When the Drummers Were Women

"This book is not just about drumming, it’s also about gender, history and spirituality. It tells the story of the relationship between women, music, religion and power. Thousands of years before Christ, women played hand drums, specifically the frame drum, in religious ceremonies, as we can see in surviving images of goddesses. Music and rhythm are intrinsically a part of spirituality, but originally women set the beat. But with the advent of Christianity, ceremonial drumming, which was associated with paganism, stops. Drums were silenced and so were women. I ended up writing a senior essay about women drummers because my experience in school was that it was always men on top of music. There were certain drums that women weren’t supposed to play; superstitions were attached to them, like they’d mess up your fertility. I tried to write my paper about that – that’s when I got this book. Music is a very male-dominated career. Women who don’t just sing but also write and produce are rare. As a modern woman musician, the alienation of women from rhythm, which Redmond describes, had a lot of resonance for me. So it’s just a really interesting book, and at the time that I read it, it gave me the courage to pursue my music. Rhythm can carry us away. If you just look at how people respond to music throughout the world, it’s one of the things that bring people together. At a concert, people move and sing and breathe together. It can also be a tremendously cathartic experience, a communal cathartic experience."