The Rhythmic Arts Project Turns 25

Founder Eddie Tuduri tells us the story of TRAP and how the organization continues to make a difference after 25 years.

By Eddie Tuduri 

I awoke after a 6 ½ hour operation and I was totally paralyzed from the neck down, The thought did occur, what will I do now?

I’ve only ever played drums, my only bankable skill in life. 

The first emotion that came over me was, whew, am I glad that’s over with. 

Not my drumming but the music business.

After 40 years of being absorbed in the affair of drumming and all it entailed, including the music business, it all came to a full stop. 

After a week or so in the ICU at St. Francis Hospital, I was sent to The Rehabilitation Institute at Santa Barbara. 

The Institute was a safe haven for folks like me with harrowing conditions and worse. 

The Rehab staff seemed staffed by a flock of angels. Such expertise and kindness were precisely what the doctor ordered. This care and the divine guidance that prevailed in my recovery resulted in the concepts and facilitation we employ in The Rhythmic Arts Project (TRAP) today, over 25 years later … and still going strong. 

My initial prognosis was grim. The doctors and therapists were surprised by my resurgence. They thought I would never walk again and have little normal bodily function.  

I owe my life to the medical profession on many occasions and respect and cherish their brilliance daily. Yet, with all that knowledge and facility at their command, there is still no match for the human spirit. 

My paralysis lessened in the first two weeks, and I could get into a wheelchair and participate in muti-disciplined therapies. 

TRAP was born in this perfect environment. My thoughts were consumed with what I could do to be purposeful, no matter what my condition occasioned. 

My life was suffused with Drums, Drums, and more Drums, so this was the apparent ticket to ride.  Our eventual methodology and curriculum emerged from our early beginnings in the rehab’s matt room.

With a few drums, bongos, shakers, percussion toys, and maracas donated by my music merchant friends, We Rocked!  

The hospital was full of patients who reveled in the TRAP early activities as we happily discovered ways to approach balance, focus, attention, and coordination. The therapists loved it and used it in their practices every day. 

We met daily in the matt room, where at least eight people with varied complications participated joyfully in what therapists ultimately called Rhythm Therapy. 

We are known as The Rhythmic Arts Project today. 

Once a week, my celebrated musician friends would come and set up in the dayroom at the rehab where the entire hospital would turn out and dance, clap, sing and generally have too much fun. Most folks were still using wheelchairs and so we called their dance style “Butt Dancing” as they never left their chairs! 

The band was called “The Rehab Rhythm Rockers” and I played drums with one hand and one and a half feet … from my own wheelchair.  

To the amazement of my medical friends and saviors, I walked out of the rehab in a little less than two months. I walk gratefully with a cane as I’m still a quadriplegic by prognosis. 

 I continued volunteering at the rehab for the next three years, honing my skills and defining new exercises. This milieu offered an incomparable learning curve. Surrounded by experts, I was all ears.

Focusing on the present, some 25 years have passed, and TRAP has traveled the world having touched lives from around the United States to destinations near and far, including Canada, Spain, Bulgaria, Damascus, Syria, Jordan, Ankara, Turkey, Quito, Ecuador, Thailand, Australia, and at least two countries in Africa.   

The book and the program have expanded from a pile of notes to an exceptional peer-studied and published methodology, now primarily in the field of neurodiverse and intellectually different people 

The methodology is based on perceptual-motor match, visual, tactile, and auditory combined with speech. 

The TRAP program has successfully addressed cognitive, emotional, and physical disabilities. Through age and ability appropriate practices, the program teaches and enhances skills such as reading, writing, TRAP mathematics, differentiation, socialization, attending skills, turn taking, verbalization, sequencing, temporal organization, motor control, motor rhythm, memory, laterality, self-awareness, and proprioceptive awareness. 

In my travels and various trainings over these many years, I’ve found some resistance to the curriculum as people tend to misunderstand the methodology as strictly musical. I understand this from a simple surface look at the program. It’s like skipping over the literature to enjoy the pictures which illustrate children and adults in a semi-circle, seemingly playing drums. This visual is misrepresenting our purpose and the entire scope of the program. The drum is at the center of the program and imperative in its facilitation, however, it is predominately the tactile component of the learning curves.

My point is that people will sell the program short if they do not look beyond the surface and discover the therapeutic and pedological benefits.

Practical proven ideas combined with fun abstract concepts, put the curriculum in a class all its own. I promise you no one is doing what we do. This isn’t arrogance, I paid attention to a hundred minds more astute than I and remembered their tutelage and more importantly, the love they showed for this population. 

Here is an example from our book. In fact, the first lesson we learn concerning the core of our teaching, the quarter note.

Quite simply, when we learned to count as children, our teacher wrote the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the blackboard and we followed along in our notepads … 1, 2, 3, and 4. This course or something similar was typical, still is.

Now, many of the children and even the adults I work with today may not grasp conventional scholastics as readily as we did.  It’s our vocation to find a way to reach our friends through creative and fun ways. 

I begin by asking; Who likes Rock& Roll?

Guess what? Everybody does! 

Ok then, here is how I learned to count. 

I draw a quarter note on the blackboard,  A quarter note is worth one beat. I demonstrate with a djembe (hand drum) by hitting the drum once and saying, (1) one. 

Everyone understands and wants to play. 

So, I draw 4 quarter notes on the blackboard ask my students to count along while playing the 4 beats, 1,2,3, and 4

I have spoken in many places and to many organizations representing a wide variety of disabilities.

I worked in a facility who served people with dementia and Alzheimer’s for nearly 5 years. As devastating a disease as this is, there were moments of great fun and laughter. Some of the clients were musicians and with a little urging regained their prowess, at least for the time we spent together. My friend Jim Hamilton was a piano player and once I reminded him of that skillset, he would play a variety of old, cool piano tunes while I played along on a hand drum. In no time, a group of dancers were up swinging, swaying, and swooning!  Jim developed a following of shall we say mature and fancy ladies, just like the old days, eh Jim. 

My time there also included basic TRAP exercises using the drums to count, identifying colors, concepts in laterality, left hand from right, and naming shapes. It seems the very things their minds would obscure, just needed a little nudge. 

I tried speaking to the administrators in several Alzheimer’s organizations about implementing the TRAP program in a more meaningful platform but, my words fell on deaf ears. I presented it as something they could develop for the future when a palpable cure was at hand. TRAP embodies a plethora of reeducation tools that I thought our friends might reclaim. 

Just a thought.

Today, TRAP is as busy as ever. The organizations Momentum, Work Inc., with programs here and in Santa Maria, and Hillside House, also here in Santa Barbara will begin training in a little while. We are currently teaching in Madera County at The Arc of Fresno, representing six facilities and many new students.

I’ve been asked by administrators and program directors over the years; what do we do with a student who has mastered the lessons to where we find it difficult to challenge them anymore?

One of the most rewarding experiences are our new teachers’ aids. Students at that level are perfect candidates for the TRAP apprentice program. As teachers’ aides or as teachers they become empowered like never before. We have two students with autism teaching other students with autism the TRAP methodology. How cool is that?

As a teacher, I’m tasked with instruction and guidance, but I am also meant to listen and learn from my students. If I’m paying attention, if I win their trust, I might find the keys that unlock their own goals and aspirations. If I know what their dreams entail, I might create a realistic path to success for them.

The Author:

Eddie Tuduri is Founder/CEO, The Rhythmic Arts Project Inc. He is a career musician, who has worked with many of the world’s great entertainers, both touring and in countless recordings. Website: www.traplearning.org; Email: traplearning@gmail.com.