Roberto Narain has been organising corporate drum jam sessions for over five years; (top) Rakesh Mathur (below) is an aviation consultant with a passion for drums

The venue is the sprawling Deer Park, an oasis of green in South Delhi. Once every fortnight the park resonates to the sound of Punjabi dhols, thumping congas, bongos, frame drums and even djembes, a West African drum. All around, men, women and children are laughing, cheering, clapping and swaying to the beat.

The aspiring musicians are members of the Delhi Drum Circle that meets once a fortnight at this open air venue for an unrestrained jam session in which amateurs and professionals play together with equal enthusiasm. Amateur drummers simply join the group and pick up the beat.

Cut to Bangalore, where Roberto Narain is bringing together drum circles of a different sort. He’s drumming up a high-energy storm in the corporate world with clients like IBM, Oracle India, Accenture India, General Motors and Apollo Tyres. At all these companies he organises corporate jam sessions where executives get together and make music. The aim is partly corporate team-building and partly just giving executives the chance to loosen their inhibitions and perhaps even pick up new hobbies.

What is a drum circle? It’s a mix of amateurs and professionals who get together regularly and have drumming sessions — all for fun.“A typical drum circle event is a gathering of people from all walks of life who come together to play hand-drums in a casual, community-oriented and friendly environment,” says Rakesh Mathur who along with his friends Margot Bigg and Anisa Nariman co-founded the Delhi Drum Circle.

Adds Narain: “Many of the participants pick up playing or learning instruments which they used to play or dreamt of playing.” Narain has an extraordinary collection of almost 12,000 drums and percussion instruments. This includes instruments like boomwhackers (brightly coloured percussion tubes), maracas and guiros (both Latin American percussion instruments) and tambourines.

Also in Bangalore there’s d’frens Management Consulting India, a consultancy that designs workshops and activities for motivating and de-stressing employees by organising drum circles. d’frens was started by a group of four Bangalore-based engineers — Rupert Picardo, Srikanth Murthy, Oscar D’ Silva and Sachin Tharayil — who quit their jobs and started their consultancy with the aim of reaching out to other executives who lead rushed and frenetic lives.

A drum circle session can last from 20 minutes to 90 minutes or more depending on time constraints. Says Srikanth Murthy: “The concept is picking up very well in India.”

So, what is a corporate drum jam session like? A drum circle sessions typically begin with noise and what the organisers call a ‘resistance towards playing’.

“We get the group to first understand that rhythm is in every one of us — we tap our feet, click our fingers in time to music that we love. When we communicate to the group that this session isn’t about technical drumming but about creating an experience that everyone enjoys, that’s when the group buys into the concept,” says Murthy.

The drummers start off with something easy. Then within the next 10 minutes the entire group is tuned to it and figures out what to do — with full energy and team spirit.

Srikanth Murthy and his friends founded d’frens, a consultancy that uses drum circles and workshops as a means to de-stress; (below) Varun Venkit’s events use the concept of ‘makers and breakers’ where one group makes a rhythm and another breaks it

Pune-based Varun Venkit founder of Taal Inc (an organisation that conducts drum circles) recently made First Lady Michelle Obama and 30 underprivileged children dance to his beats at a function in Mumbai. Venkit has been conducting drum circles for over six years. His drum circle event works around the concept of ‘makers and breakers’ which means that if one group of people makes the rhythm, the other group has to break it with cacophony. So, each team gives its best by focusing on what it has been asked to do.

Venkit draws a parallel with the corporate world. “This exercise helps nurture team spirit and focus on what they are supposed to do as a team despite odds and hurdles in their professional lives,” says Venkit. In addition, it is also an exercise that has an element of fun and is a group activity.

For another Pune-based drum circle facilitator, Jimmy Jain, group drumming is a powerful music-making experience that is used as a therapeutic intervention for achieving health-oriented and group-oriented, non-musical goals.

Apart from the corporations and music lovers, the drum circle facilitators are also conducting the events for differently-abled children. “We recently did a fantastic drum circle for a group of 250 visually challenged children,” says Murthy.

The costs of the sessions depend on transportation, the number of people being engaged and whether it is a community or corporate event. “At times there may be a little fee for the community event if the organisers have to pay for the venue,” says Jain.

Says Murthy: “The best part about drum circles is that anyone can be a part of it. “In a drum circle, everyone is equal — be it gender, age, sex or musical influences.”