Full Product Details
Author: Angela Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Dimensions:
Width: 16.30cm
, Height: 2.70cm
, Length: 23.40cm
Weight: 0.603kg
ISBN: 9780810888340
ISBN 10: 0810888343
Pages: 316
Publication Date: 10 April 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Smith provides a thorough chronicle of hundreds of trail-blazing female drummers/entrepreneurs. She interviewed roughly 50 drummers over the course of several years, and in this book she presents their stories and also information she compiled on another 150 drummers and/or bands. The author focuses on North American drum set artists, as opposed to orchestral percussionists or hand-drumming specialists from non-Western cultures. A consistent thread throughout is the difficulty--the trials and setbacks--female drummers have encountered in a largely male-dominated culture (a situation that continues today). The interesting introduction provides a concise overview of women's contributions to drumming throughout history. The balance of the book is organized chronologically from the 1920s to the present. A brief appendix includes suggested recordings, video links, and other online resources, all offered as a starting point for further exploration. The book is rich with details, and the bibliography is extensive. Comprising very short biographies, this book may best serve as a reference resource. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. CHOICE Quick! How many female drummers can you name? While the drummer position in bands everywhere is a largely male dominated thing, women have been making waves with their percussion instruments for years. This book by Angela Smith explores the world of women drummers who've broken barriers and overcome discrimination. Forget the guys, these lady drummers rock. BELLA New York City Magazine The book Women Drummers: A History From Rock and Jazz To Blues and Country is fascinating reading for music fans and those who are interested in gender issues as well. Smith recounts stories that should be heard as today's young girl drummers seek to break stereotypes and pursue their personal muses. The book is an essential work on both women's history and the contemporary state of female percussionists in the music industry. Wisconsin Gazette This comprehensive book about women drummers throughout the ages is worthy of living on university shelves worldwide. Angela Smith takes the reader from the advent of drums (BCE), to the first rebel drummers facing religious decrees, through contemporary drumming legends like Sheila E. Cindy Blackman, and Viola Smith. She tips her hat to all of the movers and shakers who have paved the way for us female drummers thus far. This book is thoughtful, thought provoking, historical, intelligent and interesting. If you like Tom Tom you will love this book because it is the very book we would have written ourselves. Buy it for your favorite drummer (if that is you more, power to you!) today. Tom Tom Magazine For anyone interested in music history, this should be required reading. For everyone else, Women Drummers is just a great book that's fun to read. The book is available online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble or local booksellers in both hard cover and e-book editions. Rope Burns Angela Smith's volume is full of the compelling stories of many women who have tried their hands at the sticks, only to face institutional sexism...Women Drummers has a dynamite premise and packs in tons of well-reported, resonant stories. A.V. Club Overall, Smith has done an admirable job in bringing the accomplishments of women drummers to the fore. LEO Weekly While this book may be of special interest to women, all drummers will appreciate the history and anecdotes relating to the instrument. Percussive Notes
Smith provides a thorough chronicle of hundreds of trail-blazing female drummers/entrepreneurs. She interviewed roughly 50 drummers over the course of several years, and in this book she presents their stories and also information she compiled on another 150 drummers and/or bands. The author focuses on North American drum set artists, as opposed to orchestral percussionists or hand-drumming specialists from non-Western cultures. A consistent thread throughout is the difficulty--the trials and setbacks--female drummers have encountered in a largely male-dominated culture (a situation that continues today). The interesting introduction provides a concise overview of women's contributions to drumming throughout history. The balance of the book is organized chronologically from the 1920s to the present. A brief appendix includes suggested recordings, video links, and other online resources, all offered as a starting point for further exploration. The book is rich with details, and the bibliography is extensive. Comprising very short biographies, this book may best serve as a reference resource. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. CHOICE Quick! How many female drummers can you name? While the drummer position in bands everywhere is a largely male dominated thing, women have been making waves with their percussion instruments for years. This book by Angela Smith explores the world of women drummers who've broken barriers and overcome discrimination. Forget the guys, these lady drummers rock. BELLA New York City Magazine The book Women Drummers: A History From Rock and Jazz To Blues and Country is fascinating reading for music fans and those who are interested in gender issues as well. Smith recounts stories that should be heard as today's young girl drummers seek to break stereotypes and pursue their personal muses. The book is an essential work on both women's history and the contemporary state of female percussionists in the music industry. Wisconsin Gazette This comprehensive book about women drummers throughout the ages is worthy of living on university shelves worldwide. Angela Smith takes the reader from the advent of drums (BCE), to the first rebel drummers facing religious decrees, through contemporary drumming legends like Sheila E. Cindy Blackman, and Viola Smith. She tips her hat to all of the movers and shakers who have paved the way for us female drummers thus far. This book is thoughtful, thought provoking, historical, intelligent and interesting. If you like Tom Tom you will love this book because it is the very book we would have written ourselves. Buy it for your favorite drummer (if that is you more, power to you!) today. Tom Tom Magazine For anyone interested in music history, this should be required reading. For everyone else, Women Drummers is just a great book that's fun to read. The book is available online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble or local booksellers in both hard cover and e-book editions. Rope Burns Angela Smith's volume is full of the compelling stories of many women who have tried their hands at the sticks, only to face institutional sexism...Women Drummers has a dynamite premise and packs in tons of well-reported, resonant stories. A.V. Club Overall, Smith has done an admirable job in bringing the accomplishments of women drummers to the fore. LEO Weekly While this book may be of special interest to women, all drummers will appreciate the history and anecdotes relating to the instrument. Percussive Notes In this comprehensive study that spans more than eight decades of music history, author Smith examines the contributions of chicks with sticks-female musicians who have dared to break through in a male-dominated area of music. Archival research and personal interviews with more than 50 female drummers paint a vibrant portrait of the pioneering artists who beat, tapped and syncopated their way into genres ranging from rock and jazz to blues and country. Read this book and forever change the way you hear the backbeat in your favorite tunes. Booktrib The book is an excellent antidote to the macho stereotypes of drummers, and takes its inspiration from jazz drummer Viola Smith, who made waves in 1942 by maintaining that hep girls could hold their own in any jam session. The author interviewed more than fifty female drummers from rock to jazz, blues to country, whose careers have collectively spanned eight decades-including Sheila E., Debbi Peterson of The Bangles, and Lenny Kravitz's longtime drummer Cindy Blackman. Smith also ventures back into history to explore the role of drumming in religious ceremonies and the silencing of women's roles in the medieval church. The modern stories are often tales of taking on a chauvinistic musical establishment-no matter what the musical genre-but taken together, they prove the essential contribution female drummers have made to modern music. Biography Angela Smith seems to have done her research well, and produced a lively and informative text on a subject that, in the past, has tended not to receive the attention that it should. Bookpleasures.com As Angela Smith's subtitle makes clear, this work is not restricted to jazz; far from it in fact, but this wide-ranging scope is by no means an impediment to anyone with interest in any of the musical fields covered. It will also appeal to those interested specifically in the difficult role women have in the world of popular music, a role that while easier today than it was several decades ago, is still fraught with the all-too familiar prejudices of a male-dominated business...Women Drummers is an admirable work, one that is an important reference book and is also worthy of a place on the shelf of anyone interested in this fascinating corner of the world of music that hitherto has been only rarely, if ever, illuminated. Jazz Mostly [H]er book, the product of Second and Third Wave feminism's 50-year run, should find a permanent place on the shelf of feminist musical studies...A superb conclusion, along with an appendix (discography, online sources, and videos) and a vast bibliography, gives readers of both genders yet more material to savor. In her reappraisal of women drummers, Angela Smith reconfigures the way we listen to them in all forms of popular music, and that's feminism at it's most useful, at its best. Popular Music & Society
Quick! How many female drummers can you name? While the drummer position in bands everywhere is a largely male dominated thing, women have been making waves with their percussion instruments for years. This book by Angela Smith explores the world of women drummers who've broken barriers and overcome discrimination. Forget the guys, these lady drummers rock. BELLA New York City Magazine
Author Information
Angela Smith is a freelance writer and executive director emeritus of the Writers’ League of Texas. Also a working musician and music journalist, she is the author of Steel Drums and Steelbands: A History (Scarecrow Press, 2012).
