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

• How Drums Came To Be

• Why Leopards Aren’t Vegetarians

• Why Monkeys Live In Trees
  

• AND…
  

• Why You Never Mess With A Drummer’s Drum Without First Asking Permission…

This story is featured in two of my DrumSongStory Programs: Trickster Tales and The Talking Drum.  It can also stand alone as a humorous and refreshing 20 minute keynote that is guaranteed to liven up the most serious corporate conference.

This telling was recorded live at an elementary school with several audience volunteers assisting me on Djun-djun, Djembe, and “Bob the Big Drum”.

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

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:

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

I first came into contact with it through Glenn Velez who played frame drum with the

Paul Winter Consort. I also found a great book called “Tuva or Bust” which was about physicist Richard Feynman’s

attempts with his friend Ralph to get travel visas to the then forbidden Republic of Tuva which was part of the old Soviet Union.

I like to start my concerts with overtone singing running the vocals through a digital delay.

I also added something that to my knowledge, no one else does and that is Throat Whistling. Which is literally a whistle I create from deep in my throat. I can get 3 distinct notes at this point…

The other vocal element is African style yodeling…

I’m also playing the Siberian Shaman Drum as well as “Bob The Big Drum”, a huge log drum I carved out of a Sycamore tree.

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

Mark Shepard plays Irish Bodhran accomapnied by audience volunteer on ocean drum

Drums, Songs and Stories Celebrating Cultural Collaboration

My Most Popular K-12 Assembly Program!

Starting and ending with the haunting sounds of Overtone Singing from Central Asia and making stops around the world, “Beyond the Borders” celebrates how cultures come together and influence each other.

A World of Vocals:
A combination of several different vocalization styles from Tuvan/Mongolian Overtone Singing, to Tibetan Undertone Singing all mixed in with Throat Whistling and a kind of African Yodeling, accompanied by Siberian Shaman Drum

.
Curiosity: An old African story that I’ve turned into an “Olde” Irish song. Accompanied by Irish Bodhran and plenty of audience participation. Watch Curiosity Video

Funga Alafia: an African welcoming song and rhythm. I invite several audience members to join me on stage and with the help of the audience we create an African Polyrhythm. Watch me perform Funga Alafia live!

Jack N The Beanstalk: Traditional European story turned into a song accompanied on guitar with traditional Mississippi Delta Blues (an African derivative style)

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

The Silkie: This is an old Irish Story that has a lot in common with many Eskimo (Inuit) tales. Primarily seals that turn into human being and vice versa. I play the wooden whistle at the beginning and the end accompanying the chorus with Bodhran. I usually ask for a volunteer from the audience to play the ocean drum as accompaniment.

Depending upon the situation, time available, the theme, the age mix of the audience and my intuition, I may move at this point into a spoken (rather than sung) story: Picking one of several possible choices:

Monkey & Leopard:
A very funny African story which I tell in a very modern way. It works for all age groups but especially well for younger audiences who may need to lighten things up at this point in the program. (It is also lighter on the sound effects so there is no time spent handing stuff out etc).

Skeleton Woman:
An Inuit tale about personal transformation. It is fairly serious but has a few funny parts that make for perfect comic relief. It has a lot of Sound effects possibilities.

Coyote & Cicada:
A Native American tale explaining why Coyotes howl and have sharp teeth and why Cicada’s shed their skin. quite funny with a modest amount of sound effects. Most audiences enjoy the opportunity at the end of the story to get in a good “Howl”. Watch a Video of Coyote & Cicada Performed Live

Overtone Singing to finish…

Instruments Used: Djembe, Djun-Djun, Bodhran, Shaman Drum, Guitar, Wooden Whistle/Flute
Sound Effects: Wind Tubes, Thunder Tubes, Thunder Drum (the Djun-Djun), shakers, Ocean Drum & more…

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

See what other DrumSongStory Programs are available for:

• School Shows, Family Concerts
• Colleges, Universities
• Corporations, Non Profits, Conferences