Boys, Drums and Ramadan

Indonesia is primarily a Muslim nation.  As such, most of the people here observe Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month.  This year marks the third Ramadan that we've experienced.  It seems like with each year we notice something new.  This year it was the drums.  In celebration of the end of Ramadan, the people of our city parade through the streets with floats, candles and drums.  This year our neighborhood put together a drum corp.  It included roughly 20 boys and young men.  Towards the end of Ramadan, they began to practice for the parades.  Everyone in the neighborhood listened as the boys would practice for 30 minutes or more.  Sometimes practice extended through much of the day.  One afternoon, practice was convened in our backyard.  Of course we didn't know what was going on at the time.  All we knew is that boys started flooding our backyard carrying all sorts of plastic buckets and sticks.  For the next hour, the sound of beating drums echoed throughout our house.  Dana grabbed her camera and captured a little bit of the action on video.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to load on the blog.

What impressed me about the boys and their drums was not their stamina, though I thought they would never quit, but their willingness to let others participate.  After an hour of near continuous practice the boys stopped and preceded to sat in a circle to talk and eat snacks.  While they snacked, the little boys in our neighborhood who had been watching took their turn on the drums.  None of the older boys stopped them.  No one restricted the little ones access to the drums.  It was fun to watch the little boys try to mimic the rhythms practiced by the older boys.  After about 30 minutes the younger boys grew tired and moved on to other things.  The older ones packed up their make-shift drums and sticks and marched out of our backyard.

As I think back on the incident, three things come to mind.  First, the rhythm of the drums.  I can hardly remember it now, but at the time I could think of nothing else.  Second, how good the group sounded considering their training the quality of their instruments.  The drums were old paint buckets with a large blue container for the bass drum.  I don't know where the bass drum originally came from.  I've seen containers like that used for hauling fish, ice and water.  The final thing was how open the older boys were to letting the younger ones play with their stuff.  Indonesians tend to view stuff differently from Americans.  Stuff is meant to be used, not simply possessed.  The boys used our backyard because we weren't using it.  They didn't hurt anything and left the yard relatively clean after their practice.  In the same way the older boys let the younger ones beat away at the drums while they enjoyed a snack.  They weren't using the drums right then so why not?  More important than gaining insight to how Indonesians view stuff was the example being put forth by the older boys.  I assume it was something that they were taught when they were small.  Let the younger ones play.  It allows them to participate and gives them something to look forward to in the near future.  In the U.S., it seems like as adults we set so many boundaries around what youth can and can't do that we push them into doing nothing.  Or worse yet, we push kids into doing things that aren't beneficial to them just to give them something, anything to do.
Well, Ramadan is over as are the parades and sounds of beating drums.  All that remains are the memories.  Memories of boys, drums and Ramadan.