Drumming taps into healing energy

When Maxwell Kofi Donkor warms up for an outdoor rehearsal of his drum ensemble in Andover, he stops traffic. Passers-by slow their cars, roll down their windows, even stop.

"Fanga! Fanga!" Donkor sings as he pounds with his hands on the djembe (jem-bay) drum between his legs. "Fanga!"


As the sun sets the other drummers in Sankofa African Drum and Dance Ensemble echo his vocal cry. He throws his head back and laughs. "Fanga!" His hands keep pounding and he nods at the cars.


The rhythm gets into everyone’s blood and legs start moving and hands clapping.


"Fanga" is Asante for "thank you" or "welcome," he explains later. "Sankofa" means "discovering your roots."


Donkor, a native of Ghana, is the headliner at the sixth annual Indian Summer Festival of Music & Healing at Schooley’s Mountain Park in Long Valley Sept. 16, expected to draw some 1,000 drummers, dancers and percussion enthusiasts from throughout the Northeast.


The festival bursts with the sounds of several drum circles, including those of the New Jersey-based Rhythm Monsters, which raises funds to build and operate a school in Kopeyia, Ghana, said Julie Lange of Hackettstown, co-founder and co-organizer of the festival.

The stage is the natural amphitheater of the park. The site was chosen, Lange said, because in past centuries it was a gathering place for Lenape Indians who enjoyed the healing waters of the mountain.


In expanding upon the themes of healing elements in native cultures, the festival also includes storytelling by Lisa Facciponti, who tells tales from many cultures; a tipi raising by Kelly Moonwater Frederick; a demonstration of wilderness skills by members of the Tom Brown Tracker School, and a labyrinth walk.


There also will be healers who practice various healing techniques from around the world and vendors selling food, crafts, drums, jewelry, ceramics, and more.


For Donkor, an internationally known master drummer who learned to play from his grandfather and has played in the National Drum and Dance Ensemble of Ghana, the roots of Sankofa go beyond genetic and cultural ones. He talks about the roots of what it means to live as a human between heaven and earth.


"Drumming brings balance," Donkor said. "It connects you to the earth. We believe that. It connects you to the spirits, too, an idea that goes back to our ancestral workship. We believe in the power of our ancestors. We believe that God is so humongous, someone you cannot touch, so that is where the ancestors come in."


Ancestors who have lived great lives are humans’ link to the spirit world, he explained.

Even the straight sitting posture of drumming suggests connections to the heavens and the earth.


"Already we have a drum within us," Donkor said. "We have a heartbeat. That’s why everybody gets absorbed in the sound of a drum."


Since drumming usually is performed in circles, it is inherently communal, he added.


"It brings us together," Donkor said. "I don’t think anyone wants to be alone in this world. It’s too lonely. There is strength generated when we drum together."


Sankofa keeps Donkor busy; the group has 100 members in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Additionally, he teaches sculpture and drumming to special needs children, troubled teens, and adults.


The grand finale of the music and healing festival at Schooley’s Mountain Park will be a massive drum circle in which everyone — performers and spectators — participates until sunset. It’s the kind of circle that started the yearly drumming event.

After the death of her 16-year-old son, Justin, in September 1993, Lange started a rap session at her home so friends could help each other heal.


"It turned into a drumming circle," she said. "I could feel the drumming helping me. I noticed that, after drumming, something shifted in the others, too. No matter the worry on their hearts when they came in, they left loose and relaxed."


Schooley’s Mountain Park, Justin’s favorite place, was chosen for a more public circle. Since then, hundreds have enlarged that original, small circle.


"I’m sure Justin is really smiling about all the things that have come to pass because of him."


That drumming, part of shamanic traditions for thousands of years, heals the body is a contention science has started to measure and verify. Results of the most recent study, authored primarily by Dr. Barry B. Bittman, medical director of the Mind-Body Wellness Center in Meadville, Pa., was published in January of this year. Bittman studied the effects of drumming on 111 average, healthy people.


"What we know is that one hour of group drumming facilitated by a music therapist changes people’s cellular biology in a positive direction," said Christine Stevens, director of music therapy and wellness at Remo Inc., a drum company.

The Bittman study showed rhythms boosted the drummers’ circulating white blood cell count, according to Professor Barbara J. Crowe, director of music therapy at Arizona State University. These natural killer cells seek out and destroy cancer and virus cells.


"We know sensory input, particularly hearing, activates emotional states and that positive emotional states are good for the immune system," Crowe said. "Drumming circles promote a positive emotional state by enhancing people’s sense of belonging and helping them release repressed emotion."


One effect of such a state is an increase in Interleukin-2, a protein made by the body that causes infection-fighting cells to multiply and mature.


Psychologically, drummers in the Bittman study reported feeling less stress and less depression, as reflected on two psychological tests — the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory.


The Indian summer festival is cosponsored by the Myhelan Cultural Arts Center, the Morris County Park Commission and Just Cause, a local nonprofit group dedicated to promoting drumming.


Lorraine Ash can be reached at lash@morristo.gannett.com or (973)428-6200.