Have fun with green at Green Valley Earth Festival
By JENNIFER DEAN
The Press-Enterprise
Friday, April 11, 2008
She's a corporate director of communications by day and a drummer and poet by night (OK, during daylight hours, too, sometimes). Drumming was a personal passion for many years before it became a visionary tool she uses to show people how they are all connected.
"It makes them think."
Chrystine Julian, of Redlands, has been bringing people together in drum circles for about 10 years and is hoping to see record numbers when she performs for the first time at the Green Valley Earth Festival at Dos Lagos in Corona on April 19.
Drumming mimics the heartbeat, Julian said. It's an "earthy experience." Celtic, Native American, African and many other cultures around the world were built through drumming.
Julian also uses drumming as a corporate training tool.
"The neat thing about percussion is that each instrument has its own individual sound," she said. Each sound makes up an important part of the whole.
"It's a great team metaphor."
Take that another step forward and it applies to an entire community.
At the Green Valley Earth Festival, Julian will take this concept and combine it with junk drums, which can be buckets, tin cans or containers filled with rocks or rice. Anything that can make a sound.
There will be a booth with supplies visitors can use to make junk drums. Also, the city of Corona will be handing out free water bottles. "We're hoping people will drink the water and then bring the bottle over to make it into an instrument," Julian said.
Junk drums make people think about other uses things can have and how they can be repurposed, she said.
"It makes them think."
Julian's drum circle is definitely going to be one of the most exciting things going on, said Deniene Husted, spokesperson for Green Institute for Village Empowerment, sponsor of the festival. But there will also be a lot of other activities, demonstrations, food, music and more going on all day, Husted added.
The Boys and Girls Club will have a Solar Green Prix demonstrations featuring sun-powered models. And there will be a career fair with businesses that have green practices; an artist that uses scrap metal to build dinosaurs, some up to 30 feet tall; six alternative-fuel vehicles on display; music by the Christian Arts Theater; plein-air painters from the Riverside Art Museum; a mural kids can paint; and a kite display.
There will be a lot of great activities for kids, Husted said. But, it's also for grown-ups.
"We are expecting more than 8,000 people this year," Husted said. Looking at past junk-drum-circle numbers around the world, there's even a possibility a world record might be set if enough people participate, she said.
At the very least, she hopes to set the bar high and aims to beat that record next year.
