The Female Drummers You Should Know

Women and girls have been playing drums as long as drums have been around. With the growth of the internet and supportive movements around the world, the number of female drummers visible in modern music is growing quickly.

While it may seem silly to have a ‘guide to female drummers’ when there’s no ‘guide to male drummers’, it’s important to highlight and celebrate the major influence women have had on a male-dominated industry, and keep doing so until gender doesn’t matter to anyone (psst…it shouldn’t).

In this guide, we’re only skimming the surface. It’s heavily geared toward drum set players in North America in the last century. We’d eventually like to include major league percussionists like Jody Linscott, Bobbye Hall and Marilyn Mazur, and crossover performers such as Kiran Gandhi (MIA) and Kenya’s Muthani Ndonga. Consider this an evolving resource!

Women drummers weren’t often in the spotlight – or even hired

Active in popular orchestras and swing bands from the 1920s to the 1950s – and the drummer for the original Broadway production of Cabaret – U.S.-based Viola Smith was one of the first professional female drummers on record. With very few women featured on the drums in her time, Smith was a pioneer and a prolific performer, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, the cover of Billboard Magazine, and even in an Abbott and Costello film. Amid the chaos of World War II, she published an article called “Give Girl Musicians A Break!”, which argued that with many male musicians being drafted into the military, female musicians should be taking their place. She was reportedly known as “the female Gene Krupa”.

In the 1960s, the world came to know and love Karen Carpenter: beatkeeper and vocalist for sibling duo The Carpenters. Not only was she a talented drummer, but during the bulk of the band’s career, she sang while playing. While she moved into more of a lead vocalist position later on, she always considered herself “the drummer who sang”. Around the same time, Honey Lantree of The Honeycombs (known for their hit 1964 single “Have I The Right”) and Moe Tucker of The Velvet Underground (whose unique setup included mallets and an upturned bass drum) were breaking the mold for expectations of female musicians.

Teen band The Runaways blew up in the 1970s, and featured drummer and cofounder Sandy West, who is still considered one of the most influential female drummers in rock music today. At the end of the decade, all-female post-punk outfits The Slits and The Raincoats popped up in the London punk scene, which at the time was home to bands like The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

In the ‘80s, we started to see even more of a spotlight on women behind the kit. Sheila Escovedo (“Sheila E.”) was touring with artists like Marvin Gaye and Prince, and releasing Grammy-nominated solo albums. Gina Schock rose to prominence as the drummer of new wave band The Go-Go’s. And Girlschool – with drummer Denise Dufort – blew up in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene of the ‘80s, becoming an inspiration for women who wanted to hit harder.

Cindy Blackman Santana – previously an emerging jazz player – became the full-time touring drummer for Lenny Kravitz in the ‘90s. By this time, Grammy-award winning player and bandleader, Terri Lyne Carrington, had already launched an incredible career drumming with jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Clark Terry and Herbie Hancock. Patty Schemel and Samantha Maloney became known for their roles in grunge band Hole (Maloney went on to drum for Mötley Crüe, and Schemel continued drumming with Courtney Love in her solo project).

Bands like The Donnas (Torry Castellano) were big with the teen crowd around the new millennium. Nu-metal also became popular around this time, where we saw drummers like Nao Kawakita (Maximum the Hormone) and Mercedes Lander (Kittie) laying down heavier beats in subgenres that featured even fewer women. When The White Stripes hit the mainstream in the 2000s, drummer Meg White became the benchmark for female drummers in the public eye, stirring up both praise and controversy for her minimalist playing style.

Around this time, the early days of YouTube meant a sudden international platform for musicians. Players like Meytal Cohen, Anika Nilles, and Senri Kawaguchi started racking up millions of views on their videos. Since then, thousands of girls and women have brought their talents to the masses by sharing their music online.

Learn these grooves played by women

“Violet” – Hole (Patty Schemel) – Click for sheet music

“Message True” – Terri Lyne Carrington – Click for sheet music

“Fell In Love With A Girl” – The White Stripes (Meg White) – Click for sheet music

“Synergy” – Anika Nilles – Click for sheet music

Female drummers by genre

This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but here are some notable players in each style to get you started. Some of these drummers fit multiple categories, but we’ve only included a few genres to keep things simple:

Female drum teachers on Drumeo

Here are 8 awesome female drummers you can learn from on Drumeo:

SHARE THIS: