Djembe Drum

Last week was a transition week for me. I returned from my brother's wedding and found I couldn't stomach the incessant busy-ness that comes from catching up on all my neglected projects. So FINALLY I needed to begin to fill up my world with things to do that have more meaning to me.

One of the things I did was pull out my guitar. I needed new strings. There is this new music store that opened up in a hole in the wall on 5th Ave. in Maple Leaf. It's a branch of Metropolitan Music. I've been wanting to stop in there for awhile now just to see what's what so the string requirement was a perfect excuse to walk up there.

I ended up getting the normal .012 light guage steel strings for my acoustic guitar. After talking to the guy for awhile, I ordered a new kind of string (new to me) called silken strings that evidently produce a more folk-tune-like sound.

I also got the name of a teacher. The guitar was something I originally started out to teach myself to play. For years the musicians I know have told me I play the piano by ear but I'm not so sure I really can. The guitar was sort of a test. I wanted to see if I really could play by ear and I also wanted to see if it would be easier to compose music, i.e. fool around, without the mantras of training in my head. I think it was a good choice but now it's time to have a teacher and gain some real technical skill.

My mission completed, I turned to leave. As I was about to walk out the door, I discovered several djembe drums on the floor hidden behind a few other instruments.

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is to go to Golden Gardens park on Friday nights and hang out. There are always bonfires, goofy adolescents, happy adults and spontaneous djembe drumming groups. I absolutely love to listen to them play and have always wanted to join in.

Needless to say, I didn't leave the music store without banging on those drums and purchasing one of my own. I LOVE IT! It is so much fun to play, whether or not I do it the *right* way. Now that the sun is coming out again, I bet I'll be able to join one of those spontaneous groups and learn a few things. I'm pretty excited about that. This is something that will fall in the "personal enrichment" time-filling category. Yay.