Women Drummers
What’s all this about girls playing drums?
Women drummers are on the rise but maybe drumming wasn’t the macho male instrument after all……
Women Drummers
This is a chapter from the book The Drum: A History
In the world of modern drumming, the instrument appears to be very much dominated by a male presence. The drum is often considered masculine, which is possibly a result of its evolution from an instrument of war. Seeing these drummers perform with such speed and power may be misconstrued as an act only possible by the dominant male of the species. This erroneous and outdated view is changing gradually as the years pass but it will be a long 
time before the drum is considered equal between the two genders. This is unfortunate as, even for the heaviest and loudest styles, good technique can produce more volume than simply using brute strength. With modern amplification, even a gentle player can sound loud and there can be no doubt, surely, that the female is capable of displaying the required aggression that these genres often demand. Even those men with the staunchest of prejudice against women in heavy metal and rock groups, surely they can accept that females are well suited to play pop, jazz, Latin, and other styles that require less force and more finesse. So if the physicality is not an issue, it remains that it is the unreasonable preconception embedded in many societies that this is a male instrument. Maybe it is not considered right and proper for one’s darling daughter to play such an instrument. Maybe she should adopt a more feminine and dainty instrument; the violin for example?
Interestingly this is a modern situation, or at least only present for two thousand years. In ancient civilisations, it was not so much a God who was the all powerful creator of life, but the Goddess. As the drum has always been considered as a spiritual object that can communicate with or influence actions from deities, it was therefore looked upon as a woman’s instrument. Furthermore, the rhythm of life was always connected with the female, such as her menstrual cycle, which was closely connected to the lunar cycle. Drums were also associated with fertility, reproduction, and female sexual vitality. The rhythm of a drum was sometimes used to help women through the labour process or played over the fields of crops to help them achieve a greater yield.
This can be seen throughout history exemplified in an ancient Turkish cave painting from 5600 BCE in which,“a band of human figures, clad in leopard skins and playing various percussion instruments, dance ecstatically around a large stag. A second group of dancers ritually surround a gigantic bull. Among this group is a figure holding a horn-shaped instrument in one hand and a frame drum in the other.” 1 It is likely that priestesses serviced the shrines in worship of their Goddess so it is very much a female entity.
The early 3rd century BCE statuette from Mesopotamia at the Louvre in chapter 3 shows a woman with a frame drum. Indeed in Mesopotamia we have records of a female drummer being referred to by name. In the Sumerian city of Ur over four thousand years ago a priestess named Lipushiau is mentioned in texts describing ritualistic drumming in the time of the Goddess Inanna. This spiritual leader was to have played the balag-di known today as a frame drum. And so it was that the spiritual drum that carried such significant importance to human’s lives was usually played by the mystical female who was gifted with the ability to create new life and communicate with the Goddess’. Females were the important gender in society and the drum belonged to them.
However, in the post Neolithic times from around four 4000 BCE, the ensuing chaos that had occurred in the newly formed, over demanding, and struggling major cities left them vulnerable to attack from violent aggressors who vanquished these civilisations across Europe and Asia. The murdering of men and imprisonment of women relegated the female status from enhanced piety and spiritual superiority to being trophies of war. Now that militaristic power had turned women into objects at the male’s disposal, the patriarchal society was free to develop, as it continued to do so into modern times.
Years later, after the formation of patriarchal Christianity, playing of music by woman and even the frame drum itself was frowned upon and in some cases banned, in an effort to diminish links with the matriarchal worship. This misogyny that occurred as a result of women’s significance in the former Pagan religions stopped the frame drum from accompanying religious events as it had in the past due to its links to Goddess worship. The women had been silenced.
Orchestra
If we now jump ahead several hundred years, it seems as though the male invaders had really done a thorough job as women were still excluded from percussion related pursuits amongst many others both within and beyond the world of music. The Goddess seems long forgotten now. In the Orchestras, changes have always been implemented gradually so the inclusion of females was never going to be instantaneous. Throughout Europe and North America, the number of female musicians was growing in the last part of the 19thcentury and into the 20thcentury, but they were still not allowed into the orchestras whose doors were firmly closed to women with the exception of harpists who could join the orchestra with their demure playing position and gentle style. As a result of this shun, all-women orchestras became popular, although they weren’t taken as seriously as their male counterparts and the performance opportunities were therefore restricted. This often forced them to play light music, which was unsatisfactory for the more talented female members. These groups necessitated women to take on the task of male roles such as timpanist or conductor, which was a real step forward. Interestingly, if a woman was taken ill and there were no other women to deputise in that area of the orchestra, a male musician might be drafted in wearing a dress and make up so as to appear like an all female orchestra.
As the great wars affected so many areas of life, it also gave women opportunities through necessity. With the men fighting abroad, many male roles were adopted by women. During the Second World War, women replaced missing male musicians. By the 1950s and 1960s, orchestras gradually started accepting women. It wasn’t immediate, after all thousands of years of conditioning had to be overcome before men could truly accept women stepping out of line and threatening this patriarchal society. Most German orchestras did not accept women until the 1980’s, and the Vienna Philharmonic did not accept women until the late 1990’s.
One woman who had total disregard for her assumed position within the patriarchal society was the Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie. Born in 1965, Glennie has spent her life creating a reputation as one of the most incredible solo percussionists in the world, and in doing so has continually broken records and gained over eighty various awards. Being the first person in musical history to sustain a full time career as a solo percussionist is a huge achievement, especially for a female in this world. But to do so having being diagnosed as nearly deaf before reaching her teenage years is even more of an accomplishment. As a result of diminished hearing, Glennie instead uses other senses to a greater extent to hear the sounds. With the aid of touch, she can process the information gleaned from vibrations, as we all do, very acutely and adds to this the visual information of what she sees. Those three senses help her build a sound image in her mind just as people with perfect hearing do. The only difference is that her method of creating that image simply relies less on audio. With her unique approach to music and her incredible musicality, Glennie travels the world performing numerous concerts every year as a soloist or with various ensembles. Furthermore, she composes music under commission for many world class composers as well as writing her own albums on both tuned and untuned percussion. Through her extensive and varied work, Glennie has inadvertently made it impossible for any male to argue that females are somehow intrinsically inferior as a result of their gender with regards to percussion.
Drum Kit
It wasn’t just in the orchestra that men were having trouble accepting women. The liberal world of rock and roll was also facing the same struggles with their ingrained social beliefs. Although there may have been many closet female drummers and maybe even groups of females who met in secret throughout the centuries, drumming was firmly considered a man’s instrument and any woman who went against this widely held belief was not acting properly.
One woman to break free from these restraints was Mary McClanahan who played the drum kit in Phil Spitalny’s Hour of Charm All Girl Orchestra, which featured Evelyn and her magic violin.
He ran a strict regime for the girls that included six hours practice a day and all members having to sign a contract pledging not to leave the band to marry without giving six months notice. Having played their mix of light classical music and jazzy versions of classic songs in many concert halls, their big break came when they began a network radio show in 1935 called The Hour of Charm, where their all female novelty visual impact was irrelevant. The band continued through the war and on into the 1950s before disbanding.
An all girl orchestra of this type was unusual but not completely unheard of. Beginning around the same time in the mid 1930s was Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears in which even the conductor (Hutton) was a female, as well as The International Sweethearts of Rhythm with Pauline Braddy on drums. But it was Mary McClanahan that was making the real impression on the drum kit. Having built up a reputable name as a great drummer, in 1939 she achieved the unthinkable for a woman. She was featured in a Gretsch advert, printed in Metronome Magazine in America endorsing her Gretsch Gladstone ensembledrum kit. This full page advert included a large picture of the drummer proudly displaying her femininity positioned behind the drum kit adorning an elegant dress. Gretsch went even further by including her on their catalogue covers in the early 1940s, amongst the greatly adored male drummers such as Papa Jo Jones. To be accepted as a female drummer in the 1930s would have taken grit, determination, and some great playing, but to actually feature on the front of Gretsch’s catalogue and adverts when they were flying high as the kit to own in the jazz world, was extraordinary.
With the onset of the 1960s and the rise of woman’s liberation, these newly charged feminists started to realise that they could do anything they wanted just as well as men; drumming included. That didn’t mean that men were ready to accept it quite so readily though, despite McClanahan’s previous efforts.
One of the first to emerge in this period was Ann (Honey) Lantree of The Honey Combs and their 1964 UK number one hit Have I the right. Sat behind her black four piece Carlton kit, surrounded by four male musicians, Lantree really started the female audience’s imagination and boosted the empowerment of woman in that era.
Another significant event for women in music occurred in 1964 when Goldie and the Gingerbreads became the first all female rock group to be signed to a major record label when the UK label Decca took them onboard as well as America’s Atlantic label. With Ginger Bianco on drums, the group scored some chart success with Can you hear my heartbeat when it reached number twenty five in the UK charts of 1965. After touring with bands such as The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, Goldie and the Gingerbreads dissolved in the late 1960s after failing to enjoy any great commercial success.
Not far behind Lantree and Bianco was Maureen Tucker who stumbled into the Velvet Underground aged nineteen in the mid 1960s having been previously working as a data entry operator. She caught people’s attention for being a female with sticks, but she also displayed a highly unconventional manner of drumming. Her style was simple and quite primal as she played in a standing position, the bass drum in an upturned position so that it could be beaten with sticks. She used a very simple set up with a snare drum and minimal toms alongside the bass drum. Staying focussed on her role as a timekeeper, she chose to avoid cymbals as they cluttered the music and detracted from the vocals, instead often riding on the bass drum with sticks or mallets. What she lacked in technical proficiency, she made up for with mesmerising energy and an avant-garde approach, and in the process, made her mark on the history of female drumming.
And then we arrive at one of the most famous female drummers in history. Karen Carpenter began her musical life as a drummer, although became better known for her vocal talents that helped her and her brother Richard to become hugely successful throughout the 1970s. Their success was largely for soft ballad type tracks such as (They long to be) Close to you and We’ve only just begun but early recordings such as the 1966 Richard Carpenter Trio version of Duke Ellington’s Caravan demonstrate an accomplished jazz drumming technique and soloing ability by the sixteen year old Karen. Furthermore, her love of Dave Brubeck and drummer Joe Morello is evident with such tracks as All I can do from their 1969 debut album. This jazz based song flows very interestingly with its five crotchets in each bar. By the time (They long to be) Close to you was recorded in 1970, their recording label A&M insisted in bringing in the Wrecking Crew session musicians to create the perfect sound for their records with drummers like Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon taking over that role from Karen. Despite this recording process, Karen still played the tracks live, although this was tailored so that for slower songs she would sing from the front of the stage whilst the likes of Cubby O’Brien took over on drums. Karen enjoyed featuring a drum solo between herself and O’Brien at the shows and by the 1973 album had returned to drumming in the studio with the album Now and Then and tracks such as This masquerade, which showed that she could play Latin rhythms as well as pop and jazz. Her chosen instrument was a silver sparkle Ludwig drum kit as influenced by her adoration of Joe Morello, who also actually instigated the silver sparkle colour for Ludwig drum kits before it became a huge seller. Carpenter’s untimely death in 1983 as a result of anorexia was tragic and it took a great musician from this world but a listen to recordings of her playing drum kit may offer a surprising treat for the inquisitive drummer.
Playing the lighter styles of swing and pop was a great achievement, but the raucous pinnacle of raw primal male power in music was a huge challenge. The world of rock music was synonymous with aggression, excess, strong physicality, and often degradation of women. One group who helped gain female acceptance in this patriarchal world was the 1970s band The Runaways with founding member Sandy West on drums. They were signed in 1976 whilst still teenagers, and possessed a sufficiently raucous, aggressive, and powerful sound to equal their male counterparts. Their lyrical content also hit hard with references to drugs, casual sex, adolescent anarchism, and anger, leading many radio stations in America to belittle their creations by refusing to play them. Europe and Asia were more accepting and the band enjoyed great success for four years before the group dissolved. With a strong character like West and her hard hitting drumming style, the band proved that women could deliver power and aggression just as well as men. Further still their attitude was genuine and the ensuing lifestyle of excess ultimately helped them on the downward slide from which they would never recover.
Following in their wake were bands such as the all girl L.A. glam rock group Vixen with their classic line up including drummer Roxy Petrucci throughout the late 1980s. This era also saw the formation of another L.A. rock band named Hole, fronted by Courtney Love who was married to the Nirvana front man Curt Cobain until his untimely death. The Hole drummers were Caroline Rue, Patty Schlemel, and Samantha Maloney. Maloney also performed with Mötley Crüe and Peaches. The regular Mötley Crüe drummer, Tommy Lee, is well known for his tales of debauchery and mayhem, but less widely known for his drumming sister Athena, who has also made her mark in the band Kottak.
It wasn’t just Sunset Boulevard that functioned as an incubator for female drummers. Nearly two thousand miles to the north east in the late 1990s was a female drummer who was about make a big name for herself with a shy, unassuming personality that was far removed from her abrasive, hard partying L.A. counterparts. Meg White was one half of the Detroit band the White Stripes, which was formed from a marriage in which Jack White was the guitarist with previous musical experience whilst Meg was relatively inexperienced having only started playing the drums months before the band formed. Since 1997 White has displayed a very restrained, minimalistic but powerful sound, which has allowed Jack to write the songs that have proven so successful. This simple, driving style has garnered White many fans from both sexes as the perfect accompaniment to her former husband’s blues and punk infused compositions.
Another wave of female drummers to emerge in the late 20thcentury brought an air of glamour and sophistication mixed with drumming technique and feel to silence any misogynists. One such lady was Sheila Escovedo who grew up in a musical family with a father who was a respected timbalero named Pete Escovedo. Whilst in her teens she began to develop a reputation and was soon touring with big names like Diana Ross, Herbie Hancock, Lionel Ritchie, Marvin Gaye, Gloria Estefan, and Stevie Wonder. Since the 1980s she has also released four solo albums achieving a Billboard Number One, an MTV award and Grammy nominations. In this period, Sheila E caught the attention of the artist Prince and was soon touring as his opening act before becoming his touring band drummer. Amongst her many live, studio and even acting credits, Sheila E also became the first female band leader on a late night television show when she was invited to become musical director of the Magic Hour with basketball player Magic Johnson hosting. She has managed to gain outstanding respect as a drummer whilst retaining an image of style and glamour.
Another glamorous lady who could excite the big crowds was Cindy Blackman who came to fame in the early 1990s providing the drums for Lenny Kravitz. Having been taught be renowned teacher Alan Dawson and been through the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, she subsequently enjoyed a successful tenure with Kravitz and then toured with Carlos Santana whom she married after he proposed to her live on stage in 2010. Despite these huge stadium bands that she has built a successful career with, Blackman’s true love is Jazz and on that level she has released several solo albums throughout her career, with influences such as Tony Williams driving her forward. With such strong jazz connections, Blackman has favored Gretsch drums, which were so popular amongst jazz players in the 1940s and 1950s.
Taking over from these high profile figures came a string of equally impressive women such as Cora Coleman-Dunham who has also provided the rhythms for Prince; Kim Thompson who has played with Mike Stern and in Beyoncé Knowles’ 2006 all girl band; Nikki Glaspie who also played in the all girl Beyoncé Knowles’ band along with percussionist Marcella Chapa; Stefanie Eulinberg who plays in Kid Rock’s Twisted Brown Trucker Band; Shauney Baby who has played with Hilary Duff, Will.i.am, and Alicia Keys; Sudha Kheterpal who plays for British electronic group Faithless as well as Kylie Minogue, and the Spice Girls; and Hilary Jones who came up through the U.S. Navy Band, proving her worth within the testosterone fuelled military lifestyle before earning her place with names such as Robben Ford, the Mamas & the Papas, Lee Ritenour, Scott Henderson’s Tribal Tech, Ray Obiedo, Eric Marienthal, Doc Severinson, Badi Assad, and Sheila E’s father Pete Escovedo. She has also released solo material since 2001 with her debut Soaring.
Beyond the pop world where style is paramount and drumming complexities less so, the musical kudos often attributed to drummers in the jazz field has also been shared out with females, some of whom have played with the biggest names in the business. Names who are more than capable of employing any of the top drummers in the world; male or female. Such examples are Terri Lyne Carrington who has amassed an impressive list of names on her C.V. such as Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock; Vera Figueiredo, a Brazilian drummer who has created a strong reputation in the Latin drumming field playing with big name Brazilian artists, releasing her own solo albums, performing at numerous international drum festivals and releasing educational videos and books; Carola Grey who has performed with Tower of Power’s Rocco Prestia, Mike Stern, and Ravi Coltrane; Dr Sherrie Maricle who is a respected drummer and composer in jazz and orchestral settings and even leads her own big band called Diva; and Camille Gainer who has performed with Roy Ayers, Chuck Mangione, and Christian Mcbride, as well as gaining many production credits as well.
Many of these women have had to endure sexism to some degree, or at least, if not experiencing it overtly, have overcome the paranoia of gender judgements. This alone displays great strength in character but not every woman who has a desire to beat a drum can, or should need to experience that negative attitude.
In 1985 an organization called Women in Music was formed as a body to represent women in all areas of the music industry be it a musician, producer, engineer, marketer, publisher or songwriter. They provide seminars, one to one meetings, showcases, networking opportunities, and a newsletter to nurture the community of female musicians and provide this support network to help these embattled women to become ready for the harsh patriarchal world that they might face in music. Another such group is that of Women Drummers International. They also have a presence in order to empower female drummers by providing tours, retreats, and a support network that focuses, not only on the musical element, but also on cultural and healing elements that are possible through the drum. Furthermore, an online monthly drum magazine emerged in the late 20thcentury offering articles that featured female drummer interviews, forums for networking, concert advertising, and equipment bartering services. It helped to maintain a close network between female drummers and give them confidence in the fact that they are not the only one out there amongst all those men.
It is thanks to such organizations and the single minded determination mixed with unquestionable talent that has been demonstrated by women over the last century that has allowed new generations of women to feel freed from their musical shackles and gender restricted instruments, enabling them to follow their hearts.
A sign of this growing movement can be quantified by looking at Union memberships. In 1997 the British Musician’s Union membership consisted of 17% women. In 2010 the ratio had risen to 27% women. An extra 10% in thirteen years is an indication of the progress that women are making in music. Of that 27% of women, the largest numbers fell into the orchestra section (42%) and the teaching section (39%) whilst the smallest proportions were in the theatre section (26%), the music writers section (22%), and the jazz section (21%). Not one single section consisted of 50% or more of women so the men still dominate every area of this organisation.
As momentum grows and more women succeed in this area, the question that is left is, “Will the matriarchal drummer ever reign supreme again as she did thousands of years ago?”
Notes
- Redmond, Layne. When the Drummers Were Women. A spiritual history of rhythm. (NewYork: Three Rivers Press, 1997), 47-48.
