Portsmouth's Unconventional Brits: DrumNation Tribe

Meet the people who literally march to the beat of their own drums: DrumNation Tribe

Transcript

00:00I'm Brandon and I actually started Drum Nation it's so long ago I can't quite remember it's

00:22over 20 years I think it was about I guess between about 2003 2005 so it's been going

00:29about 22 years so I started this really just like a tribe like a friendship like a village

00:35so that people could get involved turn up when they wanted to they can find their own level and

00:42have fun so friendships if people spoke a different language they could still play even

00:49if they couldn't speak to each other and people who had this concept that they had no musical

00:55ability or no sense of rhythm which is not true could actually become involved have friends if

01:02they're stressed they could get rid of their stress if they wanted to relax they could relax and so

01:07it's something for everybody there's a therapeutic aspect to it that actually produces like emotional

01:23physical psychological sort of changes in people so it helps people to get confidence it helps them to

01:32relax even on a basic level and it's something where you couldn't do this with like violins cellos

01:42and pianos but by having percussion people can be doing something within 30 minutes that sounds reasonable

01:51and it's exciting

01:52I'm joe I'm one of drum nation tribes group facilitators there's three of us together that

02:09that run the group I think it's quite it's quite primal so it hits you you feel the rhythms deep inside

02:15I don't know I can't explain it so it's vibrations it's what makes you feel good and it just elevates

02:22you and lifts you up so most of the rhythms that we play are from West Africa there's kind of our own

02:30take on West African rhythms and and most of those rhythms come from some sort of celebration whether

02:36it's celebrating a good harvest or a marriage or what it's that when you look back at the history of the

02:41rhythms they're all about celebrating so so they do they lift they lift you up it's it's just good fun

02:46written about the the power of music what it actually does but for most people it doesn't

02:58matter about the intellectual side it's a question of like monkey see monkey do yeah and you show

03:06somebody and they sort of replicate it or they get close to it and it's people being able to

03:12not only lose themselves in the rhythm but in that process of losing themselves they find themselves as

03:20well they they explore a different aspect of themselves yeah which is as I said addressing that

03:29thing and people say they're not musical they haven't got any sense of rhythm people discover that

03:33they've got this idea themselves which is not true that everybody has rhythm and everybody has an

03:39internal music yeah and that's the beautiful thing when you see people shine and come out of themselves

03:47yeah it's it's what it is it's wonderful it's in my lifetime it's one of the things i'm most proud of

03:52i think starting this