The Bob Bloom Workshop at PASIC 2006
A Review by Eric Stuer

[At right, from left to right: Bob Bloom, STU at Rhythmweb, and music therapist Bill Matney at Bob's November 12 2006 workshop]

Sunday, the day after the close of PASIC 2006, we went back to the now quiet Austin Convention Center to attend the Bob Bloom Drum circle facilitation workshop. Bob is one of the pioneers, about whom we'd read and heard for over a dozen years. We were looking forward to seeing just what he does and how he does it.

Mr. Bloom has a great deal of practical experience, as it turns out, and to our delight, his workshop centered on the practical, as opposed to the theoretical. He was friendly, down to Earth, and completely willing to share it all, from marketing and selling to design and presentation techniques. Alas, we did run short of time. We would have liked to see a longer workshop, and he could easily have filled one with content, but we only had the afternoon. Still, we touched on a lot, in the time allowed.

Rather than the circle format, we were purposely using auditorium style seating, similar to so many elementary school presentations. Our class size was about 25-30; he had us role play as 200 third graders while he did his normal 3rd grader school presentation. Then we went back and talked about just what was done (and why), at various points along the way.

We all had fun with it. As soon as we heard we'd be role playing 3rd graders, one distinguished looking gentleman in the front row raised his hand immediately and asked timidly, "Can I go to the bathroom?" [LOL]

Bob stressed the importance of building language learning and other disciplines into one's presentation, using official state educational standards as guides. His deceptively simple presentation was designed to be a sort of 'stealth teaching', if you will. I never actually heard him refer to himself as a 'drum circle facilitator'; rather, he describes his role as that of a 'teaching artist'. He embeds multidisciplinary learning into the set as he goes along.

At one point, for example, he had embedded history facts and mnemonic learning techniques in the segue between songs by saying:

"Whenever I have trouble remembering a name, I find a rhythm for it, like, oh, let's do: [in rhythm] John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Thirty-fifth President..", etc.

Once he had us 'kids' saying it, he switched us to clapping it, and off we went on his new song, Baba's 'Ara Me Le', using that rhythm as the basis for it. His whole program was extremely well thought out in this manner..The presentation was essentially song based, and designed to get every kid in the auditorium up to play drums in front of his or her peers by the end of the set. tres cool..

Bob has had the honor and good fortune to have served for years as a faculty assistant to Master Babatunde Olatunji at the Omega Institute for his "Language of the Drums" courses, and so Baba's influence was keenly felt throughout Bob's presentation, with several of his songs and frequent reference to Gun go pa and other things Baba has said and stressed:

"Unity of Purpose!"

"If you can say it, you can play it."

The whole workshop was very inclusive. At various points teachers and music therapists in the group brought up various points and explained the workings of their profession as related to the matters at hand. I got quite a bit of immediately useful stuff and it was wonderful to meet Bob Bloom and the other participants..

All in all, was an excellent investment of $55.00, and a perfect and fitting end to a very good conference. Sincere thanks to Bob Bloom and to the Percussive Arts Society for having him.

Eric Stuer, Nov 14 2006

[for a review of the rest of PASIC 2006, click here]

Postscript: I find that I am playing around with names more, since attending the Bob Bloom workshop, and I find myself working with Baba's name. Try this experiment.

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