Drum and Sing it Out: A Guided Rhythm & Song Journey for BIPOC Community

Welcome...

If you identify as Black, Indigenous, a Person of Color or mixed heritage, please join Ríomas (previously known as Shireen Amini) for a facilitated drum and song experience. With a touch of group heart facilitation, lineage-tending, skill-building, and weaving in of our voices, we will make space to move our feelings and visions through with rhythm and voice.

Especially those of us who belong to communities being targeted by the current administration, this is a moment when very legitimate fears are running high and grief is pouring forward. Ríomas believes in the drum as a powerful tool for release and reclaiming of our power. It is their intention to reconnect people with drums and rhythm in reverent, joyful, and relationship-based ways as an act of healing revolution.

So together we'll drum and sing it all out, for the health of our bodies, spirits, communities and our orientation toward action, rest, resistance, and flow.

During our time we will...

• Reflect on how to engage rhythm with cultural respect and integrity

• Inspire a drumming practice as an act self-care

• Build confidence offering rhythm in support of our communities

• Learn accessible drum patterns & songs (no experience needed)

• Enter trance-like jam time for movement and catharsis

• Play...

No drumming experience is required. Singing is not expected, but encouraged!

This offering is geared toward adults but youth ages 6 and over are welcome with adult supervision at all times.

Please bring a drum if you have one (or more than one if you have to share), but not required as your body is your first rhythm instrument. We will focus on drums that use our hands. Two-handed, single-handed, and single mallet drums are welcome. 

Thanks to local co-organizers Liz Digitale-Anderson and Conie Borchardt.

IN THIS CONTAINER:

This is an affinity space specifically for BIPOC and mixed race folks.

No matter your gender, sexual orientation, size, neurodivergence, abilities, or housing status, you are wanted, welcome, and needed here. 

LAND AND PEOPLE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

This event is taking place on the unceded territory of the Dakota people.

SPECIFIC LOCATION (at New City Center): 

Cedar Room

EVENING FLOW:

Arrive and settle in: 6:30-7pm

Drumming & Singing: 7-9pm

RECIPROCITY:

$15-55 sliding scale

Pay what you can / no one turned away $0-14 >>> CARETICKET

Youth ages 6-17 are welcome to attend free, with accompaniment of an adult

ACCESSIBILITY: 

This venue is ADA accessible.

Please let us know if there are any other ways we can support your access to this offering.  

PARKING: 

Street parking.

COMMUNITY CARE:

This event is indoors! If sick, please stay home and take care.

***MASKS ARE REQUIRED FOR PARTICIPANTS. The instructor will likely be unmasked while teaching and leading.

WHAT WILL BE PROVIDED:

Water

Chairs

Restroom facilities

WHAT TO BRING:

A drum, if possible

A water bottle

YOUR RHYTHM GUIDE:

Ríomas (RiYo for short, they/them), previously known as Shireen Amini, is a queer, trans masculine, Puerto Rican-Iranian artist, facilitator, and culture builder based in Portland, Oregon*. Creating at the intersection of music, healing, and activism, they are guided by a belief that music, especially voice and rhythm, can reawaken in us what modern culture has forgotten: how to grieve, grow, and feel our power together. Ríomas crafts artful, participatory songs that invite realness, tenderness, joy, and transformative energy, drawing from roots, pop and folk textures, respectfully from Black and Afro-Latin lineages. Through their song circles and educational offerings, Ríomas empowers people to trust their musicality and engage music as a living practice for cultural healing and social change. They are the founder of Sing People Sing!, a queer and BIPOC-led community song circle series in Portland, author of the course Drum Song Reclamation, and leader of an emerging band collective bridging high-level musicianship with community participation. Their first community song album Gather Your Resilience: Medicine for Liberation is set to release in March 2026.

Ríomas received their B.A. in Ethnomusicology at UCLA with a focus in Afro-Latin percussion and in 2005, studied abroad in Cusco, Perú where they learned how to play the Afro-Peruvian cajón. Since, Ríomas has also studied drum circle facilitation with Arthur Hull, received a certificate in Sound, Voice, and Music Healing from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and studied Puerto Rican pandero and plena music with Adrian(a) Santoni. They have over 20 years of experience as an accompanying percussionist and in facilitating youth and adult drumming groups. Most importantly, for over a decade, Ríomas has developed their own experiential practice of drumming for trauma healing, energy cleansing, and access to spiritual insight. They are honored to share their knowledge and skills and invite deepened connection to the drum as it may serve others on their own path toward healing and liberation.

*the original territory of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, Grande Ronde and many more tribes