It’s a surprising sound to hear entering a senior center. Bass. Loud. Passionate. Dance-inspiring. Mesmerizing.
It reminds the listener of music blaring on a cop show as a chase escalates. As burglars set up an explosion, while the seconds tick away. As the roar of a hijacked plane gets louder — and louder.
Or, to those who watch less TV, perhaps as two mountaineers near the top of Everest.
Perry Como, this is not.
More like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Black Keys or the Sex Pistols.
It gets faster and faster and louder. it’s surprising the floor doesn’t buckle, the windows don’t shatter, and the walls don’t dance.
This is a drumming circle at the Shelburne Falls Senior Center.
Hands hit antelope skin, cow skin and goat skin stretched tightly across 2-foot-high wooden drums etched with leaves and geometric patterns, straight from West Africa: Guinea, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, to be exact.
Nine women and a man play Djembe drums propped between their knees on a recent Monday.
Nearly 40 years passed between the births of the oldest and youngest women. The oldest, Anne Maloney, 94, of Colrain pounds a drum with a pipe-shaped wooden stick. Irene Baird, 67, of Buckland leads the group.
“Dawn, hands here in the middle of your drum. Here’s your bass — in the middle here. That hand will stay here the whole time,” she tells Dawn Peters, 75, of Heath.
The drummers include Maloney, Peters, Barbara Watts, 68, of Shelburne Falls, Mary Brooks, 60, of Buckland, Nancy Brewer, 74, of Shelburne Falls, Melinda Cross, 64, of Buckland, Mieke Geffen of Shelburne and Joan Arsenault, 65, of Ashfield. Irene’s husband, Larry Baird, 68, adds high notes by hitting a bell with a large nail while striking the side of a drum with his hand.
They play in chairs on the center’s wood floor below a tin ceiling. The Main Street center used to be a Masonic hall. It’s just a few steps from Bridge Street, the town’s commercial hub.
Baird leads the women in a simple rhythm. Left hand, right hand — right, left, right.
The left makes the high note on the drum’s edge, while the right pulls the bass note from the middle.
High-low-low-high-low.
They repeat the rhythm for several minutes — how long, it’s hard to say, because they seem to be having so much fun that time slips away.
They are in perfect unison, though sometimes someone gets a little lost.
“If all else fails, just play the bass,” Irene says. “When it gets to be too much, take a time-out.”
She tells them they did really well, even though she had picked up the pace and they had to keep up.
“It’s much different faster — you don’t think at all.,” says Melinda Cross. “It’s like something takes over.”
They move on to a more complicated rhythm. Bass-high-bass-high-bass-high bass-bass-bass high-bass-bass.
Magically, the drummers all finish at the exact same split second.
Baird cups her hands, then blows a kiss from her hands to each drummer.
“You did really well,” Baird says to Brooks.
“Well, I was sitting right next to you!” Brooks responds.
Larry Baird says every African rhythm has a story. One, called “Kuku,” for example, is from Guinea. It’s about a fisherman who brings a giant load of fish home to his village. The rhythm is a celebration of the feast.
Cross started playing two years ago.
“It sounded like something I know nothing about, but wanted to learn. I always wanted to do an instrument in high school and never did,” she said.
She thinks the appeal is that it sounds like a heartbeat. She smiles.
“It probably goes back to the womb.”
The drumming circle begins at 1 p.m. on Mondays at the Shelburne Falls Senior Center.