#memoriesat60

I met Tobin Low and Kathy Tu, co-hosts of the podcast Nancy, at SXSW in 2018. Tobin is a friend of my daughter-in-law Emily through their music backgrounds (Tobin was a cellist, Emily is a violinist). Over lunch and between films, Tobin, Kathy, Emily and I discussed gender pronouns and staying current with language around LGBTQ issues. Tobin, Emily and I continued the conversation while cooling off at Barton Springs. When we departed, I wanted to know more about how Tobin and Kathy were sharing queer stories about journeys towards self definition and became a regular listener of their Nancy podcast via WNYC Studios. Their earnestness, vulnerability and light are so enticing.

I recently caught the last of the 100+ episodes and I found myself tearing up. Is it Covid or the long overdue protests or being home so much or not seeing my children? Even before Tobin's voice broke at the end of the episode, the emotions, which ride so high in me of late. took over. Another goodbye to a connection, however virtual.
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If you haven't tuned in, there are some starter kits on their website - groups of episodes geared to having a good laugh, a good cry, starting a gaggle, queer money matters ... I do think you will be pulled into their warm, inviting and informative conversations.

​#memoriesat60 #missing community

My children were young. We were still relatively new to Billings. I was seeking out ways to connect deeply with others. I had already participated in a women’s spirituality retreat with Jean Shinoda Bolen at the Feathered Pipe Ranch west of Helena, but the rest of the participants were from out of state. Something intrigued me about the idea of going back to the ranch to build and learn to play an ashiko drum with the Drum Brothers. In 1997, I went and a new passion was born.
 
The simultaneously diffuse and focused attention required to play polyrhythms. The waves of rhythm filling the room and my body. The pure joy of being so intensely present and connected. The sweet high when our hands and souls were in sync within the music. And the freedom in the dances accompanying these songs.
 
This rhythmic journey and its communities took me to retreats and workshops, found me buying a djembe, a set of djun-djuns, congas, frame drums, a doumbek, a tambura in Venezuela, shakers and sticks and learning how to move my body in expansive ways. I was grateful to have amazing drumming and dance teachers: the incomparable Nigerian Babatunde Olatunji, master drummers Abdoul Dumbia from Mali and Joh Camara from Guinea, master dancer Youssouf Koumbassa from Guinea, Bangoura, a member of WOFA, the dance and drum from Guinea that performed at the ABT and came to our house for dinner and, so much learned from the Drum Brothers of Missoula and Arlee.
 
I created a drumming circle in Billings and my dear friend Robin and I began teaching free gatherings so that we could recreate the magic locally. We played on the Rims before remembering that the drums were designed to send their sounds miles away. {My apologies to those who lived below.} Robin and I played in front of the Sun'e Eye in Monument Valley. We played for an outdoor wedding, for church services, Vicki Coffman and Bess Fredlund’s improvisational theater and dance performance at McCormick’s Café, and casually, at my house, with the Puentes Brothers from Cuba. But, mostly for each other.
 
It was a glorious adventure and exploration. And then ... I learned to weld… and a new passion began to eclipse this one. Now, my steering wheel is most often my instrument as I play along with songs in my car. The rhythms, though, are forever part of me.