

Drums and Drumming: The Meanings of Drums and Drumming in American Indian Cultures and Western Society
__**Background**__ In his brief discussion on Navajo drumming, S.H. Babington says “Primitive music is an integral part of Navajo Rites. Always there is rattle or tom-tom, probably of African origin… To the beat of the drum and the rattle of the gourd, medicine men chant legends in rhyme at great length, with many repititions and minor changes. The toned strike the stranger and monotonous or wild, yet they are not as simple as they appear,” (“Navajos, Gods, and Tom-Toms” 201-202). In this description of the use of drums of the Navajo people, or any other tribe, it lacks something very critical; why drums? There are two important reasons for the use and presence of drums which follow each other. The origin of drums are found in stories such as the following (the following story originates from the Blackfoot people) “It is said that when Creator was giving a place for all the spirits to dwell who would be taking part in the inhabitance of Mother Earth, there came a sound, a loud BOOM from off in the distance. As Creator listened, the sound kept coming closer and closer until finally it was right in front of Creator. ‘Who are you?’ asked Creator. ‘I am the spirit of the drum,’ was the reply. “I have come here to ask you to allow me to take part in this wonderful thing.” ‘How will you take part?’ Creator questioned. ‘I would like to accompany the singing of the people. When they sing from their hearts, I will sing as though I was the heartbeat of Mother Earth. In that way, all creation will sing in harmony.’ Creator granted the request, and from then on, the drum accompanied the people’s voices. Throughout all of the indigenous peoples of the world, the drum is the center of all songs. It is the catalyst for the spirit of the songs to rise up to the Creator so that the prayers of those songs reach where they are meant to go. At all times, the sound of the drum brings completeness, awe, excitement, solemnity, strength, courage, and fulfillment to the songs. It is Mother’s heartbeat giving her approval to those living upon her. It draws the eagle to it that carries the message to Creator,” (“The Story of the Drum”).
 * Spiritual Origins and Implications**

Victor Barnouw, in the book __Wisconsin Chippewa Myths and Tales__, related the following story; “There was an old fellow who knew some bad medicine. He was a drummer in the Medicine Dance and was always using his drum. Once he went with his drum and his runner and camped on a sandbar in Gurnoe Swamp. He started to drum and call on a big snake, in order to get bad medicine. After a while there was a big sound like water coming through, and then water started to come up through a hole and filled the swamp and caused a big foaming whirlpool. The big snake stuck his head out of the water. He was as big around as a log and had horns. The fellow cut a piece of flesh out of the snake with his knife and gave it to his runner to put away. He also took a piece from under each horn. He cut the snake the snake just as if it was butter. This was used as bad medicine by this fellow, who caused many people to die just by wishing they would die, no matter how far away they were. He would just think that the person should die, and he would. This happened a long time ago,” (134). Such a story illustrates an interesting aspect of drumming; drums act as a mediator between humans and animals. In this particular case the voice of the drum calls for specific creatures to come forth which suggests that intention (unvoiced and bound in the cerebral world) is voiced in what the drum calls forth. In the short story, related by Barnouw, “Julia Badger’s Trip to the Other World”, drums act as a catalyst (along with dance) for altered states of consciousness. “We went into the shaking tepee then. Bedukowe danced while they were drumming outside. I suppose my spirit went in through the top while my body went the other way,” (230). As we are on the topic of altered states of consciousness, we find that drums have apparent symbolism in the world of dreams. Although Pamela Ball is not writing from an American Indian perspective, the following gives additional meaning to the drum; “... To hear a drum in a dream indicates the basic rhythm needed to keep us sane and healthy. We need to be more in touch with our natural rhythms and primitive urges. To be playing a drum is taking responsibility for the rhythm of our own lives,” (159). Drums mediate between man and animal, man and his soul, and keep the rhythm of the heart of mother earth. Drums are a prayer between man and Creator and serve to bring the drummer into personal contact with the supernatural elements of his world.

**Physical and Spiritual Uses of Drums**
Drums are an important thing in the Native American Culture. In the Native American culture, it is used in ceremonies, celebrations, and spiritual festivals that they have. Some ceremonies that the Native Americans use the drum in is the Pow-wow, war preparations, and when they do their Indian dances. The drum also plays a huge factor when they are doing the rain dance ceremony. Many Native Americans believe that when they give their offerings and do the rain dance ritual, it’ll help make the gods make rain for them so that their crops could grow. Native American drums are made out of wood and animal hair from the head. Therefore, when the drum is stroked the Native Americans also believe that the spirit of the animal and the wood that they had used to make the drum would help protect them from anything evil. The Native Americans filled their drums with water to help enhance the unique sounds of the drum when played. Native Americans also play the drum at ceremonies because they believe that it helps make them have a closer relationship with the creator. The drum is believed to contain thunder and lightning so that when played it would catch the attention of the gods. The sacred drums of the Native Americans are passed down from generations to generations by having a special drum keeper in their tribe. In the tribe, the selected drum keeper would most likely be the eldest son of the selected family and then they pass it down to their eldest son also. The cycle of the drum keeper would then repeat itself unless it is given to a new drum keeper in the tribe. Another thing about the drum is that in many different tribes, their drums are designed differently. Many tribes have pictures on their drums such as the sun, moon, fish, crops, and a feather. All of these pictures have their own symbols and meanings for the Native Americans.

**Making Drums**
The methods of making a Native American drum can vary in many ways. A way of making a Native American drum is by using strong strings, a drum frame or body, the animal hide, plywood, nails, and a hammer. When making a Native American drum you have to soak the plywood overnight in water. The plywood is soaked overnight so that it’ll be bendable for you to use for your drum. When the plywood is ready, you have to bend the plywood into a perfect circle and let it dry up. It’ll be best to let the wood dry up in a place where there is a lot of sunshine. Next, you take the drum body and you make two holes on the side of the drum and two holes on the opposite side of it so that when you put on the hide you can tie it tight. Then you have to take the animal hide and lay it down flat so that you can measure top size of the drum. Be sure to make mark about two to three inches more than the measured size of the drum. When you are done, you cut up the hide to the dimensions and then you soak the hide overnight again in water so that it’ll soften. You also want to cut long strings of animal hide also and soak it in the water so that it’ll soften up so that you can use it to tie the animal hide onto the drum. When the animal hide is ready, you use a nail to make some holes near the edges of the marked circle in the hide. Once you are done with this, you have to take your drum body and center it in the animal hide. Then you use the soaked straps of the animal hide and make it go into the drum holes and criss-cross the strings to make an X. Do this about three time to secure it to the drum. You then use the some threads and put it through the holes that you made on the animal hide and go from top to bottom until all the holes are done. After this is completed, you just wait until the drum is dried and then you can play your drum. Therefore, that is how you make a Native American drum.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">**Drums and Drumming in Anglo America**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In the song “Flower Punk”, Frank Zappa wrote “Hey punk, where you goin’ with that button on your shirt? I’m going to the love in to sit and play my bongos in the dirt.” As we can expect from Zappa, the tone of this line is very cynical, but it leads us to the idea of modern Western society adapting American Indian rituals as is seen in the idea of a drum circle. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In __The Heart of the Circle__, Holly Blue Hawkins says “The journey into rhythm begins with a pulsation. It begins by going deep inside yourself and listening- no to external noises- but to the pulses within your body. What do you hear? Your breath moving back and forth through nostrils, windpipe, and lungs, the sound of your heartbeat. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">And you sit very; very still, feel the subtle movement in your body, perhaps in response to your heartbeat or breathing. Follow the movement by allowing it to grow and become more prominent and then gradually recede into the tiniest micro-movement, discernable only to yourself. Focus your attention on your rhythm. Don’t try to name it or analyze it. Just let it be there; let it fill the space of your mind with pulsation, as if you were the ocean and had nothing to do but roll with your own tide,” (36). As with the Blackfoot legend “The Story of the Drum”, the drum resides internally before it is manifest in an instrument. At the Oshkosh Rhythm Institute, on one cold March evening, a young man signed “I want to hear the rhythm of the heartbeat” as he held his mother’s hand. The mother drummed for her child, who was both deaf and blind, and moved that pulse through him as Mother Earth does. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">There were about eight or more people attending the drum circle that evening. Robyn, the leader of the circle, asked me to find a drum and a chair. After a few minutes of introductions and pleasantries, the drumming began. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Hawkins’ description of the benefits of drumming was not apparent to me at first. I felt disconnected from those around me and dispassionate about what I was doing. I was disconnected from the meaning of the situation. My connection to the people around me and my environment came as I understood the nature of the space I was in. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">“Where is sacred space? It is set apart from the pursuits and constraints of mundane, everyday life in a time outside of time. It can manifest itself in a crowded bus or a pristine grove, in a congregation or a moment of solitude. Though we cannot describe it in the concrete terms of time and place, sacred is one of those words we seem to share a subjective understanding of, based on personal experience,” (Hawkins, 67). Such space can take on a variety of characteristics depending upon the culture (and many of them are also cross-cultural). In his discussion of Irish Pagans, Barry Raferty describes a ritualistic site. “Early prehistoric burial mounds were also sites of respect and veneration for the Iron Age inhabitants of Ireland, and were sometimes reused by them as burial places. …The larger mounds, notably the passage tombs in the Boyne Valley and at Lough Crew, Co. Meath, figure prominently in pagan mythology as places of supernatural mystery and as the abodes of Otherworld beings,” (__Pagan Celtic Ireland__, 180). Such sites are also found in Wisconsin. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">While the space for drumming can be physical, and can carry events of the supernatural with them, Hawkins is focusing on the basic elements of a sacred space. She writes; “The process of defining sacred space is analogous to climbing a flight of stairs, each step carrying one higher and higher, into a different plane of consciousness,” (71). The steps that are necessary to define a sacred space include purification, orientation, attunement, and an offering. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">My first encounter with the sacred space of drumming was in a cluttered room, full of people, drums, and soft light. For us, in this new tribe, we didn’t need a mound, a temple, or a silent grove of trees. Our space was made sacred by our mutual interest in the healing and connection that comes through drumming. Why did we come to drum that evening? My reasoning was simple; I was doing research for the wiki that you are now reading. One couple was there to relieve the stresses of their lives and resolve their personal conflicts. A mother accompanied her disabled son. A young artist and musician, a woman, siblings were all there for something. Could it be that we were there to feel the heartbeat of the earth?


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The Beat of Mother Earth: Drums, Healing, and the Mind of Drumming **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The drum has long been connected with medicine (as in the Chippewa legend “The Horned Snake” which was told in the “Spiritual Origins and Implications” section of the wiki) with healing connected to the heartbeat of the drum. Hawkins makes that point in __The Heart of the Circle__ when talking about the reasons for drumming. Since this connection exists between Native American and European American cultures, how does drumming bring about healing in modern America? Michael Samuels and Mary Rockwood, in the book __Creative Healing__, explain “Sound creates vibrational shifts in the body. Sound is what our ears pick up from vibrations moving through air. There are actually air molecules moving in space. There is a motion with a rhythm and a frequency moving in space and time. Our bodies pick up the sound with our ears, and the rest of our body picks up the vibrations in every molecule of every cell,” (218). James D’Angelo suggests that rhythm tunes specific regions of the body for optimum performance ( __The Healing Power of the Human Voice__ 109). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Drumming, and rhythm as a whole, is also a component of Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. Lynn Helding, in the article “Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences: Musical Intelligences”, suggests that rhythmic abilities can enhance mathematical, language, spatial, and kinesthetic domains (326-327). <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Drumming brings completion to the body and channels the mind while it connects European Americans with American Indians past and present, man with the Creator and his Mother Earth.

**Methodology**
Initially our search for research materials yielded only a few books which were not sufficient for the research demands of this paper. We expanded our search to include cross-tribal and cross-cultural materials. We also looked into the folklore of drums in Blackfoot and Chippewa cultures and studied the effect that drumming has on health and the connection between drumming and intelligence. The bulk of the research was conducted through the Eastern Shores Library System (a partnership of the libraries of Sheboygan and Ozaukee counties).

Fieldwork
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In order to connect the use of drums by American Indians with modern American society, it was necessary to attend a drum circle where we could observe the actions of the participants and participate in the circle ourselves. The drum circle we chose took place at the Oshkosh Rhythm Institute. All photographs were taken with consent from the participants of the circle. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; overflow: hidden;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; overflow: hidden;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; overflow: hidden;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; overflow: hidden;">The Following image is from a very brief drum demonstration given by Krista Wildflower at Osatara, a gathering of Wisconsin Pagans at UW-Milwaukee <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt; overflow: hidden;">

**Analysis and Conclusions**
As you have seen, drums are integral to American Indians (especially the Navajo, Blackfoot, and the Chippewa) as drums are a gift from the Creator. Drums carry prayers in their voice, their markings, and their spiritual uses. Drums speak with animals and the elements. Drums speak with the body and mind, bringing healing and and enhancing intelligence. As Americans in the 21st century, drumming connects us to something beyond ourselves. Drumming unites us by synchronizing our hearts and minds.