Forget a hum-drum experience.
When the Indianapolis-based Bongo Boy Recreational Music School returns to The Commons in downtown Columbus on Friday, more than 200 drums, shakers and such and as many as 400 youngsters could turn the place into Thunder Road — so much so that organizers gently suggest that the sonically shy bring ear plugs.
The free, 45-minute First Fridays for Families “Jam as a Fam Event,” organized by the Columbus Area Arts Council, will be a time for the loud and proud, according to Lisa Colleen. She’s the director of program development for Bongo Boy.
“It basically will sound like a very large concert,” Colleen said.
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She and Bongo Boy founder Ed Gaus are encouraging children to bring their own drums, if possible, or percussion instruments such as wood blocks and tambourines.
“We’re not going to be there to teach (music),” Colleen said. “We’re going to be there to engage people.”
And to give them a basic beat to follow in the beginning. In time, at some point, a harmony develops.
“We call it falling into the groove,” she said, adding that such an event could become booming chaos “if you had that many children playing without an adult who is giving them understanding that we are aiming to come into a kind of harmony.”
Colleen, who has done extensive research on the impact of drumming and drumming for peace-making, mentioned that even casual, fun-oriented gatherings of this type could represent “the growing popularity of using rhythm as a means of building community,” as she put it.
And that includes enhancing family togetherness. In 2015, during Bongo Boy’s last visit, more than 400 people attended, making it one of the larger First Fridays crowds in recent years.
Colleen breezily refers to herself as “a (former) P.E. teacher gone groove,” which means that she teaches movement as part of a whole new revival.
She led groups as young as 8- and 9-months-old and senior groups with people as old as 105. She also has drummed with patients at Indianapolis’ Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health. As sacrilegious as it sounds, she even regularly has drummed with kids at the Indianapolis Public Library — in a special, soundproof room, mind you.
Once people get hooked on the rhythm, there’s no hushin’ the percussion, as she sees it. And, as she sees it, why not?
“In the history of the world, there has been drumming since the beginning of time,” Colleen said. “It has been used for everything from healing rituals to work cadences to marriage ceremonies to rain dances. So it’s not necessarily revolutionary that we’re finding it and using it. It’s more revolutionary that we’re coming back to it.”
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Who: Bongo Boy Recreational Music School team, including founder Ed Gaus, in a 45-minute program, encouraging young children to beat and bang drums with their family. Part of the Columbus Area Arts Council’s First Fridays for Families series.
When: 6 p.m. Friday.
Where: The Commons, 300 Washington St. in downtown Columbus.
Admission: Free.
Information: artsincolumbus.org
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