In retrospect, my experience of performing in a drumline made me realize that playing music is an organic way of making heartfelt connections with other people. Being in drumline allowed me to bond with people having the same experiences, enduring the same emotionally traumatic rehearsals, and attending the same exciting competitions.
Competing against other drumlines is showmanship of superior skill on the lowest level. Once you reach the highest league of competitive music performance, every player is fundamentally sound and has the raw skill to play amazing beats. These competitions are rather a display of which group is the most in sync or which group has the most chemistry. As a result, the group that rehearses the most and spends the most time together is the group that is most in sync and wins the competition. The rehearsals are all geared towards winning competitions, so they’re basically events that are geared towards bringing the members in the line closer together. In essence, drumline in itself is a group activity that centered around the idea of forming a strong relationships with other people.
Before I proceed, I’m just warning you that this story of drumline does not feature Nick Cannon.
Every Monday to Saturday during my high school career, I would attend drumline rehearsals after school. The sweat and repetition it takes to play one song perfectly in sync with 15 other people is gruesome, but it was completely worth it because it brought me closer to other people ing the drumline. Shared “tragedy”, fostered from countless hours of suffering you spend with other people during 100 degree summer days with your instructors shouting at you and menacingly shoving a stick into your forehead for making the same mistake twice, inevitably brings you closer to the people in your drumline. Only other people in the drumline are there to hold each other up and motivate each other to keep pushing through everyday to make the show/music better. This daily grind that we all suffer together is what allows us to empathize with each other. Consequently, that mutual empathy built a common ground for me to develop strong bonds with other people in the line.
Moreover, drumline competitions are another aspect of this group activity that deepened my connections with other people in the line. Going to the competitions, everyone in the line feels the same pressure to do their absolute best. Everyone in the line has invested the same blood, sweat, and tears into producing a perfect show. At the end, everyone either feels the same happiness from winning or the same sadness from losing. The point is that EVERYONE feels. The idea that everyone experiences the same emotions TOGETHER is what produces a mutual empathy. Over time, I came to realize that this mutual understanding I had for others’ emotions and what others had for my emotions is what built a gateway for people to develop strong emotional connections.
