the
Sopris Carbondale’s
weekly, non-profit newspaper
Sun
Volume 2, Number 30 | September 16, 2010
Drummer rediscovers true calling By Trina Ortega Special to The Sopris Sun
I
Kip Hubbard was drawn to drumming at an early age then drifted away from his musical roots during college. When Hubbard returned to his drums he started something called “ensemble” drumming, which he is now teaching at True Nature in the Third Street Center. Photo by Jane Bachrach
It was a motley little crew of rural Washington kids. They’d never performed before but they had a passion, and under the guidance of drummer Kip Hubbard, those kids became part of a youth rhythm ensemble that performed at nationally recognized venues, including the World Rhythm Festival, Seattle Folklife and Bumbershoot Festival of the Arts. Hubbard, now a Carbondale resident, hopes to share that drumming passion with kids and adults in the Roaring Fork Valley with six-week, beginner-level Afro-Caribbean ensemble drumming classes. An adult class began Sept. 15 and the kids’ class (for ages 7–10) begins Saturday. Both take place at True Nature Healing Arts Center at the Third Street Center. “I consider [drumming] my calling. I really see this as an opportunity for me to give a gift to the community and I enjoy teaching,” said Hubbard, who most recently led a drum circle at True Nature’s grand opening last Friday. For Hubbard, drumming is an extension of the heartbeat that is “deeply engrained in all of us,” he said. He first felt that beat when he was a boy growing up in a small Connecticut town. The region was a “hotbed” for fife and drum Revolutionary War-style drumming that was designed to rally soldiers and “get everybody fired up,” Hubbard explained. He remembers standing in his family’s driveway one day when he was about 9 years old. Across the river, more than 10 miles away, he could hear the flute and drum music. “I remember asking my dad, ‘What’s that sound?’ It was really powerful,” he said. “It was such a huge piece of me. I think that’s why I wanted a drum set instead of a bike [when he was 12]. I had experienced it but never got to do it. If it’s inside it’s hard to get rid of it.” That fateful decision when he was just a boy led to his first “glistening, blue metal flake, five-piece drum set” and later to playing both the drum set and the snare drum in a local fife and drum corps in Old Lyme, Conn. When he was in college, Hubbard’s drumbeat was quiet; he’d stopped playing to get serious about school and a career, but the rhythm he felt inside was “always pushing to get out,” he said. He moved to Port Townsend, Wash., in 1994, and joined in a drum circle one night and his passion was revived. “Every pore of my body, starved for rhythm, woke up as I stood for the first time at a set of Cuban conga drums and felt my hands miraculously creating a beat. I had to stop at one point to be sure it was really me that was playing,” he said. At that moment, he hopped back on the path he’d started
DRUMMER page 8
John Seidel returns
Disc golf a danger?
Mural project finds funding
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