I got rhythm .. maybe

"What on earth I'm doing here?"

"Why I didn't bring my ear plugs?"

"If I have sensitive ears, why did I enrol in a drumming class?"

These were my thoughts last Thursday, when I was sitting with 4 other students in a small room in a maze-like basement of the Ottawa Folklore Centre. It was the first session of the 8 week course of hand drumming, called "I got rhythm".

* * * * *

How did I end up there? "I really want to learn to play bongo drums", I had been saying for years to my husband. I had had this wish ever since I accidentally found myself in a park drumming festival in Toronto in 2005, where dozens of drums created a beautiful, everchanging rhythm. Too shy to join the group and try a drum, I stayed in a safe distance and kept tapping on my bicycle frame.

Nevertheless I was surprised, when I opened my birthday gift last May and saw a pair of bongo drums. Beautiful, red bongo drums. I was surprised because a) he had actually bought me drums, and b) "bongo drums" looked different in my mind - I had always thought that bongo is a stand-alone drum. After some googling, with the beautiful bongo drums on my lap, I learnt that the single drum was conga, and double drums were bongo. Well, conga or bongo, who cares, I will learn it!

Carefully excited I tried to make some rhytms with my bongo drums. Tap - tap - tap. I checked Youtube teaching videos, but they were way too advanced for me, and also badly filmed - from front, so I was constantly confused which hand is left and which is right. I was also worried that our aparment building neighbours wouldn't be too pleased with contious nonrhythmic pounding on the drums. So I stopped. For the next 8 months, until I bumped into my bongo drums while cleaning over the holidays.

Their shiny red surface made me feel ashamed that I haven't really even tried to learn to play them. So I enrolled in a course, and was super excited.

* * * * *

But when the first class started, I was a nerv rack. When the teacher pounded on the drum in front of him, and asked us to repeat it by clapping, I was thinking of my oldest sister who failed the music class test when she was about 9 years old. I knew now how she must have felt that time. I guess our little sister got all the rhythm in our family, since she made it to the music class. I never even wanted to try, I had been on one piano class when I was 7 years old and decided it's not my thing.

But there I was now, trying to repeat the beat. The teacher talked about rumba and samba, and I panicked again - "I don't want to play rumba or samba, I just want to learn to play the drum!" I thought.

Pam - Tap - tap - tap. Both, right, left, right. That I could do.

Tap - tap - tap - tap - pam - tap - tap - pam - pam. Right, left, left, right, left in the middle, right, left, right in the middle, left in the middle. Getting confused. It's very difficult to coordinate left and right hands, I found out. But after some (= many) trial and error I managed. Tap - tap - tap - tap - pam - tap - tap - pam - pam.

We were repeating it over and over again, and the teacher was adding some new sounds with his drums. The deep, grounded sound of five congas became a soothing, hypnotizing rhythm. I might have some rhythm, after all!