Royal Drummers & Dancers of Burundi: A Reflection

Picture by whiteafrican on flikr.com

I won’t call these observations a “review” of the show, Royal Drummers and Dancers of Burundi, because to be honest, I didn’t see the entire performance. I only stayed for the first fifty minutes through intermission, after which I was forced to leave by the onset of a headache. The headache wasn’t reflective of the quality of the performance, but rather an indicator that the drummers had achieved their goal of a “true energy and joyful power”(according to the program). The mistake was mine to have attended a show with the word “drummer” in the title while recovering from that virus that has lately been laying everyone out in bed with fever and chills.

In further defense of these enthusiastic artists, their arrival sparked a coming-together of cultures. As I settled into my seat in the Brooks Center auditorium, I heard a man behind me speaking in Swahili to his little boy (I only knew it was Swahili because a few minutes later he began telling neighbors about his village in Tanzania.) Even though his country of origin and language (the drummers spoke Kirundi) were different, a pride for African heritage created a bond between this audience member and the performers.

In an roar of sound, around fourteen men entered through the aisles of the theatre. They wore white tunics layered with green and red, the colors of the Burundian flag, and balanced waist high drums made from hollowed tree trunks on their heads. Once onstage, ten of these instruments formed a semicircle while an eleventh more colorful drum decorated the center. The men wielded smooth, thick sticks as mallets, raising them high over their heads before bringing them down on the stretched skins of their instruments. Drummers without a spot to play (there were always two or three) circled around the perimeter, grinning, doing toe touches, or swiveling their drum stick around the circumference of their necks. These stage vagabonds quickly lost appeal and became distracting as they repeated the same gestures over and over, rearranged their costumes during exits, and opened their arms to the audience in frequent appeals for applause.

Perhaps dynamics do not play a big role in this type of music, but I found myself longing for quiet moments. The pieces were earth-shakingly loud from the start and stayed that way.  Often, the drummers didn’t even stop to transition from one ‘song’ to another, the pieces running seamlessly together into one endless stretch of rhythm. It was hypnotic, ritualistic, and, in my case, incapacitating. The instruments’ deep vibrations, which on another day I might have found invigorating, moved through every part of my body in a relentless thunder.

As I sneaked away to the parking lot, embarrassed to have huddled with ears plugged while those around me danced in their seats, I noticed a stream of people also making their way to their vehicles. Finding reassurance in this crowd of like-minded party poopers, I drove home with the radio turned off, content with silence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAgzvKBWD7c