Drumming Epiphanies

Anticipating my first drumming lesson in October I began to feel anxious and scared. I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t know how my drumming lessons were going to be taught and how I would get along with the teacher. I didn’t know how quick I would catch on, if I would at all or if it would be too difficult for me. There is much I could describe about my feelings of anxiety leading up to the lessons, but I feel these are common feelings anyone can imagine and understand since feelings of inadequacy are common to feel at some point in ones life. Therefore, I want to focus this paper on the thoughts and feelings that I felt during my lessons once they started because I feel they are more valuable to expand upon due to their uniqueness. At least to me personally I rarely feel so enlightened by an artistic experience and while drumming I had epiphanies about ideas on spirituality and repetition that have really affected my life, I think for the better.

My main purpose to be in Ghana was to research the way individual Ghanaians perceive spirituality in dance. So the topic of spirituality was always at the forefront of my brain and the question I most asked myself in regards to this topic was “How do Ghanaians define spirituality?” It seemed their ideas were a world away from what my ideas were. Drumming one night is what led me, I believe, to understand the way Ghanaians define spirituality a little better.

When I spoke with different priests and priestesses in town about spirituality and what their job was at the shrines they took care of I was often given the idea that spirituality was what was unseen. They would talk about juju - the use of evil spirits and evil power to harm someone- and witchcraft and also about river gods and wind gods helping people out with what they petitioned to the gods that they needed help with. The work that the gods and witches do is real to the Ghanaians who believe in these traditional beliefs but the power and methods the gods and witches use to do their work is unseen because it is spiritual in nature.

This idea of spirituality really helped me see how drumming and dance could be viewed as a spiritual experience or activity. This is what I wrote in my journal:

“I gained some interesting epiphanies while drumming tonight and it really just amazes me that while trying to concentrate so hard that my mind could veer off and be so enlightened. …My thoughts turned to spirituality and whether there was significance in the drumming. I soon discovered that I myself believed it was. They always (shrine people) say things that are spiritual are not seen and the way the drums just make you want to move, the way it conducted all the children to gather around, and to dance, it just cannot be explained. There is an invisible connection between people, the human body and drums, and music, heck to art. There’s an unseen yearning to create, perform and it can’t be explained.”

Thanks to the way the drumming led me to free my mind and open up to new ideas I was able to make some interesting conclusions about the definition of spirituality in Ghana and for myself. I concluded that spirituality could be defined as an energy, a power source that affects people, that unites people, that causes us to act and feel certain ways. In relation to art, dance and drumming, spirituality is found in that energy source that causes us to want to move to the rhythms we hear and allows us to build connections and relationships with those we share in performing with and in performing for. I do not know if it was just that my mindset was right for thinking these thoughts but I think the act of drumming had something to do with the way my mind was opened to these new thoughts because of this next experience I am going to share regarding the repetition involved in drumming. I’ll let my journal entry tell the story.

Another spiritual notion came in my repetition. I couldn’t believe how long I could hold on to a rhythm, especially as my mind would wander or I’d become distracted I just had to let my hands take over! I couldn’t understand it. As I would allow the rhythm to come naturally my mind would wander and ponder, sometimes the strangest things, very random and other times I would have an epiphany. But always I would try to regain conscious control, and come back to concentrating on just the rhythm, I’d try to concentrate and count out the pattern as I had organized it in my head when I first started playing the rhythm. But always when I came back to it the rhythm sounded different, like it had changed. No one told me it was wrong I just heard and saw it from a new perspective.

This experience gave me new insight on life. It taught me that as we repeat things in life such as Sunday school lessons, dance routines, we can gain new perspectives and understandings. Because as the experience or activity becomes natural it can begin to appear fresh and new as we continue to pay attention to it. Sometimes what is required is a break, a brief time when we relinquish control just as I did when I allowed my mind to wander and for my hands to do their thing naturally, so that we can return to our concentration with a fresh perspective. I feel this was a spiritual epiphany because it opened my mind to see things from a new perspective that has motivated me to respond differently to repetitive experiences, instead of becoming impatient and annoyed an a repeated experience I will now try to learn something new and glean more from the experience then I did the last time. Or I will choose to take a step back and refresh myself from the repetition so I can gain a different perspective on the situation or activity when I come back to concentrate on it after the break.

This experience also really helped validate my entire experience in Ghana. I really needed the break from school, from sitting in a desk or dancing in a studio. I had been at BYU for three years and it was beginning to seem that the next two years to graduation would be the same old thing as the previous three. But studying abroad in a new culture has provided me the break I needed. And it wasn’t a complete break either, I was still working hard and learning and earning credit, it was just a break from the normal way college is accomplished. And now that I am home I hope I can find a new perspective towards school to help motivate me to finish my undergraduate work strong and with as much interest and life as I felt I had when I first came to college, when it was new and exciting and non-repetitive.

Drum lessons were often the best part of my day in Ghana. Especially at the beginning when everything was new and exciting, as most all experiences are “from the scratch“ (a Ghanaian way of saying “from the beginning“). I looked forward to them so much and was very disappointed when they were cancelled. It was awesome to play in a real authentic Ghanaian ensemble. It felt like a dream many times when I looked up at the dark, starry African sky and just felt and listened to the rhythms of the music we were making. It felt so good to be a part of the group and even with the frustrations of learning I really grew to love Appiah and his drumming buddies because of the time they spent helping me learn their culture and drumming traditions.

But eventually the lessons too became the norm, and sometimes a repetition of the lesson given previously. This is when things became frustrating and I began to lose motivation and concentration because I wasn’t being taught new material but was struggling with the same rhythms over and over with the talking drum. This is when Appiah started to introduce dance parties to the end of my lessons. I think this was a wise choice that matched the principles in my epiphany about repetition. I needed a break from drumming, I needed to dance like my body wanted to when it heard the whole ensemble play together, and even this experience informed me more about the responsibility of drummers.

I can recall one particularly frustrating night and Appiah suggested I dance however I want to the drum he was playing. This release was just the break I needed and when I came back the next day to our lesson I felt motivated and more interested in working hard to get the rhythm I was struggling with. I think part of the reason was I wanted to please Appiah even more because I was grateful for what he had done for my emotions the night before by allowing me to dance and release my tension physically.

There were many times that it was reaffirmed to me that taking a break is important in gaining a new perspective, and sometimes the new perspective is the key to moving forward and progressing. I learned over and over that spirituality has a lot to do with the energies that are unseen that dictate the activities of our universe. I am grateful for these drumming lessons because it helped me stay sane in Ghana, it helped me learn the life lessons I hoped to learn on my cultural adventure, and it informed my research in such a way that I was better able to glean constructive answers from Ghanaians about spirituality in my interviews. Who thought a simple drumming lesson would benefit me in so many ways.