sounds
Celebrating Solstice at Stanford University, 2010.
The Big Bang Theory The ups and downs of falling in and out of rhythm. l
I
n 1960 I met the Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, who came to my grade school in Baldwin, New York, for a cultural enrichment assembly. I was 11 years old. Even now I can remember feeling mesmerized when first listening to the sounds of drum orchestration. I convinced my parents to buy Baba’s first album, Drums of Passion, and told them that I wanted to learn to drum. They had no idea what I was talking about, but bought me some kiddie plastic mylar bongos, and that was that. Many life-chapters later, I arrived at Esalen for a weekend and met Baba 28 years after I’d first heard his music. I was in awe of this gracious Nigerian gentleman who had shaped my childhood with his incredible voice and pulsating rhythms. I went to one of his workshops with the mistaken assumption that Zorina Wolf drumming and dancing might be easy for me. keeping time in By the second day of the workshop I the sunshine. wanted to leave. The precision of being with the beat was elusive. And then there was the dancing. I knew ballet and turning out at the hips. I knew wild dancing at rock concerts. But isolations? Feet and hip and rib cage and shoulder and head all doing different things? I was out of my element, and every part of my being and body was hurting. But there was one amazing moment. After floundering for four days, I “fell” into the rhythm for a brief and timeless eternity. There
BY ZORINA WOLF
was no effort. The rhythm was playing through me. After three years of study I formed a drumming band, Village Heartbeat, and a few years later I started teaching. It took me two more years to realize what was holding me back. My nemesis was understanding the richness of the interval between the beats. I could play but not relax. I couldn’t solo and find my way back into rhythm. My drumming was harsh and rigid. A year later I found TaKeTiNa, a profound body-based rhythm work, and spent years studying with its originator, Reinhard Flatischler, and his wife Cornelia. TaKeTiNa teaches you to drop into rhythm with no instrument other than your body. I learned to do it, and to lead TaKeTiNa workshops and witness the profound transformation that can occur in a weekend of rhythmic immersion. With time and study, I began to synthesize what I had learned. I knew that there must be others who had a hard time sensing and feeling the magic of being transported by rhythm without thinking it. I wanted to help people like myself learn what I had learned. Rhythm lives in direct experience or presence. We cannot think rhythm without being out of time. But there are lots of other ways to learn about rhythm: by movement, by becoming curious about intervals, by breaking down rhythmic elements and becoming familiar with them. Polyrhythms, sometimes
photos: courtesy of village heartBeat
When you fall into rhythm, all of a sudden, you are in. you don’t know how you are there.
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