When a Drum Makes the Whole Room Sing
If you can, listen through headphones or speakers rather than your phone. When I strike this drum, you won't hear only the drum. Listen underneath it. That low hum in the background is my piano.
I’m not touching the piano. The drum is setting the piano’s soundboard and strings into resonance.
I love this because it makes something we usually forget about sound beautifully obvious: sound doesn't stop at our ears.
Repetitive drumming has long been used to help people enter trance states, even very light ones (Gingras et al). But that isn't quite how it works for me. I'm a musician. Instead of disappearing into the repetition, I tend to hear the variations—the tiny changes in tone, attack, resonance, and rhythm.
What grounds me is the vibration.
I don't only hear this drum. I feel it moving through my body. The same vibration that sets the piano humming is something I experience physically, and it brings my attention firmly back into my body.
That physical experience of vibration is one reason sound has become such an important part of my healing work.
The drum that was mine
I first met Mark Barfoot (Wolf Clan Onondaga) at the opening festival of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in 2004, where he was a vendor.
I wasn't looking for a drum. I was shopping for a flute, and bought an exquisite cedar flute from him. But while I was there, I ran my fingers over one of his drums.
Mark looked at me and said, “not that one.”
He went farther back into his tent, unwrapped another drum, and handed it to me. Elk hide, with a rough finish and a “singing” maple frame.
He was right.
I knew immediately that it was my drum.
For years, I used this drum in class to demonstrate handdrumming to my students. Now I use it for songcatching and sound healing. More than twenty years after Mark first placed it in my hands, it remains a powerful and beautiful instrument.
Looking for a handdrum or flute of your own?
I’ve known Mark and played his instruments for more than twenty years.If you’re looking for a beautifully made handdrum or flute, I recommend Mark's work. You can connect with Mark Barfoot on Facebook.
I’m not an affiliate and receive nothing if you order from him. I simply love his work.
Listen again
Play the recording once more. This time, don't try to concentrate on the music. Let the drum sound and notice what happens.
Where do you experience it?
In your ears, certainly. But perhaps also in your chest, your belly, your feet, or your breathing. Perhaps your attention settles. Perhaps you feel energized rather than settled.
Perhaps nothing much happens at all.
There is no correct response to have.
Just listen.
The piano doesn't have ears, and still, when this drum sounds, something in it begins to answer.
Bibiliography
Gingras B, Pohler G, Fitch WT. Exploring shamanic journeying: repetitive drumming with shamanic instructions induces specific subjective experiences but no larger cortisol decrease than instrumental meditation music. PLoS One. 2014 Jul 7;9(7):e102103. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102103. PMID: 24999623; PMCID: PMC4085008.
