Drummer
From Freepedia
A drummer is a musician who plays the drums, particularly the drum kit, marching percussion, or hand drums. The term percussionist usually refers to a person who plays classical or Latin percussion.
Musical significance
While drummers are the butt of many drummer jokes (not unlike alto viola players) suggesting they wouldn't be real musicians, in reality good drummers are expert musicians with an acute ear for rhythm and musical form, who act as the rhythmic driving force for an entire ensemble. The drummer is the rhythmic shader and punctuator for musical ensembles; the very choice of the word beat (evoking his action) for the rhythmic motor of a performance (especially in dance) reflects percussion's traditional role as such. Their main contributions are timing changes and, often overlooked by amateur drummers, dynamic range. This makes their playing analagous to the situation in which a good timpanist provides rhythmic and melodic drama in an orchestral setting.
Percussion (along with song) is perhaps the most ancient form of music. In fact, some cultures have drum music, music that is performed by drums alone. The non-vocal sounds and rhythms of life, the most obvious being walking, are a kind of pre-music which elaborate and organize themselves through human intelligence and play into music.
Military use
Drummers have played a key role in the military in past conflicts, such as the American Revolution, and the American Civil War, before motorized transport became the rule. Drums provided a steady beat to set the marching pace, even more then often accompanying wind instruments such as flutes (signal instruments such as bugles have another primary function), and kept morale up through music. Naturally they were employed in various ceremonies, including ominous drum roles accompanying formal floggings on board ships or in penal colonies.
A curious (Commonwealth?) Army tradition was to have corporal punishments administered by drummers (e.g. [[1]]), even by drummer boys, flogging naked adult soldiers (illustration from Canada circa 1820 [[2]] apparantly showing a cat o' nine tails but probably aiming at the buttocks), under threat, if not hitting hard enough, to be lashed themselves by the drum major (their own senior), who was also charged with branding deserters and 'bad characters'.
