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Raheem Rasta, 67, a drummer and flute player with the Universal Messengers of Music, has been a fixture among drummers at Meridian Hill (Malcom X) Park since receiving his own drum 14 years ago from the woman who would eventually become his wife, on Sunday, June 1, 2014, in Washington, DC. Rasta first encountered the circle in 1982, when he came to the DC area from Harlem, New York, to complete his graduate degree in mathematics at Virginia State University. In that year, it was “my Black nationalist affiliation” that drew Rasta to the park, where he played his flute and spoke to the gathered crowd on Black Liberation Day. “Drums are one of the original instruments of man. When we play the drums, the drums vibrate just as the cosmos vibrate, just as our star, the sun, vibrates. They say music soothes the savage beast. Drums absolutely soothe the human spirit. Regardless how you come there, you leave out better than you came. I look forward to Sundays to get out in the fresh air to play drums and feel that spirit and to be able to harmonize a frequency with nature. When we hit that harmonious frequency, those people listening change. They get happy. That's why I do it...because the sound is so profound, it makes people move”. (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
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