Banging the Drum in Public

You may not immediately see the connection between an Irish folk drum and evolution. That is because you are at the start, and not the end, of this piece. By the time you have reached the end the connection will, I hope, be clear.

So - to start. Many years ago I bought a bodhran*. For those who are either not folkies or are not fluent in Gaelic, which I will assume to be the majority, this is the instrument developed by the Irish in which a drum is held upright in one hand and the stick (or tipper) is held in the other. The stick is then rapped against the skin in a seemingly random way.

I spent quite a few years learning to play it before inflicting it upon the public. This may surprise some but the bodhran is capable of surprising subtlety. The left hand rests against the skin inside the drum and its position changes the tone produced when the skin is struck. A good player can produce over an octave from it, a really good player can even pick out tunes.

I attanded Chippenham Folk Festival some years ago and bought a new bodhran from a fantastically drunk chap early one morning. It looks quite nasty but it has a beautiful tone, is tuneable and has lasted over ten years. I took my new drum to a pub session and settled down with a fiddle player and, joy of joys, a piper. After about an hour more musicians arrived along with, and this is where we begin to come to the Point, more people with bodhrans, who started playing.

When I say 'playing', of course, what I mean is hitting their drums loudly and vaguely. There were a multitude and when I realised they were there for the duration I made my apologies and left.

The Point:- Would these people have done the same thing with any other instrument? Would they have bought a fiddle or guitar and settled down and screeched in public, with good musicians, without having learnt to play? Answer - no!

The Point -Part 2.

Why is it that a certain type of person - usually someone with a devout belief in a god of some description - feels that they are able to criticise the Theory of Evolution without actually spending the time to understand it?

Why is it that time and again I hear the 'argument' - "if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys around"?

Why is it that Evolution is the only Theory about which people seem to think they are able to spout forth without fore-knowledge? Where are the people who say "This gravity idea's rubbish"? Or "So - the Germ Theory of disease, I just don't buy it". Why are they not so willing to make ridiculous statements about particle physics unless those statements contradict evolution? (The standard is the "Carbon Dating shows the wrong dates for fossils" bunkum).

I assume it's because either:-

a) The teaching of evolution in schools is universally poor. Certainly in my own country the Theory that has been described as one of the most important to ever be devised is skipped over lightly if it is covered at all.

b) For some reason evolution is viewed by the Bible- and Qur'an-thumping proles as a direct threat to their belief.

If it is the former one would imagine that it was easy to rectify - make space in the over-worked curriculum for it. After all we cover Newton and Archimedes, so why not Darwin? Evolution also has the benefit of being easy to understand and involving no equations.

If it is the latter then one must ask the question "how secure are you in your faith that the truth rocks it so much?"



*Bodhran - pronounced bowrawn. Only the Irish can produce a drum with one stick and a language with silent consonents.