Better World Network

Attached to this post is a video recording of a drum circle that meets in North San Diego County every week. It is taken with a camera phone, an experiment in seeing what can be done with simple phones around the world. The idea is to experiment with what can be done spontaneously and simply, but still convey the experience of the music. Since drumming is such a universal form of music and communication, we are exploring ways of connecting folks through drumming and podcasting… what we are calling drumcasting. Jason Manalli is the person being interviewed at the beginning; the large blue drum towards the second half of the video is a trash can that was used when the group ran out of drums.
We talked a little about Drumcasting at the Paris Uplift Academy workshop.  Here are Raoul Weiler of the Club of Rome in Belgium and Kwame Agabe of the UN Environmental Programme at the Paris workshop, talking about introducing some Drumcast-related activity at a forthcoming conference in Nigeria. Kwame spoke of the diminishing role of drumming in Africa today, as celebrations use boom boxes and recorded music instead of drums.  Maybe highlighting drumming as a global communications tool can help restore some local interest in preserving their drum heritage.  Here are some ideas on drumcasting.

Here is an interesting series on BBC’s Happiness Formula with lots of links relating to the science of happiness and Martin Seligman’s work on Positive Psychology as well as Values In Action.

This is a very interesting presentation by Frances Moore Lappé of the Small Planet Insitute entitled The Real Crisis presented at Xavier University Cincinatti, OH, 10 July 2005.

I just ran across this song, The Output Outcome Downstream Impact Blues, written and performed by Terry Smutylo.