I recently attended World Music Drumming training.

For those of you who have never experienced this and are a music educator or just a drum enthusiast, you definitely need to find a week you can attend! It was an amazing experience.

World Music Drumming is a curriculum for teaching hand drumming ensembles using authentic beats from all over the world. The teachers have traveled the world and have immersed themselves in these cultures to learn beats. Not only that, but many of them you will hear emulated in the current hip-hop music that is on the radio.

I had done Ensemble 1 at a facility for at-risk adolescents before taking the training. I wasn't exactly sure how to expand upon it in the music therapy session, though I did mix some Health Rhythms techniques in there, as well. It was great for at-risk teens, because it is reflective of much of the music they listen to, and they were able to achieve it fairly quickly. In fact, staff were amazed to find out that we had only been working on the drumming ensemble for a day, and of course, the boys thought that was cool because they were so good.

I want to continue to do some World Music Drumming in the community. I didn't know if any other music therapists were using this curriculum and had ideas for programming, but I'd be interested in learning more in the future!