The summer series of the Tulsa Community College (TCC) “I Can’t” workshops began with the “I Can’t Drum with The bART” lesson on June 7.
Michael Bremo, an energetic young man and adjunct professor in music and jazz drum set at Oklahoma State University (OSU), shared his passion for drum playing with the audience gathered at the TCC Center for Creativity.
“My dream was to play music,” Bremo said. “It helped me that my mom was a Columbian because I was raised in a home with a lot of music.”
“Historically, drums always have been a means of communication, ceremonies, entertainment, and celebration,” Bremo added.
“Drums are the most natural and easiest thing to learn,” he said.
“Everybody will be able to play rhythm by the end of the workshop,” Bremo promised.
The musician defined the lesson as having three stages: listening, vocalizing, and playing back what someone hears.
Bremo asserts that rhythm is present everywhere, including in everyday conversations. He asked a member of the audience to create a sentence that became a basis for the rhythm during the lesson.
A person came up with the sentence “I like playing tennis.” The teacher helped the audience to find rhythm in the sentence. He encouraged the workshop participants to use clapping hands, stepping, and jumping to follow the rhythm. Then, everybody ended up dancing like that to a well-known melody “We, we will rock you.”
After the rhythm exercise, the participants of the workshop received drums to play. The teacher asked to bring him a bucket because all the drums were already taken. In response, a TCC employee found three white plastic buckets and gave them to Bremo.
“I will play a bucket,” said Bremo smiling. “This is how I became a drummer. I did not have a drum when I started. I used a bucket to learn to play music.”
A guest suggested that the audience choose the words “lasagna and meatballs” to find rhythm and play music with the drums. Bremo supported the idea.
“Yes, we can improvise,” he said. “In reality, we improvise all the time.”
The workshop participants began to clap their hands and hit the drums following the newly found rhythm. When they finished the teacher concluded by addressing the audience, “See, you can drum!”
Besides OSU, Bremo also teaches music at his private studio Drum World. He collaborates with The bART Center for Music/Tulsa Community Music School to give the lessons, which are free for the public, at the TCC Center for Creativity.
“We are the only Community Music School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and have been since 2001,” the school’s website, www.thebart.org, states. “The mission of The Tulsa Community Music School is to contribute to the vitality of community arts in Tulsa through music education for all.”
Tulsans successfully improvise music by playing drums at the end of the “I Can’t Drum” lesson at the TCC Center for Creativity. (Videos by Tatyana Nyborg)
