Hand drumming in Lake Washington
Rating: 8/10
Cost: $ 20
Location: In the Fremont neighborhood
Ever since I saw what I thought was a group of buskers playing hand-drums in downtown Madison one fine summer day and was handed a drum by the generous group, the sound of drums is one of the most pleasant ones to my ears and I’ve tried to capitalize on events organized for drumming. After moving to Seattle area, I’d issues finding a drumming group but thankfully the Seattle Hand Drummers group have lately been regular with their meetups, and I have a car finally which makes going to the venues more manageable with a drum on my back. On top of that, I bought a Djembe in 2016 so now I don’t have to rely on someone’s generosity to have a nice day drumming (although they mostly have extra drums for newcomers).
So on the Saturday evening 21st April, the group was organizing a “boat jam” which meant they’d rent a boat from Electric Boat Company, get our own drums and jam while driving the boat for 2 hours. The donation of $ 20 each was to cover the cost of renting the boat. Drumming is an amazing experience, boating on a nice, sunny day with a beautiful backdrop of the city is also an amazing experience but combine the two and it makes it an exceptional. One new member brought a Hangpan which I hadn’t seen since leaving Madison and the sound of it added a melancholy dimension to the sound of our drums.
For the first time since going to several meetups, given this was a more intimate experience with limited people we did an introduction roundtable. The organizer, Nathan, who has an interesting story as a metal drummer in the past taught us a basic drum song called “Boom Boom Diggy Diggy” (not the Bollywood song) to allow us to sync our tunes and form a nice rhythm.
Overall I am glad to have a completely new kind of experience, combining two individually beautiful activities and I would encourage everyone to rent a boat once and try whatever they like to do on a nice, sunny day (need to reserve in advance). And if drumming happens to be your thing, visit the Meetup link.
