Now that's a circle!

Now I understand why the empahasis on starting/finishing early in Dupont Circle matters. Y'see, Dupont's a small place, kinda self conscious, pretty folk, can't really let it all hang out, and a good reason not to have too much volume.
Beginning at 4 pm is a drum circle jam at Meriden aka Malcom X Park up 16th street. I was warned it was gonna be big and loud and it certainly was that. In this midst of this, I will bring up comparisons and pros/cons.

Dupont being small and our group just 3-4 drummers enables a degree of musicality and a enabling of other elements of music is possible. Drums and percussion are great, but why not have a little melody if it's amenable to all and not an ego trip for the melodicist? It also does not dominate the park and give anyone a migrane, I don't think...

Meriden's jam was pretty wild, but organized and concise, and given that DC is a predominantly Afro-American City, you can see a fine example of this here. It was as close to the real deal as you can get. In NYC, the drum circles I think about are conducted in hippie-ish circle jerks in Sheeps Meadow. This was neighborhood folk, weekend warriors and office workers.
For the 5 hour jam, there were at least 30 drummers, 15 dancers and assorted break dancers. Some drummers had congas, djembes or trap drums. There were wood blocks and copious shakers. Various tranced-out conductors danced within the dirt lane between the 2 rows of drums. To the side, gay boys, black girls, pasty white girls and some in between lined up in 2 rows for some fairly traditional dance moves. Although I employed my electric flute and mandolin early and got some photo attention, eventually I was subdued by the wall of sound. At first it was one or two djembes cracking and popping high against the beat that got me beaten down, but eventually I had to completely give it up, having played myself out already.
Perhaps a change of tact next time. Although I can play myself out rather quickly on bass clarinet it's worth a shot. Maybe I can stroll a bit and work within the ritual for a little longer. My stamina was pretty good, but after a while I got to wondering why I was sticking around,

Now if only I can get an earlier start in the quiet confines of Dupont, that would necessitate getting a job change, long time coming!