OXNARD : Men Beat the Drums for Their Feelings

Jake Blehm was convinced that he was going to make a fool of himself.

The 34-year-old Ventura businessman who says he has no musical training was about to get in touch with his feelings by beating a drum in front of a bunch of men.

Blehm and 13 other guys congregated in a small classroom at Oxnard College on Saturday for a “drumming playshop.” It was part of “A Day for Men,” the second annual event in which participants learned more about the men’s movement.

Blehm began the session by tapping his drum rather gingerly. But a few minutes later, he had relaxed and was pounding away with both hands and moving his body to the rhythm.

With no practice and no apparent leader, the group played spontaneously with surprising ease and coherence. Some men had been playing drums for years. Others, like Blehm, had never done it at all.

“It feels good,” Blehm said during a break between playing sessions. “I looked around the room, and it seems like everyone’s into it. I guess it’s one of those things that you don’t need any training for. . . . It’s like meditation.”

Richard Matzkin, a 49-year-old Ojai therapist and a professional drummer, put together the workshop.

“Drums have that ability to bring people into alignment fairly quickly,” Matzkin said. “It brings them into themselves and connects with a group on a level beyond words.”

The dynamics are different when only men drum together, compared to when women join a group, Matzkin said.

“There’s more energy when men drum together, it’s more rough. Women are more flowing.”

Men also need drumming more than women because they tend to be isolated from themselves and others, Matzkin said.

“Women can connect more than men,” he said.

“The men’s movement is particularly about alienation from themselves, their families, their churches, their work,” said Kevin O’Gorman, an organizer of the event.

O’Gorman said about 150 men and six women attended 29 workshops with titles such as “How to Understand the Woman in Your Life” and “The Male Presence and Masculine Shame.”