“The plague of American gun violence in the context of the myriad social issues which surround it, mediated by the poetry of generations of women, focused by the sounds of a single drum, the story told by a single drummer…” – Allen Otte.

Allen Otte’s A Drum Is Not a Gun is a speaking percussion composition that represents yet another expression of some 50 years of engagement with socio-political advocacy through art. The work is a deeply personal response to America’s gun crisis in the context of three years of current events (climate catastrophe, George Floyd, Kenosha, COVID-19, January 6th, and more). The texts, in 39 stanzas, are fashioned from news feeds, articles, and essays (digital and print), variously combined, rewritten, and amplified, and are balanced throughout with lines of poetry from women, with six commissioned stanzas from poet Don Bogen. Using a single snare drum played in traditional frame-drum style for the setting, the piece explores a variety of sounds and techniques to elucidate and enhance each stanza of text. The work was written for John Lane, whose idea it was to engage with the topic as part of his project TRIGGER: Artists Respond to Gun Violence, which culminated in an album of the same title on Albany Records.