The Beat of Your Own Drum by Sophie Messager – Book Review by Judith Maeryam Wouk

Pick up a drum and start your unique journey with this sacred tool; there is no one right path.  The drum can help women hear their inner voice, access their own wisdom, reclaim their power, and heal. The drum in its simplicity offers a direct link to our deepest selves. 

That is the message of this profoundly personal saga, told through the stories of Sophie Messager and others.  She recounts her own transition from scientist to birth doula to journey guide for women in life transition, through reiki and a diagnosis of ADHD, growing into her identity shift from outer- to inner-centered wisdom.  Her personal practice now includes weekly drumming at dawn in a woodland with two friends and monthly drum circles.      

This book is a How-To.  Not how to learn drum technique and specific pieces or the difference between shamanic drumming (she suggests a steady beat, 3-4 a second), Middle Eastern (pattern with variations), African (different concurrent rhythms) and other drumming styles.  Not how to hone your skills for performance.  Rather, how to set up and facilitate a shamanic-type session/ circle/ ceremony, with the drum as a bridge between ordinary and non-ordinary states of consciousness. 

Messager has experienced and uses drums in a variety of perhaps-surprising contexts:  to support women through pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding and perimenopause, to regulate the nervous system of people with neurodiversity, autism, PTSD, ADHD, and addictions, and to mediate experiences of loss, trauma, stress, and anxiety. 

Messager drums for emotional regulation of such issues as security, attention, autonomy and control to foster a sense of competence and achievement.  Listening to repetitive drumming – in person, recorded, or streamed – is like having a massage.  There are social health benefits as well, from a sense of belonging to community bonds. 

With drumming you can become fully present, still mental business, and engage the right brain, shifting consciousness and bypassing the logical mind.  Messager contrasts Western medicine’s focus on measureable physical phenomena with ancient healing systems that integrate the concept of life force or vital energy as a key component of health.  People often report profound emotional release during drumming sessions. and insights that eluded years of talk therapy.   Drumming allows for emotional expression without words.

Exploring this bridge between cutting edge neuroscientific research and ancient wisdom, between scientific expertise and spiritual insight, is Messager’s major contribution.  As a scientist, she explored the growing body of evidence that validates traditional knowledge.  This paves the way for integrating drumming into contemporary Western healthcare education.

Because this is FAR, I note her recurring emphasis on using drums for spiritual practice.  She highlights spiritual journeys, her own and others, getting out of their heads and crafting an experiential spirituality.  She quotes Mickey Hart: the drum is sacred, it carries the heartbeat of Mother Earth.

Singing, dancing and drumming belong to both everyday life and to the sacred. You can bring more sacredness into your life by creating ceremonies to prepare for or mark life transitions both physical (first menstruation, fertility, menopause, hysterectomy, childbirth-related) and social (moving, marriage, children leaving).  Drum to celebrate beginnings (new relationship, new job) and grieve losses (divorce, death).   Drum to mark seasonal transitions.        

Drumming has communal, not just individual benefits. 
We drum together, our rhythms combine
Our hearts beat as one, our minds align
In sacred circle our spirits renew
Our connection grows, strong and true (p. 207)

When we drum together we’re not just making music, we’re participating in an ancient form of communication that speaks to something fundamental in our human experience. 

In the history section, Messager delves into the prohibition and modern resurgence of shamanic drumming, which is her primary practice.  Through its complicated cultural history shamanism has existed across cultures worldwide for thousands of years.  Integral to many indigenous societies in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, they were also found in European cultures, including the Celtic, Viking, Germanic and Sami.  Shamans served as intermediaries between the physical and non-physical worlds, connecting with the spiritual realms through drumming, chanting, and other rituals. The Roman conquest of Europe led to erasure of indigenous spiritual practices, which were further suppressed by Christianity.  The drumming traditions that survived tended to be in remote areas.

Shamanic drumming experienced a revival in the 20^th century (quibble:  while Layne Redmond’s When the Drummers Were Women unequivocally inspired a renaissance of women’s drumming, Layne was not a shamanic drummer.  She was very precise about playing specific rhythms correctly). 

Full disclosure: my drum journey has been quite different from those recounted in this book. My contacts are Canadian and American, not British.  I started on a(n African) djembe, but quickly gravitated to Middle Eastern tar (a frame drum without jingles, probably the drum the Biblical Miriam played) and tambourine/riqq, which are frame drums with jingles.  While they are also frame drums (a drum that is bigger around than it is deep) their construction is different from the ones Messager uses and they are played with the hands, not a beater. My drum circle, Biblical (later Spiritual) Drummers, led by a retired United Church minister, met weekly to play the compositions of Layne Redmond.   The drum circles I have attended have primarily been facilitated with the leader sculpting a rhythm or learning/playing specific pieces.  I learned briefly with an indigenous facilitator leading culturally specific; rhythms for specific occasions.  My main experience with shamanic journeying was a week in Southern France with friends.

Although I have never made a drum, I agree that it is important to honour the beings that gave up their lives.  The Holy Drumming Institute, from which I have a certificate, gifted the rural retreat center where we met with funds to support a goat in their herd.  And Cooperman Fife and Drums, https://www.cooperman.com/where most of my drums were made, used wood from their own woodlot in Vermont.  

A few more quibbles.  Discussing the impact of drumming on body energetic Messager passes lightly over the drum’s ability to agitate, rather than calm, the nervous system.  In the US Civil War, for example, drums were used to motivate boys to sign up and fight.  I would love to see more research in this area.  And although she acknowledges the healing power of the dark Messager celebrates only the (returning or maximum) light at the Solstices.

This book is a valuable resource for your drum library especially if you

• are exploring types of healing without Western colonialist bias
  • are pregnant, considering getting pregnant, or have recently given birth
• want a scientific explanation of the effects of vibration on the brain
• are seeking online and hardcopy resources and bibliography (primarily focussed on Britain)
• are seeking an alternative to psychedelics.

Messager offers valuable insights into, and resources for

• women’s empowerment and ways of knowing
• how drumming, both listening and participating, can foster personal and community growth
• tuning into a sense of the sacred, getting knowledge directly from source, by whatever name:  spirit, Love, God, Goddess your highest self
• how to listen and get to know your drum and its sweet spot

Messager’s enthusiasm is contagious and her creativity inspiring.  So let’s circle back to where we began.  Grab a drum and see where it takes you.  Writing this review, I  re-connected with my personal drum history and my own (large collection of) drums, to where I came from and where I want to go.  Listen!  The drum beats rhymically, calling us home.   Thank you.  

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This book is available for PRE-ORDER on the Womancraft website.  Pre-order copies are signed by the author and all pre-order customers will receive three free bonuses: 1) Sophie’s guide to starting your drum microdosing practice, 2) an exclusive 15-minute shamanic drum journey, and 3) a playlist of songs about drumming, women, and power. Pre-orders close on the 1st September, the official launch is 19 September. 

Womancraft, the publisher, holds the vision that women and words can change the world. 

BIO:

Judith Maeryam Wouk is an ordained Kohenet Hebrew Priestess with the ritual name of Neviah Metophephet/ Oracle of Rhythms/Re-Framer of Stories (literally, drumming priestess) and an activist. She is a long-time fan of FAR. She has been drumming for more than 25 years, studying with Layne Redmond and her students, Glen Vele, Marla Leigh Goldstein (in the US and Crete), and Tamburi Mundi in Turkey and Germany, among others. She is a veteran of Ontario Womyn’s Drum Camp and the Holy Drumming Institute, her drum circle, the Biblical/Spiritual Drummers of Ottawa, Canada, met weekly.  Judith is an ordained Kohenet Hebrew Priestess and activist for end-of-life issues focusing on natural burial.  Her publications include such diverse topics as The Truth about (M)Otherhood:  Choosing to be Child-Free; Unaccompanied/Separated Minors and Refugee Protection in Canada:  Filling Information Gaps; the Gift Economy, and Reframing women of the Hebrew Bible.