Once you’ve played the blues – once you have learned what the blues is and learned to play the blues then you can never leave it. It is a fundamental language of the human spirit and must be heard. It is therapeutic and releasing of so many toxins both spiritual and physical. I tried to leave the blues after seeing so many sad cases of “Living the Blues” where people went down the slippery slope of de-evolution until they were less than what they had been. I did not want that sticky end. My survival system was too strong to allow a crash and burn like so many of my friends. Instead I chose to put on a tie and try to go “legit” I obeyed the rules as best I could and forced my ways into a box for the greater good. Who’s greater good? It lasted for a while then an ancient voice would call out and an ancient force would erupt from my heart and say that it needed to get back to the blues. It didn’t always use that term but that’s what it meant. A certain truth and soul. So even though my common good sense told me that going back to the blues might be a dangerous trip I had to find a way to get the sustainance from the blues that was missing in my spiritual life.
So that is how the drumming therapies came about. The grooves that we play in our drumming meditation groups are blues grooves but without the propaganda of the blues lyrics. No negativity. Pure truth and soul. Then did I come to realize that these blues grooves are not about feeling sorry but about getting over it. Survival indeed but the mystery still remains. What is it?