Role of drummers throughout history

rogue_drummer

Gold Member
The next time some dimwit tries to discount the role of the drums and/or drummers, you can always counter their words by reminding them of the role of drums and drummers throughout history.

For example, like a lot of guys, I'm a history buff. Anything from the American Revolution, to the Civil War, to the old West, to the industrial revolution, Europe, and so on and so forth, I have an interest in.

From watching all those Civil War movies and westerns when I was a kid, they always showed a drummer drumming a cadence or drum call to muster or communicate with the troops. In the American Civil War, the drummer's usual station was right next to the commander, so the commander could tell the drummer(s) what drum call to use: advance, retreat, muster for meals, meetings, officers meetings, etc.

In other words, drummers were very important for communications back in the day when that's all they had.

It's worth pointing out the next time someone runs down the roll of the drummer.

Smile.
 
I think it's good to remember that stuff-- it helps keep you in touch with the roots of the instrument-- especially the idea of playing a charge or a retreat.

Military ceremonial music, too-- there's a way of using the bass drum in fanfares which you can hear as parody at the beginning of this Zappa piece. Recently we were in Paris on what happened to be Armistice Day, and caught part of a ceremony honoring foreign troops killed fighting with the French army. Periodically the drummers would play a long roll softly, as a country's representatives would step out to lay their wreath. A little thing, but powerful, touching something very basic.

I also like the Buddhist tradition of making a hell of a racket on drums and cymbals at the start of ceremonies, I guess to drive out "hungry ghosts" or whatever. I like to program something like that into the set-- with varying degrees of subtlety-- when I'm playing for a listening audience.
 
Last April I visited Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and one of the tour guides went into detail how important the role of the drummer was during the Revolutionary War era.
 
I never encounter such dimwits you speak of. Most musicians I've met really appreciate the need and role for a drummer. There is shortage where I am.

I suppose nobody could hear the call to battle in a lute or mandolin.
 
The military angle is just one tranch of influence. Drums also have played important roles in storytelling and achieving meditative states.

and as accompanyment to dancing and rituals
 
Batá drumming in Cuba begins, accompanies, and ends, every ceremony of Santeria worship. The drums originated in Africa, but were brought over by slaves during the slave trade. The drums are directly associated to the Lucumi language and can "speak" words that some Santeros (leaders of the ceremonies) can actually understand. I'd say that next to tabla, playing batá is the most difficult form of drumming there is due to the complexity of the rhythms, sliding between four and six feels, remembering all the calls and answers, etc. I'm a big believer that the lack of respect for drummers has stemmed from Western Europe high-brow music from the classical period, onwards, and carries over in our society from that.

Of course, most orchestral players that I know fully respect my abilities to gracefully play the parts I'm required to, but I think percussion has regained a large amount of ground in the past 30 years with the improvements in the educational system, difficulty of compositions, etc.
 
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