Born and raised on a potato farm in Northern Maine, Ron Lapointe found his way to the West Coast in 1962 after high school. In the next eight years he worked his way through four years of college, interrupted by two years of military service (that included a year in Vietnam), and culminated in a BA degree in Political Science from UCLA in 1970. He then spent a year traveling through Europe, lived in Greece for a year and then returned to Maine in 1971, accepting a position as Assistant City Manager. After realizing local politics did not agree with him, he resigned to pursue his passion for drumming.
This passion was discovered at age nine when a hired hand on the farm playing a pair of drum brushes on pots and pans noticed that Ron could easily execute everything he heard and gave Ron the brushes. Soon his parents bought him his first drum and in 1960, at 15, he had saved enough to purchase his first set and helped form the area’s first rock band.
In 1971 Ron started his own rock band, “Velvet Hammer” and for 3 years honed his skills as drummer, promoter, and manager. In 1974, he was spotted at a jam session by a prominent New York band touring the area and looking for a new drummer. He was invited to audition, got it, and became the new drummer for the” Bill Chinnock band”, a blues/rock band, that he recorded and toured with for 3 years. Given the nickname “Bigfoot”, he played on recordings released by Atlantic Records and other labels. In 1977 he left to join a successful R&B group, “The Peter Gallway Revue”. But by 1980, the grind of the road and the impact of the music business began to displace the passion for drumming and he enrolled at the University of Maine to earn another degree and a teaching credential. He returned to Los Angeles and began his new career as a teacher, a profession his mother and many in his family had pursued.
In 1993, after not touching a drum stick for over a decade, Ron met the love of his life (who he eventually married) and, after hearing of his past drumming career, wanted to see him play. One evening, at her request, he reluctantly asked a band in a club they were at if he could ‘sit in’. They said yes, and for the next hour his passion was reignited. He then obtained a drum set and played in local venues until he decided to take drumming in a different direction.
As a boy, the African drummers in the Tarzan films always fascinated him more than Tarzan. So when he attended an African drumming workshop in the early 90's, he realized his curiosity to learn the ‘roots’ of drumming ran very deep. This curiosity led him to the djembe, an African drum that moved him to his core. He started taking lessons from various teachers and began learning the challenging traditional African rhythms that were so different from anything he had ever heard. Hand drumming now became a serious avocation.
Over the years, Ron has studied, performed, and played for African dance classes in the Los Angeles area as well as partnered with an amazing African dancer/teacher to create “African Persuasion” an African dance/drum ensemble. As a teacher and drummer at heart, it’s no wonder that every Saturday afternoon finds Ron’s garage filled with African drumming enthusiasts ready to learn what he has to teach-- that drumming is a fun, expressive, creative, healing, and entertaining way to bring community together.
