Russell Buddy Helm

First Chair violin, MidWestern City Philharmonic orchestra. Child prodigy from a village in Scotland. Trained classically from an early age at the national institute of music. She excelled. Now midlife and anxious about her yearning to play her village folk tunes but unable to because of the traumatizing classical musical training. She could only play what she could read in front of her on a music stand. I know this condition. I had it too when I was a preteen drummer. I was amazed at a friend in the sixth grade who could improvise on the drums. And the girls really liked it. I needed to do that. Only I could not understand how somebody could just start tapping with drumsticks and make it sound good. I could only read what was on the paper on the music stand. I could sightread any difficult percussion music with ease while also playing to a metronome. But I could not swing. The next few decades I spent in the Deep South. There I learned to get out of my head and into my heart, and feel the music. That saved my life. So now with this virtuoso, I was being asked to open up a new inroad into her creativity. Her husband had brought her in and she had accepted his invitation after witnessing his shifts and improvements in his condition using the drum in this specific healing way.

“Just hit the downbeat. Steady and relaxed.” I intoned,

We got a groove going that was slow. Although her intellect wanted to interfere and judge, I stated simply,

“Don’t judge. Just follow the groove. Single note in the middle of the drumhead, like a heartbeat.”

Soon she sunk into a deeper state of relaxation which was safe for her, because she was creating it herself. Her husband sat at the back of the room and enjoyed what he was sure would be a positive outcome.

“Okay, Now while you’re hitting the drum, make a sound. Any sound. Just open your mouth and make a sound while you are hitting the drum.”

She was torn between her critical mind forbidding her to do such a thing and her childhood desire to sing her cultural folksongs.

“It’s not a note. It’s not music. It’s just a sound.” I reassured her.

“Nothing to get worried about…”

Her mind was trying to regain control over her heart, so I reminded her gently,

“Keep the downbeat going, nice and laid back.”

Soon her groove settled in again and she was stable enough in her heart to open her mouth and make a sound while she hit the drum in a steady relaxed pulse. Her husband lit up like a christmas tree.

“Good. Keep the groove going…” I waited until I sensed that she was ready.

“Now, do it again.” I asked her.

She made a vocal sound again. It was slightly stronger and not so suppressed. The downbeat groove was keeping her critical mind occupied. She sensed an opening in her belief system. There was suddenly hope. Her breathing deepened. She smiled.

Soon we had her singing a phrase that she made up of several tones. Not notes, just tones while she kept the groove going at a safe tempo for her. This was her first improvisation, maybe in her whole adult life. It is terra incognito for many classically trained musicians. But it is also the way music has always been handed down through the aural tradition of hearing it and learning how to play it. Her belief system saw that it was safe to explore musically, even make mistakes, that are not really mistakes but clues. So it shifted it’s survival agenda to include improvisation. The steady laid back pulse of the downbeat played by her, kept the critical mind in check, in stasis, while the realization could take place and the belief system could realign itself. It only takes a moment sometimes.

She was then able to give herself permission to sing and play her favorite folksongs on her violin, by ear, not by reading off of sheet music. To explore music again safely.

This protocol creates a new belief pathway that does not go through the Judgmental Forest. When we learn, we also remember the emotional charge of that lesson. It will interfere if it is not from a place of joy.

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm©2015

Non Linear Functionality

Drumming can trigger non linear functionality in human consciousness. This is one of the next evolutions for humanity; expanding our awareness beyond literal, beyond rationality, past intellectual parameters and around restrictive assumptions. Rhythm defines an outside reality beyond words and intellect. Drummers develop unique problem skills using timing as a dimension. This is a newly activated bio app. Rhythmic holographic constructs are a new paradigm employed by this dormant app that is being activated, now that the rational mind has ceased to be of much use except in three dimensional spheres. The coherent rhythm field is a usable paradigm, again. It was and then was over ruled, but now is coming back because it can decipher reality using equations in time. Time was the missing ingredients in tribal medications. The anthropologist ignored the singing, breathing, dancing, drumming by the shaman when they prepared their brews. Rhythm was and still is our blind side. Those who see the world rhythmically, understand basic truths about our dimension and how it relates to dimensions outside our comprehension.

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm©2015 buddyhelm.com

You say you had a hard life

well that’s a natural fact

things been taken from you

ain’t never get em back

I’m here to tell you

That kind of pain, ain’t no gain

Look out baby they’s comin back round

all over again

This time, Learn from the blues

This time, Don’t live it

This time don’t live the blues

This time just learn from the blues

I have realized that I would not have had such a stellar introduction to the blues if if hadn’t been for Christian, the keyboardist in Bethlehem Asylum. And as a result of his perspectives and teachings, the healing drumming therapies came about many years later.

In retrospect it seems like a forgone conclusion, even ordained, but while we go through our changes we seldom see the overall arch of the dramas in our lives. We may feel the intensities of the moment but it takes time for us to see our own ultimate intentions.

The fact was that he was born into the Brahmin caste in Jaipur, India, then moved to Harlem in New York City as a young boy in the midst of the greatest jazz music evolution that the world has ever known. He was saturated with all of the great jazz improvisers and musical theorists. While we lived and played in Coconut Grove, Christian talked about George Russell’s musical concepts that all the notes were available for improvising- not just the notes in the chords or the scale but the whole keyboard. There were no wrong notes.

“That wasn’t a wrong note. You just didn’t dig it.” Was his quip to quiet the young pups who thought they knew something about jazz. He could solo on trombone, his black wooden ebony flute, percussion and of course any keyboard. His attitude was a mixture of tough New York City street smarts, brilliant musician and composer but also the other side of his demeaner was the priest, the magic man. He was a jazz shaman. But that term did not exist back in nineteen seventy.

Whenever we opened for a major act, they would come over and meet Christian and learn musical ideas from him as he sat at his Wurlitzer electric piano during sound checks. He was always the center of awed interest, and he never abused the privilege. He was the calmest person in any crowd.

The seekers would spout quotes to him.

“You don’t know that for real. That’s something you read in a book.” was another way he put the pretensions of philosophers into perspective. He had reality written all over him. He was tall, even qaunt, thin, dark skinned, with thinning hair that he used black boot polish on to cover up the sparse parts of his sculpted head. He looked like Gandhi with his wire glasses, but with a taller, longer gait that had evolved over years in the big city. He owned the space he was taking up with solid sure conviction of who he was. His real angel side came out when the hippie kids would talk to him. He gave them insight in just a few words. Never one to elaborate. It was a zen koan left to the listener to ponder and decipher for years to come,

“Your soul is on fire.” He mumbled to me as we walked down the sidewalk at the University of Miami where we were to open for Miles Davis and his Bitch’s Brew band. He was right. My soul was burning white hot- as were many others at that time.

The philosophy of the band was historically based; Our Sisters of Bethlehem opened their convent to  the mentally ill back in the late seventeen hundreds in London. The insane lived there, also the political opponents of the crown, writers, philosophers, free thinkers, and the criminally mentally incompetent. The ruling class would sit in their observation booths high above the courtyard and be amused by the humanity wandering about, jabbering to themselves.

The lyrics to the ‘Bethlehem Asylum Theme song’:

“If you’re wondering where you are and from where you’ve come,

You’re in Bethlehem Asylum, Third one from the sun.”

Over the years, I have developed a way to use the drum in a therapeutic way. It is ancient and it is modern. But I often hear myself quoting Christian, or feeling him in my hands when I am playing the keyboards. I listen to the playback and have no idea how I could play that. His voicings are unique.

When I see myself performing a healing drumming meditation with someone or with a group, I remember his compassionate groove.

I seem to still be the drummer in Bethlehem Asylum.

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2015 buddyhelm.com: photo by Ron Sill