Russell Buddy Helm

Drums thundered off the brick buildings in downtown Elkhart, Indiana as The Wavettes, a drum and baton corps, marched and played their drums and bugles down main street of this typical perfect mid sized midwestern town- a good place to raise your kids up. Wearing a bass drum is not an easy task, even for a young, tall, skinny student of the famous woman drum teacher, Aileen Trafford.  They were national champions and the drummers were all excellent, as was the baton twirlers and color guard. In 1959, this was drumming in the United States; military, disciplined, marching, maneuvering. There was no swinging drumlines playing hip hop. This was traditional American ceremony; no dancing, just marching. The parade lasted hours, the young Scotch drum player was tall and looked older than his age. He was also a good enough drummer to be in the senior corps, but he was required to carry the largest, heaviest drum, strapped onto his thin frame that would come back to haunt his chiropractor at a later date in his life. The first mile was hot, the uniforms were heavy and grew moist in the Indiana summer sun. The second mile of the parade the leather straps wrapped around his thin long fingers began to chafe the skin. The third mile, the blisters start to come up on his fingers as the deep low pounding reverberated through his determined skull. The next few miles was the agony of watching his own fingers bleed freely as chunks of skin were ripped off by the unforgiving leather straps on the twirling scotch drum mallets. By the end of the parade there were blisters on most of the marcher’s feet. But the Scotch drummer had to soak his bleeding hands and wrap them in qauze soaked with Bactine, a useless antiseptic. He would not be able to hold a spoon for a day or so because of the pain and raw bleeding gashes in his fingers. It was part of the dedicated sacrifice required to be a good drummer.

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

“Awesome session again with two kids and Henry’s power song! Listening to the song made the one child talk about his birth mother and how she didn’t want him. At the end of the song, the autistic girl with him, who had been listening to his story with a very concerned look on her face, sang “A….. is a good person.”

Our intellectual mind is the most recent arrival at the party of human evolution, and it doesn’t even know it. Walking into the scene, the intellectual mind says,

“OK! Now the party can start. I am here!”

Our sense of rhythm was the first to arrive, setting up the drums for the party of our life, long before the frontal cortex was even a glimmer in mother nature’s eye. In the womb, the tempo outside triggered different survival chemicals to secrete into baby’s bloodstream. Was it a dangerous environment out there? i.e. fast, aggressive, chaotic tempos. Or was it sedate, bucolic. Or maybe stressful with pompous royal grooves? Whatever the rhythmic calling card, our sensibilities are decided without our having a chance to decide what we want. That is the human condition. Our intellectual mind decides things. That is what it does, often rescinding things that do not fit into it’s rational box. So late to the gig of life, the fretful mind excludes things that can not be spoken of. It decides not to see these things that don’t fit it’s rational template. But there are more things than there are words. There is more reality outside of our definition of reality than we can imagine. Our intellectual mind has blind spots. One very important blindside is rhythm. The so smart, so clever critical mind can be controlled by the first sense we had; our sense of rhythm. That is why commercials have soundtracks, why movies have driving drumbeats to stimulate war or any other imperative. We are driven by rhythm and we don’t even know it. To get this horsepower under control is simpler than thinking; start a steady tempo at about 50 beats a minute. Hit a deep downbeat tone on every beat, nothing special or fancy. Then slow your tempo down to about forty beats. Don’t let the critical mind get you into a tizzy deciding what is correct tempo. Just slow the thing down. Critical mind will fight this maybe. Experience the drama and continue to slow down, little by little. Viola! You have just broken free of the critical mind’s hold over your operating system. You are beholding the universe in all of it’s undefinable mystery.

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

For the longest time (25 years) I have been using the phrase, “The Downbeat is forgiving. It just wants to be played. If you lose it, no blame, no shame, just find it again and you’re back on your groove.” This is constantly showing me new meanings in this aphorism. When we set up a non judgmental drumming session, there is confusion and distraction to varying degrees in the people who desire healing from the drum. Their intellectual mind is running amok; making it impossible for the real “I” to witness itself outside of fear. By introducing a very simple concept into their overstrung critical mind; that the downbeat is the only thing they need pay attention to for the moment, plus if they do, it feels good. The mental anarchy subsides and they begin to get a bearing on their own place in the universe. The distractions  fall away. It may take some time for a few of us, but eventually the human wins out. The heart finds a way. The downbeat is the voice of the heart, still beating, still willing, still forgiving, still loving.

excerpt: “History of the groove” Russell Buddy Helm©2015 all rights reserved buddyhelm.com

Watching and learning what this new form of drumming therapy is doing for us has been a fruitful illuminating trip. I am passing on what we have learned in the drumming therapies because this is an on going evolution of how we can upgrade our own operating system using rhythm and trance and downloading wisdom to our heart drive. But before we can do this, we need to make room in our beings for a new mentality. This involves releasing memory space being used by our past. The way the drum has made this accessible is simple yet fascinating. When we set up a judgement free space for drumming, we create a new definition in our intellect of what it is to do something creative and not judge ourselves for doing this, as well as not judging what we have created while in this sacred creative space with the drum. Once our belief system sees that this non judgmental form of seeing the world is valid and pleasant, it can then be transferred over to our self help psychology department in our personal survival mind. This new value system redefines our self image without self judgmental limitations. This new operating system takes over without any disruption because it is accepting more of what is possible. We become better and our drumming improves too!

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