The Irish Times
How to beat the competition
Phones are ringing, people are arguing, e-mails you don¹t want keep popping
up, time is short, work is piling upŠ.How do you get relief? You bang your
drum, or your bongos. Or you shake your maracas.
In no time at all you¹ll be feeling so much better, even beaming at the
idiot in human resources you clashed with at the budget meeting, because now
his darabukas Middle Eastern drums are chiming in so well after
your booming intro.
Samba for stress, the louder the and more carnival the better, is the business
solution being embraced by big Irish companies such as Irish life and AIB and
even the more peacefully inclined glencree center for reconciliation.
The man leading the band is Dave McFarlane, percussionist, veteran of numerous
groups and the brains behind a venture called Teamsamba. He tells me how he
got senior managers and trainee pups to bang together. "I was asked to
do a workshop for a theatre about three years ago, people were coming up to
me afterwards, saying ŒI¹ve been having a really bad week, but now
I feel great!¹ They were getting rid of all their frustrations. So I took
the idea to corporate situations, companies like Dell, and now it is really
catching on."
AIB's offices on Adelaide road in Dublin had a 20-week course in Samba percussion,
says trainee executive Kate Quane. "It was great, we really enjoyed it
and it was very good for team-building." Staff at PFPC, a fund manager
at the Irish Life center, were looking for a Brazilian music group to play at
their end-of-summer party when they heard about Teamsamba, says fund accountant
Sile Loughrey. "At first some people were against it, but our managing
director, Joan Kehoe, was very enthusiastic and promised to get ten managers
on board if we could get as many rank-and-file staff." They had three practice
sessions before their gig night at the party, in the Landsdown road entertainment
room. "It was such a success some of the guys are going to learn drumming
properly."
"Anyone can do this," he says." I¹ve had people especially
in the corporate work, come up to me before hand and say; ŒLook I cant
do this.¹ Either they are too embarrassed to play drums before their collogues
or they think they have no musical ear, no rhythm. I say, yeah, yeah, because
I know, firstly, everyone can do it, and secondly, it is so much fun everyone
will want to join in."
Samba, of course, is very egalitarian music. "It is great to have an executive
on a pair of shakers, and a junior employee on a big drum!" says McFarlane.
Sile Loughrey reinforces the point, if not so gleefully. "It was so good
to have managers and ordinary staff all playing together and people who would
normally never talk getting to know each other." With a bang.