Present’ mind is a drumbeat away at workshop

By JEN O’CALLAGHAN, Telegraph Staff

Published: Thursday, Apr. 27, 2006

The thought of spending about 3½ hours in a room filled with the sound of beating drums may at first blush seem anything but relaxing, but Rusted Root drummer Jim Donovan intends to prove just how calming it can be at a workshop in Wilton this weekend.

“I found when I was in college several thousand years ago that when I would play in the African drumming ensemble, it was like entering another world,” he said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Pittsburgh, Pa. “It struck me as kind of odd that you could have a peaceful feeling while feeling energized at the same time.”

It is that energized other world Donovan hopes to show the 35 participants who arrive at Kundalini Yoga & Art Studio on Saturday, a fitting site for what he hopes to accomplish with his charges.

“Yoga is another word for discipline,” he said. “This workshop uses very relatively simple, repetitious drumming, as well as vocalization.”

It incorporates some of the same goals of yoga, agreed Susan Brown, who co-owns the studio with Joan Hanley.

“What he does is so compatible with what we’re doing,” she said. “His drumming workshop really helps to achieve mental clarity.”
Donovan calls that clarity “presence,” which he defines as “the ability for a person to focus on at will on the task at hand and be able to shut out their mind chatter. To really be able to be fully in a moment without that idea of multitasking, which has become so popular.”

But for those who may be wary, Donovan said the class has no religious undertones and requires no previous skills as a drummer. Donovan will even provide the drums, he said.

“Complete non-musicians who think they have zero rhythm should show up. People who are musicians who want to find ways to more deeply experience music should show up. Its very accessible to a lot of people,” he said.

He is accustomed to having a range of skills in his classes, as he schedules workshops for everyone from preschool up to adulthood. In fact, Donovan’s engagement at the almost 4-month-old yoga studio came about rather serendipitously. One of the studio’s nine teachers, Christine Eaton, and her husband, Diego Sharon, are close friends of Donovan’s. Sharon is a teacher at the nearby High Mowing School, where Donovan will work with students on drumming. Sharon suggested that Donovan teach an adult class locally, as well.
His desire to reach out to all ages might well come from his own roots in drumming, which came about thanks to his baton-twirling sister when he was 11 years old, living in a small town in southern Pennsylvania. The local marching band asked if he would consider playing the cymbals, to which the answer was a resounding yes.

“People would see me coming, and they would hold their ears because I was loud,” he said. “I got bit by the bug.”

But Donovan promises no one will need to hold their ears at the workshop. He will take participants through a quick technique lesson to learn how to hold and hit the drums, then use simple rhythmic patterns and simple sounds to achieve what he called “entrainment.”

“Entrainment is just a term that describes the feeling of letting your emotions, your physical body, your mental capacity come into alignment with a pattern, like dancing, but inwardly directed,” he said.

And that’s where that new world comes in, the one most of us have a hard time finding because, as Donovan said, when it is quiet, our brains tend to go to work.

“You actually end up missing the moment that’s happening because you’re spread too thin,” he said.

The goal is a quiet and present mind, not perfection, Donovan said. “This is more about your intention, more about what you’re trying to bring to everyone and to yourself as opposed to being this virtuoso.”

And those 3½ hours? Donovan promises they will fly by.

“You’ll be very surprised how fast the afternoon goes,” he said. “It’s almost like a time warp.”
Jen O’Callaghan can be reached jocallaghan@nashuatelegraph.com.