Dom Famularo | Drumming's Global Ambassador

Some drummers are famous for a record. Dom Famularo was famous for a room — for what happened in it when he walked in, anywhere in the world, with a pair of sticks and something to explain.

He called himself Drumming’s Global Ambassador and, unusually for a nickname, it was simply accurate. He taught in China, New Zealand, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Belgium, Serbia and dozens of other countries, for over forty years.

He died on 27 September 2023. Drumeo renamed its education award after him.

Who was Dom Famularo?

Dom Famularo was born on 26 August 1953 and grew up on Long Island, New York.

His education is a roll-call of twentieth-century drumming. He studied with Jim Chapin — the author of Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer, the most important drum book ever written — and also with Joe Morello, Al Miller, Charlie Perry, Colin Bailey, Shelly Manne, Papa Jo Jones and Ronnie Benedict.

That is not a list of teachers. That is a lineage, and Famularo spent his life passing it on.

Jim Chapin, and the succession

The connection to Chapin is the key to understanding him.

Chapin’s Moeller-technique-derived approach — the idea that a drummer should generate power through relaxed, whipping motion rather than muscle — is the foundation of most modern hand technique. Chapin taught it into his eighties, largely by turning up and showing people.

Famularo took that approach, systematised it, and took it global. When Drumeo created a Legacy award for education in 2021, they named it the Jim Chapin Award. Famularo won it in 2022.

When he died the following year, they renamed it the Dom Famularo Award.

That is about as clean a statement of a teaching lineage as an awards list can make.

What Dom Famularo taught

Relaxation over force. The central Moeller idea: speed and power come from letting the stick do the work, not from gripping harder.

Technique in service of music. He was a jazz, funk, fusion and Latin player, and the technique was always attached to a musical purpose.

That drumming is a language. His teaching framed rudiments and technique as vocabulary rather than as exercises — things you say, not things you complete.

And, relentlessly, encouragement. Every account of him from other drummers converges on the same point: he was extraordinarily positive, and he made people believe they could improve. That is a teaching skill and a rare one.

He also worked as a motivational speaker outside drumming entirely, on much the same material.

The books and the business

He wrote and published widely, and founded Wizdom Media to publish drum education — his own and other people’s. He was a fixture at drum festivals and clinics on every continent, and he taught right through his cancer treatment.

He died of pancreatic cancer on 27 September 2023, at 70.

Dom Famularo’s setup

Famularo’s gear was, appropriately, a teaching tool more than a rig.

He was associated with Sabian cymbals over a long period, and his clinic setups were conventional — a moderate kit, a good pair of hi-hats, and a practice pad, because a great deal of what he demonstrated needed no drum at all.

We would rather leave the detail there than pad it. If you have a documented specification for one of his clinic kits, the Rig Vault takes suggested edits on every page.

What to take from him instead

Learn the Moeller technique properly. Not from a video thumbnail — from a teacher, or from Chapin’s book. It will change your playing more than any piece of gear.

Then practise on a pad. Famularo’s whole point was that most of what makes a drummer good happens on a flat surface with no drums attached. Our rudiments guide is where to start, and our piece on how to drum faster covers the relaxation principle he built everything on.

Where to start

• Jim Chapin — Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer. The source text.
• Famularo’s clinic footage. Any of it. Watch how much of it is talking, and how good the talking is.
• His instructional books. Widely available, and written to be used rather than admired.

Final thoughts

There is a version of a drumming career measured in records sold. Famularo’s is measured in a much stranger unit: the number of drummers, in dozens of countries, who got better because he showed up.

That number is not calculable and it is very large. It also keeps growing, because the people he taught are now teaching.

An award with his name on it is exactly the right memorial. It means the lineage — Chapin to Famularo to whoever wins it next — is written down.

Read about Gregg Bissonette and Ulysses Owens Jr. — the two drummers who have won the award since it was renamed.