It’s 8 PM on a Friday and people–mostly white, mostly in pairs–are trickling into Rhythm, a dark, elegant Randolph Street bar devoted to all things percussive. After paying the $5 cover, they order beer and martinis at the long, curved bar, which is dominated by a large brass gong and overlooks “the pit”–a sunken circle 14 feet across with three rings of cushioned bench seating around it.
Rhythm caters to all types of drummers, but the djembe is an easy way in for beginners, says Doug’s brother, Rob, who handles the bar’s finances. They were introduced to it in the summer of 1998, after accompanying their parents on a three-week trip through Kenya and Tanzania. Their folks went home to Glenview, but the brothers decided to extend their stay for another five weeks. “We climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and hitchhiked,” says Doug, and eventually they made their way through Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to South Africa. Doug had just earned his bachelor’s degree in communications from Boston University, and Rob, who’s now about to hit 30, had recently quit a two-year stint as an investment banking analyst, concluding that “the money wasn’t worth the lifestyle trade-off.” Toward the end of their adventure, they found themselves at a hostel in Cape Town, where they were invited to “go to this thing at a drum cafe,” says Doug. “We loaded up in the hostel bus and went to an out-of-the-way industrial neighborhood, to a nondescript factory warehouse building. The place was carpeted, and there was a circle of plastic lawn chairs. There was a bar off to one side where you could buy a beer.”
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They began talking about the drum bar again in earnest. Doug called his college friend Michelle Hirschfeld, who’d majored in hotel and restaurant management and was working at a Hyatt on Maui. “I was kind of ready to leave,” says Hirschfeld, who’s from Boston and wanted to return to the mainland. She had no background in drumming either, but it didn’t take much to persuade her to jump in as third partner and operations manager.
Some customers have come back three or four times in the few weeks Rhythm’s been open. “It’s an easy sell for drumming, because there’s nothing like this around,” says Doug. “A lot of people like to drum but you can’t do it in your apartment because your neighbors will hate you. In the summer you can play outside but when it’s cold there’s nowhere else to play.”
As the circle becomes more intense, people start checking each other out. A guy sets his beer on the head of his djembe and is politely chastised by a staffer. The woman in maroon finally gets off her stool and asks me if I want her tambourine. “I want to drum,” she says, looking toward the pit.
