By: Robbie Ciara
Staff Writer
We’ve all been guilty of it. On any given afternoon, hundreds of students who are bored at their desk decide to take a couple of pencils and drum until their hearts content. They bang pencils off of glasses, books, tables and soda cans. On a rare occasion, the rhythm may mirror a Neil Purt drum solo, if they’re lucky. When it’s all said and done, no one has heard the amazing science book bass or the plastic inbox high hat skills that ring from a thick No. 2 pencil until now.
Last Saturday, The Red Bull Tum Tum Pa competition made its way to the Old Dominion Campus at the very popular hipster lounge, 37th and Zen. The Red Bull Tum Tum Pa is the first freestyle drumming competition for students. Teams of up to four bring musical creativity; jamming with pens, pencils, rulers, scissors and erasers to create unique rhythm.
What is most interesting about this competition is that the Tum Tum Pa competition is an international event. The best beat performance nationwide has a shot to compete in the Red Bull TUM TUM PA World Finals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Old Dominion competition featured three teams from our campus. With team names like “Hipster” and “Fat Man’s Breakfast,” the competition was sure to be loose and extremely entertaining. The Mace and Crown’s own Diane Dougherty and Christian Ernst were invited to judge the competition and drink as much Red Bull as possible.
The competition started with two rounds of competition. The first round consists of doing a drum cover of a popular song. The genre is non-specific. It can be a bass thumping song from Jay-Z or the drilling rhythm of ACDC’s “Shoot to Thrill,” it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s the natural thumping of a Red Bull can or even a stapler.
The Zen disc jockey got things going in the first round and the popular song of choice in the first round was Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” Hipster had a team of one and started things off light and loose by using pencils and plastic accessories. “Fat Man’s Breakfast,” with its team of three, was loud, fun and frantic. By the time the judges were on their third can of Red Bull, the crowd was pumped up for the second round, which features the free-style round.
In the free-style round, teams get sixty seconds to produce their own original Tum Tum Pa symphony and all of the teams saved their best for last. One two-man team made the crowd go wild by pouring a Red Bull in a glass and drumming it simultaneously to create an instant treble to bass rhythm that scored high with the judges. Judge Christian Ernst said, “The Red Bull pour at the end was just sick!”
In the end, it was the Three-man team of “Fat Man’s Breakfast” that won the competition in a drum montage that featured spiral binders, cans, scratching and hand stomping that rivaled anything you’ve seen in the movie “Drum Line.” The first place winner received an opportunity to produce a Tum Tum Pa video that will be used to judge the nationwide competition. The winner and runner-ups also received Red Bull products.
For more information or to view the nationwide Tum Tum Pa videos, log on to www.redbull.com
Photo by: Jason Anderson
