The Beauty of the Beat : A free drum workshop aims to teach a new way to communicate and a better way to live.

In the shadow of Watts Towers, the Saturday morning children’s drum workshop is in session. The homework assignment is a kid’s dream and a parent’s nightmare: For practice, “Just beat on a table . . .”

Well, the idea is self-expression. But these students also get a dollop of culture and, teacher Stephin Booth hopes, a sense of tradition to boost their self-esteem.

For two years, Booth and Joseph Pilly Martinez have volunteered as a team to teach Afro-Cuban drumming at Watts Towers Art Center and other venues around town.

In real life, Booth, 40, is a DWP maintenance and construction worker, and 28-year-old Martinez is a research development technician for a Riverside biomedical firm. But they share a passion for congas and quintos and tumbadoras .

Leaning over his conga, slapping the cowhide skin with the flat of one hand, Martinez counts out the beat: “1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4. If you can say it, you can play it . . .”

Booth places a 3-year-old’s hands atop an oak-barreled drum that’s almost her size. Halfway through the hour-long lesson, her enthusiasm is waning; this drum-beating is hard on the palms.

Not to Stephin Booth, 11, who’s here because he wants to be, not because he’s teacher’s son. He already plays stick drums, bass, piano, organ and guitar “and I’m learning how to play the flute.”

Young Stephin’s dad knows that, for every boy like his son, there are hundreds with neither the opportunity nor the guidance to fulfill their potential. These are the kids he wants to reach.

“Any change in this community’s got to start with the individual,” says Booth, who grew up in Watts. He reasons that if one adult takes the time to teach youngsters about their shared heritage “it’ll cause them to look at themselves and try to find out where they’re at.”

He even dares to think, “If guys from different gangs would sit down and play together . . . the drum has healing properties. There’s definitely a link between the drums and the spirit.”

Booth, who plays drums at church, finds that sometimes “music opens the door and the words go in.”

He and Martinez go through drum basics with the kids:

“Remember--the bass is in the center of the drum.”

“If you grab the skin, the sound won’t travel.”

“Use your wrists to save your arms.”

“You don’t have to beat hard and wreck your hands.”

Booth, who’s been playing for five years, learned by listening, watching and, later, lessons. Martinez, who brings a Caribbean flavor to his drumming, grew up in Brooklyn and learned from street musicians.

“Whenever I’m angry, I turn to the drums,” he says. “If you have a problem communicating verbally, you can always express your emotions on the drum.”

That’s one message he wants these kids to hear. Another is that, centuries ago, the African drum was a form of communication--one that survived despite later efforts by slaveholders in the Caribbean to squelch it and thus avert any possible uprising.

As Booth and Martinez are about to pack up their drums and rattles, a serious, bespectacled child, lured by the hypnotic sounds, wanders in off the street and starts smacking a drum. He asks what’s going on here.

Booth is not one to miss an opportunity. Free drum classes, he says, “and we’ll be back here.”

But before the Watts drum workshop returns April 16 from 10-11 a.m., Booth and Martinez will offer free drum workshops for all ages from 2:30-3:30 p.m. Saturday at the Santa Monica Festival, Clover Park, 2700 Ocean Park Blvd.

They’re the French’s New Foreign Legion

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A marathoning French duke was in town recently, going the extra mile, as it were--and as most dukes must--to raise a few francs for spiffing up his ancestral castle.

Francois, Duc de Liancourt, had timed his Southland visit to the L.A. Marathon, but had to pull out with a pulled leg muscle.

The 35-year-old duke, by day a Paris banker, broke bread with local Francophiles at Elin Vanderlip’s Villa Narcissa in Portuguese Bend and at the California Club with Friends of French Art.

All agreed that Francois, a handsome six-footer, is charmant . And, while it would be unseemly for a duke to come right out and ask for money, Vanderlip had no such qualms. Raising funds to restore French treasures, such as the duke’s 10th Century castle, La Rochefoucauld, is her passion.

Since founding FoFA in 1979, Vanderlip has each year led a well-heeled group of devotees to France. For the privilege, each super-tourist gives $6,000 (on top of trip costs) for Friends’ projects. Raised to date: $3.5 million.

This year’s 10-day Provencal odyssey in mid-May is sold out at 36, reports Vanderlip, mentioning that she has six Duponts coming. But it won’t be all pigeon on toast and vintage wines. Vanderlip expects those on her “house parties” to take their mission seriously.

Magnifying glasses in hand, they’ll haunt museums, churches and castles, sniffing out deteriorating objets . FoFA efforts have rescued from the wreckers’ ball a mill painted by Cezanne and Pissarro, salvaged Marie Antoinette’s harp and part of Empress Josephine’s wardrobe.

On a recent trip Vanderlip learned through Mrs. Hennessy--”the cognac lady”--about La Rochefoucauld. Unannounced, she dropped in.

Clearly, here was a castle in need of help. The digs were less than royal when the duke’s vivacious mother, Sonia Matossian--who accompanied the duke and his duchess to L.A.--moved down from Paris six years ago. Even the roof leaked.

The style, after seven centuries of tinkering, is part DaVinci, part Disney. It’s small, as castles go, only 43 rooms. But Matossian has a staff of only two and she’s also the tour guide, leading 15,000 paying visitors through annually.

“She’s much more courageous than me,” says the duke, who is an infrequent visitor to his 12-acre domain a few hours South of Paris by high-speed train. “Ten years ago, it was a ruin. Now we have furniture, we have central heating.”

He first saw the castle when he was five. That day, he recalls, someone gave his older sister a rabbit. “I told her, ‘give me the rabbit. I’ll give you the castle.’ Unfortunately, she kept the rabbit.”

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As the Dow plunged, one personalized plate said it all. Spotted on a black Mitsubishi Eclipse in Sherman Oaks: OWALLST

This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.