How it all began!

Greetings to all good people!

My name is Vladimír, and I am originally from Ukraine. Back in 1993, at the wonderful age of 20, I came to the Czech Republic as a construction worker. I worked on building sites for three years, then came university in Prague and a family with two beautiful children. I built a house for my family and started thinking about what to do next.

In 2012, a Czech friend approached me because he had an order for pellets for a Škoda plant. I thought: “Great, at least I can contribute a little to cleaner air in the Czech Republic.” So I went to Ukraine to build pellet production plants. Everything went well, and we supplied pellets throughout the Czech Republic.

But in 2014, Russians came to Ukraine to wage war. When they seized Crimea, the border ran just 40 km from one of our plants. The situation was tense; Russia wanted to take the whole of southern Ukraine too. Every day we expected an attack. All my employees began preparing for war with their former “brothers”. When I saw my 21-year-old secretary asleep at her desk in the morning because she went shooting at night, I could not bear it and also began recalling what I had been taught during military service. Severe physical overexertion and the stress of anticipation caused me to have a stroke one night: half my face was paralysed, my eye would not close, and my overall mental state was terrible.

A real slap in the face from my little angels. I realised that war was not my path. I was not afraid of death, but the thought of spending the rest of my life with part of my body no longer functioning frightened me. I returned to the Czech Republic, where my family and many good friends lived. The plants in Ukraine that I had to leave behind quickly swallowed all the money. As soon as I stopped sending money, the people working there began selling the cars and anything else that could be sold.

I had to start from scratch. I was looking for something that would lift me out of depression and fill my heart with the enthusiasm I had before travelling to Ukraine.

On YouTube, I then came across a musical instrument whose sound surprised me. It was made from an old gas cylinder and produced magical, bell-like tones. I remembered how my grandmother helped people when I was a child and often advised them to stand beneath bells because their vibrations were healing. I saw no other way at the time, so I went to a scrap metal yard and bought an expansion tank to try making my first musical instrument. The result looked awful and barely rang: as usual, information from the internet differed from reality. Later, however, I found someone in Ukraine who had already been making similar drums for three years. Together we made several of my first drums, and I happily took them back home to the Czech Republic.

And that was when drumming became my daily therapy. Every day I sat with a drum and played — not for the music, but for myself. I expected no miracles. Gradually, however, I began to notice the left side of my face, which had been stiff, slowly relaxing. The eye that had previously been unable to close properly began to improve. Saliva no longer dribbled as often, and the unpleasant tension gradually disappeared. My left hand still did not respond one hundred per cent, but I felt a noticeable improvement there too.

Drumming helped me both physically and mentally. Whenever I immersed myself in the drum's rhythm, my whole body relaxed beautifully. But when I returned to old problems and stress, all the difficulties came back. That was when I realised I needed to change my lifestyle. Less stress, more calm and regular drumming — all of this brought me real and lasting improvement.

Today, there are no traces of the stroke on my face, and I know very well that the drum's vibrations are more than sound: they are healing waves that gently caress the body and touch the soul too.

I wanted to offer the drums to other people, so my son and I put our drum online through crowdfunding (a platform where people from all over the world voluntarily contribute money to support new projects). To our surprise, the drum from the Czech Republic was very popular and was supported by 1500 people!

What next? It was a great responsibility towards the people who believed in us. We had to organise production. I had learned to make drums from old gas cylinders, so that was how we started. My son had to start making electronics, with which he had no experience, and I had to make musical instruments I had never made before — by the hundreds.

I went back to Ukraine and bought up all the old gas cylinders in the area around Kherson. We began making them by hand. In 6 months we made 300 drums that did not look particularly good and each rang in its own way (that was when I realised that even iron can have a memory: every cylinder was at least 20 years old and, of course, had its own story). A nightmare: thousands of dollars and months of work gone, and only a few drums in hand that I would not be ashamed of.

Alex (my son) was in a similar position. He took charge of the electronics and, after half a year, declared that it could not be done. The total failure left us feeling deeply hopeless, but we carried on…

I started looking for a manufacturer with a 300-tonne hydraulic press and searching for iron that would ring. Alex began working with a new electronics developer. I found a plant in Poland that made the first 1000 drums for me. And they were good. We arranged for a 7D laser in Poland; final production takes place in the Czech Republic. Production took us six months, and then the drums finally flew out all over the world.

After a year, the electronics needed another change of developer and a fresh start, but the third developer was excellent and finished the job. We made the next version of the drums from even better, special iron (an alloy, not scrap metal), which travels 4500 km to reach us.

Despite all the obstacles, we did not give up: we love our work and our drums.

We continue developing the instrument, and today's drum is more spherical, rings for a long time and has a special Komatex paint that forms a single whole with the drum. The electronics are finished. Research is now being carried out with psychologists into the positive effects on children of drums used with an electronic teacher.

We have already found that the drums' miraculous vibrations positively affect the mind, and we have many letters from people all over the world saying that they really do have healing effects.

In the future, we want to use our drums for group therapies, organise concerts in churches and continue surprising people with their ringing sound and vibrations.

Thank you in advance to everyone who believes in us and supports us by buying drums from our workshop.
Vladimír Jerechynsky