Drumroll, please… and coexistence

Can a drumming circle developed in South Africa to promote multiculturalism and used in New York City for corporate events be used in Israel to encourage coexistence?

Aviva Nash hopes so.

On Tuesday, Nash’s Drum Cafe will be hosting its first event in Israel since Nash, a former South African, moved to Israel from New York three years ago.

She’s working with two Arab organizers from the cultural center in the Haifa-area Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel to produce the free, women-only event.

“Women are the rocks, they come together and drum and sing and we’ll see what happens,” said Nash. “What will be so wonderful and interesting to see is once they’re locked into the rhythm and they break out of the format, how the cultural rhythms will come into it.”

Nash described that experience as the heart of the Drum Cafe philosophy.

“If you listen to everybody, and listen to the base beat, then we create something that’s the sum of each part, and yet each part is integral to the whole,” she said.

The Drum Cafe concept was created by Nash’s high school classmate, Warren Lieberman, who used the idea of interactive drumming to help unite and absorb South Africa’s multicultural workforce.

Nash then brought Drum Cafe to New York City, where she introduced the communal drumming concept to the corporate world as well as the general public. Besides corporate events, Drum Cafes were held annually in Times Square, with 20-minute drumming sessions in the middle of the intensely busy and noisy intersection.

The drum events always “scored high,” said Nash. “It was this vehicle for unity and a sense of togetherness.”

The Cafe isn’t a drum circle. People walk into a room, where there is a djembe drum, a skin-covered goblet drum from West Africa placed on each chair.

“It’s an infectious drum call,” said Nash. “We’re bringing African rhythm to Israel with the philosophy of African ubuntu, which means I am who I am through you, through others. Man is not an island, and isn’t isolated.”

In New York, said Nash, the Drum Cafe helped transform companies into communities with its team of musicians and drums that would have people drumming together in unison.

“It goes beyond language and culture and faith or opinion,” she said.

Well, not always.

In 2013, Nash sued Fox News personalities Bill O’Reilly and Greta Van Susteren for defaming her as nothing but a “hippie-dippie chick” who stole money from taxpayers with her drumming conferences.

According to Drum! magazine, the federal General Services Administration had paid an enormous sum of money for Drum Cafe’s team-building exercises.

Her lawsuit was eventually rejected by a Bronx Supreme Court Judge who said the “stealing” cracks were aimed at the GSA’s “lavish use of taxpayer money to entertain and provide gifts to federal employees” and not at Nash.

Nash said she didn’t try to sue the Fox newscasters because they had caused her any personal damage — “I partially aspire to be a hippie-dippy chick,” she said, laughing — but because she disliked their irresponsible journalism.

“They used our great vibe and drumming to leverage a news segment,” she said. “I think that’s wrong, they weren’t being journalists, they were just doing it for the ratings.”

Nash said Drum Cafe had actually given the government group a “great price.”

Soon afterwards, she moved to Israel and now lives in Zichron Yaakov.

She’s gathered a local group of drummers for Drum Cafe Israel, including one from Ghana and another from Yemen, and is first focusing on women’s initiatives, with hopes to eventually hold women’s drumming events in the center and the south.

Drum Cafe Israel, Tuesday, April 5, 6 p.m., Daliyat al-Karmel. The event is free and limited to 150 people. To reserve a place, email Aviva Nash at aviva@drumcafe.com or call her at 054-815-5359.