Russell Buddy Helm

The second night of the Geia Fesival was the showdown with the djembe cowboys

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story” Russell Buddy Helm

©2013 all rights reserved

The second night of the Geia Festival was the showdown with the djembe cowboys. There were a few dozen people gathering around the fire, eager to drum and dance. Three big guys walked into the middle of the circle and started banging. They didn’t show any respect for anyone and what they were playing was very bad; just a lot of banging and posturing. I was already set up with my stool, djembe stand and tambourine pedal. They just ignored what was already going and disrupted the circle and the dance. The other drummers gave up. I got in their face and waved my white taped up hands to distract them.

“You can’t do that.” I said loudly over their noise.

“F**k you.” the biggest one said. I grinned. This was going to be fun.

“You’re scared little boys making a whole lot of noise. You don’t respect the other drummers. You don’t respect the dancers. You don’t respect the women, and you don’t respect the women drummers. You don’t respect yourselves. I am not going to let you do this anymore.” I waged my white taped up fingers in their faces again. This is a good trick to remember when someone is locked into aberrant behavior; distract them with a visual.

“F**k you.” All three of them said. They banged louder. It was apparent that they were playing from a place of dysfunctional behavior; deep insecurity, resentment about daddy and mommy, not getting laid, a typical list of reasons why guys act like dickheads.

“If you want World War III; then right here, right now. But I wouldn’t advise it. I am not going to let you make that horrible noise and disrespect what these people are trying to do here.”

Another round of profanity. So I let them have it,

“THE GIRLS DON’T LIKE YOU!” I yelled at them. That got their attention. They stopped banging. They looked around at the people gathered around us. The women were glaring at them nodding their heads in agreement.

The ring leader sneered at them, “Who is this asshole?” He said nodding in my direction. Cy’s girlfriend held up the brochure that held my bio and recited out loud,

“This is..”..she listed the people I had played with. Their stoney faces started to droop a little. They tried to regain the upper hand but I was quicker, and started a groove with the downbeat, and the tambourine; the typical dance groove that has always worked. The girls yelled,

“That’s it! That’s what we want. Not that crap you’re playing! ”

They got defensive, “The fire tenders asked us to come here!”

Now the fire tenders are a romantic lot; they don’t drum much, don’t dance much, but they make the fire happen, essential to the whole effect. They take great pride in their art of stacking logs that erupt in a celebratory blaze at the beginning of each night’s festivities. I wasn’t going to let these guys use them as an excuse. I got up in the big guy’s face. He was actually bigger than me, not as big as Terry the Tramp, but sizable.

“The PROMOTERS! of this festival, HIRED ME! to come out here, and DUST YOUR LILY WHITE ASS!!! Which is what I will do….”

I’ve had unexpected swings on me ranging from high school football rednecks to drunked up step father, martial arts competitors as well as motivated professionals but the thing that saved me from injury was a combination of my father’s instincts and my drummers’ quick reflexes. This big guy considered swinging on me, I could feel it, but I gave him the look….The dancers gathered around. This was their turf and they gave these guys the unmistakable impression to leave. I took my eyes off of him, giving him a way out, and focused on setting up a groove that would dissipate the angry little boy energy.

The big guy tried to mimic what I was doing but couldn’t play that simply. I started to realize then, that drumming was a way to read someone’s psychological profile. This was a valuable lesson that I learned from these guys. They gave up and left. The groove picked up again and everyone had a good time.

The next day, dancers followed me around the heavily forested retreat. As I got to meet all the regulars, some would come up and express their gratitude. Others would make suggestions about taking the tempos even slower so they could dance for longer stretches at a time.. They were excited about the possibilities. I didn’t know that they were staying close to me to protect me. The three djembe cowboys were looking for me. They had made it known that they wanted to ‘kick my ass’ which was unusual for this group of peaceful people. Cy mentioned later that the they had confronted him at his drum booth and wanted to know where I was. Cy, it turned out was a Marine, said, “Why don’t we all just get along.”

Guys are so sensitive about their rhythm it’s almost too easy to get their goat just by criticizing their sense of rhythm. It is partly a result of a thousand years of being denied a groove in our European tribes. When the Romans came across Europe with the Church, they wiped out all indigenous rhythms from the Caucasus to the isle of Britain. Dancing and drumming were pagan, evil, and punishable by death. As a result we have a deep insecurity and shame about our rhythms. Other races know this about the American/Europeans. It is our blind side. In the martial arts world, Far East schools train to drum beats, often in time signatures that we don’t easily understand like five and seven beats. This gives them a distinct advantage in fighting; we cannot anticipate their moves, but they can totally anticipate American/European moves because our training is based on simplistic four beats.

Bruce Lee said it succintly, “If you want to defeat your opponent, all you have to do is break their rhythm.”

Bruce would parody American karate martial artists by pretending to move like a stiff robot. Bruce was the cha cha champion of Hong Kong. He loved to dance. When I was being tested privately, for a belt in karate when I was sixteen, I managed to kick and punch my teacher simoultaneously.

“How did you do that?” he asked with some surprise. Then he remembered, “Oh yeah, you’re a drummer!”

The next afternoon, at the festival pavilion, I gave my three hour drumming meditation seminar on their huge professional stage with a giant sound system. Hundreds of sincere drummers, men and women, kids and adults, handicapped and whole, all listening and playing along, getting the downbeat concept, the basic four and three beat patterns, the purpose of the slower tempos for dance, protecting the space. It was a great long, high consciousness drumming workshop, one of the best. When I came down off the stage I was in an exhalted state. The drumming had gotten me here to this sacred place and everyone was sharing the groove. I felt vindicated and full of the spirit.. Suddenly my spider instincts woke up, someone was on my left blindside, I turned and saw one of the bad guys within knife thrust of my left kidney. He was just looking at me. His sock cap pulled down over his dark eyes.

“I heard your workshop…..that was good.” He said in a subdued tone.

I stuck out my hand and shook his, “It’s about love.” I said.

There were no cameras allowed but I had set mine up, focused just on me on the stage, and got a little of the drumming affirmation, “I am not a victim” and posted it later on youtube.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story” Russell Buddy Helm

©2013 all rights reserved

“There is another reason why we brought you here, that we didn’t tell you about.”

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 all rights reserved

2000. “There is another reason why we brought you here, that we didn’t tell you about.” Selene, the festival promoter said to me in their tent. It was the middle of the night, in the Midwest. They had flown me in, treated me like a rock star, drove for hours until we arrived at a huge, private festival site filled with thousands of happy campers; families, kids, kilts, bare breasts which meant it was a safe place for women, flowing hippie garb, costumes, flute music on the air and the unmistakable rumble of a drum circle high up on the ridge. The festival organizer was a woman, that impressed me.

She explained to me in very concise concerned terms. “We’ve had this festival for twelve years. We bought this land; four hundred acres . It used to be a boy scout camp. There are three guys who drum and they have ruined the festival for everybody for the last three years. They are djembe cowboys.”

“I’m your hired gun?” I said incredulously.

“We read your book. You’re the only one who understands this problem.”

Patrick, her partner/husband added carefully, “They are big guys, really big. Toughs. They dominate the circle, don’t let anyone else set a beat, they don’t let the dancers move around the fire. They are aggressive, angry, loud, rude and not part of the tribe. They come from back East, New Jersey or someplace. I don’t know…”

“Well…This a horse of a different color….” I said, checking my internal radar on this one. I thought of the stoney faced Richard Boone in the vintage TV show, ‘Paladin’;  Have Djembe, Will Travel.’

“I’m here. OK. Let’s do it.”

Their worried expressions lightened up. The Lone Ranger had arrived.

This was what I had signed on for. These were really sweet people. I had been through so many different scenes; psychedelic pop festivals where the cops herded alligators onto the festival site,  Redneck state trooper confrontations down on the chitlin circuit between Miami and Dothan, Alabama, Otis Redding’s road manager slicing my shoulder pushing me out of a second story window, Punk rock concerts in LA where kids slammed into me, Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami where mental patients jumped on my drumset while I was playing it, Rock n Roll suicides, junkie/ jazz intrigues, art/ damaged performances ending in police riots, Afro Cuban  gun confrontations in Little Havana, The Bethlehem Asylum’s typical concerts that oft went astray, Tim Buckley  in Boulder, refusing to leave the stage and singing until they shut the power off and I had to restrain the promoters’ son, preventing him from breaking Tim’s wrists. Peter Ivers confronting hardcore punk TV show guests with his recurring question, “What’s the meaning of life?” Bikers, mercenaries, FBI/CIA assassinations,  music business murders…..on and on. If this was to be my OK corral; then so be it.

“Let me go up to the drumming circle and see what’s going on.” I said calmly. I was curious but there was also the familiar pinging in my head. This was a moment in history. As I walked up the hillside, the drums were sporadic, unfocused,  subdued. I hefted my djembe onto my shoulder and crossed the meadow toward the huge glow of the fire. Embers danced up into the night air.  There were banners, the moon was bright,  I felt like Toshiro Mifuni in ‘The Seven Samurai.’

The people were very nice, humble even, standing around the big fire, tapping on their various drums. This was a beginning night for the festival, so not everyone had arrived yet. I sat down and surveyed the scene. Mostly young people, one girl in a kilt, a djembe hanging off her bare thin shoulders. There was no pretention here, also not much of a groove. I decided to learn from them. I sat down on a log, set up my tambourine foot pedal and lightly hit the downbeat in the middle of my Ghana Djembe head and followed their lead..I liked this approach because I invariably would learn something; a new beat they were trying to get to, or I would understand the most important drum group leader’s lesson; find the beat that even the most novice player can play, that way no one is left out and their life force energy, their orgone, was the truest and often the most potent. I stayed soft so as not to disturb this meditative mood. I was enjoying myself immensely, fitting in, when a rangy, thin guy strolls over to me. He had a leather stained cowboy hat on, a smattering of whiskers in a goatee. and he had a drum. He came up gently, “Excuse me. But could I sit next to you and try to keep up?”

That took me by surprise, “I’m not playing much.” I said simply.

“Yeah, But what you’re playing is right.”

“That’s the correct answer.” I smiled,  “Sit down.”

He followed my pattern as best he could, the group was starting to wake up, but I was not leading it…yet. After a few minutes he said,

“You know, I found a book a while ago and it changed my……” He focused on my face in the firelight. His eyes lit up, and his face showed real amazement. “You wrote the book!”

“You read my book?!!” I was also amazed.

He gestured to the rest of the group, “Hey! Everybody! He wrote the book!!” He pointed at me and all the people smiled knowingly and nodded. I was not expecting this.

“Can I study with you?” He asked earnestly.

“Sure.”  I said, for some reason, I felt Timmy hanging over my shoulder, laughing with that twinkle in his eye. “Let’s have a  lesson right now.” I suggested, taking the lead as the zen drum master teacher. He looked scared but willing. “OK”

I looked around the fire at the women, standing, waiting for the drummers to get a groove going so that they could dance. This is what my life was all about. “Pick a woman, any woman. Don’t let her know. And we’ll make her dance.”

He introduced himself as Cy. He looked around, suddenly intimidated by the weight of the choice facing him. I sympathized with him. I remembered being paralyzed like that when Tim had told me to pick something out on the jukebox in a bar in New York city while all these powerful musicians were hanging out, talking. I was so afraid, I could not choose between Frank Sinatra or Marlene Dietrich. Tim finally came over and chose something for me.

I looked around at the women and chose one; mid twenties, wearing a sari, bare breasted with bindi on her forehead and around her nipples. Her hands resting on her hips with that attitude of, ‘Come on guys get a groove going.’

“Her” I whispered to Cy, “But don’t let her know. Just follow my lead, don’t play anything more than I do, hit the downbeat, steady, don’t speed up.” He followed my instructions and she started to sway to the beat. He got too excited and started to bang too much. “No, don’t do that! Keep it simple, just the downbeat, leave the space. don’t get excited…” She felt the anxiety and faded back into the shadows.

I stopped and looked at him. “We lost her. Now its going to be more difficult to get her to dance again, but we have to. So do exactly what I tell you to do. No more. Just the downbeat. Stay STEADY.” Slowly like a deer coming out of the forest, she reemerged and started to move again. Soon she and others were dancing around the fire, safely, with an entranced, fluid energy. I kept admonishing him, “Less..play less. Hit the Downbeat.” The firedance grew and the rest of the drummers were following us. It was a perfect moment. Eventually the groove ended and she faded away. Cy was beside himself with excitement, “I have NEVER  done that before.”

“You’re a drummer. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing.”

I realized that the world that I wanted to live in had arrived. Manifesting on the drum works.

Suddenly the woman dancer materialized behind us. Cy knew her.

He introduced me. “This is the guy who wrote the book.”

“We’ve been watching you dance.” He said excitedly.

She frowned.

“No.” I said. “We were learning to drum by watching you dance.”

“Well, in that case. I’ll dance some more.’ She said directly to me.  I was sitting and her nipples were at eye level a foot from my face. The bindi’s around her aureoles sparkled invitingly in the firelight. I wanted to kiss them.

“Do you like my bindis?” She asked me holding her breasts forward.

“Yes.  They are beautiful.” I said almost speechless. I looked up to the stars and thanked them. She disappeared and I never saw her again.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 all rights reserved

Johnny Appleseed of the downbeat.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story” Russell Buddy Helm

©2012 all rights reserved

1990

As I signed my books at the New Age Trade Show conventions each year, the lines grew longer, each person I asked, “Do you have a store?” Most of them said yes. “Give me  your card. I will come and set up a drumming group.”

“Be of Service” Cathy had responded to my equivocation about not knowing what to do after leaving the shark infested water of film production. I had taken off my suit and tie and did not have an identity, but I had a gift. It was a gift that had given me great joy and solace. It was an identity that compensated for many perceived shortcomings in my life. So teaching drums became an avenue for me to rebuild my personal goals and self esteem. There was not the stigma of drug and alcohol related problems which I was grateful for, I had steered clear of that, but the emotional stress of mysterious deaths had been a recurring theme. Impending doom. I was afraid to work with any singer/songwriters for fear that my bad luck would visit them. I did not want to have any more partners mysteriously dying while we were creating music. So I decided that drumming; solo drumming; drumming with total strangers, would be the safest path. I used Chuck Berry’s strategy; go on the road alone and have the promoter provide the band. If the beats I play as so simple, then everyone could play them; like Chuck’s songs.

The goal here was not musical hegemony, it was higher consciousness and the key was women playing the drum and women safely dancing in sacred trance.

I took it on the road after initial success in Santa Monica and it worked, but in most places I was so far ahead of the wave that people didn’t get it. The ones that did, picked up the concept and the lesson of the downbeat and it grew like a little tree sapling, in places all over the country. Some places like Asheville, already had drumming groups but they were usually boisterous affairs with young men banging mercilessly, creating a good excuse for the local police to shut them down. I introduced the concept of the downbeat and moderate tempos to as many as would listen. The women were always the first to understand because they wanted to dance; and you can’t dance if the tempo speeds up and the guys are banging too hard. I was giving these guys the benefit of my many years hitting the groove all through the South in the Sixties and on into the Seventies when the drummer’s job was to get people to dance. Most of the youngbloods  were so caught up in the drama of modern culture that they had difficulty holding a steady beat, let alone slowing down to a danceable tempo .. But when I hit the groove, the girls danced. That was always the the litmus test. This obviously frustrated some of the youngbloods who had spent so much time growing their dreadlocks. The girls wouldn’t look at me while they were in the ecstatic trance of dance, I was old, but they danced anyway. Whenever possible I encouraged women to drum. They drum for different reasons then the men; for community, cooperation instead of competition and fear. I knew it would be a long and thankless activity but I didn’t mind. I knew it was important. Our culture needed this. It was going to be a healthy and necessary addition to our consciousness. We needed sacred drumming. I just planted the seeds of the soulful drumming and moved on. I was told one of my spirit guides was ‘Chief Many Horns’ who was a real traveling mystic back in the eighteen forties. He had done the same thing after trying to explain to Congress the efficacy of treating the native population honorably then eventually participated at Little Big Horn; so much for reasonable discussions. But I knew that I was planting seeds of the life force itself; I was not confronting any power structure this was an addition. Orgone was being generated, Chi was being spread around, Reiki energy was healing people through the groove. Soul was being nurtured in brains and hearts of people who did not have it in their make up but who needed it. We were making a matrix of connectivity on the superconscious level. It would pay off sometime in the future, I was sure of it. When the local connections grew to the point of mass consciousness, we would have nation world earth consciousness and the drum would be the conduit. We as a species would be able to make group decisions that would be life affirming, not based solely on profit but on well being; stewardship. It was just a matter of time; keeping time, sharing the groove and making conscious connections all across the country and the world. When everyone would be finally playing these simple basic patterns using the downbeat, we would be a tribe, a family of one mind. It would not be soon, but it would happen.

An unmistakable destiny appeared in my own identity; starting with the death of my father, then Aileen Trafford, my first drum teacher at the age of eight, a remarkable woman, then a musical heritage nurtured by my mother. Even the futility of the Bethlehem Asylum and tragic murder’s of Tim Buckley and Peter Ivers took on new meaning. There were so many clues from the universe that I was doing the right thing, I had to continue; just to see how it would turn out if for no other reason.

1999. On stage at the International New Age Trade Show in Denver. I was brought there by the publisher of my first book on drumming, Llewellyn Worldwide, to give a demonstration of drumming as a meditative healing artform. The dinner hall was filled with over a thousand vendors from the three day show, eating on Llewellyn’s tab. It was a gracious affair. I had not performed in front of a large audience in several decades. They told me to bring some drums, so I fashioned road cases for the African djembes.  The head of advertising, Lisa, had set the theme of caribbean nights, there was a parrot on the mic stand, she introduced me as one of their new authors. I took the low foot tall stage,

“I want people to come up here and drum with me who are afraid to try this. Women! ESPECIALLY WOMEN! People who have never hit a drum. I don’t want any drummers! I want you to see that anyone can do this. Come on up. Don’t be shy.”

It is hard to believe now, that drumming had not ‘happened’ yet, but there were no drumming groups around the country then. It was not yet a national trend. Slowly with some shyness people came up. They sat down at the  carved African drums. I set the tempo with my tambourine on my foot and hit the downbeat in the middle of the drumhead. “Just get the downbeat going. Support that deep note in the middle of the drumhead.”

The downbeat is a New Orleans invention from about two hundred years ago. It was an expediency created out of the need to get everyone going on the same groove right away.

It was as if they found me in a cold storage vault, thawed me out and said, “Now play!” I took off and the group stayed on the downbeat and the place exploded with cheering and dancing. The whole room was on their feet in a matter of minutes, dancing and having a great time. The publisher was sitting at her place of honor and her eyes were wide, mouth open in astonishment.

“We thought you were just a writer. We had no idea you were this strong.”

“The books are just an attempt to write about this.” I gestured at the joyous throng of dancers, sweating and happy after hours of moving to a good beat. Drumming had arrived.

www.commondreams.org

I was taking an extended drum solo that sounded like a Harley, and it was a really hot and humid night.

excerpt “History of the Groove, Drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 all rights reserved

1969. I was taking an extended drum solo on a typically hot and humid Florida night. The Bethlehem Asylum was playing to a full house of ardent fans and we were giving it our best, most intense performance. I was dripping wet. No shirt, skinny, hairless chest, ‘slight build’ as the medical draft examination described my long thin frame. My very long hair and muttonchops hung down off the sides of my baby face, salty drops of sweat falling onto my chrome Ludwig snare drum head as I pounded out a drum solo that sounded like a Harley 74 cranking  up and going through all four gears. I loved playing a drum solo that sounded like a hog. My mind was on the open road, headlight tilted up for the long night highway ahead of me, shining far enough ahead to avoid any gators warming themselves on the blacktop, maybe somewhere down below Kissimmee, blasting through the everglades, wide eyed and free. “Nothins’ gonna stop the MIDNIGHT RIDER…”

The atmosphere in the club was so thick I was taking huge gulps of air as I pushed my endurance, shifting up into fourth gear, kicking hard on the bass drum pedal, tripolets around the tomtoms, snare slamming like a high powered sniper rifle, chattering like an AK, mimicking the carnage in the jungle half a world away. Cymbals bashing like lightening flashes over the sea of sawgrass somewhere beyond the safety zone of tourist Florida, out in the boonies; outside of Immockalee, where the Seminoles move like ghosts in their dugouts. Hellbent for leather. The crowd cheering, clapping, sweating, hooting, drinking, screaming as I gulped more air. My young healthy lungs inhaling so hard my wet nostrils collapsed on themselves, unable to take the air pressure. I opened my mouth wide to get more air into the engine. Chewing gum, biting down hard as I slammed ahead in a full tilt boogie meditative groove at a hundred miles an hour on the open road. Achieving “Independence’; where all arms, all feet, all hands are going as fast as possible on their own rhythms yet connected to the inner core of quiet, peace,   happiness,  fearlessness; at one with the survival life force; chi, soul, mojo, orgone, prana, ashe, Grace. The downbeat of the universe beating within my own heart. Arriving at the mystical communion only a drummer can know.  Everyone else wanting to be there but all they could do was cheer and witness the trancendent moment.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

I gulped more air and hit it harder, twisted the deadman throttle all the way back, gutsy rumble of that four stroke Harley the only thing in my ears.  Sticks dancing so fast and slick they almost launched like torpedoes out of my fierce grip. More gulps of air, more chomps on the gum.  My black thick wet hair airborne around my face and shoulders like Medusa; slapping my chest and shoulders like some invisible dominitrix.  Faster! Harder, baby! Wet meshed cords of hair whipped like snakes across my sweating face.  I gulped more air, chomped gum and swallowed as my hair slapped into my gaping mouth.  The gum, the gulp, the chomp all happened simoultaneously.. The gum, suddenly mashed into my wet hair, was sucked down my throat by the intense air pressure. It was immediately impossible for me to breath. In the blink of an eye I was choking to death. Nobody seemed to notice at first. I couldn’t stop the drum solo. This is an interesting effect of drumming either on a drumset or on a handrum like an African djembe in our meditation groups. People won’t stop drumming even if they are hurting themselves. They will continue to play as blood appears on their hands, or they strain the muscles and tendons. Primal, basic, instinctive, the groove drives us as if we are seeing an oasis in the desert and we are thirsty. I witness people who won’t stop, no matter what else is happening. I was choking to death and I wouldn’t stop drumming.

My father appeared before me. He had been mysteriously killed when I was four years old, most likely by trusted friends in the intelligence business, but he had saved my life when I was a few months old. Submerged beneath the water at a swimming quarry in Pennsylvania, he had lifted me up out of the water as I was blacking out. It had felt like God was lifting me up. That was one of only three memories I had of my father. But here he was, in this sweating, hot nightclub. I was dying; suddenly and ridiculously by my own doing. Saint Peter was standing there shaking his head with scorn, “Dumb. Really dumb, Buddy.”

“Pull the hair out of your throat..” I heard my father say in a very patient Pennsylvania Dutch accented voice.

I kept the bass drum going, my left foot on the frantically opening and closing hihat, and my right stick moving around the tom toms. With my left hand I grabbed the roots of the thick tube of hair that now disappeared into my mouth, gum enmeshed, down my throat. I pulled it up. It was long and slimy and really disgusting as it came up out of my throat. Eventually, the almost two feet of hair emerged from my gaping mouth with a giant blob of gooey gum stuck on the end like a knight’s mace. The crowed changed from cheering to: “Eeeuuughooo! That’s disgusting! Aaaahhhh!” This giant glob of gum and hair and spit hung by the side of my face as I finished the solo. The Asylum members laughing so hard they almost couldn’t finish the set. Jeanie, one of our most strong hearted fans cut the glob out of my tangled hair with scissors she always kept for such occasions. I don’t know if someone took it as a souvenier. I hope not.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story” Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 all rights reserved

Don Henley strolled into our store on a Sunday afternoon.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm © 2013 all rights reserved

1998

Don Henley strolled into our store on a Sunday afternoon. He checked out the drums, “I’ve just been setting up my home studio again. Vacuumed the carpet….probably got enough to last another ten years..”. We both laughed. “I want to have that atmosphere where we used to just play. You know?”

I did know. “These djembes will give you that state of grace.” I said simply.

“Yea!” He enthused, “Grace! That’s the word I was looking for!”

Great. I just gave Don Henley his next million seller.

He sat down and I put some African djembes around him. He seemed perplexed. “How do you play them?” he said, seriously interested, drummer to drummer. No rock star bullshit.

I gently popped the standing drum, quickly lifting a deep tone out of the middle of the goatskin head then hovering above the head, ready for the next downbeat. “Flat, just use your whole hand; fingertips and heel…”

Then he stopped me from teaching him. “No.”  He said.”Never mind.” Of course…I could not dare to teach him how to play the drums. He was an expert rock star drummer/singer/songwriter/asshole. Although at this moment he was being pretty nice.

“OK.” He said, “I’ll take ’em.”  He mumbled.

“Which ones?” I asked.

“All of them, man.”

He strolled around our tiny shop. He picked up a copy of my unpublished manuscript, ‘Let the Goddess Dance’.

“What’s this?”

“It’s my book, about drumming. There is a CD that goes with it.” He put it on the pile of things to buy.

“No I don’t want the CD. I don’t want to get busted for stealing somebody’s music.”

“That’s right. You guys never got busted for lifting somebody’s music.” I said with my slightly accusing tone.

“What do you mean?” he said defensively.

“Nothing.” I said but I was thinking of ‘One of these nights’ in particular which was a pretty good cop of Al Green.

He also bought one of my oil landscape paintings I painted with all my fingertips tapping instead of a brush. It is pointilist style.  Very dreamy, English countryside. He handed me a card.

“Here. If this one explodes I have another one. I’ll be back.”

He wandered out and came back about an hour later. He looked at the total, faked a heart attack then signed the receipt.

“My roadie will be by tomorrow to pick them up.”

“If you want me to tune them, or play them, just le….”

“Yea, yea. I’ll call you..” He said with a wave as he headed for the door.

“Wait a minute, Don…” I said. He stopped.

“What?”

“New pants?” I asked.

“Yea. Why?”

I reached down and pulled off the sizing strip stuck to the ass of his new jeans.

He walked out and I realized that he had just bought a copy of my manuscript, uncopyrighted. I got on the stick right away and got it published with Llewellyn Worldwide. Thanks Don. Your roadie looks more like a rock star than you do. If I listened to the Eagles I might find some lyrical ideas lifted from my book but what am I gonna do; sue the Eagles? I’d rather not listen to them. It’s not that I don’t respect what they’ve done. I am still looking for the mystery in the music.

It didn’t take long for Llewellyn Worldwide publishing to realize that they had a best seller on their hands; that is, in the New Age market. They changed the title to “Drumming the Spirit to Life” but kept the CD included in the book as “Let the Goddess Dance”. I wrote a song by that title on it intended to become a New Age Anthem where I played all the instruments and sang. I was free to do what I wanted. I was not in the music business anymore. I was not just a drummer working to make hit songs for someone else. I was an author. Drumming had not yet arrived as a national pastime. I was ahead of the wave on this one. I was positioned for a long ride, only I had to watch myself. My tendency to speak bluntly was always a risk. I had to really watch my rock n roll mouth at the New Age conventions. They were busy  trying to bring in the light; ignore and suppress the dark. Although I sympathized with this one sided approach to meditation and healing, I also knew that if you don’t come to terms with your own shadow, it will sneak up and bite you on the ass when you least expect it. I had a few teeth marks on my derriere.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm © 2013 all rights reserved

1995

“This band sucks, but you’re great!” She said, then kissed me. I continued playing.

excerpt “History of the Groove, drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm

©2013 all rights reserved

“This band sucks, but you’re great!” She said, then kissed me. I continued playing.” I haven’t heard that in a while.” I responded. It was a typical beer bar on a typical Saturday night and I was playing the drumset with Francis and a group of his friends. A good looking girl was trying to dance as we chugged through some Allman Brothers songs; “One Way out’, “Southbound”, on and on. I didn’t like playing bars anymore; low lifes, loser musicians living the ‘blues’ lifestyle.  At least the no smoking ban was in effect. If you want to be a musician, this is usually where you end up; selling beer with your music. I did it because I wanted to keep my chops up on the kit. It was like going to handball court and working out. I ignored everything and just felt good playing. I was playing well, I was having fun in the dingy ‘Brennan’s Pub’ in Venice, California. This girl was having a hard time though. She was trying to dance; just dance. The typical horny barfly creep kept hitting on her. She would move away, he would pursue her. Finally out of desperation to get away from the guy, she jumped  up onto the stage, stepped around the idiot lead guitar poser, bopped up next to me as I sat on my drummer’s throne and told me her opinion of the band and of me. Then she leaned down over me and kissed me, very passionately, tongue down the throat, the whole thing. I kept the beat going. The guys in the band assumed I knew her. “What’s your name?” I asked above the din, as we banged on.

“Jenny.” she said as she stood there and bopped to the beat.

“That was my first girlfriend’s name.” I said making small talk, while hitting the accents on ZZ Tops, “Tush”. The rest of the band was in their alcohol induced fantasy state of stardom; performing in front of thousands of adoring fans in some grand festival. I was wondering what this girl was up to. She continued to stand next to me and dance while we went through the reportoire of the usual bar songs. The creep that had been harassing her still hovered at the edge of the stage but was looking less predatory now. He decided to give up and walked away.  We finished the set, a few people were sober enough to clap and yell. When Jenny was sure that the stalker was gone, she hopped down off the stage and disappeared; no phone number, no, “See you later.” She just slipped out safely. As we loaded out I thought about this event and tried to make sense of it. It felt important. Jenny had to have a safe space, right away. So she jumped up onto the bandstand not because I was some bad ass guy, but because the beat was safe. It was the beat that she recognized as an eternally safe energy. I had witnessed this years earlier playing with Chuck Berry; he seemed so alive, even at his advanced age of forty six years old, and it was because the beat was keeping him young. I told myself back then to pay attention to this. It was important then, and even more important now. I finally spoke to Francis and the rest of the guys in the band,

“I am not going to do this anymore. So don’t call me and ask me.”

The guitar player was uncomprehending, “Whut? We got you some roadies.”

I had to explain it, “I am not going to play drums and get women to dance in an unsafe environment. Ever again. I learned from the greats about how to get women to dance, but there is no safe place for women to dance in our culture. So I am not going to put women in harm’s way any more. I am not playing clubs ever again.” I walked out.

“But yer thu groove king, Buddy!” I ignored their pleading and left that world behind.

There was a time when the music felt sacred. It lasted only a few years but it left an indelible impression on my soul. I decided to start writing again. I wanted to create the world that I wanted to live in. A world where it was safe for women to dance the sacred dance. I had boycotted writing years earlier when I had scared myself very badly by creating, or anticipating events that changed the world. ‘The Oracle’. I called it a novel but it was about my impressions while I was allowed into the inner sanctum of Sanford Research Institute in Palo Alto back in nineteen seventy five. My novel got to Simon and Schuster and they loved it. But the world events overtook the book and the book became real. There was the Jihad, the Islamic revolution, the Mahdi commanding the Muslim world to cleanse the infidels. It seemed unreal as I watched it on the six oclock news. I had written about it as fiction but now it was real. Had I created it? I had that experience with other writing. I asked Stewart, the  author of ‘Rebel without a Cause’ screenplay and many other great movies. “Does a writer create reality or just pick up whats going to happen?”

“Both.” he said. “The red jacket is an example. I wrote the red jacket into the ‘rebel’ script as an afterthought. But after the movie came out, every kid had to have a red jacket.”

“I mean, do  you create something out of thin air. Like a jihad revolution or…”

“I don’t know.” he answered diplomatically. I had my suspicions. I knew that manifesting or conjuring with the drum was as old as time itself. I had written a novel about a young psychic kid raised in the South who ended up at SRI involved in a remote viewing project ending with the Islamic revolution. I was so scared I didn’t let Simon & Schuster publish it. I stopped writing. I didn’t want to manifest anything that terrible again and I didn’t want the spooks on my tail again wanting to use me as a psychic spy. But now, this was different. I knew the world that I wanted to create. It was important for our culture that this new world emerge. If the women were not safe to dance in ecstatic sacred dance, then that creative energy would turn bitter, and our culture would not survive. It would be a world that was safe for the sacred dance. I knew what I would call it: “Let the Goddess Dance”.

Our culture was doomed unless we could create a safe space for the sacred, sensual, spiritual dance. It was not about sex. It was about joyous prayer with a groove that was danceable; non aggressive, nurturing, creative, inclusive of all people, and magical. I started to see young people banging on djembes. The impulse was there in the zeigeist but without direction it would go the way of most music in this culture; merely commercials for selling alcohol. This was important enough to come out of the closet as  a writer and get to work. The book and the CD evolved quickly as we held drumming meditation workshops three times a week in the store on Montana Avenue. People from all walks of life came in and contributed their insights.  I knew I was on the right track. The universe was enabling this process. All I had to do was keep the groove going. After each workshop I sat down at the first generation of laptop computer and pecked out my insights from that night’s session. It became a book quickly.

Guro Dan Inosanto was Bruce Lee’s partner

excerpt “History of the Groove, Drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy helm ©2013

all rights reserved

1992

Guro Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee’s partner, was  demonstrating knife fighting techniques to a select group of high level black belts; CIA, SWAT, SEALS, Special Ops, LAPD; but when Guro Dan wielded the blade it looked like he was painting a Jackson Pollack; gracious swoops and jabs, slices and lateral strokes that could have been any color other than blood red. He was calm, authoritative, demonstrating subtle moves;”This is defense…this is sport…this is training…this is for combat…this will take time for the bleed out….this is for the kill”. The Inosanto academy bleachers were full, over two hundred solomn spectators watching the greatest martial arts teacher in the world divulging Bruce Lee’s and other great fighters’ secret techniques.

“This is not just an art form…” He addressed the crowd. Large portraits of great martial artists hung overhead; Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Korean, Filipino; not only men, also women with secret techniques like stones woven into their long black hair that would crack a man’s skull like an egg with a swing of their diminutive shoulder.

“This is very practical information…” He turned to the ‘Odd Job’ type man standing to my left. “Tell them what it is like in Manilla, Arturo.” The stoic round man spoke with respect, “They will walk up behind you with a knife rolled up in a newspaper, stab you in the kidneys, take your wallet or your purse, and no one sees the blade.”

Dan suddenly stopped and looked at me. He looked at Francis Echinard, to my right, the French Savat champion and blues guitarist confreres of the late, great Lowell George. Francis was delivering me to his Sifu, who had requested from Francis, the ‘right’ drum teacher.  He turned to the group of black clad men on the sprawling mats, waiting for his next deadly lesson.
“All of you practice.” Dan said. They all bowed in deference as the master stepped backward off the mat, bowing, then turning to his right and hastily but with dignity walked around the cavernous room, turned the corner of the mat, heading in our direction. All eyes were on him. I realized that he was coming to us. I straightened up, put my hands together; fist in open hand, to bow to the master. He saw my actions and sped up, arriving in front of me before I could bow. He stopped, faced me, and bowed low, his eyes straight to the ground; an unheard of action for the master. I was non plussed. I felt every eye on me in the auditorium. I did not know why this was happening. I bowed slightly to acknowledge his display of honor. He stayed down for a long time, until everyone in the auditorium got it. Finally, Dan raised his eyes and looked into mine. I realized that he was insisting that I be the greatest drum teacher I could possibly be. I would have no choice.

Almost every week he showed  up early in the morning at our store for his lesson, whether he had just returned from Stockholm, Rio, Tokyo, Miami or where ever he was conducting seminars on martial arts. He was studious, humble, dedicated; the perfect student. “Do I have to learn how to read music?” he asked because a previous drum teacher had insisted he learn to read drum exercises. This was another example of a drum teacher giving inappropriate, even damaging experience to the student. That teacher was not paying attention to what this particular student needed. They were going on automatic pilot in their method of teaching because that is the way they were taught. This isn’t about music; but once the student gets this approach they will be able to play music as a byproduct of their own healing.

Drumming can create consciousness. It can grow like a fresh new leaf under the right conditions; the drummer can learn without mind numbing sight reading, without brutal training and without macho bravado like, “Harder! Faster! Louder!

People wanting to learn how to drum do not necessarily want to become ‘drummers’ in the traditional European/American definition. We are at a new stage in our mental development and the drum rhythms help us to integrate new functions that the brain is starting to implement; such as multitasking, improvisation, trance, courage, relaxation, healing, joy and of course dance.

Using the downbeat as a cornerstone for building a rhythmic vocabulary, I showed him the four beat  and the three beat structures that applied for indigenous rhythms all over the world. I knew that there was no way I would be able to teach Dan what he instinctively wanted to use the drum for. He would have to discover that himself. I would merely show him the parts that he could use, the building blocks of rhythm and he could put them together in his own fashion for his needs.

At one point, we stopped playing, he was dripping wet from exertion and I was cool and calm. “You have to be in SHAPE to be a drummer!” He exclaimed.

“Dan. You are in better shape than I will ever be in. You have to be relaxed. Let your hands do what they already know how to do.”

“Bruce Lee said the same thing to me.” he responded. “You are the Bruce Lee of drumming.”

I laughed. “That’s very nice, but it is not true. You are coming here to hear the same things Bruce was telling you. There is one thing you are not doing correctly.”

“What is that?” he asked, alert to improving his art.

“You should be smiling. This is your life. You should be enjoying it.”

He blinked his eyes in recognition, thought for a moment about how to do that. Then we played and instead of the toughest guy in the world I saw the young boy who was playing the drums out of sheer joy. I had succeeded. He was the greatest drum student I could have ever had. He sounded really good. Dan developed a drumming training program for his martial arts classes. The CD is a big hit, worldwide. “No 2nd Chance: Martial Arts Drumming” (or ‘No Second Chance’). Available on itunes and CDbaby. Guro Dan Inosanto is recognized not only as the greatest martial arts teacher in the world, but now also as the father of Martial Arts drumming in America. I couldn’t be more pleased with any student.

excerpt “History of the Groove, Drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy helm ©2013

all rights reserved

excerpt “History of the Groove, Drummer’s story” Russell Buddy Helm

© 2013 all rights reserved

1988

Baba Olatunji, the great Nigerian drum prophet waved for everyone to stop playing their djembes in his seminar. He pointed down from the stage at me. “YOU!” He commanded in his deep African accented voice. “…Play over this!….” He started a traditional African pattern and I had no idea what it was called. But I knew it was in a four beat pattern and I could hear where the “one” was if they were counting, and I could hear where he was laying down the pretty cool accents, so I just went for it; no fear. His eyes lit up and he showed some surprise. I wasn’t playing weak copies of his licks. It was fresh for him. He stopped after a  moment, intrigued. “Play over this!!” He said with a higher level of challenge in his rich voice. He took off again, and his seventy year old hands flew like black bird wings and the sound was like a song from heaven. I just jumped in and messed with him. He started to grin. It was a big weathered white, wise smile that radiated the God in the man. After a few minutes of tearing it up he stopped, and he was actually having a good time for a change. Up to that point he had just been putting in his time; just another drumming workshop, this time at the Ashgrove on Santa Monica Pier. He had been letting his student teachers carry most of the teaching load. His hands were in bad shape, I could tell that. He played with mallets on tall Nigerian talking drums, no expression on his face. He might as well have been selling tokens on the IRT. But for some reason, he picked me out of the crowd of about two dozen earnest drum students.

He was perking up a little bit. “PLAY OVER THIS!!!” He said with that macho challenge I have seen in so many drummers. But with him there was also love there; he was not just a hustler, sexist drummer with an attitude, he was a teacher and the original prophet of the drum. This time the groove was in 6 beats; my favorite. We took off while everybody else just sat on their thumbs and listened. We were both laughing now. The club reverberated with the hot soothing flashes of djembe licks both traditional and unorthodox. I was throwing in some Philly sissy strut, Motown, Macon, New Orleans second line, Memphis, Chicago Shuffle. It had been a long time since I had been able to play with a real great player. We chewed the place up for a few minutes, broke a sweat. Then he realized he was supposed to be teaching so we stopped and grinned at each other. I could see that he could not see very well. But he knew what he heard and he liked it. Suddenly a women interrupted the moment. “Can we play something slower now?” she pleaded.

That offended Baba slightly. “THAT was NOT fast!.” He admonished her. “…THIS is fast…” He grined, gave me the nod and we took off on a two beat pattern. He set the tempo at about a hundred forty beats a minute. He flew, his hands spread wide, arms raised high in the traditional African style, hitting hard, despite the pain I could see it was registering in his arms and hands. I threw it back at him; staying close to the drumhead, jazz style, less muscle but getting just as much tone, not speeding up, putting on the Afro Cuban touch that I usually saved for the encore with Tim Buckley. He got very interested. He threw fours at me and I responded with a four, then back and forth again, trading fours faster than anyone could count. We were both laughing. This was what it was all about. Finally he backed off, and we stopped. The rest of my classmates were still sitting, watching, wondering what had just happened. He rose up, Aiyo, his LA Yoruba priest/student teacher standing by, not knowing what the master was up to. Baba came down off the stage and moved toward me. I stood up to bow, but he grabbed me by the shoulders and put his sweating black forehead against mine. “Where have you been?” I decided right then and there to distinguish myself from the cult of African wannabe’s. I whispered into Baba’s ear while he still embraced me. “My first drum teacher was a woman..” He stepped back, almost shocked, and threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of exasperation, even disgust, and yelled a bit too loudly, “I don’t want to hear it!” He walked away from me and climbed back onto the stage and proceeded with his workshop. I had done it again. I had said the most potently damaging thing I could have said. I eventually came to call it my ‘Psychic Asburger’s syndrome’.

He had large charts on an easel showing the words he had coined for the different notes on the djembe. It was very scholarly. Very intellectual. But as soon as the group started to play the part, they would start to speed up til it would turn into a train wreck. Then Baba would stop it and move on to the next drum pattern. He would sing the part, they would play it a few times then it would speed up and disintegrate into chaos. In my own workshops I had been using a tambourine on my foot to keep things steady. The high steady ‘chink, chink’ was understandable to our culture. I saw that he could not use that because he was teaching a very traditional method. I saw that for us, things had to be different; we needed some steady pulse to follow, otherwise our fears would drive us into a frenzy of speed drumming. We needed to relearn how to be constant in our hearts. The trance that would heal us needed to be steady, simple and relaxed. That was different than what Baba was teaching.

During the break, he sat with me and commiserated about the music business. “I made NO money off the albums I have done…”

“Not even, “Drums of Passion”? I asked. That was the first great introduction that America had to African drumming back in nineteen sixty four.

“No, nothing.” He said with some rancor. “…and Mickey…”Planet Drum”…nothing. He did not even thank me when he got a Grammy. And I SANG on it. He did not invite me to the awards….” He shook his head. Such a common story among so many talented, inspired musicians who changed the world with their songs. Only here was a holy man with his drum selling his own video cassettes of how to play like Baba Olatunji, the greatest African drummer in the world.  I decided that I would not be like this. I would find some other way to play and inspire and survive and thrive. I would not be a victim of the pernicious music business. I would have to create something different. I did not know what it was, but there must be something better. This was a great man’s story. They amputated one of his fingers several years later and he still kept playing because he had to.

I would have to be clever if I were to survive; I was not African so I would have to find a different way to play the Djembe.  First thing I would NOT do was play as hard as the African’s. I would play the djembe softly, with more subtle tones.  My fingers might survive that way.  I would not compete with anger or aggressiveness. I recalled my martial arts training back in Clearwater during my high school rock band days; ‘Those Five’ were a target; I was a longhaired musician. I was a bad example for the local draft board. Richard, the waterboy, told me to come to his dojo after I had a lunch time altercation with the defensive line.  “They have instructions to kill you.” He stated matter of factly. “Come to my dojo. Learn how to defend yourself.”

“What’s a dojo?” I asked him. “Karate School”. He taught me to be quiet inside, and fast, powerful and flexible on the outside. I would be more like….Bruce Lee.  I would not compete. I would play the djembe from the Tao. I would listen to how the women wanted to play. If they wanted to play slower, than that’s what I would try. I didn’t have a problem with women drummers. I saw that our drummer’s path in this cultural mix was different than the African style of drumming. We were much simpler and had a deeper trauma about our sense of rhythm. There was shame there, guilt and fear. It had less to do with ‘talent’ and more to do with  psychology. So I took what I could from the master Baba and went my own way. God bless Baba Olatunji.

exerpt “History of the Groove, Drummer’s story”

Russell Buddy Helm© 2013 all rights reserved