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African Drumming for
Your Health, Happiness
and Bottom Line
By Carol A. Boe – June 2011
tart tapping on a West African Djembe (pronounced GEM-bay) drum with a group, and scientific evidence
indicates that this musical effort can help improve your physical, mental, and emotional health.
Since 1999, researchers have begun to look seriously at how playing African hand drums in a group for
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recreation can reduce stress in people of all ages and help people deal with particular disease challenges such as
cancer, autism, and Alzheimer’s. Drumming is also used for corporate team building and anti-aging.
Recreational hand drumming is where there is no pressure to achieve perfection. When done with an
easy-to-learn rhythmic protocol (a system of guided steps), it lets people communicate in a unique way that they
may not understand, but they know they’re getting something out of it. Hand drumming also helps you connect
with the people you’re playing with through entrainment.
Entrainment is a physics phenomenon that occurs when two or more oscillating bodies lock into phase
and start vibrating in harmony. Dutch scientist, Christian Huygens, first discovered this process in 1665 while he
was trying to design a pendulum clock. Huygens found that when he placed two clocks on a wall near each other
and swung the pendulums at different rates, they eventually started swinging at the same rate because they
mutually influence one another. Huygens did more research and discovered that human bodies are also
mechanical systems.
Entrainment is evident in music. Barbara Crowe, Director of Music Therapy at the University of
Arizona, Tempe, defines rhythmic entrainment as: “A strong sense of group identity and a feeling of belonging
created because participants are actively making music together, and because the sustained repetition of the
steady beat acts to bring people together physically, emotionally, and mentally.”
When members of a hand drum circle play together for an extended period of time they have similar
breathing and heart rates and can even be on similar brainwaves.
Increased Immune Function
In the late 1990s, neurologist Barry Bittman, MD and two other doctors, Lee Berk and David Felten,
conducted the first comprehensive landmark study showing that people who did recreational group hand
drumming (or non-pressure drumming without achievement) with a healthrhythms protocol increased their
immune function, especially for cells that seek out and destroy cancer cells and virally-infected cells. Their
research was done at Dr. Bittman’s Mind-Body Wellness Center, at Meadville Medical Center, in Meadville, Pa.
Dr. Bittman’s research showed the biological effectiveness of recreational hand drumming by
contrasting it with different relaxation methods and how they affected neuroimmune measures. (Neuroimmune
referrs to the interactions between the immune system and the brain.) The results were based on blood samples
taken from subject groups before and after each session.
“People need to feel comfortable and non-stressed,” says Dr. Bittman. “We felt the need to initiate and
develop a protocol to help people overcome the feeling of being non-musical, which is dominant in our culture.

2. But there’s an innate part of us that is musical.” Dr. Bittman adds, “When people join together they develop a
camaraderie that provides a measure of safety in expressing themselves in meaningful ways.”
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A Different Way to Play and Heal
Atlanta’s “One-Hour Drummer,” Peter Marino, has developed another easy-to-learn rhythmic
protocol, called the “Kyo MethodTM “ to teach people of all ages who can’t read music how to play an African
hand drum like the Djembe. Kyo is a Japanese word that means sound or action. The protocol puts words to
rhythms which makes them easy to remember. This enables Marino to teach up to five drum parts in a one-hour
class to people who have never touched a drum before. Hence, the name One-Hour Drummer for his classes and
company.
“There are many great teachers teaching the Djembe in Atlanta and around the country,” says Marino.
“I’ve studied with some of them. But I don’t think there is anyone out there who can get this much out of people
in such a short period of time. I try to read the groups, as well as the individuals and try to go in a direction that
will help make them feel successful in one hour.”
In October 2010, the Cancer Wellness Center, Piedmont Fayette Hospital in Fayetteville, Ga. started
using Marino’s One-Hour Drummer classes for their patients. The African hand drumming program is offered
because it enables patients to express themselves without the pressure of talking about how they feel, which can
be especially difficult for men to do, according to Program Coordinator Tavari Taylor.
The drum program also produces lots of laughter and unexpected connnections between the
cancer patients.
“In the same drumming circle we have children as young as 10 and patients in their mid-70s. Where
else would the 10 year-old have a chance to talk to a 70 year old patient?” says Taylor.
“When people are going through chemotherapy their white blood cells are down,” adds
Taylor. “Drumming raises their T cells and boosts the patient’s immune system so they can better fight
the cancer.”
T cells are specialized white blood cells of our innate immune system that seek out and destroy cancer
cells and virally-infected cells.
“Drumming falls within the mission of Cancer Wellness” says Taylor. “People who are fighting cancer
have their good days and bad days. But they always leave Peter’s session happier than when they came in.
When Peter is here, you can hear the drums throughout the hospital. We leave his door open so patients, nurses,
and anyone else in the center can wander in and check it out. We definitely plan to continue offering the
drumming program.”
Marino started doing African hand drumming classess with his KyoTM protocol at a summer enrichment
program for autistic kids in Philadelphia. Music therapists usually work one-on-one with special needs children.
But Marino was asked to teach a class with 15 autistic kids of different ages and degrees of autism. His students’
autism ranged from not being able to sit still to rolling on the floor screaming.
“I really thought they were going to fire me after the first class,” Marino says. “I didn’t know what I was
doing and didn’t realize that I had to adjust my expectations for the kids. Instead, all the teachers said it was
fabulous because it was the first time these kids all sat together and did something as a group for half an hour.
My goal was just to get them to sit still.”
At the end of the six-week program, the autistic children did a drumming performance for their parents.

3. “Afterwards, some of the parents came up to me in tears saying this was the first time their child had
ever been part of a group and achieved something,” Marino adds.
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Healthy Playtime for Adults
Peter Marino now focuses on teaching adults because
they often need more healthy forms of stress release. Many
children have more organized opportunities to play and relax
than their parents do.
He makes hand drumming accessible to the public by
offering three commercial six-week classes using the KyoTM:
“Intro to Hand Drumming,” “One-Hour Drummer Goes to
Africa,” and “Urban Taiko.” (Urban Taiko uses sticks on drums
made from tires and duct tape.)
The public classes are limited to 20 students. Most of
the students have no musical background, and they range in ages
from twenty-something to eighty-something. The classes are
very structured. They begin with hand control and touch control
exercises, but they are intended to make everyone feel successful
and enjoy him or herself.
“We give people the opportunity to make some mistakes
and let them know that it’s ok,”
says Marino.
African hand drumming classes offering fun and health
benefits to non-musical adults using the Djembe have sprung up
across the United States. They can be found in places such as
Ft. Meyers, Fla., Fort Worth and Houston, Texas, Los Angeles
and Redwood City, Calif., Boston, Mass., Chicago, Rochester
and Schenectady, N.Y., Kenosha, Wis., and others.
Giving oneself permission to make mistakes can be
difficult for many players in western cultures. When we learn
something new we are usually expected to get it right the
first time.
“Immediate gratification takes too long,” adds Marino.
Judy Newman, a technology Training Specialist for a
law firm, has taken the One-Hour Drummer Goes to Africa
and Urban Taiko classes.
“I’ve always loved percussion,” Newman says. “You
can feel the movement through your whole body. That’s exciting
to me. Putting words to the drum parts makes it so easy to
remember.”
“I started with the beginning class,” says Barbara Theus,
The One-Hour
Drummer
Peter Marino, left,
is also a professional
trumpeter who played
for the Lion King on
Broadway and worked
with such music giants as Yo Yo Ma,
Giovanni Hidalgo, and Andre Watts.
Marino, who has degrees in music
and music education, started playing
hand drums with a men’s community
group in Philadelphia in the 1990s.
That experience led him to develop the
KyoTM Method that he now uses to teach
music novices how to play drums.
The classes cost $150 and include a
course book and CD to play along with at
home. Twice a month, he runs 90-minute
practice sessions, or drum labs, that cost
$10 a session and walk-ins are welcome.
These drum labs are more structured
than traditional freewheeling drum
circles. Marino wants people to feel that
they’re getting something out of them
and still have a good time.
Bring your own drum or use one of
Marino’s. If you’re new, just listen and
follow the the beat. You’ll pick it up.
“We do the African hand drumming
programs because we know how good it
is for people,” says Marino.
Participation in the ensemble “Stage
Fright” is voluntary. It gives musical
novices a chance to perform in coffee
houses, at festivals, fund-raisers, and
other events around Georgia. During
performances, the group passes out
shakers and cowbells to get their
audiences involved, too.

4. a semi-retired florist who is in the One-Hour Drummer Goes to Africa class for the second time. “It was harder
for me because I had no musical background. But I kept practicing and got better at it. I stay with it because I
love it.”
Newman and Theus are now members of Marino’s performing group “Stage Fright.” The ensemble was
started to give students who complete the One-Hour Drummer Goes to Africa class a chance to continue playing
with a group and extend the wellness benefits of their drumming.
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Effective for Anti-Aging and Alzheimer’s
A three-year study of older adults by Alicia Clair, Ph.D., Director of Music Therapy at the University of
Kansas, and Karl T. Bruhn in the late 1990s showed that making music with a group helps reduce anxiety,
depression, and loneliness. It also helps improve concentration and manage daily stress. Clair’s and Bruhn’s
research found that these things in turn help people to feel better emotionally and physically. They also tend to
be more motivated to continue making music.
“From exercise, nurturing and social support, to intellectual stimulation, spirituality and stress reduction,
group drumming stimulates creative expression that unites our minds, bodies and spirits," says Bruhn, who was
known as the “Father of Music-making and Wellness.”
An eight-week study in 1995 by Dr. Clair with music therapist Barry Bernstein and Gary Johnson found
that recreational group drumming could also help people with Alzheimer’s Disease. During this study, twenty-eight
Alzheimer’s patients learned new drumming strokes and some learned increasingly complex rhythm
patterns during forty-minute drumming sessions. The drumming was effective because rhythm permeates all
four parts of the brain. It synchronizes the logical left and the intuitive right hemispheres, which helps access
unconscious information. Rhythm also synchronizes the frontal and lower areas of the brain to help integrate
nonverbal information with some insight and understanding.
The Clair, Bernstein and Johnson research also showed that drumming could help Alzheimer’s patients
relate better to their loved ones: “The predictability of rhythm may provide the framework for repetitive
responses that make few cognitive demands on people with dementia.”
African Drumming Helps the Bottom Line
Corporate wellness is another area where recreational African hand drumming is effective. Diana
Marino is Peter Marino’s wife. She is a change management and team building expert with twenty years of
consulting experience with Fortune 500 and smaller companies. People in financialy driven corporations tend to
be very guarded and busy driving agendas for their bossess or organizations.
“When money becomes your means and not your end it can release a hell of a lot of stress and tension,”
says Marino. “Drumming connects you back to yourself. If you’re not connected to yourself, your not going to
be able to connect to anyone else in the company. One of the things I find in corporations is a real need for
people to interact with each other away from their titles, positions, and personal agendas.”
Building connections and trust between coworkers helps them make deposits into what international
leadership authority Steven Covey calls their Emotional Bank Accounts. If mutual deposits have been made,
then there is likely to be a more positive and automatic response when one colleague asks the other to
do something.

5. “From a strictly business perspective, the effects of the Emotional Bank Account is better
communication, increased collaboration, and higher morale, as well as more trust and connectivity,” says
Marino. “If your organization has those things, then your productivity is going to be better. When people are
happy going to work recidivism drops and that will definitely affect your bottom line.”
A 2003 study by Dr. Bittman and colleagues showed that a recreational drumming protocol reduced
burnout and improved anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue among 112 long-term care workers at Wesbury
United Methodist Retirement Community in Meadville, Pa. The study included men and women ages 19 to 78.
The 400-bed facility retained 49 more employees after the hand-drumming program was introduced than the
year before. Wesbury had created a more satisfied and effective workforce that seemed to be more committed to
working together. Paul Umbach of Tripp Umbach Healthcare Consulting, Inc., provided an economic analysis
for the study.
Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. in Torrance, Calif., has used African hand-drumming circles for
corporate teambuilding, stress reduction, and change management since March 2001. That’s when the company
opened its Drum Room, which has been used by more than 3,000 associates.
Midge Waters, Associate Dean of the University of Toyota has already gone on record in Drum Circles
at Toyota by Christine Stevens saying, "It's an opportunity for our associates to listen to each other and put their
personal creativity into the process."
Ron "RJ" Johnson, Associate Development Manager for the Center for the Toyota Way at Toyota Motor
Sales' Corporate University, also noted in Drum Circles at Toyota that the hand-drumming circles help
employees reach their full potential.
"The Toyota Drum Circle experience creates a safe, risk-free, collaborative environment where people
can create inspiring rhythms in the moment,” says Johnson. “As we play together, we entrain into a rhythmical
spirit of camaraderie, where differences are recognized, embraced and heard. It's through this inclusive behavior
that we can truly leverage our unique diversity."
When people are creating music—or anything else—with a group, they feel connected. That connection
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helps people feel comfortable and less stressful.
“Creating anything can make your whole day go better,” says Peter Marino. “You can deal with a flat
tire better if you just came from creating something. It’s a way to just let it all out.” 
One-Hour Drummer, Atlanta, Ga., http://www.onehourdrummer.com
Mind-Body Wellness Center, Meadville Medical Center, Meadville, Pa., http://www.mind-body.org
Photos by Carol A. Boe