Mark Shepard’s DrumSongStory

Posts Tagged ‘family concerts’

UCCCA stands for Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts and I’ll be performing DrumSongStory for their “Family Fun Day” on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 2:00 PM. at Wilber Mansion, 11 Ford AVe, Oneonta, NY 13820 Admission is FREE! For more info call UCCCA: 607-432-2070

Check out the full flyer below.

An inspirational program designed to celebrate creative, innovative thinking, build strong self esteem and install confidence. Thirsty For The Sky is just the thing for your organization’s next conference, retreat, symposium, festival, orientation, celebration, graduation…any culminating or initiating event.

This Program works well for high school, college and adult audiences. Most of these songs carry positive NLP language patterns so the constructive thoughts get stuck in your head more effectively than affirmations.

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Here are the songs from the CD:
(I haven’t yet recorded the spoken word/storytelling part of the program. In addition I’ve written dozens of additional songs that support this theme since recording this)

Overtone Overture: Overtone Singing, African style yodeling, throat whistling and the “wooo” sound accompanied by a huge frame drum.

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Thirsty For The Sky: Title song expresses the longing many of us feel for being unlimited and empowered rather than victims of our own self talk.

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Victory Song: This song is full of “Why” questions that Noah St. John calls “Afformations” because they are questions they are more powerful than affirmations. The questioning process engages your Unconscious Mind to filter for the presupposed answers. Having a rough day? play this song quietly in the background. You will be delighted with the shift to a more positive state by the end of the day.

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Arise, Arise: A song about rising up to new levels in response to challenges.

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Coming Home: A drum song about personal healing.

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Spirit In A Body: We are spirits with bodies not bodies with spirits. Big difference!

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Children of the Drum: the story of my African drumming teacher, Kevin aka Kazi Oliver and I met, connected and influenced each other even though we came from widely different backgrounds and cultures.

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Be Patient With Your Drumming: Based on a saying by the Shona people of Zimbabwe

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Beautiful Person: a quieter, more meditative version of this song. The original version is from my Visions & Voces CD. Slightly altered the lyrics after learning about NLP language patterns.

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Field of Dreams: This really happened.

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Why Is It Possible?: Using NLP presuppositions as well as the powerful effect of asking questions has on the unconscious mind, this chant is designed to run in the background of your day alerting your “Reticular Activating System” to “filter” for possibilities. To learn more about this process check out http://ModernJedi.com

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Better Than Expected: One of the concepts I live my life by: Why does it work out better than you can possibly imagine? In NLP reframing we take anything that seems bad and find a way to turn it around. It’s technically called “reframing”. Hopefully I’ve managed a bit of humor to get the message across. BTW that’s Joe Mennonna playing a real Tuba in the back ground.

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Best Day of Your Life: Inspired by my reading of Carlos Castaneda books. A warrior lives as if each day, each moment is his last. Turns out to be really good way to have an incredible life.

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Ancient of Days: A spiritual but not religious song.

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Fly, Fly, Fly: A lot of sky and flying themes fill my music. someday I will take those hang gliding lessons or get my pilot’s license!

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Back To K-12 School Assemblies

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Mark Shepard’s DrumSongStory Concerts For Colleges are fully customizable and adaptable for any theme you may be working with. DrumSongStory is ideal for:

• Campus Coffeehouse/Concert Stage – When you need something different to uplift the spirits and attract an audience with plenty of humor as well as thought provoking and mesmerizing content that goes beyond mere entertainment.

• Festivals, Special Events, Multi-Generational Concerts - Ideal for special events where the audience might include younger siblings, parents or grandparents or folks from the larger community beyond campus.

Below are a few samples of Mark Shepard’s DrumSongStory selections appropriate for College audiences:

Narcissism: A humorous look at what we all know is true… (accompanied by Irish Bodhran)

Hippie Girls: Another humorous song (accompanied by guitar)

Rain On A Tin Roof: A Joyful Love Song

Raven Stops The Rain: A Creation Story From Siberia. this is one of the many stories I tell where I hadn out dozens of sound effects instruments for the audience to play. (Studio Version)

These are just a small sampling of songs and stories available for any given performance. I draw on over 400 songs written over a lifetime and countless folktales and original stories to mix and match for a unique concert experience your audience will remember for years.

check out these other programs:

• The Drum of The Elephant King: My most interactive program
• Thirsty For The Sky: Drums, Songs & Stories About Daring to Live Your Dreams
• All My DrumSongStory College Programs

For booking Call 888-598-7709 or e-mail me at Mark [at] MarkShepard.com

Pictures from a recent family concert performance of Mark Shepard’s DrumSongStory at Church Street School in White Plains, NY.

Program Theme: “Beyond The Borders: Drums, Songs and Stories Celebrating Cultural Collaboration”

Introducing the Frame Drums

Mark performs “Curiosity” a “DrumSongStory” where Mark plays the drum, sings and tells a story all at the same time.

Mark Shepard plays “Bob the Big Drum” with the assistance of a young audience volunteer

Mark Shepard demonstrates some cool Djembe techniques to a young audience volunteer

This is a series teaching how to make many of the cool sound effects instruments I use in my DrumSongStory programs. I will be updating these posts with video as well. I welcome your photos and videos, links and suggestions. These very simple instruments can also be made as part of a team building process for organizational and corporate groups who are interested in innovative ways to break the ice and build connections and community while having fun.

I’ve also held instrument making workshops just before a performance of Drum Of The Elephant King so that the participants can be an integral part of the show.

Here’s a small audio sample so you can hear how I use these instruments in my DrumSongStory programs:

 

 Cool Sound FX from Elephant King: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

How to make a “Chicken In A Cup”

a.k.a. “Friction Drum”, a.k.a. “Guica” (Gwee-ka), a.k.a.  “Cuica” (Kwee-kah)

Ages: 6 and up. Younger children may need help from grownups.
Time needed: 10-20 minutes including practice time.

Check out the picture at left. The huge Guica is made out of a 5 gallon paint bucket. I took the bottom out, and stretched a piece of rawhide over it to see if it would make a decent drum. It was only so, so. But there are no failures in this business! I took a piece of waxed linen thread and turned it into a Guica. Now it sounds like an “Elephant In A Cup!” Next to it in the photo are the more usual sized materials.

Materials:

1. Plastic cups (the sturdy kind) work the best but you can emphasize recycling by using plastic yogurt containers, or larger plastic sour cream containers. For a very temporary Guica you can use a paper cup. Most kids will rip the bottom out of one of those pretty quick. You can experiment with different sizes and materials.
2. Waxed Dental Floss (good) or Waxed Dental Tape (better – but more expensive and smaller amounts available)
3. Hammer & Nail: or other tool that will make a decent sized hole in the bottom of a plastic cup.

How To Make It:

1. Punch two holes in your plastic container about a finger’s width apart. It helps if your nail is a decent size. It might also be possible to squeeze the cup and snip the holes out with a pair of good quality scissors. Or you could thread a large needle with the Floss and “sew” your floss into the bottom of the cup.
2. Take a piece of waxed dental floss about as long as a child’s outstretched arms or one long adult arm and thread each end through a hole.
3. Pull the ends through the inside of the cup and make sure they are even.
4. Tie a simple knot as close to the holes as possible so the sting doesn’t fall out and so the knot is not in the way of your fingers sliding up and down the string.
5. Shazaam! you now have a genuine “Chicken In A Cup”.

Some Tips: When I do large workshops I make the holes in all the cups ahead of time. Making the holes is not a kid activity. And is included here only for adults. I make a charcoal fire in my outdoor grill. I heat up a couple of nails. Using heavy work gloves and a pair of vice grips I grab a hot nail and melt the holes through about 5 cups at a time. Danger: The fumes from the melting plastic are toxic. They also smell nasty. I make sure there is a decent breeze blowing and I hold my breath when necessary. Wearing a protective mask is also a good idea.

I’ve also used an electric drill on a slow setting to drill down through as many as a dozen plastic cups at a time.

How To Play It:

• Hold the cup in one hand and lightly hold the strings in your other hand as close to the cup as possible.
• Then gently slide your hands along the string.
• You should hear an amazingly chicken-like sound. Particularly if you do it in short jerks.
• If you do it in one long smooth pull it sounds more like a sea-gull or maybe a wild animal.
• The larger the cup the bigger the sound.

Some Playing Tips: The sound is created with friction. So, if your hands are greasy or if the wax has been worn off your string by a lot of playing, it might not work as well. In that case wash your hands with soap and water and either get a fresh piece of waxed floss or use a piece of beeswax (available at hobby stores) to re-wax the string. Another technique is to use a small piece of wet sponge. Experiment!

The How To Make Cool Sound Effects Instruments Series:

• How To Be A Shaker Maker
• How To Make A Cuica (a.k.a. Chicken In A Cup)
• How To Make a Rain Stick
• How To Make Wind Tubes
• How To Make An Ocean Drum
• How To Make A 2X4 Xylophone, Old Wrench Xylophone, Wind Chimes etc.
• How to Make A “Paint Stirrer Rhythm Stick”
• How To Make A “Paint Stirrer Stir Drum”

To book one of Mark Shepard’s DrumSongStory programs now, call 1-800-378-4971 or e-mail mark[at]markshepard.com

See what other DrumSongStory Programs are available for:

• Schools, Family Concerts
• Colleges, Universities
• Corporations, Non Profits, Conferences

The Silkie is from Mark Shepard’s Breathing Underwater CD which is ow Available for Instant Digital Down Load
Regularly $15 |Get the Album of Drums, Songs & Stories about the Sea For A Limited Time Only: $5.00

The Silkie | April 10, 1998 | Song # 290

by Mark Shepard

Once there was a fisherman
On the salty sea
Who felt so very alone
That he dreamed of a wife
Who would keep him company
And give to him a child and a happy home

One northern summer day
He was paddling his way
Through the tiny islands not far from shore
When what did he espy
With his hunter’s practiced eye
But a maiden dancing on the rocks
So wild and pure

Well the sun was in her eyes
So he took her by surprise
After he had hidden her seal skin
She was a Silkie you see,
A magic creature of the sea
Who sometime come ashore
To walk in human form

Refrain:
Oh to be a Silkie of the Sea
Oh to be a wild creature swimming free
Oh to know the secrets of the foam
Oh to love the ocean and to call it home

She begged to be let free
But he said, “No, come with me
In seven years your skin I will return”
So sadly she obeyed,
Turned her back upon the waves
Took a path that led her towards an early grave

In the passing of the days
She gave birth to a babe
A human son with web between his toes
But she’d begun to fade
And to wither all away
A little more with every single passing day

But she told the child tales
Of seals and fish and whales
She taught him how to sing and play the drum
She told him of the times
When she was strong and fine
She told of other drier days that were to come

Refrain:

6 years she’d struggled on
Now she was almost gone
And the fisherman grew silent and grim
Yet still he did deny
The quiet pleading in her eyes
As he told himself that someday
She would change her mind

One night the child awoke
To a strange un-earthly note
A sound from deep beneath the moonlit sea
It was old grandfather seal
A legend now made real
Calling to his own to bring his daughter home

But the boy tripped in the sand
And reaching out his hand
Touched the softness of her lost seal skin
The man had thrown it to the deep
Hoping so his wife to keep
But the spirit of the sea had washed it in again

Refrain:

The took it to her and
She slipped in to it’s fur
Once again her eyes were full of life
She was a silkie y see
And would have died if not set free
She was never meant to be a human wife

Her son began to cry
As she slipped in to the tide
But he could not save her any other way
And on certain moonlit nights
He would sometimes catch her sight
And then they’d swim together
In the healing waves

Refrain:

He brew into a man
Who knew the way of land
As well as the secrets of the sea
And I met him one time
Though he was old and almost blind
He played the drum and sang this very story

Refrain:

Commentary: This is my all time favorite story. Folk singer Joan Baez did a traditional Silkie song that I heard as a kid and then I came across “Women Who Run With The Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. also the movie, “the Secret of Roan Innish” draws from this body of Silkie Stories. So this song combines several different versions of the Silkie.

I used to only perform it for older children and adult audiences but one day a school principal who was somewhat clueless about developmental ages combined a group of kindergartners with a group of 5th graders in an assembly.

I knew I was in trouble. I can easily handle a group of kids from K-8 and connect with each age level all at the same time but to have only to two extremes was really tricky. Nothing was working. Finally I figured I would at least do something that would nourish me whether it reached the kids or not.

So I sang the Silkie. You could have heard a pin drop. So I tend to end my programs with this piece of it at all fits in with the theme I’m working with. It’s just a great way to end a program. Kind of on a thoughtful quiet note.

I use it as part of several programs:

• Breathing Underwater
• Beyond The Borders
• Mysts & Magick
  
• DrumSongStory
• Beneath the Northern Star

The Silkie by Mark Shepard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
http://DrumSongStory.com/TheSilkie

To book this program now call 1-888-598-7709 or e-mail mark[at]markshepard.com

See what other DrumSongStory Programs are available for:

• Schools, Family Concerts
• Colleges, Universities
• Corporations, Non Profits, Conferences

Drums, Songs & Stories From Ireland

Stories and Story Songs:

• The Silkie

• Eileen McGillicuddy And The Fairy King
• Grace O’Malley The Irish Pirate Queen
• Quit That Racket!
• Arthur MacBride
  and more!

Instruments:

• The Bodhran
• The Bones
• The Spoons
• The Tin and Wooden whistles

Sound Effects: (played by the audience)

• Fairy Bells
• Thunder Tubes
• Wind Wands
• Banshee Pipes
• Rainsticks
• Ocean Drum
• and more

To book this program now call 1-800-378-4971 or e-mail mark[at]markshepard.com

See what other DrumSongStory Programs are available for:

• Schools, Family Concerts
• Colleges, Universities
• Corporations, Non Profits, Conferences

Abi yo yo was as big as a house...

An Annoyingly Dysfunctional Family Saves a Dysfunctional Town From a Giant with a BIG Personal Hygiene Problem!

This is the first story I ever told. I learned it as a kid off of a Pete Seeger record. Seeger’s original version takes about 8 minutes. Mine takes about 45 minutes! Let’s just say I’ve had a lot of fun with my adaptation techniques!

In Pete’s original the boy plays a ukulele. Since I’m always getting in trouble for playing the drums I had him be a drummer…

To summarize the story, Abi Yo Yo comes into this town every once in a while eating everything in site, cows, horses, whole flocks of sheep. By the time he gets to the edge of town he is usually ready for dessert. (”Yum! Pee-pull! Goood!”)
Now in the town they usually ostracize any body who can’t follow all the rules perfectly. And the edge of town is where those people live. It’s a simple way to get rid of trouble makers. But then Abi Yo Yo doesn’t show up for such a long time that people start flaunting the rules and getting on each others nerves.

• Children refuse to eat broccoli.
• Drivers stop stopping at stop signs.
• People throw their garbage all over etc.

Eventually three members of one family start to get so out of line that it begins to really bug the other residents!.

Suffice it to say that the main characters are a trio of “creative” types:

• We have a drummer who practices ALL THE TIME!.

• We have his sister, a painter who uses public buildings for her “canvases”. And,

• We have their father, a magician who is constantly making stuff disappear.

Eventually they get ostracized. Of course Abi Yo Yo shows up and it is the outcasts that save everyone else from becoming “dessert”
Program Length: 45-60 minutes

Age Appropriate: K-12
Note: Can be easily adapted to support the “Pillars of Character” Program or any other “character” education themes.

Drums:

• Irish Bodhran
• Siberian Shaman Drum
• African Djembe
• African Djun-djun
• and more

Sound effects:

• “The Wooo Sound”
• Thunder Tubes
• Palm Nut Shakers,
• Wrench Chimes
• and more

To book this program now call 1-888-598-7709 or e-mail mark[at]markshepard.com

See what other DrumSongStory Programs are available for:

• Schools, Family Concerts
• Colleges, Universities
• Corporations, Non Profits, Conferences

A Talking Drum made by Mark Shepard out of a piece of house column

Drums, Songs and Stories Celebrating Africa and the African Diaspora

Please Note: You’ll notice there is some overlap between this program and Trickster Tales

An interactive program for all ages featuring:

Drums:

• Djembe
• Djun-Djun
• Talking Drum
• Congas
• Tar
• Riq,
• and other percussion instruments from Africa and the the African Diaspora as well as cool sound effects instruments played by the audience (where and when appropriate)

Songs/Rhythms:

• Funga Alafia – welcoming song/rhythm


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• The Samba
• Congo Square
• The Rhumba – and other infectious rhythms

Stories:

• “Monkey & Leopard” – why monkeys live in trees, why leopards eat meat & why you never mess with a drummer’s drum without asking permission.


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• Anansi & the Talking Drum – Anansi discovers the secret name of the king’s daughter but is so shy he can only
  

  Mark Shepard telling "Monkey & Leopard", African Trickster Tale

  play it on his talking drum…

• That’s Ridiculous! – Various vegetables, animals and inanimate objects talk to people.

• Why Lions Don’t Have Wings – Frog puts an end to Lion’s flyin’.

Sound Effects:

• Thunder Tubes
• Thunder Drum (the Djun-Djun)
• Cuicas
• Shakers
• Ocean Drum,
• & more…

Please Note: This program can be combined with drumming and/or instrument making workshops for maximum educational impact

To book this program now call 1-888-598-7709 or e-mail mark[at]markshepard.com

See what other DrumSongStory Programs are available for:

• Schools, Family Concerts
• Colleges, Universities
• Corporations, Non Profits, Conferences

Mark Shepard Tells A DrumSongStory with the help of a young audience volunteer

Drums, Songs & Stories Exploring The Trickster Archetype In Many Cultures

Of course this is the funniest program I do. It is after all, stories celebrating tricksters: Fox, Coyote, Rabbit, Anansi the Spider, Monkey, Crow, Turtle…all of these non-human characters have much to teach us about ourselves. Almost always the trickster gets tricked. Coyote always gets bested by roadrunner. But some tricksters like Bugs Bunny always seem to come out on top.

• “Monkey & Leopard” (Africa)


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• “All Stories Are Anansi’s” (Africa)
• “Coyote & Cicada” (N. America)
• “Coyote & Turtle” (N. America)
• “The Lying Contest” (Armenia)
• “Anansi & The Talking Drum” (Africa)
• “The Pointing Finger” (China)
• “Djuha Borrows A Pot” (Syria)
• “Fox, Crow and the Piece of Cheese” (Aesop)
• “For Sale: The Eiffel Tower -Tale Of A Modern Trickster” and more…

To book this program now call 1-888-598-7709 or e-mail mark[at]markshepard.com

See what other DrumSongStory Programs are available for:

• Schools, Family Concerts
• Colleges, Universities
• Corporations, Non Profits, Conferences