THE DRUM SET & SPIRITUALISM                                                                                                                              The Spiritualism Connection I have a library containing books written by drummers dealing with the subject of drums, drummers, and drumming. Each one articulates the close relationship between drums and the “Spirit.” 9 Mickey Hart, long time drummer for the rock group The Grateful Dead, says that the drums have two voices, one is technical and the other he calls the “spirit side of the drum.” 10 The spirit or trance side of the drum is “a side recognized by almost every culture on the planet” 11 So the question now becomes: Is the trap set associated with the “spirit” side? To answer this question, we must look at the origin of the trap set. In doing so, we’ll soon discover that the trap set cannot be separated from the origin of jazz and rock music. “When the slave ships began plying the waters between the New World and West Africa, everyone thought they carried just strong, expendable bodies. But they were also carrying the Counterplayer culture—maybe even the mother goddess culture—preserved in the form of drum rhythms that could call down the Orisha [ancestor spirits that possess the worshippers] from their time to ours.” 12 “West Africans believe that the spirits ride the drumbeat down into the body of the dancers, who then begin the erratic shaking movements of the possessed. … The Yoruba say that anyone who does something so great that it can never be forgotten becomes an Orisha. And some become so famous that their status begins to approach the godlike. Shango, Kori (the goddess of fertility), and Ogun (the god of iron and war) are all examples of Orisha who have inspired their own cults and are worshipped by thousands of people.” 13 Notice that it’s the drum rhythms that call down the Orisha, with the end result being possession. The drums are the medium being used to contact supposed ancestors, and this type of spiritualistic communication is absolutely condemned in the Bible. Indeed, the “dead know not anything” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). Therefore, this is communication with evil spirits— spiritualism. “In the Caribbean and South America, slaves were allowed to keep their drums and thus preserved their vital connection with the Orisha, though the sudden mingling of so many different tribes produced new variations like candomblé, santería, and vôdun. But in North America the slaves were not allowed to keep their drums and they lost the means by which to keep the rhythms of their spirit world alive. And out of this severing came jazz, the blues, the backbeat, rhythm and blues, rock and roll—some of the most powerful rhythms on the planet.” 14At this point, you might be wondering how this “spirit side” connects with jazz, blues, and
rock-n-roll. Well, as African-American drummer Sule Greg Wilson notes, the “no drumming”
laws were powerless to stop the “Spirit.”
According to Wilson, black individuals such as Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver,
El Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcom X), and Nat Turner all had the “Spirit.” He writes, “Those are all
leaders—manifestations of Black Power—coming straight from the Spirit. Nothing more, nothing
less.”
15
So how then did the “Spirit” survive in the United States? Wilson cites several examples, and
then he describes the situation at the end of the 19
th century.
“The only place in the West where it was decreed that Africans could not play hand
drums was the one place where they came up with foot drums—tap dancing, that is. It’s
dancing and drumming, all in one, the way playing trap drums is being a traditional drum
ensemble all by yourself. U.S. African society wasn’t smashed to nothing, it was just
condensed. What does that mean to today’s people? It means that into the feet is where
the Spirit, the African vocabulary of Spirit-calling, went to. Ask your elders on this side of
the Atlantic—the old time jazz drummers—where they got their rhythms and the answer
will be as from any other African musician: they watched the people carrying the Spirit-
the dancers—and played what they saw coming at them. … External circumstances can
bust up any drum, but no one can break up the Spirit that makes you dance.”
16
Consequently, the rhythms of jazz came directly from the “Spirit.” We should also note that
these rhythms constitute the African vocabulary of “Spirit-calling.” According to Wilson, it was
the “Spirit” working through African-American drummers, such as Baby Dodds, that set the
standard for drumming the trap set in the United States. This includes rock drumming, since it
evolved from jazz.
Wilson asks,
“Why have a drum set? Development of such a polyrhythmic instrument is not the
European way. Traditional Euro-drumming is identical: twenty people playing the same
purrr-rum-pa-pum-pum, or, in another scenario, just one bodhran or tabor player.
African drums play in parts that combine to make a melody, just like trap-set drums are
played.”
17
Thus emphasizing that the traps are a package deal. The philosophy behind their
construction (how they are put together) is African, and it cannot be distanced from the “Spirit.”
The Evolution of Spiritualism in U.S. Music
As the industrial revolution took hold, a new soundscape was born, or what is known as:
“The auditory chaos of industrial urban noise. And it was out of this soundscape that the
backbeat emerged, its first manifestation appearing in those New Orleans brass bands
—African rhythms and African sensibility channeled through the unfamiliar instruments of
the American marching band—and in the syncopated ragtime of Scott Joplin. The front
line of these bands consisted of trumpet, clarinet, and trombone, but sitting in the back,propelling this new beat, was an invention that to my mind rivals those of Henry Ford
and Thomas Edison. I speak of course of the drum set.”
18
Here, Hart actually puts the invention of the trap set on par with the Model T and the light
bulb! And this is another reason why the trap set is separate from other percussion
instruments; by virtue of its origin and the way it’s played, it is simply in a class all by itself.
According to Hart, the backbeat, which is your basic rock rhythm, grew out of African
rhythms and African sensibility. Thus there’s not only a family tie between rock, jazz, and
African rhythms, but there is also a “spiritual” unity that pervades all three rhythms as well. Hart
also credits the African-American consciousness with the origin of the trap set. He goes on to
say:
“The specifics of the West African rhythmic tradition were lost, except for in the secret
societies that still followed vôdun. All that remained was an urge that, once freed,
satisfied itself by creating something totally new, a polyrhythmic instrument that one
person could play handily.”
19
John Miller Chernoff spent 10 years studying African drumming. He makes this important
observation concerning the unity of Latin and jazz rhythms, which also applies to rock rhythms
as well:
“Certainly there is a musical continuity which reaches in an easily distinguishable way into
the Americas [from Africa], and music continues to carry a message of solidarity to
African peoples throughout the world. You can hear Soul and Latin music almost
anywhere in Africa; you can hear African and West Indian music on the radio at various
times in most large cities in the United States; you can sit in a bar in Ghana, Togo, or the
Ivory Coast and hear music from Zaire and Congo, from Nigeria, from South Africa, from
Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and the United States; great drummers, aficionados,
and scholars can trace the rhythms of Latin dance halls of New York to Cuban and
Brazilian cults and then to West Africa.”
20
In one of the most striking connections, West African drummer Babatunde Olatunji made an
amazing discovery when he first came by boat to New Orleans. He said that back home in
West Africa, there are many rhythms for different occasions, but “the most important rhythms in
Yoruba land are those that communicate with the Orisha.”
21
He goes on to describe his experience in these words:
“I never became a master drummer in the old sense of knowing all the village rhythms,
because when I was twenty-three—in 1950—I won a scholarship to college in Atlanta. I
came by boat, arriving in New Orleans. I was going to study sociology. My drumming
was behind me I thought; I’d only brought a small frame drum to amuse myself on board
the ship. But when I got to college and first turned on the radio and heard, “When I love
my baby, every time it rains I think of you and I feel blue,” I was so stunned. I remember
thinking, hey that’s African music; it sounds like what’s at home. And the same thing
happened when I heard gospel music. So I joined the campus jazz combo.”
22
Thus the same rhythms that were used to communicate with the Orisha can now be found injazz, blues, and 50’s music, which is unquestionably the beginning of rock music. And so the
“Spirit” lives on—and is a vital part of rock music today and, in particular, to the trap set that
was designed to be the foundation in rock and jazz music.
This is clear in Mickey Hart’s testimony. He says:
“It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when I awoke to the fact that my tradition—rock
and roll—did have a spirit side, that there was a branch of the family that had
maintained the ancient connection between the drum and the gods. I suppose it was a
little like meeting some long lost cousins and realizing with a start that these are your
relatives, that you are rhythmically related, and in drumming that’s the same as blood.”
23
Here again we can plainly see how the modern trap set developed and it’s close connection
to the spiritualistic roots of rock and jazz music. Those most notable in the profession of
drumming make the connection themselves, and not just Christians.
________________________________
9. See Mickey Hart with Jay Stevens Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion (New York,
NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990); Dru Kristel and Sule Greg Wilson.
10. Mickey Hart with Jay Stevens Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion (New York, NY:
Harper Collins Publishers, 1990), p. 18.
11. Ibid, 23. See also Mickey Hart and Fredric Lieberman Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm (Petaluma,
CA: Acid Test Productions, 1991).
12. Ibid, 209.
13. Ibid, 202-203.
14. Ibid, 209-210.
15. Sule Greg Wilson, 20.
16. Ibid, 24-25.
17. Ibid, 27.
18. Mickey Hart, 227. (emphasis supplied).
19. Ibid, 227.
20. John Miller Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979) p.29.
(emphasis supplied).
21. Mickey Hart, 215.
22. Ibid, 215. (emphasis supplied).
23. Ibid, 212. (emphasis supplied).