Drumming with heart, Afro-Cuban drum choir takes the stage

There are three basic ways the African drum is struck to create the base, tone and slap sounds. When drummers strike the middle of the drum, the sound is called “gune.” And when they slap the drum’s edge, the sound is called “go do” or “pa ta,” depending on how the hand strikes the side. It sounds simple enough. Yet, the combination of pitches and the way the separate drums fit together creates a cross-rhythmic sound that can be both complex and repetitive.

According to Freehold Borough resident Skip Leib, also known in drumming circles as Graywoulf, the sound is that of the beating heart of life. That collective heart beat is a unifying sound that Leib, now an unofficial Afro-Cuban drumming leader in Monmouth County musical circles, wants to resonate as far and wide as possible.

For the past 20 years or so since he started on his own drumming mission, Leib’s Graywoulf has organized a few groups that have grown and played all over the county and beyond.

Most recently, last year, he began a drum choir called Roots And Wings (R&W) at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County (UUCMC). The UUCMC meetinghouse, located on West Front Street in the Lincroft section of Middletown, now rocks on every other Monday evening with the sound of 15-18 beginning and advanced drummers rehearsing in a structured format, just as any other choir rehearses together.

“It's not an original concept as far as UU choirs go,” said Leib, who got the idea for the Lincroft congregation from another UU church that had already successfully drummed to the beat of their own unique choir. To drum up the concept in Lincroft, he just talked to its UUCMC leadership and minister.

All were enthusiastic about the idea. “We posted it in our newsletter and drummers, and new wannabe drummers, began to come,” he said.  “Now we have around 15-18 enthusiastic R&W members from various towns in Monmouth and Ocean counties. It was that easy to get started.”

But Leib had his own two-decade jump on what has evolved locally into this church choir of a different kind. The drummer, Graywoulf, emerged in 1990 when Leib bought his first drum — a Native American frame drum purchased from the Pueblo tribe in Taos, New Mexico. Shortly after, he began to study.

“I went to a week-long workshop given by Babatunde Olatundji at Omega in Rhinebeck NY; and I got hooked on West African and Afro-Cuban style drumming,” Leib said. “I soon bought my first floor-standing drum, a fiberglass conga, which was shortly followed by another conga, and then by an authentic African, rope-tuned, Ivory Coast Djembe  (a goat skin drum from Guinea, Africa).”

Getting into his own rhythm, he said he started buying about one new drum per year and now owns about a dozen hand drums of various styles and sizes. Over the years, Leib has studied with many African and African-American artists as well as Latino drummers, including the revered elder African drummer known as Papa Ladge, a fantastic drummer from Newark named Joe Barnes (a/k/a Joe "Slap"), and the great Latino drummers Glen Velez and Giovanni Hildago.

“Locally I studied for a while with Basha Alade when she had her percussion band and dancers in Long Branch,” Leib said. “And every year I would go to the now defunct Massachusetts Earth Drum Council's long communal weekend of drumming workshops in a camp in the Berkshires, where there would also be experienced African drum masters as teachers.”

In 1992, Leib started his own band called Sticks and Bones. They performed at many schools, churches, and cultural venues including street festivals at various locations. For eight years, they drummed on many a New Year’s Eve at Red Bank's First Night festivals, and were also the main midnight act at Princeton's New Year’s Eve Curtain Calls festivals in the Princeton University Chapel. Sticks and Bones retired in 2000; however, Leib and many of the drummers who were in that band occasionally perform together when they get a gig, he said.

And if Leib’s experience is any proof, those who drum together usually stay together, even if intermittently, through the years. The unifying feeling generated by a drum choir stays in sync with the drummers, like a life-force beat, he said, and it’s quite contagious.

Jack Ives, a Tinton Falls resident and creative director of Ives & Associates Advertising, started drumming with Leib four years ago and became part of the drumming choir just last year and has quickly gotten to know and like the feeling very well.

Ives explained that, as a relatively new player of the Djembe, and occasionally the bongos, “I have drummed for four years now and am still a beginner, but I’m consistently improving. The drum is now in my blood. I was in DC a few years ago in Martin Luther King Park and saw a drum circle of about 180 drummers. What a memory. I want to be a part of something like that. We are now creating that in Monmouth County.”

Now, not only as a member of the drumming choir, but now a member of the drumming community as a whole, Ives went on to explain that he started drumming with Leib because he liked the energy of the drum and knew it as strong vibe that emanated from the beginning of mankind as a form of communication.

Drumming with Leib, Ives said, has provided him with a sense of belonging to something greater than he could have ever expected.

“It connects me with other drummers throughout the county and connects me to other cultures that have various forms of drums,” he said. “Skip says the first sound we hear is our mother's heartbeat while we are in the womb. The initial single beat of the drum represents that heartbeat.”

Joan Weich, a Middletown resident, who joined the choir last March, said she also finds a unifying, soothing spiritual component in drumming: “I had to give it up for awhile, but I came back last month. I missed the energy of the drums beating like our heartbeats. I missed the people around us in the circle, the unity of the beats coming together as one.”

For Charley Nelson, also of Tinton Falls, it was a fairly easy decision to join, but, a slightly intimidated novice, he did have to give it some thought. “I have always wanted to do something musical, but I could not read music and had no musical background,” he said. “Roots and Wings was my opportunity. Also, I was nearing retirement and was looking for a hobby. Drumming for me has become more than a hobby and more of an obsession. The drumbeat is close to the heartbeat and, although primal for me, it has a spiritual connection. I find it meditative.”

Nelson explained that Leib teaches traditional African rhythms; and when those different individual drummers’ rhythms are played simultaneously, it can put both drummer and listener in a meditative trance.

“There is a great sense of community in the drumming groups,” he said. “In addition to the choir, I have found family in various drum circles in Monmouth and Ocean counties. I will always be grateful to Skip for opening this opportunity for me,”

Leib said it has always been his intent to branch out. In addition to drumming at services held in the UUCMC meetinghouse, he wants to drum at fundraisers, charitable events and other congregations. R&W recently drummed at a fundraiser for Family Promise, a charitable organization that helps homeless and low-income families.

In addition, several drummers from R&W along with other area drummers got together to drum on Thanksgiving and Christmas Days at the Salvation Army in Asbury Park. The drummers entertained the homeless and less fortunate, as they ate a full Thanksgiving meal and a few of the R&W drummers also got together and drummed in Freehold for a gathering honoring the start of a community garden.  

“Skip and I and some other drummers (not UUCMC) drummed at Stella Maris Retreat Center on the ocean in Long Branch, during the summer as part of a Healing Service for the Ocean after the oil spill in the Atlantic,” Ives said. “My hope is that we can reach out to others, such as cancer survivor groups, the elderly and anyone who wants to invite our healing energy into the space.”

Leib currently teaches hand drumming in his home and has an ongoing association with the Isis Tribe from Asbury Park who he will drum with when asked to perform at local schools and street festivals. For the past 15 years, he has performed at St. Thomas Church in Red Bank for Kwanzaa. He also conducts private affairs where folks want a drumming circle experience in their homes or for parties.
He said drummers from outside the congregation are invited to sit in on the choir rehearsals provided they understand it's a structured, teaching rehearsal of drumming rhythms, and not a drum circle or jam session. The rehearsal, he said, is about the subtle perfection of the respected form.

The Monmouth County Drum Circle recently held its 2011 Opening Night at Leib’s house and rocked Freehold Borough as it has been doing on Sunday nights for the past two years.

After a while, the police came to his door to inform him that there had been a noise complaint. A usually undaunted Leib said it was the first time someone complained about the noise. “We may have to look for another place to play,” he said.

In the words of the hand drummers in Monmouth County, “gune, dune, go do gune.”