The following essay was contributed by Joyce Lewis:
Paradiddle, paradiddle…right, left, right-right, left, right, left-left. I never asked the counselors at Washington Junior High School to give me 10 drummers in one class, all boys, of course! But every morning at 9:30, there they were, drum sticks beating on everything within reach.
As a neophyte band director fresh out of UT-Austin, I simply took the schedule handed me, which divided 200 beginning band students into classes of woodwinds, brasses and this one percussion class.
What does one do with 10 drummers? I couldn’t tell them to go take speech instead (the speech teacher was my best friend, and her numbers were up, too, so she didn’t need any more students).
Drummers, percussionists. We all know how important they are. What would a high school band or a rock band be without them? They’re the backbone of the group. So I kept them all.
We only had four snare drums, one bass drum and a pair of cymbals, so even taking turns would be ineffective. To maintain my sanity, we left the instruments in the corner and bought commercial drum pads with hard-rubber tops, perfect for learning drum rudiments….and much quieter.
Fortunately for me, at Del Mar Junior College, my band director had been a percussion major who taught a comprehensive percussion methods course. I whipped out my Haskell Harr Drum Method Book II and brushed up on my paradiddles, flamadiddles and ratamacues, and practiced with the kids every day.
Actually, it was a lot of fun. The only problem came at the end of the year when we were to present an end-of-school concert. Again, what to do with 10 drummers?
The educational concept in San Angelo in the early 1960s was very innovative for the time. Every seventh grader in the city came to Washington for one year, splitting up into two 8th-9th grade junior highs for the next two years, before coming together again for high school.
This meant that every seventh-grade band parent would be attending my concert.
Central High School was the most beautiful high school I had ever seen, more so than most college campuses. There were separate buildings for each grade, plus the Babe Zaharias gym and indoor pool, the John Phillip Sousa band hall, a performance arts building in-the-round and a homemaking building. The city even had a golf course next door, so that Central golfers virtually had their own course. Next to the golf course was an idyllic, meandering stream. The school was topnotch in every way, and yielded the State Champs in football (coached by Emory Bellard) while I was in San Angelo.
Using local eighth and ninth-grade junior highs for resources, I pooled together enough percussion odds and ends to feature all 10 percussionists on two numbers in our concert.
First, I arranged “American Patrol” for our clarinetists to play while the drummers flamadiddled along; the song was a perfect fit for drum rudiments.
The other number was “Trumpets Ole”, a Latin number featuring our trumpet section, but with much opportunity for using Latin rhythm instruments like maracas, claves, tambourines and bongo drums. I think we made up a lot of parts which the composer didn’t write, but each percussionist had a part.
In July of 2004, as I sat on the front row as part of the Houston Symphony Chorus’ performance with the Symphony in Howard Shore’s epic Lord of the Rings Symphony: Six Movements for Orchestra and Chorus, I was reminded of my 10 drummers from so many years ago.
In his endeavor to relate J. R. R. Tolkien’s “sweeping emotion, thrilling vistas and grand journeys” (Houston Symphony program notes), Shore included not only full orchestra, chorus, children’s chorus and soloist, but unusual instruments like a whistle/recorder for Hobbits’ melodies, and lots of percussion instruments not often seen.
There were instruments from the East to depict the Elves, a cimbalom from Haiti for a mellow sound, and the hostile Orcs were represented by violent and percussive sounds. These abrasive sounds were achieved by using a double set of timpani, two large gongs, several sets of smaller gongs, Japanese taiko drums, chains beaten upon piano wires, and a set of metal bell plates so loud that we singers nearby could not hear if we were singing the correct notes. Very loud, those Orcs!
Occasionally, a solo violin, flute, bassoon, trumpet or horn would take over while the Chorus was busy singing in the Tolkien languages Quenya, Sindarin, Khuzdul, Adunaic, Black Speech and Old and modern English, but probably most listeners left Jones Hall remembering the plaintive melody of the whistle and the impressive percussion section.
It makes me wonder what has happened to my 10 drummers of long ago. What would their reactions have been to this music? Would they have imagined themselves being up there on the stage? No simple paradiddles or ratamacues here; no more playing on the rubber pads!
Of one thing I have no doubt: They would have been blown away by Howard Shore’s wonderful, grand spectacle of Hobbits, Dwarves, Men, and especially Orcs, because that was
BIG-TIME PERCUSSION…THE BIG DRUMS!