Festival of Healing Drums

Cape Town, 7 December 2002

We were recently in Cape Town for our honeymoon and I’d been in touch with a dancer based there, Natasha, who told me about the Festival of Healing Drums. It was a fundraiser for St Luke’s Hospice – that provides care for patients with incurable illnesses and supporting their families. Unlike medical care in South Africa, there is no charge for being a patient at their hospice and most of the work is carried out in the patients’ homes if possible. Due to the increasing need for care of people with HIV/AIDS, there was a need to raise additional funds. And so the Festival was organised and took place from 10am-10pm at three points around the Waterfront area, culminating in the switching on of the Christmas lights in Cape Towns’ main shopping area. You could watch a vast range of drumming, join in and I knew that Natasha would be there dancing. So we left the poolside and cool beers behind and on a relatively warm day went down to the Waterfront to try and meet her.

We watched a number of performances – most notable were Abuvuki. The band is made up on 10 young musicians from the township of Langa (which coincidently we had been on a tour of that morning). They formed in late 2001 and had just released their debut album. Abuvuki use a fusion of marimbas, trumpets, trombones, congas and African drums as well as amazing vocals and taking it turns to dance. It must have taken a lot of courage as there were at least 400 people watching them perform.

And to get the audience really into the rhythm, there were workshops led by drumming facilitators who split the audience into four sections and got them all clapping out different rhythms at the same time – great fun and it sounded fantastic.

We also saw ABADA Capoeira – a brazilian martial art, dance and spiritual discipline that originated in Angola and was taken to Brazil by slaves. Capoeira is about learning to play and fight at the same time, and the drums lead the dancers from one sequence into the next.

The Steelband Project was established in 1997, its main focus was to provide quality music education in under-resourced communities by using recycled 44 gallon drums. We saw that most of the players were children under thirteen and they really knew their stuff!

We also really wanted to see the Drum Divas – a 12 piece, all women djembe group - but we were thwarted! Initially we turned up just too late for their first performance and their second spot was taken over by a drumming workshop run by Efrain Toro, whose helpers handed out drums to the audience and we were all shown how to hit the drum and how to keep the various rhythms going.

And we also didn't get to see Natasha – somehow amongst the 1000 strong people wandering around I managed to miss the woman in bedlah and coins accompanied by drums! However in the end it was just great to wander around to the different stage areas and get drawn in by all that was going on. It was a inspired way of involving all members of Cape Town for such a worthy cause.

First published Taqasim Spring Issue 41