Drumming with hippies

Forget about mindfulness or reading a book, Pat Fitzpatrick reckons the road to happiness is to get out and bang a drum with a group of strangers

I’m still buzzing after my African drumming class last night. There’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d be writing, 20 years ago. If I was still buzzing the morning after a night of rhythm and beats back then, a hard rain was going to fall. (The clubbers used to call it Weepy Tuesday.)

Now, drumming gives me good vibes that can last for days. I sleep better, I think faster and there’s a nice, sore tightness in my shoulders. Best of all, the banter with the other drummers sets me up for the rest of the week. It’s also turning me into a hippie.

I started African drumming as an assignment for the Sunday Independent. The idea was I would try and improve myself by stepping out of my comfort zone. I thought it was a load of bollocks, but reckoned it might be good for a spot of hippie-baiting. Two years later, and I’m still drumming. I know more than I should about the indigenous people in coastal Guinea. I can hold down a samba beat, if that’s what you need. But more than anything else, I’m down with the hippies.

My classmates are up for anything on the hippie front. This includes yoga, reiki healing, or some workshop hosted by a visiting guru. (There’s no shortage of workshops in the hippie’s world.) There’s talk of Agua de Florida, a flower-water cologne popular in shamanic rituals. There’s also a hushed mention of someone who will bring you to Barcelona for a peyote ceremony. (If you see me wandering around Barcelona, please don’t say hello. You’ll probably just freak me out.)

My role in all this is to play the grumpy uncle. They say: “My life turned around once I started putting almonds in a smoothie.” I say: “You people are all crazy.” I’m their resident cynic. Except I’m not, really. The hippies are starting to get inside my head, and it’s only a matter of time before I start bulk-buying Aqua de Florida on the web.

This is a coming home for me, in a way. I was a weekend hippie in my early 30s. As I remember it, there was a lot of reggae and no one, except me, had what you might call a proper job. The drums bring me back there, for one hour a week. The classes take place above a bookshop and holistic centre on the Coal Quay, which is basically downtown Hippieville in Cork.

As we left the building late last night, past flyers for aura cleansing and more, I said to the guy behind me that there was bad juju at the start of the class, and it had seeped into our drumming. I remember thinking to myself at the time, “You crossed a line there saying ‘bad juju’ without laughing out loud”.

If some door has opened in my mind, it’s the drums that did it. The way the class works is we take a simple rhythm and build on top of it, using a variety of drums, bells and shakers. Walk past the window half an hour after the class starts, and all you can hear is a sloppy din, as we feel our way into the rhythm. Walk past an hour later, and by then we should be ‘cooking’. This is where we have all figured out where our part fits in the greater scheme of things, and the drums and bells feel like they are playing themselves. We’re grinning around the room at each other, having unlocked the secret to the rhythm and now just grooving it out for fun. It genuinely is a transcendent moment. I look forward to it every week.

This is why I’m not into mindfulness, or all that book-learned, self-improvement stuff. I think you need to do something active to open up your mind. Reading about mindfulness is like sharing an upbeat post on Facebook — it’s anti-social and ineffective.

As my grandfather used to say, you need to get out and meet the people. If you really want to open your mind, go out and try something new with a group of strangers. And no, that doesn’t mean swinging. Or workshops.

“I remember thinking to myself at the time, ‘you crossed a line there saying “bad ju-ju” without laughing out loud’”