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Flowering Drum Song

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SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

To the casual music fan, drums are Ringo Starr.

They’re the province of the lead singer’s opposite, cluttering the rear of the stage, deep in the shadows.

As both drummer and businessman, Remo Belli sees something different.

“It ain’t all rock ‘n’ roll,” cracked Belli, founder and CEO of Remo Inc. in Valencia, the world’s leading seller of drumheads, the skins that drummers hit.

Belli, inventor of the synthetic drumhead, envisions a whole new market--therapy drummers.

“I really think soon there will be drum centers, where people will go, pay a monthly fee and play for hours, to relieve stress,” said the gray-ponytailed Belli, 70. “Percussion definitely has a deeper impact on people’s lives than they think.”

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“Drums have a special fascination with people because I can take anyone off the street and sit them down and teach them to play something that sounds like something you hear on the radio,” said Dave Black, a longtime jazz drummer and composer who uses Remo drumheads.

“With brass or woodwind instruments, you have to [be trained to blow an educated] tone before you can do anything.”

Well aware of that accessibility, Remo officials are trying to boost the company’s presence in the emerging education, therapy and world percussion markets, as more companies explore what Belli called the “deeper impact” of percussion.

Hot products are large kettle-style drums that Alzheimer’s patients use for therapeutic “drum circles” or tiny round drums banged by children still in diapers. Large corporations are even getting into the act, hiring drum consultants to teach employees to loosen up and release aggression through percussion.

These trends have helped push sales higher, with percussion sales roughly doubling between 1991 and 1996 to almost $250 million, according to the Carlsbad-based National Assn. of Music Manufacturers.

“The thing I’m most intrigued with is the position music is taking socially,” Belli said. “Considering all of the areas of technology and everything, we deal most with the emotion. We’re in the well-being business.”

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About a year and a half ago, Belli’s company marked its 40th anniversary and moved from a cluster of buildings in North Hollywood to a new 200,000-square-foot headquarters carved out of Hasley Canyon just outside the northern border of Santa Clarita.

Four years after the 1994 Northridge earthquake crippled production, Remo’s annual revenues are about $40 million and climbing, executives of the privately held company say.

A jazz and swing drummer from rural Indiana, Belli stayed in Los Angeles after serving in the Navy in World War II. In 1957, he came up with the all-American concept that drumheads made of polyester would last longer and provide a more consistent tone than the traditional animal skins.

Decades later, Remo devised Acousticon R, a synthetic drum shell that replaces wood or fiberglass in the drum’s body.

The new materials help lower the cost of drums, which had been a deterrent to newcomers. A set of beginners’ rock-style drums can cost from $800 to more than $2,000. The company also offers drum sets of synthetic materials for $5,000 that compete with $10,000 sets from rival manufacturers, Remo executives say.

Belli conceded that there is an inherent challenge in creating a centuries-old product from synthetic material. “There’s no discussion,” he said. “Some people are going to think it’s odd. I don’t argue with them.”

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There was a time when musicians refused to accept a drumhead that wasn’t made of cowhide, Belli noted.

“When we first came out with Acousticon, we made crap,” said Doug Sink, Remo’s chief financial officer. “But it’s come a long way.”

Among musicians, Remo stands with Fender amplifiers and Gibson guitars as a brand name.

It has a solid lead in the drumhead business, with more than 80% of the market, Remo executives say. But the company is fourth or fifth in selling full drum kits, they said. Remo’s sales figures are not made public, nor are those of many other companies in their field, they said.

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Remo does about half its business overseas, so many of the Acousticon drums bear African and Asian designs and colors and come in shapes of traditional drums from those continents, such as the djembe and asonga, and Belli travels several times a year to explore world markets.

But for all its prominent status in the market, the company’s workers maintain a level of secrecy reflecting the industry’s fierce competition.

In Remo’s starkly modern headquarters, research and development teams conduct intensive tests in soundproof rooms. If a product finally passes muster, it is brought to a special area of the factory floor that employees wryly call “Area 51,” in reference to the secret military test site in Nevada. That’s where the company keeps instruments destined for its celebrity drummer clients.

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Drummers paid to endorse Remo include jazz greats Louis Bellson and Billy Higgins, U2’s Larry Mullen Jr. and Mickey Hart, who played for the Grateful Dead.

Drums of all shapes and sizes are visible through slits in the blue tarp surrounding the rectangular area, but company officials will not allow visitors inside to view or photograph them.

During a tour of the new building, marketing director Gary Marcus acknowledged that Remo keeps plenty under wraps, but insisted that its philosophy does not lead to a siege mentality.

“This place has more romance than business,” he said.

As he spoke, a quality control specialist unwittingly emphasized his point, breaking into a frenetic solo to test a conga drum.

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