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Dressed in African garb, the students of Living Rhythms set up their drums in a semicircle as their friends and family watch them in the relaxing atmosphere of the Golden Flower Tai Chi Center. After a brief huddle, the ensemble begins to play.

But don't call it a performance. This is a "sharing" and what participants refer to as a "village gathering."

The instructors at Living Rhythms, a Winston-Salem-based West African drumming school, find that the word "performance" makes students nervous, which isn't what the end-of-term village gathering is supposed to be about. It's about sharing what they've learned with their loved ones before enjoying a potluck dinner with the Living Rhythms community.

This village gathering illustrates the philosophy behind Living Rhythms, founded by Bill Scheidt.

"Our purpose is two-fold," Scheidt said, "to preserve the music of West Africa and to use that music as a tool for health, harmony and understanding in modern society."

Living Rhythms particularly emphasizes the djembe, a drum that is associated with providing a sense of community, celebration and joy. Scheidt said the school isn't just about the music but about what the music inspires in people, how it brings people together and how it teaches people about cultural understanding.

The school's approach to drumming is also based on recent scientific research about drumming's health effects, Scheidt said. This research concludes that drumming can increase natural killer cell activity and enhance the immune system, which is beneficial to cancer patients. It can also help with the body's response to depression and stress.

"The drum reverses the body's hormonal response to stress," Scheidt said.

Anyone can take a class at Living Rhythms no matter how much experience they have. There are beginner, intermediate and advanced evening classes for the public in addition to workshops.

Semesters typically last eight to 10 weeks, and classes have 15 to 20 people. The Living Rhythms team also goes to various schools and conducts hands-on workshops.

They have done corporate programs at businesses including Wachovia, Sara Lee and Hanes in which the drum is used to teach employees about teamwork and productivity. They also have specific health programs, which have been conducted at places such as camps for terminally ill children.

Scheidt founded Living Rhythms because of his studies in Africa and his love of music. Scheidt's love of music goes back to his childhood when his mother, a violinist, introduced him to the violin at age 5.

"That ended for me when I smashed my violin on the dining room table," Scheidt said. "I guess I was already into percussion."

He went on to play saxophone in high school and study ecology at Wake Forest University. But it wasn't until a trip to Africa for his ecology studies that he discovered his love of drumming. There he witnessed the meaning behind it, the community experience and the joy it brought. He wanted to learn more.

"It was a very intense, very powerful experience," Scheidt said. "I saw how the music was an expression of the culture and of being a human being in that part of the world."

He has tried to return to Africa every year since that experience, moved by the warm and welcoming people he met. When he travels to Africa, Scheidt lives with different families, which he said connects him with the people. He also has studied music there extensively under Mamady Keita, a master drummer who Scheidt calls "the Beethoven of the djembe," drawing crowds of 15,000 at his European concerts.

"To be around somebody who's a master of their craft is a rare experience," Scheidt said. "The message that he's generating is such an inspiration."

Keita told Scheidt to never forget his experiences in Africa and to share what he learned with people in the United States, which led Scheidt to found Living Rhythms in 2000.

This fall, Keita will pay Living Rhythms a visit before it changes its name to Tam Tam Mandingue, becoming a branch of Keita's international school. There are only four other branches of Tam Tam Mandingue in the United States: Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Diego and Santa Cruz, Calif.

When Scheidt founded Living Rhythms, he said he felt like he had a double responsibility to people here and people in Africa. From the beginning, he wanted to emphasize African drumming as a tool for health, community and emotional expression, and share with his students the cultural significance behind each rhythm.

"It was really inspirational because starting off I didn't know how it would be received," Scheidt said.

But he found that people did understand and appreciate what he was teaching and that he was successfully passing the message along. Since then he has held lessons at the Golden Flower Tai Chi center, where he is a student.

Scheidt teaches everyone from doctors and lawyers to students and teachers. His students also vary in age, race and gender, and many of them have been with Living Rhythms since the beginning.

"Mamady always says that the djembe doesn't see people's age, gender or color," Scheidt said. "It sees their hearts."

Robin Leftwich was in the very first class at Living Rhythms and is now an instructor there. It all started when a friend, who knew she liked drumming, paid for her classes as a Christmas gift.

"I got to be here since day one and really help develop it," Leftwich said. "It was small, and it seemed like we all kind of clicked in the beginning, so it became an immediate community fast."

Dave Fairall was a student in Scheidt's first beginner class and now plays with the advanced group.

"The biggest factor for me is the wonderful community that exists here in the school," Fairall said. "We care about each other, look out for each other, celebrate with each other, cry with each other. It's a really wonderful group of folks."

For Steve Atherton, an intermediate student, the relaxing atmosphere of the drumming classes drew him to Living Rhythms.

"It's so different from the normal work week," Atherton said. "Just getting together, working off some stress. Some folks do it on the golf course, but I like doing it here."

Contact Alexa Milan at 373-7081 or Alexandra.Milan@news-record.com.