Brandon Clapham’s reaction to drumming was very simple: “I was just happy.”
“It was just like a spiritual, physical connection — a connection to the creator and the spirit of earth,” says Clapham, who has been drumming for the past four years in Vancouver. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Clapham has been in touch with indigenous drumming practices and prefers to recite meditative phrases that speak of serenity and self-sacrifice. But drumming remains out of reach for many of the country’s indigenous Canadians. That’s why the Cochrane-based Native Canadian Music Centre is hoping a new intervention — playing percussion that resembles music but is meant to be played inside the brain — will help some of the country’s indigenous people experience the transformative power of drumming for the first time.
The drums weaves sound into the diaphragm of the individual’s brain, passing down through the brain and into the subconscious, says Patrick Hodges, a director with Native People Are Power, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering indigenous Canadians.
The drum plays through the part of the brain’s auditory system, providing rhythms that resonate in the brainstem, which releases rhythmic hormones in the thalamus and into the hypothalamus — systems that connect to the autonomic nervous system, the nervous system that regulates body temperature, heartbeat and breathing.
“It’s actually going to activate different parts of the brain that have not been exposed to drumming,” says Hodges. “It’s going to stimulate those parts of the brain, which are really lacking for many young people within the First Nations population.”
The drum also has a stimulating component that allows listeners to respond to the beats in positive ways, Hodges says.
The drum is particularly effective in helping young people who are struggling with mental health or living in poverty, Hodges says.
“[It’s like] being able to set your sights so high and that you realize you can achieve whatever you put your mind to. It’s a way to make the possibility of survival for yourself seem achievable.”
The drum is particularly effective in helping young people who are struggling with mental health or living in poverty, Hodges says.
This approach has already seen success in international research. In a 2010 study in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that participants who played music-type drumming exercises for 20 minutes a day showed reduced emotional problems related to depression and anxiety.
But finding an intervention to assist First Nations youth with their First Nations culture has proved difficult. Hodges was working on the Interdepartmental Aboriginal Youth Program at the University of British Columbia when he realized there was a need to conduct research on the effect of drumming on brain development. His research team conducted a series of experiments to determine how drumming affects drumming practices.
The researchers had participants reach into their mind or body with no other instrument during the 20-minute drumming experiment and repeated the task without additional music, without drums, with only a drum and with a puppet show.
Researchers found that participants who drummed during the experiment were able to quickly become accustomed to the rhythmic beat and the high frequency of the drum, so as to play the drum with more ease.
The research prompted Hodges to use drumming to help first nations children deal with their cultural issues, such as “gender identity and challenging their identity, or needing to be more physically active,” he says.
One member of Hodges’ research team, Bill Davies, a neuroscientist at UBC, used brain imaging to examine the participant’s brain when they were playing the drum, and when they were watching a