Russell Buddy Helm

1998. Savannah is a special place. It survived the Civil War intact, thanks to the perspicacity of it’s women folk who delivered enough booze to the invading horde that they spared the city. General William Tecumseh Sherman gave the city to President Lincoln as a Christmas present along with 2,500 tons of confiscated cotton on Christmas day 1864. It was a lucky city to survive the devastation wrought across the South by the Union forces. I thanked my gracious host in Atlanta, Johnny Freedom and all his cohorts at Little Five Corners in Atlanta and headed southeast through the lush green forest that is Southern Georgia, for a drumming meditation workshop at MoonDance; a New Age store in the picturesque promenade of Savannah. It was a first event for them. They were definitely ahead of the curve for the wave of drumming to sweep the south. I felt like I was on a mission; spreading the groove around the country. When I arrived, we set up in a vintage building that had been a slave market. I put out all my djembes from Ghana for this group of eager drummers. At this time, people did not have djembes from Africa. They were not available. So I would carry a dozen, sometimes up to two dozen Ghana djembes in my van which I stored around the US where ever I set up drumming events. The Ghana drums are lighter, more user friendly, especially for beginners. They are very inviting with nice Adinkra symbols carved on them. They were simple. When I decided to do this drumming as a life work, I decided to use these drums for several reasons; firstly, they did not have any hardware on them which can be intimidating. There very litle industrial dark energy used in making them. So people could feel more at ease playing them. Savannah is a tourist destination; lovely old trees in small parks spread all over the city. The houses are exceptional samples of Antebellum South at it’s finest. The art school was just getting started and the town had a certain unique simple charm. When we got going in the upstairs of this converted slave market, I looked around at the mix of people; every race seemed to be present. This was evidence that humans had evolved into a community of mutual agreement and support. I felt that we were releasing a certain energy that had been trapped in the building. It felt like an exorcism of sorts. There was joy and healing and really cool energetic grooves. This group was typical in that they did not have any idea what drumming was about but they wanted to participate in a groove as a group. This is an instinctive move on people’s part and I do not correct their playing; just show them the downbeat. If they get the drumming bug they can always find a drum teacher, but I warn them; many drum teachers are control freaks and traumatize the students, so I make sure they have a good time in the drumming meditation groups so that they will keep drumming even if they get a weird teacher along the way. We were standing around in the store, MoonDance. Tourists were strolling by. Ornate horse drawn carriages carried people up and down the promenade. A sincere middle aged man from the midwest spoke quietly to me, as if it were a confession. “I am a Catholic priest. We recently had a service for a friend who died. He was also a Catholic priest. He had requested that we drum for him. It was a very moving experience. I want to do this drumming in our church. But I’m afraid they won’t let us do that.”
“Yet…” I added. “When you do, let me know. I’ll come and bring some drums.” This is the way it went all over the country. I went where there was interest. I booked events on a first come first serve basis. Eventually I even drummed with a thousand Dominican nuns in Adrian, Michigan at their mother house. Things change for the better when people feel their groove.

With intention drumming there are more faculties of the human brain being used. Usually we are passively enjoying the entertainment coming at us. We have been trained into the receptive, non assertive state of mind. Some of us are more adept at receiving while others are more talented at telling the world what to do. Using a groove that is convincing but not assertive is the key to making the universe do what we want it to do. This has been a form of trance magic practices all over the globe for all times. We sense when we are in communion with the universe. It could be in any activity. But the shaman drummer comes into the union with the universe in a very receptive way, listening and feeling for how the universe wants to communicate with the drummer.  It is an introductory dance of rhythmic communion with forces that we do not comprehend but feel the need to beseech. Showing respect at this juncture seems to be a requirement. After the initial courtship between the drummer and the forces to be addressed, there is a time when the universe just likes to dance. That is the drummer’s job. After this passage of rhythmic dance time, there comes an opportunity when the universal forces, flushed with excitement after having had a good dance, will grant a favor to the drummer and their community. This is possible because the universe has all the elements of reality and can arrange them howsoever it pleases. There are many ways to look at this relationship between the drummer and the awesome universe at work, by using the groove.
Excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2015 all rights reserved

Atlanta, the testing ground

1995. Tommy Motolla was installed as head of Sony Music, after divesting himself of Hall and Oats, and Charlie my pal from the Bethlehem Asylum Daze. I was making folk art inspired by my trips to Atlanta, so was commissioned to make a tin ear to present to Tommy at the roast in Culver City. “What do you need to get ahead in the music business?” was printed on the glass domed case. Inside the glass was my tin ear and a pair of shiny brass balls. This was an homage to the Brill building days when songwriters sat in little rooms and composed love songs for teenagers then had doo wop singers record them. We still move to those grooves. They are our sacred tribal grooves. The CD “Drum Dance”, later retitled, “Let the Goddess Dance” was released. It was the beginning of drumming as a separate music form for me. I pulled away from the conventional music scene when I got cynical flak from some of my old session musician friends, “It’s just drums, man!” I threw out the rules about how to record a song and made up a new open canvas on which to paint rhythm. Large record companies controlled the manufacturing of CDs. Tape Specialties was the first company to go outside the monopoly and manufacture small runs of one thousand CDs.  Brent Lewis had an amazing  drum studio out in Joshua Tree where we drummed and slept under the stars. Our store was acoustically perfect for recording drums. Its a craftsman house built in the forties, floor above the ground with a two foot crawl space that acted as a super bass woofer, we vibrated the wooden floor with djembes. I put together a Protools computer recording system in the store. Helmtone records was created. My trips to Florida and Georgia and other parts of the country were getting more frequent. The drumming in St. Pete, Tampa, Orlando, Clearwater was picking up. 1997. November. We took one of the first precious Ghana djembes to Maui and sold it to our friends. Rod and Sunita. There was some sporadic drumming on one of the remote beaches that you had to hike into, but there didn’t seem to be drumming groups on Maui to speak of at that time. Djembes were not anywhere to be seen. I could feel that the time was imminent though. Something was rhythmically evolving in our three times a week drumming workshops at Seasons in Santa Monica. There was a wide spectrum of people; creative, eloquent, willing. The feedback was resembling a faith healing show. People were becoming believers in a form of energy that the drumming was generating; especially if the grooves were played in a certain relaxed way. They didn’t have time to learn traditional African drumming. They couldn’t remember the parts anyway. These people were creating what they wanted; a mechanism to recharge their lives. I just kept the downbeat going and they created, sang, released, healed, and celebrated. I was just the drummer! Now that we had come up with a rhythm therapy using drumming as a meditation, it was time to take it on the road and test the Helmtone Healing Drum Protocols among ‘real’ people. An artist in LA does not always get a true read on what they are creating. It is best to take it out of town to see if it is a viable product. Atlanta to me always represented the nexus of true music. The quality of musical experiences for me in Atlanta are indelibly etched onto my heart like a classic RnB tune cut into a lacquer disk. I love the town. If this drumming meditation worked there, in Atlanta, then it would work anywhere. Chomping at the bit, I arrived with a collection of derbougas from Morocco. We knew two Muslim brothers who ran a falafal stand in the Santa Monica Third Street Promenade. They imported rugs from their home in Tunisia, and rolled up clay camel drums inside the rugs to protect them. They were as fragile as flower pots, and had great tone. The pictures painted on the side of the little drums were strange, until one day I turned the drum upside down and saw that the images were camels walking across the desert. Wriston, a friend I met in LA at Motown had moved back to Atlanta. She hosted a house drumming meditation. The metaphysical community caught on when I went into their shops and pitched the idea. We had a bunch of witches out in the woods, banging and singing, and dancing on Halloween. Up in the Blue Ridge mountains, I taught a seminar on the downbeat amidst the tall trees. This felt very good. I felt I was on the right track even though when their ceremony started the drummers forgot about the downbeat and just hooted and banged away.  It  was a lot of fun but I could see that people were looking for meaning in their rituals. The drum would provide that ingredient but our psychology was getting in the way. One of the first events in Atlanta was at a long standing metaphysical bookstore on the north side of the hilly wooded center of town. The turn out was small; one dog. It’s owner was the editor for the Aquarian underground newspaper. I wrote an article on drumming as an energy and spiritual event. My sister heard the article in the United Kingdom at Glastonbury during her retreat at the Tor. Things were connecting all over the place. There was no money to be made at this but I was not deterred. I drummed at the Roswell Women’s center, and had a good turn out. The second time I returned, the women’s center had changed hands and had disregarded my booking an event months earlier. I had to throw out the conventional booking and touring methods based on my years in the regular music business. This was going to be a lot looser. I just reminded myself of how patient Baba Olatunji was. Cathy, infinitely patient, was sending me more delicate camel drums when they were dropped and broken. One men’s drumming event in the park was exceptionally noisy. The alpha male wanted me to get him the biggest drum I could find. He chewed up my dombeq with his class ring. I reminded myself that this was a long process and that I was playing a small part introducing rhythm to America in ways that had not existed before. I felt guided and pulled along by this creative flow of the groove. When Jumoke’s drums arrived from Ghana everything changed for the better. The Sensua gallery was actively running a drumming group by this time. I met Bill Liggin, a therapist who got the drumming therapy right away. I had been coming into Atlanta and adjacent venues for five years. The seeds had sprouted and mingled with the homegrown. Johnny Appleseed of the downbeat. This went on all over the US. Constant touring, replenishing drums, repairing vans, driving, drumming with so many people that they all started to resemble each other. We were a growing community, a network, a web of consciousness that would eventually make the right decisions for us all. And it would swing.
excerpt: History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm©2015 all rights reserved.