Jenny Clark had never been to the coffee shop on Main Street in Lewiston before. She enjoyed her visit so much that she stayed for two hours. “I will be back next Monday because they are here,” she said.

“They” are the hand drummers that congregate at Cafe Bon Bon each Monday evening. “It’s soothing,” said Clark’s friend, Ron Cote of Auburn. The community drum circle is open to all abilities and any type of drum – and then some. Circles consist of a group of people gathered for the purpose of making music with percussion instruments.

“It moves. It twists. It shifts,” said Brandon Carpenter, a 20-year-old hand drummer from Lewiston.

Carpenter initiated the weekly drum circle and posted fliers around town to get the word out. The more, the better, he says. “Drummers feed off of each other. When you drum with other people, it’s like everybody has their own little piece of the puzzle thrown into the mix.”

Carpenter went to a drum circle in Venice Beach, Calif., where about 500 musicians played together until the sun came up. “It was shaking the Earth it was so loud,” he said. “When you are listening to a drum circle, especially a large circle, you close your eyes and you can mentally see the snake of it kind’ve shifting.”

A recent evening at Cafe Bon Bon started with three drummers. A woman soon joined in by tapping on a blueberry soda bottle. “It’s all about filling in the gaps,” said Carpenter as he explained that anybody playing anything can join in.

Carpenter plays a djembe, a hand drum from West Africa. The woman, who wished to remain nameless, switched to playing a cowbell shortly before Liza Saucier of Greene chimed in by playing the spoons. About 90 minutes into the jam session, Jessy Kendall of Auburn showed up playing a xylophone and the clave, a percussion instrument consisting of two small wooden sticks that produce a high-pitched sound.

Large drum circles are “one of those things you have to experience, like a hallucinogenic drug; you just have to experience it,” Carpenter said.