Calling all young women and girls ages 11-17. You are invited to join this fun, creative, and playful new group for teens. Sip boba, make art, and learn to drum with musical leaders Krista Holland and Megan Danforth in Ashland, Oregon.
In today’s interview, I spoke with Megan and Krista about their vision for this emerging group for girls who are interested in creating soulful connections and beautiful rhythms while learning the art of frame drumming in a supportive circle. Let’s learn more!
(Megan) Thanks for speaking with us today, Shields. Krista and I have been envisioning a supportive group for young women and girls for a couple of years, and feel energized to really make it happen this fall. Our youth need spaces for creativity, playfulness, and decompression more than ever!
To begin with Krista, you are the founder of the Sacred Drumming Academy and teaching this art form is your primary work. Will you please tell us more about your journey and practice with frame drumming?
I was first introduced to the frame drum over 25 years ago when I met my primary frame drumming teacher and mentor, the late Layne Redmond. Redmond authored a book on the ancient history of women’s global drumming traditions, titled When the Drummers Were Women.
In my late teens, I began seeking out different healing modalities to help me deal with depression and a sense of being lost in the world. My mom suggested that I consider learning a musical instrument, and somehow, the idea stuck, so I eventually decided to try drumming.
Over the years, I explored many different drumming styles until I learned about the frame drum and the ancient history and traditions of women’s frame drumming. I became fascinated by the idea that there was a widespread feminine drumming tradition I had never heard of, which was all but forgotten or undiscovered in many areas of the world. I’ll never forget the first night when the woman who would become my long-term teacher and mentor, Layne Redmond, showed a presentation of images of art depicting women from the ancient world holding or playing a frame drum. That evening presentation changed my life and set me on a course of research, practice, and study that I have been exploring ever since.
Megan, people in our community will know you for your amazing work in founding Rogue World Music and your beautiful voice in the folk trio, Wild Honey. I also recall interviewing you along with your husband, Tom Pike, for Jump Education, an educational project that is also a creative response to the needs of adolescents. Share with us how you and Krista developed a connection and about this new offering you’re making together?
Thank you for this generous introduction. Krista and I first connected as neighbors and mothers, each of us admiring the creative work of the other. Within a few years I began attending the instructional evenings she offered to learn the art of frame drumming. These evenings became an important time for me to step out of the daily grind of work and home responsibilities, and to step into a space that felt meditative, nourishing, supportive, and fun. I also found that spending time this way in a circle with women, developing trust in one another through shared rhythms, making mistakes, laughing through learning, and returning again and again, fulfilled a deep need in my heart for a sacred community.
In 2017, I joined Krista on a journey to Crete, an island in Greece, where mythological stories and archeological ruins reflect a potent history of women and the drum. It was after this powerful experience together that we began to really lean into our friendship and consider collaborative ideas. So, this current project has been in a state of emergence for many years, really, and over these years our connection has deepened while our creative ideas have clarified.
Synchronistically, Krista and I each had the idea of creating a group for girls, independent of one another. The idea had been percolating in the back of our minds until Krista spoke to it earlier this year. Upon hearing her vision, I suggested with great enthusiasm that we launch it together!
Wow. What alignment! Krista, Megan mentioned the interesting history of women and the drum. Can you please share more with us about this?
Yes, thank you, Shields. I would love to. A frame drum is any drum whose diameter of skin is larger than the depth of the shell. Frame drums are traditionally made of wood and skin, sometimes with the addition of jingles or bells, such as a tambourine, which is also part of the frame drum family of drums.
To create a drum is an archetypal idea that spans eras and continents. Much like dancing, drumming is considered a cross-cultural or poly-cultural idea and practice found globally.
No one knows exactly how far back the idea of creating a frame drum goes because the drums being made of wood and skin disintegrate rapidly from the archeological record but what we do have as proof of the antiquity of drumming traditions – are thousands of pieces of art depicting the drum, most prominently the frame drum, across thousands of years. In the vast archive of artistic records depicting the frame drum the most common motif found is the image of a woman, girl, priestess, or Goddess holding or playing a frame drum. The archeological records show that in the ancient days, the frame drum was primarily a woman’s instrument.
The images of a girl or woman holding a frame drum can be found in almost every artistic medium such as clay and marble statues, vase paintings, frescoes, oil paintings, and more. Of course, in the modern era people of all walks of life and genders play the frame drum! That said – the widespread history of women’s drumming traditions is a fascinating subject that is still relatively unknown to many people. This history that I am referring to is something people can learn more about in the book I mentioned above called When the Drummers Were Women – A Spiritual History of Rhythm.
Megan, please tell us more about the transformative nature of frame drumming and why you are choosing to share it here and now in Ashland with young women?
Learning to play the frame drum is a fun and beautiful way to begin a musical journey for those who have no prior musical experience because it is one of the most simple instruments but can also become more rhythmically and musically complex over time.
The experience of creating a rhythm with others is one that can nourish the nervous system, it can calm the mind, and it can fill our hearts with inspiration. Drumming is such a primal experience given that every human gestates to their mother’s heartbeat. It’s no wonder that the drum has been a central feature around which to gather community for thousands of years.
No matter our age, we all share a desire for spaces that nurture a sense of freedom and possibility, one in which we can celebrate mistakes and explore unique ways of self expression. But these spaces are hard to find today and therefore much needed, especially for our youth. Krista and I are inspired to create a place where girls can support one another in the process of learning to play the drum in an inclusive circle. We will always begin with the basic foundations and warm-ups and will ensure that the experience is one of playfulness, acceptance, and exploration.
Krista, in your work with frame drumming, how have you seen it take root and create transformation in women’s lives?
Over the many years that I have been playing the frame drum, teaching the drum to others, and studying the ancient history and myths connected to the frame drum which is also sometimes called the sacred drum, I have watched the practice transform and uplift many people’s lives. One of the most impactful things I’ve witnessed is how the drum can create inner and outer connections. Women and people can feel a connection to an ancient cross-culture tradition that truly doesn’t belong exclusively to just one culture.
The frame drum appears in ancient art and writing in diverse settings and time periods, from the Hebrew Bible to the writings of ancient Mesopotamia, to the stained glass windows of ancient cathedrals, to the hieroglyphs of Egypt, to the Scottish tradition of frame drumming that is said to go back at least 500 years by written record. The diversity of places and span of eras in which the frame drum appears can inspire women and girls to feel a natural part of a tapestry of timeless and universal human and feminine connections.
Drumming is a human birthright and as the saying goes “Music is the universal language.” The combination can make each girl or woman who picks up the drum for any reason naturally connected to a global tradition that is simultaneously ancient, modern, and futuristic.
Drumming and being in rhythm remind us that we are each a part of the great rhythm of all things—from the rhythms of day and night to the cycles of the moon and the cosmos, to the seasons, stages, and ages of each human lifetime. Rhythm is a guiding force that helps keep life and each of us in balance. Being aware of and connected to life’s rhythms can bring a feeling of greater relaxation and trust in the guiding principles and order of life.
Megan, you have always been a catalyst for visionary projects here in Ashland. Tell us more about your vision for the Drum Group for Girls.
Our vision is to create a space for girls that is inspiring, a space that provides a respite from the stress of daily life, a group in which they can be playful, authentic, and expressive. And most importantly, drink boba!
We envision a weekly time when girls can show up, mingle a bit, and gather in circle and create rhythms together. There will always be a space provided outside of the circle as well, a ‘doodle den’ with art supplies, for the times when we need to step away and simply listen, to learn to take care of ourselves while remaining a part of the group. This is such an important lesson.
The Drum Group for Girls is also our creative response to the adolescent need to safely explore the sacred dimension of their experience, to feel a part of the emergence of beauty that is created while drumming in a circle, to receive guidance and mentorship from mature women with vibrant creative lives and wisdom to share.
We are on an exploratory mission to discover the best way to catalyze this vision.
We are beginning with an 8-week series, one session per week, and depending on the level of interest and the age range of the girls involved, we’ll continue to develop offerings that reflect the level of engagement, interest and need. We would LOVE to expand our offerings to include a tween and a teen group, a mother/daughter group, and retreats, both regionally and afar.
Krista, frame drumming has always played a role in humanity’s story and timeline. Tell us more about the widespread resurgence you are witnessing globally and how it is being embraced by women around the world?
We are currently at the very beginnings of a global renaissance and resurgence of women and girls of all ages and stages of life reclaiming and reconnecting with the frame drum as a tool and an instrument for ancestral remembrance, connection, community building, musicality, sacred practice, brain optimization, and general wellbeing.
Modern research and science show that many different demographics can benefit from drumming or musical practice. Numerous published and peer-reviewed studies on the effects of rhythm, specifically, and recreational music-making, in general, point to these methods and modalities as wonderful complementary tools and adjunct therapies in a person’s holistic wellness practice.
Modern people everywhere are looking for simple, accessible, and time-tested protocols that can be utilized for greater inner and outer harmony and well-being. Frame drumming is one tool among many, but it holds a unique place and potential being that it is both timeless and time-tested. Frame drumming has established its place as a bonafide instrument for making beautiful music while simultaneously being a fantastic tool with the potential for transforming consciousness, awakening whole-brain functioning, fostering group bonding, and a host of other possible holistic health benefits.
Women and girls, along with many others, are finding a frame drumming practice that meets them where they are at while opening them to a world of unique possibilities and potential for soulful inner and outer connections and greater synchronicity with life’s rhythms.
Megan, it sounds like this group is not only educational but offering something beyond this that you feel girls need right now. Can you speak more to this?
Megan: Yes, Shields, Definitely. I’m thinking about how healthy communities cultivate relationships between the elders and the youth. Without these pathways of sharing wisdom and receiving guidance and inspiration, our youth and elders suffer. I turned 50 this year which marks an important transition in my life, one for which I chose to engage in a wilderness rite of passage earlier this year. I returned from this experience with renewed energy and inspiration that I’m bringing to this collaboration with Krista. I’m passionate about serving our community in ways that uplift our hearts and cultivate joy. Our youth are heavily burdened with the weight of global events that seem insurmountable and they are overstimulated technologically speaking. I strongly believe that all of us, but most especially our youth, need spaces where we can soften and open, where we can be imaginative, encourage optimism and where we can experience the beauty of humanity.
Making music together is powerful medicine, especially when it’s playful, exploratory, and centered around creating heartfelt connections. For many people, making music can be intimidating because our culture has set musicians apart from society as somehow gifted with talents that some don’t have. We buy tickets to see performances. We sing in the shower. We dance when no one is watching. But we are all inherently musical beings. There is a place for each and every one of us in musical community. Music making emerged not as a performance activity, historically, but as a culture building tool, a way to cultivate belonging, a way to make meaning together, a way to honor and tend to life experiences that we all share. Krista and I are inviting young women and girls into a space like this because we have decades of experience in musical group facilitation, knowledge and wisdom we long to share, and a passion for serving our community.
Krista and Megan, thank you for the amazing work you are doing here in our community.
Thank you, Shields, for creating such an awesome way for us to share our vision with everyone.
Do you have any last thoughts or comments you would like to share with our readers?
Yes. If you or your daughter, sister, niece, or friend have any questions and/or suggestions, please reach out to us! Here are the details:
Drum Group for Girls starts on Sept 26th and runs 8 weeks until November 14th, on Thursday afternoons from 4pm to 5:30pm at Rogue Valley Yoga at 1355 E. Main Street.
Register at www.sacreddrumming.com/events/drum-group-for-girls
Contact Krista Holland at: sacreddrumming1008@gmail.com
Contact Megan Danforth at: frendzfam@gmail.com
