Question: What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians?
Answer: A drummer.
That wisecrack is fairly typical of what are known as "drummer jokes" - a whole genre of humour based on the premise that drummers are unmusical, stupid and no good at anything - especially drumming.
Question: How do you know there's a drummer at the front door?
Answer: The knocking keeps getting faster and faster.
Perhaps drumming has on too many occasions attracted the attention of people who simply want to be in a band but can't actually play anything? Maybe crude drumming has been seen as an easy alternative to virtuosity? Much like the bodhran player who believes that mere possession of the instrument entitles him to disrupt any seisiun within earshot - an activity which provoked John B. Keane's famous remark that the only way to play a bodhran is with a penknife.
Maybe they knew what they were at in Nashville when they banned drums from the stage of the Grand Ol' Opry? They said it was sinful. But surely that ought to depend on the drummer?
I'm thinking about drummers as I listen to a record by the Nigerian musician Chief Ebenezer Obey. This is Yoruba music and it's difficult not to be hypnotised by the beautiful, hour-glass, talking drums which form such a major part of this intoxicating music - juju as it was labelled by the colonial British. You would be hard pressed to make a drummer joke at the expense of any of these outstandingly skilled percussionists - particularly when you don't even know what drums are saying. For all I know they might be telling jokes about the sort of people who spend their evenings listening to juju music.
In the days long before jazz and rock 'n' roll it was the gods themselves who spoke through drums - such was the belief among the people of West Africa who had been stolen away and dragged to America as slaves. Drumming and dancing were the twin pillars of West African worship and so it was particularly devastating that, in certain places, both were banned. Firstly, slave-owners regarded any African religious practices as "heathen", "devilish" etc, and secondly, they knew these drums were used to communicate both with the old gods and with each other. They feared this magnificent drumming, which could be heard far and wide on neighbouring plantations, might well lead to revolt and escape. The drum is a simple but powerful thing.
The drum has always been at the heart of the development of popular music - either its presence or its absence. In the Protestant colonies of the southern states, the emphasis was on converting the slave to Christianity and, with drums banned, it was the shouted spiritual that eventually developed as a musical means of worship (and subversion). In Catholic colonies, Spanish or French slave-owners didn't care so much what the slaves got up to as long as it didn't interfere with production, and the drums largely survived. When these musics began to come together, the result was early jazz.
Coincidentally, the fact that West African religion happened to be compatible with aspects of Catholic worship led to further strange musical and ceremonial blendings. For example, the Snake-God Damballa was honoured when the drums sacred to him were beaten out on St Patrick's Day.
I played the drums once myself. The school, in a rare moment of decadence, decided to stage a production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicoloured Dream Coat. Anyone who was vaguely musical was press-ganged into the orchestra but it was soon discovered that there was no such thing as a drummer in the ranks. It appeared briefly that we might have to revert to plain chant but after a frantic investigation it turned out that I could almost keep a beat. I was immediately auditioned and I demonstrated my sudden skill by tapping two rulers against the radiator. Next thing I was sitting behind the remains of an ancient drum-kit last used by a ceili band in the 1950s. The cymbal sounded like a gong, there was no high-hat, the bass-pedal was inoperative and the snare sounded like a cardboard box. But those were generous times and I banged away contentedly like a living drummer joke. But in fairness, I'd like to see Buddy Rich get through an entire musical with two antique drums and a bin-lid. Maybe I was avant-garde?
Question: What's the definition of an optimist?
Answer: A drummer with an answering machine.
These jokes are all very unfair. Some of my best friends are drummers etc. But my defence of their activities can only go so far. Let's not forget that terrible ritual feature of rock concerts known as the drum solo. This is the moment when drum aficionados begin to flail about and the rest of us (including the band) go to the toilet. This is unwise. Any drummer left on his own will hammer away for hours like Vulcan at his forge and will only cease his racket if he can smell the smoke from the Catherine wheels and Roman candles exploding all around his kit. Which reminds me -
Question: How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Answer: Ten. One to put the bulb in and nine to talk about how much better Cozy Powell would have done it.
I've been lucky enough to see some remarkable drummers close up - people such as Brian Downey, Jim Keltner and two of Coltrane's magnificent drummers, Jimmy Cobb and Elvin Jones. When any of these musicians fine play they are guaranteed the respect of anyone listening. Even so, drummers can have a very hard time just trying to keep time. I once heard Jerry Lee Lewis stop mid-song and yell at the drummer that he was in the wrong key! Meanwhile, The Killer was taking what appeared to be totally arbitrary lurches in tempo as the frantic drummer tried to work out what exactly was going on. Then there's the old story of the showband leader who meets a stranger who seems to know everything about him. Finally he panics, thinking that the stranger must be a Revenue Commissioner. "Who exactly are you anyway?" he asks. The stranger looks hurt and replies, "I've been your drummer for five years." Yes, it's tough being a drummer and maybe we should try a little harder to be charitable.
But first, another drummer joke. A drummer decides he needs a change of instrument and he goes into a music shop to buy a guitar. He looks at the lines of instruments and eventually chooses a red one. He asks if he can try it out. The shop assistant smiles and asks, "Are you by any chance a drummer?" "How did you know that?" asks the puzzled drummer. "Because sir," answers the shop assistant, "you're trying to play the fire-extinguisher."
John Kelly is a writer and broadcaster