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Katy Gaughan
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Katy Gaughan brings her love of the drum and joyful dance to enchant
her audiences. As a drummer, dancer and drum circle facilitator, Katy
uses her musical skills and facilitation training to bring people
together to feel the connection of community, learn about the drum
and movement, and have fun. Katy believes that the drum is an instrument
that can be used for healing and encourages health through drumming
with her organization Music Heals Us.
She is a hand percussionist for Tribal Trance Fusion (one of many!)
and is most often heard playing the West African djembe drum or the
Latin conga drums. Yet she can also be found exploring the wide variety
of instruments that lay at her feet during a Tribal Trance Fusion
concert—if she’s not up and dancing with the audience.
Her love of drumming and dance led her to the 2003 East Coast Drum
Circle Facilitators Playshop with Arthur Hull. This one-week intensive
training with Hull, one of the grandfathers of the American drum circle
movement, certified her as a drum circle facilitator, which she brings
into performance as well as into community drum circle facilitation.
Katy is also the conguera for the local jazz trio Djesben and has
drummed with a variety of Washington DC area based bands over the
past five years, including Rhythm Shamans, Haunted Bordello, Shmazi
and Jaqui MacMillan’s Hand Drum Orchestra, which performed at
the 2002 Baltimore International Rhythm Drum Festival. She also plays
with the Rhythm Worker’s Union, an activist group committed
to bringing rhythm and music to the streets during protests, marches
and demonstrations.
Katy has been dancing most of her life and has been drumming for the
past seven years. She has been blessed to learn and play hand drums
with a variety of teachers in the Washington DC area, including the
Malcolm X Drummers, Laryea Addy of the Royal Ghanaian Drum Family
and WAMMIE winner Jaqui MacMillan.
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