Introduction
Hey Drums (2016-present) is a blog documenting the work and experiences of Australian female and gender diverse drummers.1 The site also features percussionists but is largely focused on promoting a diverse intersection of players of an instrument widely and predominantly accepted as the territory of cis gendered men: the drum kit.2 Just as ‘drummers have largely been neglected in scholarly literature on music and education’,3 non-male drummers are routinely underrepresented in drum kit culture, to the point where these artists are required to write their own histories and document their own contributions. Much literature and media surrounding the instrument is not representative of the diversity of drummers out there, which Hey Drums (amongst other publications and movements) seeks to address.
At the time of writing, interviews with more than 145 drummers from across the Australian continent have been published on the site and promoted on Hey Drums social media platforms and there is a dedicated Spotify playlist featuring bands with female and gender non-conforming (GNC) drummers. The project has grown into an online and real-life community of drummers, regular articles in a nationwide drumming magazine, live performance, and teaching events, as well as academic outcomes. This chapter will document the genesis, goals, and evolution of Hey Drums and affiliated projects, highlighting some of the individual artists and the broad range of areas in which they work.
A Woman’s Work
A woman’s work is never done. Or it’s erased from history books.
As early as 2001, I wanted to do something to counter the incessant feedback I had received throughout my teens which continued into my twenties, that ‘girls don’t play drums’, with some kind of project listing and profiling all the Australian non male drummers I could find.
I began the Hey Drums blog in 2016 as an acknowledgement of the people I already knew, and to learn about others. It started with some personal emails and a public call on Facebook, which resulted in more than twenty candidates within an hour. There has been a steady stream of willing and eager interviewees ever since, demonstrating the great need and enthusiasm for this project. I find interview participants mostly by word of mouth. Some are self-nominated. Some are suggested by bandmates or friends. Some are found at gigs and on social media. The need for the project is affirmed almost every time I contact a new drummer and explain what the project is (often now they have heard of the project), and receive many replies affirming I haven’t been alone in feeling isolated as a non-male drummer. Melbourne based session drummer Julia Watt, for example, says that:
Since beginning my professional drumming career, I have truly felt like the odd one out and felt I was the only one of my kind out there in the big bad world of the music industry. This was especially true before the days of social media when finding other non-male drummers was quite a challenge. Through their love of drumming and the Hey Drums program, Nat has managed to bring together and create this lovely community of drummers and like-minded creatives. It is so nice to be a part of something so wonderful and to feel connected and inspired by my non-male peers.4
The birth of the blog and beginning to pen feature articles for Drumscene magazine happened almost simultaneously in mid-2016.5 I was starting to collect all this information and saw the possibility of doing something more than simply presenting it on the Hey Drums blog. A chance discovery of the female-focused drumming magazine Tom Tom in a music store in New Orleans in 2015 had me reflecting on Australia’s own drumming magazine, Drumscene and its lack of representation of female and gender diverse drummers.6 It was evident that a wider audience could be reached, at the same time as challenging the typical male drummer stereotype very much reinforced by previous issues of Drumscene.
A few email exchanges later with editor and founder of the quarterly magazine, Frank Corniola, and I was to become a regular writer for the print publication, contributing articles about all aspects of life as a drummer that just happened to feature non-male artists. Frank was aware of the lack of representation in the magazine and was open to doing something about it together.
The articles do not mention gender unless it is something that the interviewees specifically bring up. They instead focus (just as in all the other articles in the magazine) on different elements of drumming and drumming related experiences. I have been careful to avoid sensationalising the people in the articles.
You Can’t Be What You Can’t See
The desired outcome of this work is the normalisation of seeing and hearing women and gender diverse folks behind the drum kit: to simultaneously increase representation and raise awareness that these drummers exist. It is just as important for these drummers to see themselves represented as it is for younger aspiring drummers to see themselves represented in print.7
Since 2016, I have penned more than fifteen articles for Drumscene, including profiles of dozens of Australian drummers both here and overseas – articles on touring, session playing, yoga for drummers, inclusive music education programs for young people, practice hacks, promoting yourself as a drummer on social media, and interviews with international superstars Terri Lyne Carrington, Cindy Blackman Santana, and Vera Figueiredo.
Each artist featured on the Hey Drums blog answers the same set of questions.8 There is no common theme amongst the answers given, except perhaps in the final question: ‘What advice would you give your younger drumming self?’ There is a strong sense of solidarity amongst the interviewees and their less experienced selves; a combination of many variations on ‘don’t be so hard on yourself’ and ‘don’t let annoying old man drummers try and intimidate you with useless facts about what kind of cymbals you should be using’ [9].
There are three main goals of Hey Drums:
1. The documentation of Australian drummers;
2. The inclusion across all iterations of the project of trans and GNC people;
3. The promotion of all the interviewed drummers the same way regardless of level of experience, ‘fame’, ‘chops’, or genre.
Documentation
The number one goal of Hey Drums has always been to satisfy the need for documentation of female and non-binary artists in a traditionally male dominated field: to present unequivocally the existence of and creative work being done by female and non-binary drummers around Australia, despite a still common perception that these people don’t belong or are a rarity behind the kit.
My experience as a young drummer in the early 2000s is not an uncommon one: being confronted, even accosted, in drum shops and at gigs, by men who felt the need to either point out or challenge the fact that I was a drummer and also not a man. Having had (only a few but very influential) incredible female mentors – very established artists in their own right – ten to twenty years my senior, I wondered what it must have been like for them at my age (and now). Each generation seems to be continually surprised that women and GNC people are drumming, perpetuating what feminist author Dale Spender describes as a submergence of information,10 the erasure of the achievements and experiences of non males at every age. As Australian author and journalist Jane Caro writes, ‘the revolution that has occurred in the lives of women remains relatively unacknowledged. It’s as if each step forward is regarded in isolation’.11 And, as Catherine Strong writes in her essay Grunge, riot Grrrl and the forgetting of women in popular culture, ‘women are generally written out of historical accounts of music in order to reinscribe the creative dominance of men in this field’.12
Though only three years old, the Hey Drums blog represents an important historical document that will, hopefully, continue to be added to for years to come. By providing a snapshot of women and gender diverse people working in the music industry it serves and will continue to serve as a resource for musicians, music fans, students, and researchers alike.
The Importance of Inclusion: Trans and GNC Artists
For the first twelve months the blog was called She Drums. I knew this was not inclusive of trans and GNC artists, but I was not yet sure how to make it so. At the same time, I wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t going to be interviewing or featuring cis-male drummers With the encouragement and advice of some patient non binary drummers who were enthusiastic but reluctant to participate in a project titled ‘she’ (with good reason), Hey Drums (a reference to the gender neutral pronoun ‘they’) was created in its place.
The second goal of Hey Drums, the importance of the inclusion of trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming drummers, cannot be understated. In a time where these people are being actively excluded, bullied, and vilified in the arts, in sport, this is a movement, like any feminist movement, that must be trans and GNC inclusive.13
It is important to note, however, that this is not a project seeking to ‘out’ anyone. There are no check boxes around gender identification that accompany the drumming questionnaire. There are drummers who feature on the blog who are non-binary but not public about this, or trans but not public about it. There are others who are very much out and outspoken. The blog and affiliated events are safe spaces that are inclusive but respectful of the drummers’ privacy; places they need not feel like ‘a specimen with all the lights bearing down’. It is important that all of these artists are seen as people, as drummers, first.14
Snapshot of Drummers: Diversity
The third important element of this project is that it does not discriminate in terms of level of experience, technical ability, or genre of music played by the drummers in question. In fact, the very opposite is true: the diversity of the featured artists in terms of playing level and style is part of what makes this community and this project both interesting and unique. The range of stories and experiences is important: to hold a mirror up to as many different types of musical practices as possible; to show that there are many different ways one can be a drummer and that they are all valid. There is not one type of female or GNC drummer, just as there is no one type of male drummer.
This sentiment has been echoed by Dr Louise Devenish, Chair of Percussion at UWA Conservatorium of Music. Louise explains:
Being interviewed in Hey Drums made me feel part of a bigger drums and percussion community, a much bigger community than I knew was out there. I learned about so many other musicians from different cities and genres that I otherwise would never have come across. One of the great things about it is that it is inclusive in lots of ways, so there are many ways to connect with and through Hey Drums for musicians of all genders, all genres and all modes of making … Hey Drums is incredibly important for the drum community and overall music community within Australia and internationally!!15
At the time of writing this chapter, more than 145 drummers and percussionists (overwhelmingly drum kit players) have been interviewed. These drummers include some of Australia’s most seasoned players such as Sonja Horbelt (co-founder of the Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival), Julia Day (Do-Re-Mi), Jen Sholakis (Jen Cloher, Laura Jean, The Orbweavers) and Clare Moore (Dave Graney). There are interviews with well-known artists such as Lozz Benson, who drums for folk pop star John Butler and was awarded first prize in ‘Australia’s Best Female Drummer’ competition in 2016, Leanne Cowie of ‘The Scientists’ fame, and pop sensation G Flip, who belts out powerful original songs from behind the kit. Alongside Lozz, Leanne, and G are dozens of little known and non-professional but regularly gigging drummers, all with their own experiences and all given equal weight within the project.
The drummers I interviewed are regulars with bands, freelance drummers, touring artists, teachers, session musicians, as well as professionals in other fields who maintain steady side careers as musicians. They are students, activists, booking agents, multi instrumentalists, electronic musicians, composers, and collaborators. Some have formal musical training. Some are self taught. Some strive to make a living from music. Some have no desire to, or even a strong urge not to combine their love of music making with the stress of trying to make a living.
There is Tanja Bahro who started playing at age forty-seven and now gigs regularly in Melbourne with her traditional jazz band, and sixty-year-old student of African drumming Anne Harkin who also began drumming in her forties. There are a number of Australian born drummers currently living and playing overseas such as Latin percussionist Nasrine Rahmani (Madrid) and jazz drummer Jodie Michael (New York), and those born in other countries who now call Australia home such as Bonnie Stewart (born in Ireland, now Sydney based) and drummer/composer, Cissi Tsang (born in Hong Kong, now based in Perth). There are performers across rock, pop, metal, improvisation, jazz, noise, experimental music, circus, and cabaret.
There is blind from birth drummer, Renee Kelly, who was made famous through a series of short films by the Australian Broadcasting Commission focusing on disabled artists.16 There is yoga teacher and arts manager, Holly Norman, who has turned her focus to the mental and physical wellbeing of those working in the performing arts. There is ex Circus Oz drummer and Edinburgh Festival regular, Bec Matthews, performance artist, Tina Havelock Stevens, who plays drums underwater and in abandoned aeroplane hangers, and electro pop percussion duo, Feels, who are crusaders for gender parity in their own right through their creation of WOMPP: Women of Music Production Perth,17 a community-focused label and series of education groups for female and GNC music makers in Western Australia.
Approximately two thirds of the drummers interviewed for Hey Drums hail from Melbourne. This is inevitable as it as it is where I am based, but it is also the city with the highest number of music venues per capita in the world.18 Almost ten percent are based in New South Wales (mostly Sydney) and there are representatives from all the other states and territories in Australia, as well as a number of Australian born drummers living, working, or studying overseas.
Outcomes
Outcomes of the Hey Drums project so far include the online interviews, the articles in Drumscene magazine, several live performance events, a conference presentation, and drum lessons that are open to the public. There is an online community of the drummers who have been involved on Facebook; a place to ask for advice, offer support, and share opportunities. Most of the 100+ members have done an interview or a gig for Hey Drums at some point, and many use the private group to advertise that they are looking for work or gigs, that someone they know is after a drummer for project, to offer education opportunities for young women and GNC artists, to borrow gear when travelling, or to ask advice when buying new equipment. The larger and more diverse the community becomes the greater the opportunities for collaboration.
Holly Norman, drummer and Program Manager for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival describes Hey Drums in the following manner:
An incredible resource for drummers and percussionists on the Australian music scene. Not only does the blog promote a strong sense of community between female and [GNC] musicians … but it provides a platform to profile players to the broader musical and arts community. I’ve met many new musical peers and colleagues through Hey Drums and always love seeing the articles come out to get to know new players. [19]
In May 2018, Hey Drums curated an event at the Make It Up Club,20 which is a weekly experimental and avant-garde sound art and performance event that has been running in Melbourne for the past twenty-two years. Fifteen drummers set up five drum kits and performed three sets of completely improvised music to a full house. The reactions from performers and audience alike were electric – and the performances were incredibly diverse and engaging – with veteran noise and experimental drummers playing alongside jazz, and punk artists – all finding a way to listen and work with each other. This Hey Drums takeover of the Make It Up Club has now become an annual event.
In 2019, a summer night market in the Melbourne CBD featured a pop up speed drum lesson event, with two experienced teachers and Hey Drums representatives offering rolling ten-minute drum lessons to members of the public, who could then have a go at jamming along with a favourite pop tune. Preference was given to female and GNC ‘students’ and this event was picked up by Melbourne Music Week for a similar event in Bourke St Mall, in the heart of the CBD.21 This event provided a way to engage the public in something fun whilst also raising awareness of Hey Drums.
An event at the Melbourne Recital Centre, also in 2019, saw original electro pop outfit Cool Explosions collaborate with Hey Drums in an hour-long concert and soundscape performance for drums, percussion, vocals, synths, and electronics.22 The band specifically sought out Hey Drums in order to collaborate with non-male drummers and percussionists.
In the same year, I presented a paper at the ‘Gender Diversity in Music and Art’ conference at the University of Western Australia.23 That presentation began with a talk about Hey Drums and ended in a collaborative improvised performance with five other drummer/percussionists who were in attendance at the conference. Some of the performers were WA locals (Genevieve Wilkins, Cissi Tsang, Flick Dear) and some were visiting from interstate and overseas (Vanessa Tomlinson: Brisbane, Robyn Schulkowsky: Berlin). All the participants, with the exception of Schulkowsky, had been previous interviewees for Hey Drums and were keen to be involved to promote the work being done by the blog.
2020 will feature a collaboration with the Melbourne Museum and Melbourne Fashion Festival, Australian drum maker Entity,24 as well as monthly drum lessons at an iconic Melbourne venue the Esplanade Hotel.
Context
The musical landscape in Australia is changing and the representation of minority groups including people of colour, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+, women and GNC artists is very much a big issue. The 2019 fourth annual ‘By the Numbers’ study of the gender gap in Australian music found that ‘the diversity of acts represented on major Australian festival line-ups improved significantly; for the first time in the report’s history, a festival analysed achieved gender parity, with fifty percent of acts on Falls Festival’s 2018/2019 line-up featuring at least one woman’.25 Further, fifty-two percent of year 12 (final year high school) students undertaking a music subject in 2018 were female. However, a discrepancy exists between these figures and those female musicians being recognised as practising professionally. While women represent forty-five percent of those with a tertiary music qualification and fifty percent of those that study music, they make up just twenty percent of those registered to receive royalties.26 In a report on the ‘gender gap in Australian music’, Ange McCormak noted that:
If you turned on the radio in 2018, you were more likely to hear songs performed by men than women. Only 21 per cent of the top 100 most-played tracks on Australian radio stations in 2018 were by solo female acts or all-female groups; however, 27 per cent of songs were by acts with men and women, or featuring a female vocalist.27
On 8 March every year both national and community broadcasters turn the airwaves over to female and gender diverse presenters and recording artists for International Women’s Day programming.28 This initiative sees a significant spike in representation, but the above statistics show there is still much room for improvement.
Hey Drums is part of a wider series of grassroots movements in Australia, part of a broader landscape of organisations striving for greater access and inclusion. Music Victoria is an advocacy group with a motto of ‘Advocate, Support, Celebrate’. The independent body has created a variety of initiatives focusing on gender equity, safety, and inclusivity in the live music scene, among which is their ‘Best Practice Guidelines for Live Music Venues’, which includes a chapter for venues on how to deal with sexual harassment.29 Music Victoria also hosts regular panel events, training, and mentoring for female and GNC musicians and music producers.
LISTEN (established in 2014) ‘is a new music initiative focusing on fostering change, using a feminist perspective to promote the visibility and experiences of women, gender non-conforming and LGBTQIA+ people, people of colour, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with disabilities and other marginalised folk in Australian music’.30 LISTEN began as an online community, has hosted conferences, gigs, talks and events, now incorporates a record label, and is host to the Listen Lists: databases of female and GNC sound engineers, performing acts, session musicians, DJs, and producers (beat makers).31
All In, based in Melbourne ‘exists to create a more inclusive environment for musicians and audience members in the Melbourne jazz scene’.32 Through a variety of strategies, they are trying to address the aforementioned discrepancy between number of female music students and professionals, with activities including:
Advocating for policy change in venues and institutions;
Listening directly to marginalised people’s experiences of the scene and taking action;
Sharing valuable knowledge, stories and perspectives;
Helping to foster sustainable careers;
Boosting the profiles of diverse artists;
Promoting a broader range of gigs and events.33
Girls Rock! Australia is a national network of music camps focused on rock and pop music. Held during the school holidays, the program is ‘independently run by a team of musicians and educators passionate about empowering girls, trans and gender-diverse young people through music education and mentorship’.34 They have held camps and concerts in all the major Australian cities since 2016 and are aligned with the Global Girls Rock Camp Alliance.35
The combined effects of these movements, organisations, and activities puts pressure on bookers, broadcasters, and festival organisers to be proactive in regards to gender representation. Worldwide, there is also a groundswell around inclusivity of female and gender diverse instrumentalists.
The formerly mentioned quarterly New York based publication Tom Tom Magazine was founded by drummer Mindy Abovitz in 2009 and is ‘the only magazine and media company in the world dedicated to female and GNC drummers, beat makers and producers’.36 Like Hey Drums, Tom Tom has expanded from the page and screen to include live performance and installation events, a drum academy, and a podcast. Also, like Hey Drums, Tom Tom recently changed their focus from ‘female’ drummers to be inclusive of GNC artists.
Hollywood drummer and teacher, Liz Aponte, offers online lessons for women and girls, to ‘help female drummers who are feeling frustrated with their progress reach the next level and absolutely CRUSH it in a male dominated music world’.37 She also makes drums through her own business, The Respira Collective,38 and makes jewellery and other accessories from broken cymbals through her company Full Circle Co.39
The annual ‘Hit Like a Girl’ contest is an amateur contest for women and girls where female percussionists and drummers of all ages and levels are encouraged to participate. Its purpose is ‘to spotlight female drummers/percussionists and encourage drumming and lifelong musicianship for girls and women, regardless of age or playing level. The event is produced by the Hit Like A Girl Contest and our activities are made possible by the generous support of artists, individuals and companies in the music and music products industries’.40
The contest was conceived by a team of drum industry and media veterans (along with Tom Tom’s Mindy Abovitz) as a way to promote and raise the profile of female drummers. Since 2011, it has attracted more than 5000 contestants from over fifty countries.
Australia’s Drumscene magazine ran a similar competition from 2016 to 2018. Their Best Female Drummer award was a new category created in a long-standing yearly competition. The category has now been subsumed back into the existing competition.
Conclusion
Strangers now contact me when they are looking for a drummer, percussionist, or teacher. Artists and audience are invested in diversity and there is a growing movement in Australia of acknowledging privilege when employing musicians and looking around for who is not currently being represented. People are realising the importance and relevance of supporting, acknowledging the work being done by female and GNC people in a traditionally male dominated area. Alex Roper, a Melbourne-based freelancer and one of the first interviewees for Hey Drums, explains the importance of the blog:
It gives a platform for people who might not have had one in the same way previously. I know I have been found through the website and my interview and have done gigs because of it and connected with people I wouldn’t have otherwise. I was able to see myself as a professional and people to see me that way too. I even got a job at a prominent Melbourne drum shop & school because of Hey Drums!41
The project offers value to the music community and music audiences in Australia via the blog, private and public social media groups and platforms. It has great value as a resource and a work of advocacy. What is unique about Hey Drums is that it assumes first and foremost that everyone who is interviewed, who has a lived experience of being a gigging drummer, deserves to be there. GNC, non-binary, and non-male analyses are critical for truly representative future studies of the drum kit, and there is a great opportunity to include a diverse range of voices from a relatively early stage in the burgeoning field of drum kit related academia.
Historically, women drummers have been separated out in literature – female artists separated out into articles such as ‘the best female ... of the 90s’ or ‘5 female drummers you should know’ and GNC artists are all but written out of history. Tom Tom Magazine, Angela Smith’s History of Women Drummers and Layne Redmond’s When the Drummers Where Women fill a substantial gap in the literature. Hey Drums is attempting to do the same and, though unfortunate that this is still at all necessary, will continue to do so until sensationalised articles about female drummers claim ‘girls can do it all’, ‘breaking the mold’, ‘marching to their own beat’, are no longer tolerated or relevant – until ‘alternate histories’ of drumming no longer need to be written.
