PORT ANGELES – Approach the Longhouse a little late on a certain night, and you hear thunder.
Come inside, and you’re enveloped in vibration between hands and skins, wood and beating hearts.
This is the circle, assembled by Beatriz Giraldo and about four dozen of her suddenly drumming, rattle-shaking, dancing companions.
They come once a month to the Peninsula College Longhouse, to make a circle of rhythms, interlocking beats played on drums from all of the Americas — North, Central and South plus Hawaii – and from Australia, Africa and Asia.
Giraldo, a mental health occupational therapist, began hosting the Longhouse drumming circles in October 2008.
Once a month she sets up a close-knit corral of seats, with her collection of percussion instruments awaiting anyone who comes without a drum.
At the August circle, newer arrivals such as Carol Dunlap of Port Angeles and Ruby Lanham and Donna George of Sequim joined in, playing along with seasoned Port Angeles musicians such as David Cowan and Kevin McCartney.
No experience fine
“No previous experience is necessary,” Giraldo emphasizes. “If a person is already in the circle, and is shy about playing, I don’t say anything. I just invite the person, with some percussion instrument,” and things seem to flow well from there.
Giraldo, who guided circles in her native Colombia and in New Mexico for more than a decade before starting the one in Port Angeles, has studied and drummed with musicians from Senegal, Guinea, Spain and the United States.
Today, if she has any goal in mind, it’s to facilitate a feeling of freedom and connection in the circle. Each member has what it takes to make music, she said.
That one thing is a heartbeat.
At last month’s gathering, Giraldo found herself a combined seat and drum: a caja Peruana, just a big box that makes a throaty sound when hands come in contact with it.
Others played African djembes, simple frame drums, beaded gourds, maracas and wooden sticks.
Noelle Swarm of Port Angeles played a drum she adorned with a painted passion flower; Geraldine Lesser brings one made by a member of the Cheyenne tribe and Sharon Eckerle toted hers purchased from a pawnbroker.
Drums prompt dancing
It didn’t take long for the dancers’ feet to awaken. Valli Sanstrom sashayed around the circle, smiling and playing the sticks, while Diana Somerville raised her frame drum up like a full moon.
“Sometimes you drum and cause a dance; sometimes you dance and cause drumming,” Giraldo said. “Either way.”
Lesser and Cowan gave the same response to a question about the sensations they feel in the circle.
“I’m full of energy,” said Cowan, who’s been drumming for a good 34 years now.
“I feel energized,” Lesser said. “Everything leaves my mind, and there’s just the beat.”
Somerville, a science journalist, author and Peninsula Daily News columnist, came to the circle with a taste for rhythm, but no musical training.
“I leave the world of words,” she said, and “while I’m no great shakes as a drummer, I am a heartful participant.
“I appreciate it when the skillful drummers do some dazzling riffs. It touches me to see a newcomer to the circle transformed by picking up a drum or a rattle for the first time.”
Somerville and Giraldo are co-hosts of the circle now, hoping to give people a place to find their inner musician.
Somerville is fond of the Zimbabwean saying, “If you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing,” while the Longhouse mix illustrates another thought:
If you have hands and a heart, you were born to drum.
At the end of the August gathering, Giraldo led the circle in singing songs including “May All Beings Be Well and Happy,” a Buddhist blessing, and the gospel classic “This Little Light of Mine.”
During a pause, Giraldo’s cell phone rang, momentarily whisking the room back to modern technology.
Giraldo rose from her seat, eyes wide. “Sorry,” she exclaimed, as the drummers laughed.
Flushed and smiling after the music was done, Giraldo said: “I love that you are all here.”
She emphasized, though, that she’s neither conductor nor teacher.
“I am just there in the circle, with the best healer, the drum, in my hands,” Giraldo said, “connecting every person in the joyful sense of unity.”
________
Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsula dailynews.com.
