hey guys i'm dan from the new travel and i have nothing better to do on a sunday than
sit alone in the park and talk to my camera wait no hey guys i'm dan from the new travel
and today i'm going to take you to the tam tams one of montreal's oldest and most
cherished traditions at least amongst owners and people who love hangouts in the park on sundays
i've been to the tam tams a couple times before i've always loved the energy i've
always thought it was a unique part of the city uh i've just never known how to make a video about it
because first of all it's very loud and second of all it's like like what's what's the purpose even
i don't know but the more i think about it maybe not everything in life needs a purpose maybe some
things just exist for their own sake i think tam tams is something like that and so i'm going to
show you what it's like this is mount royal park one of the major parks just uh north from downtown
and this statue here this is the center of what is known as the tam towns
move out of the way boss come on move move move
so i'm going to take you over there and show you what it's like but basically
it gets pretty loud when you're in the middle of the tam tams so i'm going to give you a little
introduction before we get there tam dams is french for drums it literally means like
the drums and you can hear them in the background as i speak there are you know dozens or sometimes
even hundreds of people who make giant drum circles who play the drums who dance who chill who
just spontaneously spend their sunday afternoon hanging out in the park and one thing that's
really interesting about it to me is you see a huge variety of people i mean you see
older people you see younger people like students you see families you see uh hippies you see like
any kind of person you can imagine in montreal you can eventually see them here it's just like one of
those places where the power of music and just the power of community brings everyone together
that's about all i can say about the tam tams if i get lucky maybe i'll speak to someone over there
and get some other opinions on it anyway guys it's one thing to hear about it
it's another thing to see it for yourself are you ready for this let's go
pretty cool place huh now one thing that interests me is
one thing that interests me is even at a place like the temptams you have different communities
forming like you have the main drum circle which is to my right which i just showed you
but there's a smaller drum circle to the left you know i don't know what the deal with the two drum
circles is i like to think there's a rivalry and they're like we're the original drum circle no
we're the original drum circle there's like an interesting sociological study to be had here
about how like whatever group of people you have like they will naturally split into like subgroups
if you're ever visiting montreal and you want to see it it takes place in this place called
mont monema to sur georges at sien cartier and i don't know who sir george etienne carter was
i wonder if he was a hippie because he's definitely become a hippie
icon to the city of montreal and the temp temps so as i said at the beginning if i was lucky i would
get to talk to someone at the tam tams i just met miguel hey and miguel uh you found me walking
around and you recognize me from my videos right absolutely man it's crazy to see you here and
you said this is your first time first of all how long you been in montreal i've been here for seven
years seven years this is your first time at the tam tams yeah first time at the time time but it's
the time time is supposed to be the place where you go first and i did things wrong
for my first couple years i was like focusing on university and stuff so i didn't come but this
is the one of the first thing you hear about uh in between the poutine uh picnic electronic
and then tom tom is like the things that you have to do during the the summer well any any thoughts
on the time time so far first time at the tam tams i think it's super good because i really like the
fact that it's only drums you know it's like i feel like we realize how much music has different
layers and how simple drums as i mean it sounds simple but it's hard to do it right but it can
be like you feel so united and you feel so into it you know and i think it's yeah i just re remember
the power of being all together things that we haven't done that much this past couple years
and maybe let's zoom out because you you you moved to montreal seven years ago you came here as a
student right yeah what do you remember what's your first impression of montreal like what was
it like moving here it's not super positive what's your truth i'm gonna tell the truth i came here
to visit different universities in montreal uh in november 2013 and it was the winter huge snowstorm
when i arrived the first day and then i came we were in the taxi with my aunt who came with me
and i looked around and i felt like it was super gray it was super grey you know and it was snowy
and stuff and i was like i would never leave here at the end of the day i ended up coming here and
what i discovered about montreal is that is the city that you have to experiment as a montrealer
someone who's from here montreal you have to go to have a branch you have to go to the different
parts you have to enjoy the quality of life it's not a city where you're going to go somewhere you
know and you're going to feel super impressed or amazed but it's more a city that you experiment as
a you know you do things here and this is where you get the real vibe it's a city that you have
to live in even if you're here for three days live here like you're from here you know that's great
i really love that city now i feel like it's home i'm i'm no longer french because i'm from france
but i'm no longer french i'm from montreal that's awesome man of course that's awesome
now believe it or not there is more to tempt him than the temptams if you keep going back
i mean you'll find a lot of people just hanging out in the park
as you do in any nice park in montreal but you've also got these kind of sub communities
where you have like you've got some live action role play i believe it's that's called what is
it larping yeah i don't know much about larping but shout out to any larpers who might be out
there but yeah you've got some live action role play you've got some huge slack lines
those lines that people with much better balance than me sometimes balance on
and yeah you just got all these people enjoying the park doing their own thing
so if you want to check out the tamtams but you don't want to be in the drum circle the whole time
it's definitely something where you can have a picnic here
see the music hear the music in the background but also like do your own thing in the park
so i just asked permission to film because i don't want to just be in the middle of a battle but yeah
here they go you can see that this is this is more intense than i thought it was check this out
i mean you've got it's not a like free-for-all you got the two armies on both sides
this is wild this is wild oh my god
so yeah this surprises me i mean i knew that i knew that there was some uh role-play fighting
going on back here but i didn't know how intense it got when people fall they really fall you know
i'm not intense enough for this i'm gonna stick to youtube slack lines everywhere oh
the guy just got up on the big one check this out yeah this is something i could never do
even the dog looks impressed
and now i understand what those kids over there were doing
they're training for the big leagues future fighters
is
so i kind of set out today wanting to know what is the tamtams is there some
deeper meaning behind this i mean i've heard that they meet every sunday since the 1960s
but why why that's the question i kept wanting to try to answer today but really there is no answer
i got some perspectives i met someone who is at the tamtams for the first time i met someone else
who's been going here uh every weekend for decades it all comes back to the same thing
it's about the vibe it's about the spirit it's about sitting down and enjoying some good times
enjoying a beverage enjoying the good weather celebrating the summer in montreal and listen
if i talk to more people would i've got some different answers are there more stories waiting
at the tam tams of course there are but listen i'm gonna leave some of those stories for you if you
want to find out what it's all about maybe you got to come down here for yourself i think sometimes
when we're watching youtube videos we expect them to give us some answer we expect like okay this
video is going to teach me about productivity this video is going to teach me about uh what
life is like in montreal but sometimes you got to experience life and come to your own conclusions
and i think that's where i'm going to leave this video at
i mean i'm just a guy on the computer screen or on your phone i can't do everything for you okay
i'm still figuring my own life out i guess that's kind of the message of the new travel i hope i
can inspire you not by giving all the answers but by showing you that you can find your own
did that make sense or was that just a crazy ramble to try and sound deep and end this
video i don't know but i will say this a big part of the temptams is about just relaxing
enjoying the moment enjoying your day and i've been so busy filming this video
i haven't really done that yet so i'm going back but i'm going to end the video here
i'm going to go back just to feel the vibe and experience the temp times on my own for a bit
and so that was it i got a few final shots from my video and then i was making to leave but then
just as i was going to leave the most interesting thing happened
a small group of strangers saw my camera and they asked what i was doing
so i explained about the youtube video i was making about the tam tams
and they asked if i wanted to join their group and sit and have a beer
of course i was ready to leave but when the universe offers you an opportunity like this
you can't say no after a long day of filming it's exactly what i needed we sat we talked we shared
stories one of them had a cool looking camera so i played with that for a bit but i didn't
film most of this experience i just lived it i just sat there and talked with these new friends
and as i did that everything opened up and it finally happened i finally experienced the tamtams
yeah so i solved the mystery that i talked about early on about why there are the two drum circles
uh because my buddy josh he's actually you know he's a drummer he's a tam tamer and he explained
it to me and it has nothing to do with the rivalry that i thought might exist it's more about the
technique of the drumming so the big drum circle he described as chaos it's just chaotic energy
you're going there to feel the chaos of like all these different elements playing together whereas
the smaller one is concerned with being like more technically sound you can imagine how for
the musicians in the group who really want to like practice the craft and like make good music that's
where you go to the smaller drum circles so you can actually hear every every piece of the puzzle
and kind of like play off each other a little bit more also i wanted to share that the little moment
at the end uh it was so cool as i mentioned you know i was i was ready to end the video and this
guy just like saw me he's like hey this guy's name is mario he saw me with my camera he's like
are you a journalist and i was like no i'm making a youtube video about the temp towns and you know
we talked a little bit and he's like oh you can you can come with us if you want because they were
just arriving at the tam tams uh and i was about to leave but then i thought you know what like
the universe has just handed me this moment uh a chance to make some friends a chance to hang
out and do what i wanted to do which was just relax a bit did you get like a good price on uh
okay guys i upgraded my youtube camera what do you think so i didn't interview these guys
i didn't i didn't film everything but off camera like he was explaining about how uh they they're
they're part of an organization called the guardians le guardian spiritual de quebec
he was telling me they're there to like kind of look after the tamtams so i was asking like oh
so you you clean it up and stuff he's like well we keep the energy clean we keep the energy pure
uh make sure there's no conflicts with police or anything like that make sure the vibes are good
uh i don't know what that actually means but like i thought it sounded pretty cool
and yeah other than that this has been like a progression in my journey of showing montreal
i started off with just myself showing my first impressions of the city showing what life is like
the little bit that i knew but i quickly realized that to progress further
i should explore some different neighborhoods i should talk to some different people
and i'm still going to do neighborhood tours but now i'm also interested in showing the events
and the particular moments that speak to montreal as well and i think together with my own opinion
with the friends and random people i meet and with these specific things like the tam tam
which are almost like indescribable i can get a like total sense of what montreal is i mean
i'm kind of thinking of making this all into a documentary like these will all be like chapters
of a documentary that could be called this is montreal i want to be as inclusive as i can to
all the different sides of montreal i know that there's like sides that myself as a you know white
english speaking dude can't really speak to i'd love to you know experience life in morial noir
which is a predominantly black neighborhood to the north of montreal a lot of haitian immigrants
who i'm sure have a very different experience than i have you know maybe i could meet someone
who was indigenous who grew up in montreal maybe i could meet someone who yeah just has an experience
like very different than mine not just in terms of race or identity but in terms of lived experiences
and yeah like i don't know it's hard because montreal is such a diverse city that it could
just go on and on and on like i could be doing this for the rest of my life
and maybe i will be who knows like travel is still in a weird position so i don't have any
immediate plans to travel though that could be changing by the fall and once the us border
opens i'd love to get down in new york city i'd love to show some places like that off
so who knows what the future will bring but for now i'm enjoying making this series
speaking of which thanks as always to my supporters over on patreon.com the new travel
or just by clicking the join button under this video even a couple dollars a month really means a
lot i hope everyone in montreal is having a great time and uh yeah i'll see you next time guys peace