Hi, it’s Keoni here. While I was with Dhyanis at Ya Halla in Dallas last week I noticed that local bay area favorite Susu Pampanmin was the guest drum teacher. I’ve always enjoyed Susu’s drumming and we used the song Cairo Cats from her album Dancing Drums in our show Secrets Unveiled which Troupe Dhyanis performed in Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe in 2000. So before I knew it I had bought a Dumbek and signed up for the beginners class. Dhyanis was thrilled because every dancer wants her man to drum for her, but I was not really sure what I was getting myself into. Susu first instructed the 30 people in the class to wait while she gave very beginning instruction about how to hold the drum and how to make a dum and a tek to me and two other brave beginners. Then she advanced to a teaching the basic of the Waheda and the Masmoudi rhythms. I struggled with just making a good sound but enjoyed being in the room with the pulsing rhythm of 30 dumbeks. Susu broke up the class quite a few times with jokes about drumming and riffing on her experiences playing with other drummers. She also mentioned that a drummer must always play a rhythm four times before moving onto another phrase. The first time the dancer just hears it, the second time she decides what to do with it and then the next two times she can really dance to it. While I’m not sure where my career as a drummer is going to go I now have a brand new appreciation for the music I’m hearing and dancers I’m watching as I travel to belly dance events with Dhyanis.