Malibu’s Rick Allen and Lauren Monroe share their knowledge at special community drum circle Saturday.
By Carolyn McLuskie / Special to The Malibu Times
Raven Drum Foundation co-founders Rick Allen, drummer of the legendary rock band Def Leppard, and his wife, Lauren Monroe, have just returned from a three-week learning intensive at India’s Oneness University, which has deepened their work at the Malibu-based nonprofit foundation they created to empower people in crisis. The two will share their experience with a special community drum circle, Music as Medicine, this Saturday at the Chumash Interpretive Center in Thousand Oaks.
“I’ve learned that the origin of all religion is one person’s direct experience of the unknown and the mystery of love,” said Allen, the one-armed rocker whose fall and rise is heavy metal legend. “And yet that experience is available to all of us. Our mission is to celebrate diversity and bring people together through their common beliefs. And love is the most basic way that we are all brought together as one family.”
The communal drum circle is an ancient form of healing interaction that Raven Drum Foundation uses as a powerful, present day tool to help people in adversity. Its community outreach programs to special needs children and teens and adults in crisis help people to release stress and rediscover a sense of personal creativity and empowerment. There is no audience – everyone participates in the circle with a drum or percussive instrument.
“What we learned in India is that our mind is our greatest obstacle and that it separates us from one another,” Monroe said. “The key is to transcend the mind so that we can have a more direct experience of love with one another and the world around us, and feel an interconnectedness with something greater than ourselves.”
“Love is the core of every religion, every belief system and every culture,” she added. “It’s the one thing we have in common. Love is the key to oneness. We bring that back to Raven Drum through the experience of the drum circle.”
The beauty of the drum circle is that you don’t have to be a musician or even know how to carry a beat. It’s already inside you, Allen explained: “The first rhythm you ever heard was your mother’s heartbeat. That beat is still inside you – your heart carries the rhythm of your soul, and when your hands connect with the skin of the drum and you begin to play, you’ll find that you’re smiling, and you’ll see that joy reflected in every face in the circle.
“You feel the closeness,” Allen said. “In the drum circle, you see parts of people you don’t necessarily see when you first meet them.”
Raven Drum has brought the sacred healing power of the drum circle to the teenage boys incarcerated at Camp Kilpatrick, a juvenile detention facility here in Malibu. For many of them, it is their very first experience of relating to each other in a positive and healing way. To see gang members drumming, chanting and dancing in the circle together is to know that, as Allen said, percussion speaks where language can’t.
“The whole idea of the drum is firmly embedded in our DNA,” Allen said.
Raven Drum is continuing its programs at Camp Kilpatrick, where Xavier Eikerenkoetter combines the teaching of traditional West African drumming with specific training and life skills classes to prepare the youth for a tribal-style initiation ceremony into manhood.
“We’re working on creating a bridge program to support boys after they’ve left the camp,” Monroe said. “These programs will be facilitated in the greater Los Angeles area in high-risk communities that suffer from gang-related crimes. We are also focusing on programs and community events where the intent is music as medicine. Our mission is to give people the experience of music, of drumming, as a way of healing and as a medicinal tool.”
Saturday’s drum circle starts at 2 p.m. and is co-sponsored by Journey to the Heart. There is a minimum $15 donation per adult, and all proceeds go to benefit local community healing programs and the Chumash Interpretive Center. A drum or percussive instrument will be provided to the first 75 participants. Or bring your own drum or noisemaker to participate in this one-of-a-kind community celebration.
More information about the Raven Drum Foundation and Saturday’s drumming event can be obtained by calling 310.774.7462 or online at info@ravendrumfoundation.org.
For directions, contact the Chumash Center at 805.492.8076 or at www.chumashinterpretivecenter.org