Drumming contest: Make room for the winning team

Tum Tum Pa national finals crown ‘Char Payee’.

ISLAMABAD:

The drums have been beating for a while now and time for ‘Tum Tum Pa’ to announce the drumming competition’s winner has come to pass. Hence why Kuch Khaas (KK) called for the grand national finale on Thursday.

Char Payee, the team from Lahore School of Economics bagged the prize for the national finals. The group of four will represent Pakistan at the World Finals in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil this June.

Red Bull Tum Tum Pa, the first freestyle drumming competition for students, came to Pakistan around mid-April 2011, where its qualifier events were held at top universities in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad.

Participants used their musical creativity to create rhythms by jamming with pens, pencils, rulers, scissors, erasers and anything else they could get their hands on in the classroom. Of over 40 groups that participated, it boiled down to the top seven, which ultimately made it to the national finals.

The competition kicked off with a bang as media and spectators huddled into a cozy room at KK, while one group after the other came on stage to perform their covers of famous songs, followed by their own original compositions, each for 60 seconds.

Farhad Humayun of Overload was one of the event’s main judges, giving points to each group on rhythm. The other two judges, one a musician and the other a Red Bull marketing head, judged the groups on creativity and audience response.

The audience was up in roars as each group brought it all to the table, from using creative instruments made out of Red Bull cans, pencils, rulers, erasers and baskets to explaining in depth, the story behind each of their group names and composition titles.

In the end, after much deliberation and point counting, Chaar Payee received the most points from the judges and got the best audience reaction.

They scored the highest points for creativity, owing largely to ‘Arif Gondal’ - their own, original instrument created out of a box, cans of Red Bull, a pen holder and pens / pencils.

Following the results, the audience were treated to a short performance by Overload - Farhad Humayun on drums, with Nasir Saeen and Kala Saeen on dhol.



Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2011.