Layne Redmond’s unusual path focuses on the hand-held frame drum, the world’s oldest known drum. For fifteen years, she researched the history of this drum in religious and healing rites in the ancient Mediterranean world culminating in her book, When The Drummers Were Women. This book details a lost history of a time when women were the primary percussionists in the ancient world and also explains why they are not today.

Layne has been featured in many music festivals including the Touch Festival in Berlin, Seattle Bumbershoot Festival, the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, Tambores do Mundo in San Luis, Brazil, the World Wide Percussion Festival in Salvador, Brazil, the Vienna International Percussion and the Marranzano World Festival in Sicily.

Her recordings include: The Wave of Bliss, Invoking the Muse, Trance Union, Since the Beginning and her meditation cds include: Chakra Breathing Meditation, Chanting the Chakras, Heart Chakra Meditations and her book Chakra Meditation. She was the first woman to have a Signature Series of world percussion instruments with Remo, Inc. All Things Considered on National Public Radio, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Drum!, Modern Drummer, Percussive Notes, New Age Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, New Age Voice and Shaman’s Drum are a few of the media that have featured articles and interviews with Layne Redmond.

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Zohar Fresco and Layne Redmond, rehearsal in Cyprus, 2007:

YOUR BRAIN ON DRUMS:

The Mob of Angels with the incomparable Laurel Masse.., the fantastic Steve Gorn and Eva Atsalis. The rocking rhythm section of Jagoda and Tommy Be:

Tranceformation, composed by Layne Redmond. Performed by Bob Becker, Tommy Be, Stacey Bowers, Russ Hartenberger, Garry Kvistad, Rick Kvistad, Layne Redmond. At the Woodstock Beat concert, 1995:

Glen Velez with Layne Redmond:

Marcos Suzano, Robertinho Silva, Tommy Be, Layne Redmond, Maranhao, Brazil, 1996:

I was out on Shatz Island on Crystal River as a thunder storm blew up towards me, trying to photograph the lightening but just not fast enough. Later I would look at photographs of ominous black skys without a trace of glimmering light in them. My younger brothers, tired of waiting for me in the car, were sure that much more interesting things were happening somewhere else. I took them back home to their comic books and tv and fell asleep on the couch like I often have to do after chasing lightening. Falling into a dream, I found myself still trying to photograph the lightening bolts. Now high up but somehow very close to me a brilliant electric yellow opening doorway had appeared in the deep smoked purple sky. As I quickly set up my camera to catch this shot a tremendous clap of thunder split my mind open. In the ensuing swirling chaotic brilliance, my brain exploded into a supernova, shattering me out to the ends of the universe with the force of a nuclear bomb. Eons later, I became aware that I was laying on the grass, paralyzed, a crowd of people gathered around me. I had been struck by lightening. Someone said, “She’ll never be the same.” And I knew I never did want to be the same. Something pulled me out of the dream, and in a hazy state I took my tambourine, went out the front door and sat out on the steps under an ancient pine soaring up into the clear afternoon sunlight. Trying to bring back the essence of the dream, I relentlessly played my tambourine, until a deafening explosion of the wild dream thunder struck the pine in front of me and I was in the midst of shattering splinters and sparks of burning wood for real this time. Shocked and stunned into silence, I carefully shook off the burning embers and backed into the house. But from then on, Iansan, mighty goddess of lightening has pursued me through my dreams, striking me with her bolts of lightening as she so chooses, and in waking life pursuing me with tornados and hurricanes until I have fled to her domain in Bahia where there are no hurricanes or tornados but where she lives indeed.

Portals appear and disappear. Open and Close. Throughout our lives. Some are open to us forever, some only for a second and some never. Which ones we walk through determine who we become, just as much as the ones we do not make it through.