Remo Marching to the Rhythm of Different Drum Circles

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Remo Belli acknowledges most people think of drum circle participants as patchouli-doused hippie holdovers.


Even the head of Valencia-based drumhead maker Remo Inc. admits he first felt that way about the free-form rhythm sessions. But they’re now a key part of his company’s marketing strategy.


“My concern from the very beginning was, was it Griffith Park and Venice Beach? Were you out there smoking pot and drinking beer?” Belli said.


But the 78-year-old Belli, who attends drum circles at least once a week and has been to hundreds over the past 15 years, insists that most people involved don’t fit the hippie drummer mold at all.


“It was very interesting to change the perception,” Belli said. “We get professional people, and people from every walk of life.”


Drum circles occur when drummers gather to create rhythms that participants claim can reduce stress and provide a creative outlet. Some companies use the circles as a team-building exercise.


Belli has been at the forefront of a movement to legitimize and foster recreational drumming. His drum-making company, which does an estimated $45 million in business annually, draws a major boost from drum circles. About six years ago, he opened a drumming center in North Hollywood, and has become a major advocate of the activity as a recreational and even therapeutic force. Drum circles have found their way into colleges, senior centers and even boardrooms. Companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Motorola Inc. have experimented with the practice.


Other musical instrument makers are starting to follow Remo’s lead in seeing drum circles as business opportunities. For example, Bloomfield, Conn.-based Kaman Corp., which owns drum makers Toca and Latin Percussion, is also promoting its products through drum circles.


“It is another avenue to show our product. It opens the door to a lot of people who haven’t had formal training,” said Mark Moralez, a percussion product specialist at Kaman.



Facilitating growth


“Remo forged the way, and people were laughing him at the beginning. Now, they are all doing it because they realize it is viable market,” said John Yost, owner of Chicago-based Rhythm Revolution.


Belli envisions recreational centers like his North Hollywood operation opening up across the country and is already scouting locations in cities such as Columbus, Ohio, and Birmingham, Ala. Yost is similarly bullish.


“Just like yoga, people know it is good for them. Yoga was not very prevalent, but now every neighborhood has a yoga studio,” said Yost. Yost, as many drum circle facilitators, has undergone training in how to run a session and is a member of the Drum Circle Facilitators Guild.


“It is a new and expanding industry,” said Jonathan Murray, president of the guild, which was established in 2001. “We definitely haven’t hit the edge or close to it. Ninety-nine percent of the people that I interact with are in the drum circle for the first time.”


Many of the facilitators receive Remo instruments at a discount, or even free, and use them during their sessions. Subsequently, many of the participants who begin drumming regularly choose the Remo drums they are accustomed to playing when they buy their own drums. Some go on to become facilitators themselves.


By taking recreational musicians seriously, Belli has connected with a large untapped pool of potential buyers.


“Remo is a big believer in the fact that everyone can make music,” said Scott Robertson, a spokesman for NAMM International Music Products Association. “There is tremendous support and interest in people wanting to make music. They just have to believe that they can.”


About 15 years ago, Belli joined Arthur Hall, founder of Village Music Circle at a drum circle in Santa Cruz. At that time, drum manufacturers principally aimed at professionals. Only a few small companies made anything for public use, Hall said.


Belli signed up Hall to bring Remo to recreational drummers and encouraged Hall to design drums for them.


“This is a model for what our industry should offer the public,” Belli said. “Our industry has never created anything. We are very reactive. We didn’t create rock ‘n’ roll. We didn’t create Dixieland, opera. …. We service it.”


After coming to the West Coast from South Bend, Ind., in 1947 to pursue a musical career, he invested $2,500 he borrowed from his parents and went into business with Roy Hart at a retail shop, called Drum City, on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.


Soon he teamed with a chemist from Dupont to make the first synthetic drumhead that could be mass-produced.


Capitalizing on the invention, Remo was established in 1959, with Belli holding a 45 percent stake in the company. Belli subsequently bought out Hart’s stake and left the retail shop to take on manufacturing drumheads full time.


The synthetic drumhead was a huge advance. It allowed drummers to play in weather conditions that strained traditional animal-skin drumheads, and it came along just as rock and roll exploded onto the cultural landscape.


“That changed completely the volume of business done in drumheads. It doubled and tripled it,” recalled Belli.

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