Dirge for Drums

As dutiful daily reflections of our changing times, newspapers are drawn to stories that chronicle the first and last of many things. But The Times’ Calendar section carried a doleful description the other day of the drastic decline of the drummer. Bad enough they’ve been banging on synthetic drumheads for years instead of the stretched animal skins that were good enough for much of human evolution. Now many hire-by-the-session drummers have been replaced by -- wait a beat -- the drum machine, a computer-guided electronic gizmo that mimics the percussion sounds of your wildest dreams. What’s next -- robot violins?

This news, written by Geoff Boucher, won’t stabilize Iraq, help pick a president or solve budget battles. But it is perhaps revealing of a general impersonality that is on the ascent. Does anyone remember doctor house calls or telephone exchanges with names?

Drummers can be a tad weird. Maybe it’s the constant banging, or because they’re always sitting behind the band. Maybe drummers hear and feel things others can’t. Drums can be sensual and were integral to tribal dancing, signaling, marching, advancing into battle, modern dancing, burlesque and notably rock ‘n’ roll, which couldn’t do either minus prominent percussion.

A few precocious players impress from their first day twirling the twin sticks. But most young drummers make family and neighbors wince, even when they practice in the basement. They aren’t of the drum fraternity and don’t, can’t, understand the complex arrangements of paradiddles, rolls, rim shots and sequencing by foot of different-toned bass drums and cymbals. But they do know noise. Trumpets might inspire some to “Charge!” But from the Scots to the Zulus, human drummers kept everyone together. Even those not dancing but patting the table or nodding head in time. Many closet drummers dreamed of coordinating two hands and two feet to seize control of a musical interlude and take one of those wild, improvised rides of syncopation, propelling the audience to a standing ovation.

Others, possibly expressing anger from another time, enjoy banging the be-dickens out of helpless circles. It isn’t great music, but it is great catharsis. We’re told that many of today’s recordings did not even have a live drummer in the building. Saves on pensions. Alas, now to preserve unity and the beat we must rely on an impersonal machine, like a metronome on hallucinogens. Ba-dum-dum.