i would get the comment she play really good for girl be once in a while i was feeling my oats i would go up to some fellow drummer who was a boy or a man and say gosh you play really good for a boy i've been playing music all my life and loving it and had the most fun doing it and experience so much joy hundred seventy nine the notion of a woman sitting at a drum kit was very new and there was more rewarding driving with a beat from a drum kit such complicated poly rhythms in conjunction with what carol and brandy was doing with hamburg action and the congress there was a rhythm section like none of us they didn't think about the fact that i never saw any women drummers or rarely i saw one in the i know rape band that my sisters exposed me to that was an all women's band they wanted a drum set which my mother was very big like to get her because you know kids have little stages that they go through and you think they're not serious about this and she got this i was five years and mine mine mine mine mine mine farmer was begging begging to get a drum set so my mother bought her the drum set and then she got a drum teacher and that was it people often ask mom how do you stand her playing the drums in the small house the noise the banging no melody wants to stand she'd say it's a lot better than this week a violin by practicing in the house wasn't the worst thing mom was facing when i was eight dad walked out on us he never said goodbye and i didn't see him again for nine years but the love between the four of us helped us carry on i have so many memories of my mom and my sisters like the time that my sisters were working in las vegas with jimmy durante and peter lawfor every night we'd go with my sisters to the desert inn and sit backstage was quite a lot of fun for a twelve year old my older sisters marilyn and rosalind were my hero when she got her big drum set i think she was ten she really showed the talent at a very young age and we tried to encourage her and feed it and she just went to town when i was i joined the first band outside of school which was called the silbert tones and we played for bar mitzvahs and weddings from that band if few of us formed a little combo and we played more jazz and standards and one of the boys was sixteen he had a nash rambler and we were able to fit my drum set and it has the bass and all the instruments and five of us into this car and go across l a to gigs and i get back at two or so in the morning and my mom was very fine with it she really trusted me when i was nineteen my dream came true of moving to san francisco and i just felt in love with the town i fell in love with north beach and the jazz clubs and the coffee houses and the be mix and all that ind i landed this job at a club in north beach ca crystal will this club had a wax museum of all the famous prostitutes in san francisco i was crystal will the drumming six weeks after the club opened it closed and went bankrupt and we didn't get our pay for the week before and it was just gone and that just made me remember all the messages that i had gotten the music business you can't count on that you better have your teaching credential have some other kind of work that you can do because the music business very up and down officially for a woman drummer and i saw to be true time to get married and i found a man who is good looking and sweet enough and so we got married and that lasted two and a half years i almost felt that i had abandoned my creative self to fit into the american dream a little more and rock n roll with the end of that year i ended up falling in love with a woman and it was actually through her and her mom through their encouragement that i got back into drumming and that was the end of my silent period sick movement and the feminist movement were really beginning to take off and i was fortunate to be in the san francisco area at that time because that was a hotbed of women musicians and activists and all of it the music and the feminist movement bonded together so what women and musicians and performers were singing about war issues that women were dealing with being part of the feminist movement empowered me made me feel much more connected to my lineage as a woman and as a woman trauma in the women's music movement there were a lot of folk  but there weren't that many jazz players a group of women named alive was one of the main groups that brought jazz to women's music i had heard of them but i never heard them before an edition with them but the stories i read here is my god these women are wild they do crazy things jam for hours and they jump off the stage and walk around playing their instruments on this big stage with these gigantic flowers around her and she was a big personality so we interviewed for a piano player and an essential we went to their cakes we watched them play and  barbara and janet with the obvious choice at that time we were traveling in a ford econoline van there were five of us full drum kit for congress and a crew stick cello an acoustic stand up bass an amplifier i remember times when we would drive for hours and hours and hours and the thing you do when you're in your early twe to go to a lot of festivals jazz festivals and and meet so many other musicians it was just a very fertile ground for learning and sharing and expanding would play the fusion of those two drummers interlocking rhythms that is such a powerful experience a live was so exciting each and every single member and just particularly barbara was so compelling with her smile and her love of playing i was such an alive fan i groupie great guy i remember that some of the energy becomes larger than we are and the audience on a good night they pick that up and they amplify that energy and then there came a moment when brianna and came to the band and said that she wanted to do her own career as a singer and at the same time janet the piano player decided that she wanted to have a family and children and carolyn had already gone so we decided to end the band but i have to say that it took me fifteen years to get over that ending and there were times when i would be performing she dares to drum after eight passionate years together a live die so did a part of me the voice of defeat was all  he'll never find another group like this one you can make it on your own as a drummer basic your career is over i would get to the alive portion and i just burst into tears i had thought that the band would go on forever when the band ended i felt like the ground was taken out from underneath me i had an experience that kind of sorrow and loss since my father left shortly after the end of a live we started just playing together we didn't really know what we were doing but i had some software and some synthesizers and i've been playing with them ever since i made a cd with sheila called lady of the serpent skirt which is based on the snake goddess minoan snake priestess may was a long twenty minute piece that was very exciting for us to compose we really did feel like we channeled some kind of powerful goddess energy that awareness of the goddess culture took me to finding that women were the keepers of the drones and those cultures and those peaceful cultures that sometimes had peace for hundreds of years it gave me a sense of my roots as a woman the women or the holders of the drum they were the drummers in our time as bank music which was our record label we did a total of five albums together there was such joy and permission and creativity and it was a very special couple of years for both of us i think that exploration and all of musical world was really important for barbara to recover from the loss of the band and i think she thought she would be was forever in a family a musical family and she decided that she knew every song that we sang and she sang along so there was a constant humming and then coming from the front on all of our new  pieces and the audience was really great about it nobody i think everybody knew that it was his mother and that was part of the performance  sometime in the one nine hundred ninety s i became aware barbara's world music draw me she was exploring rhythms and her albums all hearts and beauty and the beat and it was all kinds of percussion drawing all kinds of ethnic and world music influences and inspirations she was virtually becoming a one woman because an orchestra we've worked together for many years a community called the planetary day and every year barbara provides the stability of a p barbara uses her drumming as a instrument of connected because it's steel and concrete all around us the sound was everywhere and by the time we got through maybe five minutes of playing there were easily two hundred people there because the tourists who are on the street shopping or looking came up to see what was and it was so infectious the drumming and the dancing that they got involved in the ritual to so these people from japan and germany are shouting their prayer and it's starting to dance around these big circle and today's world where there's so much hostility so much killing so much partisanship we need to find something in the pulse of the heart that will bind us together we went to the former yugoslavia on a peace mission together with eight other women called during the bosnian war and performed in refugee camps so for months i work to removing any violence from my coming in fighting the sounds from the drum rather than imposing my will becoming my drums lover instead of its master harvest like a driving diplomat or where ever we went as soon as she started playing whatever she was playing garbage cans or to how they could feel her communicating with them her love she grabbed my hand and pulled me to a tiny room filled with bunk beds where she lived with her mother sister grandmother and six others we sat around a rickety table and talked with our hands and our eyes i wasn't sure if our laughing made us cry or crying made us laugh i was fortunate enough to be able to visit africa the year two thousand to study with an african healer in zimbabwe and i brought my gym bag with me and i would just drum in the airport in a marketplace we did many rituals and many drumming and dance sessions of course she brought the drums for my does from the beginning of our relationship we have collaborated in many many ways week elaborated at a wonderful theatre percussion piece called she dares to drum do not retreat from following your spirit six years to find your mate or two years to find your body a dead cottonwood tree gave a piece of it's tr an artist inspired hands gave their labor a community of friends gave their money so you heard could be born when i first received the heart was made in new mexico we did a ceremony and then i took the drum to a cave just between santa fe and tower where i spent a week with the drum i had told b j the maker of the drum that i was to be the steward of that drum for i didn't know how long but for a spell and then it would move on the hearthrug was a very big spiritual teacher hard taught me about listening to the plea about community and how to be with all different kinds of people in larger numbers and be inclusive drumming has become a movement in our culture of high stress and much activity drumming really brings you to that meditative place and i do believe that's why so many people are drumming these days a lot of her teaching was how to work together with someone so you build a relationship through the drumming and through the drums it's not just you drumming it's you interacting with other people who are drumming and really paying attention to the experience of the other there's a way that she holds the space and brings joy to all the drumming that's contagious and i think you can feel it in the room what she taught me was so profound how to stay present in my body while i'm with somebody else to keep it fin situations i feel like i really don't need anything else so whenever possible i try to do traveling events or workshops or retreats in natural settings because it really helps me as a teacher works on people relax it's people instantly the reason why i first saw barbara thanks that i want to take lessons with her even though i hadn't considered taking lessons ever before was because she was doing these incredibly complex rhythms while in a state of  being here and siberia on the land like this has been a life altering experience i became aware of siberia and sharman is only twenty five years ago when i saw a photo of a siberian shaman and his drum made a deep impression on me bierria is an an are women some of them are keepers of the drum which they play for ceremonies healing and other spiritual work this month sherman is them is a very ecological practice swerved through nature and through the person tells us to live in peace with me the natural foods and to love the natural world just so loving so open hearted so down to earth the minute i saw our i realized that we were connected for main teachings were simple yet profound live simply love the earth love others and honor your ancestors i'm so grateful to barbara came here and there it was so magical being together and more deeply rooted in the earth and in carrying this kind of way of life the connectedness of life and it made my heart open new york wider as wide a my friend carol and brandy put on a drum camp for women called born to drum at this camp i met a member of the and introduced her to the hard drum she raised the question about where is the rightful place for a sacred instrument like the heart to be when she came back from she said something really powerful happened you know we need to talk about this make became very clear to me that that drum was to go with susie and to go to this a qualm people in the northwest and be the heart drum there i could not believe that barbara could let go of something that meant so much to her and i said are you sure you want to do that absolutely it's just the right thing  when i told susie the drum was going to hurt i didn't feel like i was losing the trauma but that i was gaining a larger community is hard drive is going to bring so is something that breaks down the barriers with drumming with drumming from a spiritual place for a spiritual purpose i'm just grateful to all of you for being here so i just think it's easy for putting all this together and all of you for being here and this beautiful ceremony for the drum that when i go home people that have love d me will feel all of you and i'll always carry you with me if a drum like this can be used to bring cultures together and hearts together i can let the drum go as long as i know ok right right my friendship with sheila is like family she and he lane and lotus their family almost immediately barbara and baby lotus fell madly in love with each other and from a very early age a lot of this was around drumming and banging on percussion instruments and set some instruments up in my studio for the baby to play on and she claire and barbara would play with her as a toy drone for her first birthday and this is before she could walk and then when she was about three i think reminder and renewal of our humanity in making sure that we care for each other and his love and understanding is connections to different cultures to find a common ground where all of those meet that's what the