Uploaded December 2013 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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The Oral History of Female Drummers Part 2
"First Beat" at the Perez Art Museum Miami Second Saturdays
A Tom Tom Magazine Production
December 14th, 2013

"As if the new Perez Art Museum Miami didn't already wow us with its exquisite design — this Saturday it will bring together 15 female drummers from Miami and New York who will fill the entire museum space with a medley of indigenous and modern rhythms.

The performance titled First Beat is part of PAMM's free second Saturdays, held from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Each hour, on the hour, the women, including Kiran Gandhi, drummer for MIA, will take museum goers on a musical journey through jazz, rock, and the Latin and Afro-Caribbean rhythms that represent Miami.

"We're going to sonically christen the entire museum so that our beats touch every angle, every square," said Mindy Abovitz, publisher of the all-female drumming Tom Tom Magazine, who curated First Beat and will perform on Saturday.

Abovitz commissioned a similar project in January at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Upon touring PAMM, she knew that bringing together a diverse mix of female percussionists would nicely compliment the new museum digs, which she described as "alive and breathing."

What's unique about Saturday's show is that the drummers will be isolated from each other but play in sync. "The museum is expansive. We're going to be spread out to the point where people are going to have to find us," said Abovitz, noting that the distance between will symbolize their realities in a male dominate field. "We have to find each other. This is a representation of how spread out we are."

Venus Rising's Zeva Soroker has been breaking down gender barriers in the West African and Caribbean drumming scene since she started the group in 2003. Through use of percussion, she says that she expects to have "a conversation."

Part 1, PS1 MoMA NYC, Jan 6th 2013: youtube.com/watch?v=8NA14dfyutg