Sundays in the Summer by draft
By Risa Dickens
Today we walked a long loop through frisbee games around the gazebo at the far end of the park to come sit behind the fenced in, tarp-covered monument and listen to the thundering drum circles. We sat just off the path on a slope above the roots of a line of crabapple trees shedding their blossoms. We watched the drummers, hackisackers, walkers, smokers through this spacious wall. Hundreds, maybe thousands now, of people come to the tamtams every sunday of the summer. We still like to go and listen to the drums.
Today at the tamtams I saw a girl and a boy trade phone numbers smiling not so casually. I saw a regal looking black man with a long striped button shirt, black pants and shoes and a furled but also striped umbrella, walk slowly through the knot of crowd toward about thirty people drumming. I saw a woman in a pant suit and sensible heels dancing, and two women in midrif shirts and tight jeans packing up their drums, leaving mostly men. I saw a young Indian family with a little girl stop and watch the drumming beneath the fallling petals off the path, and the woman’s sari was pink and white and gold, and a barefoot hippie went running by, and then another, and a young couple wearing bank-wear smoked a joint.
In the wide cresent of the stone terrace behind the monument there were drummers all around. A larger knot on the right side thumped loud away together, and a smaller, tighter group on the left, centered around a black man with long dreadlocks who was smiling with the pleasure of the sun and the drums, banged out more complex rhythms that lifted higher above the croud. Near the center of this battle, at the apex of the cresent by our feet sat an older man with a bigger drum. His hair was wild and white beneath a visor, and fixed off the rim of his instrument was a piece of handwritten rhythm. Six feet further along the benches around the circle sat another guy. Tougher looking, but similarly grey, he wore a tight black tshirt and his hair slicked back with pomade. He could have been the leader of a tough pack, but he watched the goofier, more expert man respectfully and, when he could, found concise ways of working with his rhythm. In a way they looked like they could have been in love.
I said to elran, who had been sitting quiet like me, blown away and open by the movement and variety of people and the pulse of the drums, that: “the best thing about drumming is that moment when you feel that other person who is hearing and hitting the same thing as you- and you have an intimate connection but maybe you never talk to each other.” You could almost see the groups of patterns building fuzzy waves from the dense corner where the hitting was mostly simple and the same, and then hear the line of more complex communicating flight breaking away. He said “Yeah. They are all just banging away.” “yeah” I trailed” I just happy to be banging.”
There were native people there, drumming beside an over-tanned and blond guy from the university, and I saw one man with his long hair, eyes smiling, looking at all this as though surprised by our surprised delight. I imagined that to these first nations guys it might just make sense that people on these lands might find they want to stomp and dance and drum.
People walk past our apartment into the late late afternoon on their way to the tamtams. When we got back from our walk out we lay on the bed with the big doors open and listened to the cars. Sundays are the longest day of the week. Even if you don’t go see the drums, the strange, smiling static of that happening sort of radiates out around the city characterizing the time sense of the day. You ask each other if you’ll go to the tamtams today; and out at night you meet people who were there all day. They’re darkly tanned and windswept like they’re back from travel, drained but carrying a different energy around.
Deeper in the woods, in the clearing behind the second path, the medeival sword-fighting has evolved into a weekly war. During the election last summer I saw a brave knight battling from behind a sheild built of a “vote Bloc” Gilles Duceppe election poster, and it seemed witty and practical- or maybe it wasn’t satire. Tough to tell.
There are always also actors practicing a play, and jugglers working on the toss, and Capoeira crews learning from a master; and all of these groups form circles that stand out only as holes in the thick knit of blankets and bikes and people.
Our city’s on an island but we have no beach so we gather and drum and watch the road.
June 7th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
I haven’t been to the tams in a couple of summers. Back when I did go, when my work availability did not include sundays so that I could please go, I used to look around anxiously for a certain couple. They were both well into their 70’s and the wife held red castanets. She was always garishly dressed, but made-up with the exagerated blush and red lips of a three year old’s doll. Her husband’s face stands out more clearly to me…strangely enough I had to call my people-watching-partner Raph to remind me how he used to dress. I’m so disappointed in myself for forgetting that he wore raver clothes, once in a while he’d sport some standard old-man clothes, but mostly he’d prefer alarmingly bright pants and crazy chunky necklaces. RAVER CLOTHES! CASTANETS! NEON GREEN WHISTLES! And then they’d dance. They’d dance for hours and hours right in the frey, completely over-the-top DANCE MOVES- spins and gyrations and slides and claps. I’d sit and watch worriedly while they moved and shook with french hippies with lizards or ferrets perched on their shoulders and mcgill students sporting man-sarongs. I don’t remember them ever smiling, though I do remember their faces turning dangerous red-ish colours that made me really nervous in the 35 degree heat. And so every week when I went back I’d check in with them, just peer over the crowd to see if they were still there, if they were ok. There were a few scary weeks when one of them wouldn’t be there, but, dedicated as they were, one would always represent. And as if the hypnotic sunday beats weren’t enough for them, they’d end up dancing the same dance at some of the jazz fest shows I saw. Gradually, this fantastic couple was upstaged by my interest in giggling at the epic medieval battles and so I haven’t seen them in years now. I hope they’re ok and still living it up (more than me, I think). Does anyone else remember them?