A Day Without Words: Drumming as a Practice for Living
By: Helen Hazelmare
Tags: Communication, Healing, Community, Connection, Music

Photo by Paulo Infante on Unsplash

It’s the beginning of 2020. Long-time friends embrace and those newly met clasp each other in tenderness, the air sizzling with anticipation as we collect into the afternoon space of concrete and jewel-toned lights. Sometimes we meet under the sky of passing clouds, beside the waters of white caps, sometimes we are rolling from tents beneath the full moon; today we find ourselves in a cabaret performance space between shows. Instruments cradled in calloused, gentle hands are being set out on long tables for anyone to play — shakers, flutes, frame drums, rain sticks — and a collection of djembes and bongos is being carried out into the center of what will be our circle.

There are some things in life that can only be enjoyed with the senses. Words cannot describe the purity of aliveness when group energy holds you, uplifts you, dives you deep into your shadow and surfaces again. This connectivity is profound and essential, this truth. Language is a lone star inside the many constellations of us all; it needs to be set aside from time to time so we may remember the original, unifying force of healing. We must remember music.

As someone with a left-sided vestibular impairment, learning to play an instrument has been invaluable to my overall health and wellbeing. For a time, there was only music to express what I felt or needed; words evaporated from me as quickly as they were thought and I knew compassion for little ones’ frustrations in their transition to join the verbal world. Music was the one thing sustained of which I had accessible memories. The physicality it takes to hand drum is another virtuous quality, something vital; it drew me out of my shell of uncertainty, an emerging cuttlefish spouting sepia rather than a dried resignation to be clammed up for the rest of my days. Truth be told, I can’t keep a rhythm going for too long but it sure is fun to try! And that’s enough for me, it is plenty. It also helps knowing drummers are pretty much the most chill people ever, plus the musical style means there’s always an emerging melody or harmony — or something else entirely. It’s all welcomed, incorporated into the whole of our experience together. We feel worthy. There is ecstasy, there is peace.

The dancers and hoopers arrive, adding their airy magic to the day’s evocation, and others who come just for the pleasure of listening now bustle with laying out the offering of collected food on the cloth-covered table. There is nothing to be, nothing to do, nowhere to get to. There is only here, a time without words. Words would only get turned upside down and inside out for draw into other shapes here. When we collectively sense they’ve become intrusive, words begin to fall away in greetings as we share ourselves via essence — gazes met and held, holding arms, passing children around. Language is a construct from which we all need time away.

I’ve two djembes that I play regularly, two wildly different voices of drums due to size and skin, and a hand-held frame drum I had the honor of making under the tutelage of a wise elder last year. The frame drum sends healing vibrations into my left side, giving me enough sensory input so that my brain can keep remembering how to swallow. The drum’s sound is similar to other drums in one regard: it is divinity. The ability to journey within my body and beyond as facilitated by this sound, by this music, could never happen if I simply told myself in words to do something. Music encourages the practice of non-verbal dialogue, much like visceral therapy (the manipulation of forces within the body); vibration is often the key to unlocking stored memory, ancestral memory, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

I caress the head of my drum with love and reverence as I settle into my spot for the day, nestled beside a man and his grandson who enjoys petting my animal tattoos. I pause and give thanks for this connection to the heritage that sings in my blood, this knowing that music is life, and that drumming is the ancient, universal understanding with the power to unite us all.