Yesterday I got a new metal drum. It has been on my to-have-done list since I came to Cairo. I resisted it. I am not a collector. I have a metal drum. I got it as payment from my tabla teacher on my first professional gig back in Toronto, 12 years ago. But that drum has been sitting in a warehouse in Kyiv, together with all my belongings, since the beginning of the war. I guess I resisted getting a new tabla because I was hopeful the war would be over and Iana and I could reunite with family, friends, and get all our little treasures. It has been 539 days of war, with no end in sight.
On a pragmatic level, I am a drummer and I need a drum. It is a mundane problem, especially considering the context of war, when so many people lost their houses, jobs, and so many more lost their lives.
However mundane, it was a problem nonetheless. I went to the flagship store in Egypt to get a new tabla. I learned that, like cats, it’s not you that chooses the drum. The drum chooses you.
I saw mine across the room. It is golden and blue, my favorite colors, the colors of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. I suddenly realized they are also the colors of my homeland of Brazil and my adopted land of Ukraine.
As I was leaving the store, I remembered a quote by David Allen:
‘The mundane is not a substitute for the sublime. It’s just a secret passageway to it.’
So may this mundane action of buying a drum be a secret passageway: I will use this drum to create 3 solos for Ukrainian dancers during my stay in Cairo. And I hope to play with it in Ukraine, when all sounds of taks and dums don’t remind me of machine guns and bombs, but the sounds of the celebration of victory, freedom and peace. The rhythms of life moving forward.
