Team
Our team of facilitators and support staff comprises of our trustees Roberto Narain & Vasundhara Das, as well as some very committed individuals from our community who want to be part of our mission for the right reasons – sharing their rhythmical spirit and building & serving community.
Roberto Narain
Trustee – Community Drumjam Foundation
Partner – Drumjam
Roberto Narain is one of the Trustees of the Community Drumjam Foundation. Music aficionados in India have long delighted in the inspiring talent of this drummer extraordinaire. An extremely versatile artiste, Roberto is constantly exploring new dimensions in music.
Born in Monza, Italy, Roberto lived in Bangkok, Thailand until his family moved to Bangalore, India in the early 80s. He picked up a pair of drumsticks when he was thirteen –and hasn’t put them down since
In the context of Drum Circles, Roberto who has been facilitating drum circles from 2006, along with his partner Vasundhara Das, started Drumjam in 2008. Roberto, who is trained in Drum Circle Facilitation by Arthur Hull (the founder of the worldwide modern Drum Circle Movement), is an experienced, skillful facilitator who has facilitated Drumjams for groups as small as 5 people and as large as 10,000 people. Roberto’s passion for rhythm is communicated to everyone who takes part in Drumjam events, and his exuberant energy creates a compelling atmosphere that participants in his drum circles remember long after the last beats have faded away.
Drumjam, over the past 10 years,has exposed over half a million people to drumming and rhythm with an extensive touring program doing 80 to 100 drum circles a year. In the year 2013, Roberto along with Vasundhara, started the monthly Community Drumjam at Rangoli Metro Art Center, Bangalore. Community Drumjam is a free family friendly drum circle, which is open to everyone. Community Drumjams have been held once every month since June 2013 and are completely funded by Drumjam, enabling it to remain agenda free and completely for the benefit of people.
As part of the work of the Community Drumjam Foundation, Roberto will now be running Drumjam VMC Facilitators Trainings in India to enable more people to take the positive impacts of this work to larger populations around the country. Roberto is a Village Music Circles Certified Trainer for India and is one of 14 International Trainers who now constitute the VMC Global Team. At the first co-facilitated 3 day Basic Facilitators Training held in June 2017 in Bangalore, Arthur Hull along with Roberto co-facilitated the first batch of Drumjam VMC India graduates.
As a performer, Roberto has performed in a number of bands, bringing his own brand of electric virtuosity to a rich variety of musical styles. He has studied with T. A. S. Mani of the Karnataka College of Percussion and classical carnatic rhythms ripple through some of his music. Other than that, with respect to drumming and music technology he is self-taught.
Roberto has worked with guitar maestro Konarak Reddy and celebrated musician L. Subramaniam. He has been a founding member of the following bands – the famous heavy metal band Millennium, Warden, Middle Earth, and co-founded the world music band Arya, and currently runs a recording studio, The Active, with his partner, singer / actress Vasundhara Das. The first project coming out of The Active was a collaboration called The Shah Hussain Project featuring Vasundhara Das and Mir Mukhtiyar Ali. The Shah Hussain Project features Roberto in a dual role of both drummer as well as producer.
A prolific all rounder, Roberto has performed in various settings and musical forms such as Rock, Heavy Metal, Jazz, Jazz Rock, Fusion & Funk and has over the years been part of festivals such as the “La mar de Musicas” in Europe, and has toured and performed in the US as well. In India, he has been part of the famous Jazz Yatra series, The Other Festival, The Ladakh Confluence and various other festivals.
Roberto Narain’s journey with live electronic music began in the year 2000 with ‘Sounds from My Mind’, his first performance in this genre. This stunning display of Roberto’s talent in an entirely new form took away the collective breath of musical heavyweights. Roberto is known for pushing the envelope as far as solo drum performance is concerned, and with electronic drumming, he is setting standards in a dimension that others are just beginning to discover.
Presently, Roberto is busy with his ongoing projects, Drumjam for drum circles, facilitator trainings, solo performances as well as recordings but places the highest priority on performing live and sharing his amazing rhythmical spirit with people through his Drumjams.
Vasundhara Das
Trustee – Community Drumjam Foundation
Partner – Drumjam
Vasundhara Das is one of the Trustees of Community Drumjam Foundation. In addition to her extensive training and experience as a musician, Vasundhara has trained in Drum Circle Facilitation with Arthur Hull, the founder of the worldwide Drum Circle Movement. She has also trained with Christine Stevens as a HealthRhythms Facilitator and Kalani Das as an Orff Music Facilitator.
Over the last few years, she, along with Roberto and their team has been facilitating Drumjams for many varied groups of people such as Corporate, Community, Schools& Colleges. With experiential learning as the core intent, she facilitates programs that expose participants not only to an interesting mix of elements of music like rhythm, melody and harmony, but also encourage creativity using related artistic elements like movement and storytelling, in a format that is very interactive and engaging.
As an entrepreneur, Vasundhara and her partner Roberto Narain, run Drumjam, a company that uses the medium of music and rhythm for corporate training, team building and community building at corporations, communities, schools and colleges.
Drumjam, over the past 10 years, has worked with leaders of industries across all sectors and has made approximately half a million people experience music through group drumming.
In the year 2013, Vasundhara & Roberto started the monthly Community Drumjam at Rangoli Metro Art Center, Bangalore. Community Drumjam is a free family friendly drum circle, which is open to everyone. Community Drumjams have been held once every month since June 2013 and are completely funded by Drumjam, enabling it to remain agenda free and completely for the benefit of people.
In 2017, Vasundharabecame aCertified Trainer forArthur Hull’s Village Music Circles Global in India, in order to train and empower others with skills of drum circle facilitation so that there can be a greater impact of this work in her country. She is one of 14 International Trainers who constitute the Village Music Circles Global Trainer Team.
As an artiste, Vasundhara Das is a multi-faceted, multi-lingual personality successfully straddling many worlds. Well known for her skill in both the film and music industries. Vasundhara’s acclaimed films include Hey Ram, Monsoon Wedding, Citizen, RavanaPrabhu and several others. When it comes to singing, she has trained in Hindustani classical music from an early age & has made her mark with many songs for Indian films. Her hits include Shakalaka Baby, Where’s The Party Tonight, It’s The Time To Disco, Pappu Can’t Dance and a host of songs in various languages. She has worked with composers such as A. R. Rahman, Shankar, Ehsaan& Loy, Vishal &Shekhar to name a few.
She has also been collaborating on many independent music projects over the span of her career so far.
Vasundhara’s current focus is on music composition at her Bangalore based studio called THE ACTIVE, where she creates original independent music. Vasundhara also performs extensively on stage, in solo appearances as well as along with her band. Her latest musical outing as a singer and composer is an independently released album – The Shah Hussain Project.
Presently, Vasundhara continues her work as a recording artist, composer and performer, at the same time working with varied groups as a drum circle facilitator and a VMC Certified Trainer.
Vidya HT
Admin Manager / Program Co-ordinator
Vidya has been an intrinsic part of Drumjam since 2011, working as the administrator and programme coordinator.
With prior to experience in financial consulting in aleading investment firm having of around 10+ years in capital market and her accounts background, she is at the core of all operations at Drumjam.
A post-graduate from KSOU in Human Resources and BA graduate from Karnataka University Dharwad, Vidya derives immense pleasure as part of the Drumjam team, in being able to motivate and engage varied participants with rhythmic based activities and healing.
She looks forward to being part of many more success stories with Drumjam.
Rama Naik & Nagaraju
Logistics Co-ordinators
Rama and Nagaraju have been working as part the Drumjam logistics team for about 10 years. They first came to work with Drumjam as daily wage labourers in order to move the drums and other equipment from the warehouses to the venues and back. Once they were hired by Drumjam, learning on the job, they have become efficient logistics co-ordinators. Drumjamhas also helped finance a truck for Nagaraju. The Drumjam Truck now arrives at venues full of drums ready for eager hands to play them. Rama has become Drumjam’s in-house photographer in addition to his logistics duties and can be seen with a camera at all Drumjam sessions.