I enter the tiny doorway of an old crumbling building. She stands upright on legs of pride and will, for the many years of neglect leave only the faintest signs of her past glory. An occasional rush of wind carries away small bits of her fragile vanity. Five cautious steps down and I can feel it even before I hear it. The thick sweaty air pulses with the rhythmic force of a sacred tradition. Against the wall in front of me are several entranced men, their hands busy calling song out of their colourful drums. The small room is filled with people, but without the occasional bright piece of clothing, it would be hard to notice them. They are dark as night. Most of them are sitting and watching, and some of them are part of the music, directing the lead drummer with their vigorous hips. This conversation between drummers and dancers is a very sensuous foreplay and almost a dare to climax. The drumming intensifies, the dancers are wild, and everybody is singing or yelling, sweating and feeling primal, urged on by pure sexual rhythmic intoxication.

      That was my first night in Cuba. I was finally experiencing what I'd dreamed of for the past four years. During the next two weeks I would study with master percussionists and drummers in La Habana, Cuba, learning Cuban and Afro-Cuban drumming from the source. It would have been impossible to anticipate the deepness of the experience. More than learning how to drum, I learned how to be a drummer.

       If I take a drum lesson here in the States, I put my battered drum in the car and drive to class, where I'll spend the next hour with another drummer or maybe a few, struggling to count some foreign rhythm. When time is up I'll go home and unless I can play a cd of African or Afro-Cuban music, I won't likely hear that kind of rhythm again until next week's class.

      Music is like religion ­ it's meant to be lived, not practiced once a week!

      "La musica es mi vida! La musica es MI VIDA!" (Music is my life!) The old man spoke these words to me with a passion rare and deep. He was showing me his special cajon technique (box drum) as we were standing outside in a sort of alleyway that barely separated two rows of tiny cement boxes known as housing, trying to catch a moment of breeze to cool the sweat. It was a special night. The percussion workshop had officially ended that day and after two weeks of teaching us authentic folkloric percussion rhythms, our beloved teacher and master drummer, Lali, was hosting a rumba at his house, to celebrate and to give our group a real Cuban drumming experience.

      The warm breeze carried the drummer's call to our lost taxi and guided us through the maze to the right alley. The rumba was already in full effect. There were eight drummers (Raul y Su Grupo), eight family members plus guests, our workshop group of nine, and five bottles of Cuban rum, all packed into his10'X12' living room space. Three generations were present, from a three-year old clave-clapping boy to Lali's mother, who must've been in her seventies. Instrumentation was typical for this kind of affair ­ three different sized congas (tumbadores), large and small cajones (box drums), gua-gua (to play palitos), claves and the guataca (hoe blade used as a bell). We were anxious to give our undivided attention to the drumming in progress.

      But first you must eat! Our special dinner presented with typical Cuban graciousness and pride was a potato sandwich. That's a boiled potato and a slice of tomato between two slices of white bread with some sandwich spread. It was delicious! That goes for the rum as well, which is served straight in small juice glasses. I pretended the rum would accelerate the body's breakdown of all those carbohydrates.

      Fortified with rum, starch and hospitality, I let the vibrations of sixteen dancing hands envelop my spirit completely. In Cuba, drumming is not just music, it's not just rhythm; it's a way of being totally present. Interacting with the Great Source and the collective spirit through the self. Cuban rhythms are not counted like rhythms are here, there is no 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. They are not taught by counting or reading but by listening, feeling, watching and playing. In fact, the rhythms we learned do not conform to a count. If you force them into a countable or writeable shape, it's like the difference between a freshly pressed organic fruit juice and the frozen reconstituted version ­ the taste is similar but it doesn't feel the same. .

      I look around the room at these men, drumming the rhythms they were taught as children, drumming the same rhythms they felt in their mother's womb, each of them selflessly offering a part of the source to the collective. One of the younger drummers is suddenly inspired to sing. His clear tenor voice releases passionate cries and pleas that move through him to fill the room. It is so pure. Beads of sweat run down his face, through the peaks and valleys of his shameless contortions. The other drummers are with him in his spirit, their leather hands pounding energy into this space as if aiding the painful birth of his song.

      I sit inside of this, breathe it and absorb with every sense. "La musica es mi vida!" says the old cajon player, "La musica es MI VIDA!"