Former Third World Drummer Willie Stewart. - FILE
IN AN alley warehouse in north-east Fort Lauderdale, Willie Stewart is trying to teach six teenagers rhythm on conga drums.
"Keep it on the beat!" he shouts as he pounds out West African rhythms while the youths try to keep their individual parts going.
"If we don't keep the beat," Stewart continued, "we're dead."
After several missed attempts and stops and starts, the young charges synchronise, making Stewart smile."Keep it up!" he yells.
The beat goes on, and will continue as long as reggae drummer Stewart has breath.
IT'S THE HEARTBEAT
A former member of the group Third World, Stewart now drums to teach children their heritage, to show adults how to relieve stress, and develop team-building in corporations. American Express and For Eyes are among his clients.
"Everybody's got the beat inside them. It's the heartbeat, and reggae has a heartbeat in it," he said with a Jamaican lilt.
The drum is African culture's most important instrument.
"The drum has an ancestral history," Stewart said. "There were no cellphones. No phones. No televisions. The message was passed through the drum."
The tradition remains alive.
When Bill Nix started a black arts newsletter 10 years ago in Palm Beach County, he called the sheet The Drum.
Nix, a Delray Beach resident, said he started his publication "to connect the rhythm of life and the rhythm of my people."
For Stewart, the drum is magical, as his clients will attest.
Elet Cyris of Royal Palm Beach hired Stewart for a stress-relieving workshop for a women's day programme at her church in West Palm Beach last year.
"The way he explains the drums with such enthusiasm grabbed us," she said. "I was sceptical about the drumming but once he got us participating, it was a wonderful day."
MOST SUCCESSFUL ACT
While Cyris didn't know Stewart before inviting him to do the workshop, she had seen the Third World band play several times in Jamaica, at New York's Apollo Theater and in Canada.
"They produce some good dance music," she said.
Born in England to Jamaican parents, Stewart grew up in Jamaica and fell in love with music. He was a member of Inner Circle, a popular band in Jamaica, and toured as the youngest member with Byron Lee & the Dragonaires.
But in the United States, Stewart is known for the 23 years he spent with Third World, a band that produced 13 albums and received five Grammy nominations. The group is Jamaica's most successful act next to Bob Marley.
The group achieved a top 10 hit with a reggae beat version of an O'Jays original, Now That We Found Love, in 1978.
Stewart left the band in 1997.
"Sometimes in life, you get another calling," Stewart said recently as he sat in his home music studio in Pembroke Pines. "I wanted to do something with teaching and impart knowledge with kids."
Stewart's current group, Reggae Ambassadors, including several of Third World's original musicians, performs concerts focusing on a global sound of reggae, jazz, hip hop and world beat rhythms.
"The world matters," Stewart tells his young drumming students. "You should be concerned about what you can contribute to your peers."
This article, taken from the South Florida Sun Sentinel was written by Gregory Lewis, Staff Writer, and carried in the May 16, 2005 edition.
