Sent to: Yahoo! Groups: DrumCircles: Message 1520
Date: Thu Dec 6, 2K1 10:50 AM
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/Sticky-Wicket
A Sticky Wicket: Breaking Sticks By Reverend R Clark
Greetings Folks!
I notice that some folks break sticks. Not bread sticks either, that's easy, and a party foul at an Italian restaurant as they are Not suitable for demonstrating rhythms, for true. What I am talking about mainly is the ubiquitous standard hardwood drumsticks, I see broken <CRACK splinter splinter> during spirited play.
I also witness that I don't.
This made me feel a bit weird for a while (weirder than my "normal" weirdness even). Like maybe I was some kind of puny, unworthy wannabe. Mebbe, mebbe not, really none of my business as it is not for me to make such judgements about myself, any longer. It was like playing the rhythms correctly was not enough, I wasn't "Real stick drummer" yet, not having been "blooded" in much the same way as when I and others first began hand drumming. Where as passionate newbie drum addicts we played so long and hard we drew blood or pissed blood or got a blood blister, and were initiated by this gory rite of passage into the ranks of blood siblings and hand drumming society at large. Silly, hunh?
(Aside: I take much better care of my hands too nowadays, or as Baba [Olatunji] calls the hands, "my instruments." Thank Goodness. See what else I've written on this subject here, if you wish.
Breaking a stick like the "heavy hitters" in my mind would somehow make me a member of the Dunun club. Didn't happen. <Ouch> Granted, I Did console myself, with Pollyanna mind chatter like "I don't do rim shots, That seems to play hell with sticks" and/or "One fine day, I too, will break a stick."
<sigh>
I noticed that bells and other metal ideophones Will wear sticks down and chew them up after much play, and that's not the same splintery ending to the useful life of a drumstick as when a big hunk of it jaggedly flies off dangerously from an otherwise apparently sound stick. That's so thrilling, so dramatic, ay? So I aspired to that. <grr>
However, since more than a dozen years and a lot of Dunun playing in the most recent four years now...
<<<Shameless self-promotion alert... I also build staved Dunun that turn heads.>>>
... and still no high drama, no unexpectedly snapped stick, no any kind of snapped stick.. <sigh>.
Upon analysis One thing that seems to feed into my not breaking sticks seems so obvious now I'm looking at it. When I first began using sticks for Dunun and the like I just assumed that a stick was like a miniature baseball bat. When I began as a child to use wooden baseball bats (aluminium ones were rare) I was cautioned to "put the label up" so as to keep from breaking it. This advice is given because the label on a bat is always burned into the wood so when up it orients the grain of the wood presenting the edges of the "rings" of tree growth to the force of the "hit." The wood is Much stronger this way and less likely to break when hitting a hardball.
So by this reasoning, if I want to break sticks I might improve my chances by rotating them 90 degrees? Kule. <grin>
Can it simply be that I don't break sticks because I am wimping out? Naa... didn't I? ...<surprise> once put my hand through an unblemished goat skin head? <puffs up chest>
(Aside: Breaking a head that way made a good case with me, BTW, for finishing the original carving if it is splintery. I sure have the "Big Happy Giving Thanks and Praises to JAH that I'd smoothed the inside of the drum, Hat" on! No punji pit trap inside to gouge my "instruments", Whew! As it was I was shocked spitless at having my hand inside the drum with the flaps of poky goatskin holding my wrist, and otherwise unhurt. Got my complete and undivided attention, sure! <grin>)
O.K. I Must confess the head I broke... with my hand, well <puff up deflates> ...it Was old and dry... <shoulders droop, gaze averts downward, shuffles feet, overacting> So maybe I don't hit very hard after all <whiny sympathy sniff> ...that old dry skin could have just been ready to go the way of all flesh and decided to let go its tenuous bridging significance between the world of the living and the wild blue yonder at just the precise moment my puny hand bumped it. <sigh>
Also I've never split a drum headed with rawhide cow skin so far, either... Not that I'm really interested in That accomplishment, it Would mitigate the lack of broken sticks, and Boy Howdy, am I Really "on a roll" here with no merit badges or such initiations a tall.<sigh>
Well to be fair and serious for a moment, the set of Dunun I made for myself to sacred PHI geometry are broken in and are a long way from breaking down. The heads are unlikely to split for a long time (at least ten years), I'm told. Yet at contrast with that, I've seen recently headed drums on O.P.'s Dunun "give up the ghost" and a number of others split and wonder if this is caused by too narrow a stick or odd corners on a larger stick, or damage in transport, flaws in the skin, &tc. The jury is still out on this. How do you vote? Why do you think cow skin heads fail prematurely? An unlikely and not impossible cause might be the error of coming down (when playing vertically) on the other stick in such a way that the force of two strikes is combined plus the lower stick is driven into the head. OTOS (on the other stick) I've seen some players do this move deliberately. It does make a kule sound, with the sticks cracking together combined with the emphasized muffled thud sound.
Where's the up up up side of all this? I am above ground, I am breathing, I have a heart beat, I have two hands and plenty of sticks and things to play with them, and people to play with and for in healing intent. For which I give great Thanks may the trend continue for I am happiest when I am playing with the pulse, breathing freedom.
Not breaking sticks might very well be what's so. I accept that. However, after writing this essay it really falls into the category of "So what" to me any more.
I bow in your general direction, kindred spirit, namaste.
I could be wrong, it's just what I think. What do you think?
Peace, R
http://home.acceleration.net/clark
Captain of Djembe-L Moderation Team
Founder and "Ring Master" of the Djembe-L WebRingRelated: Dunun Beater
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