So tell me the story of how Inanna got together.

Well, around 21 or 22 years ago, a band named Mamma Tongue came to Alna, Maine, a tiny town that no one’s every heard of. It’s kind of a coastal town, but inland a little bit. We all met while taking lessons from this group of Africans. They gave lessons, and eventually, they left. So some girls got together who wanted to keep playing, and they were all particularly good. They had gone to a lot of classes and were really getting it. They had met a few times, and I ended up joining a little later after a phone call from one of them. So basically we started out of a drumming class.

We were told by our teacher that if we really wanted to get good, it would be better if we tried to create pieces for performance, so this is the interesting part about our band, I think. Someone had called us and said, “I heard about you guys drumming together. Would you come and be a part of our winter solstice celebration?” So this is the first gig we were preparing for, but we didn’t have a name for our band.

A couple of us had read Mickey Hart’s book, “Drumming at the Edge of Magic.” In that book, he traces the history of the drum, and he made it known that the very first artifact found of anyone drumming was a stone carving of a woman playing a frame drum. And we knew she was the daughter of a king, and that she was a high priestess, and that lines of high priestesses would play these frame drums through the temples of the moon.

We thought it would be cool to name our band after her, but we couldn’t find her name anywhere. What we did find, though, was that the Sumerians honored and worshipped the goddess Inanna. So we used this name for the band. Then, a few years later, we met Layne Redmund, who is a master frame drummer, and had done a lot of research on the history of the drum. He had found out that women were the first drummers, as much as we can tell at this point. There were huge lines of women – you see them in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the whole Mesopotamia area, during the time when they were honoring the goddess. The drum was really huge, and we found out later that there’s another myth about Inanna that she actually brought the drum to the people. And when she was going to ascend from the dark world into the light, her women priestesses played the drums for her.

So it’s just a very interesting thing that, in the 19 years this band has been together, we keep finding ourselves living this story of Inanna. Everyone lives her myth of going through the darkness, and the fact that there’s always struggling and suffering of life, and then there’s the good times and you come out of it as part of this cycle. But that’s also kind of the way that our band is – we’ve been through a lot of changes, we’ve worked hard to stay together, we’re a democratic group of women who collaboratively come up with everything we do. It’s very hard, but it’s always the greatest thing, that once we create this piece or this song together, even though there are challenges along the way, the final product is always something that we all love. So we practice in our band a lot of what we share with the world – peace, community, unity, bringing people together to drum and to sing.

What is it about African drumming specifically that appeals to all of you?

Well, I love rhythm myself. I’ve always been a dancer – I started dance lessons at five years old, and I just love rhythm. I think it’s a very innate, tribal feeling that we all share. We play a lot of festivals, and whenever we play, the little ones – and I’m sure they do this for most music – get mesmerized, and they just dance. They can’t help themselves. When we’re in the fetuses of our mothers, we hear her heartbeat for the first nine months of our existence. There’s this pulse of the mother’s blood, and it’s something that’s felt, I believe, within us pretty innately when we’re born. It’s very much an addictive thing for me, and for everyone in the band. When we discovered the djembe – the African drums – we definitely became obsessed with learning and playing more and more. The djembe is a pretty amazing construction, because it makes so many beautiful sounds on one little drum, as opposed to congas and other drums. Maybe it’s the wineglass shape, or the heavy wood, or the goat skin. It’s just a beautiful combination of materials that create this gorgeous sounding instrument that hits you in the heart when you play it. You feel that vibration, and it’s very powerful.

You mentioned that when Inanna came together, you had members of Mamma Tongue instructing all of you. Prior to that experience, was this something you were all always interested in, and/or doing at the time, or was it something that you truly discovered through this interaction?

I think for most people in the band, this was their first real interaction with doing something this specific. I think at the very beginning, I was the only person who was actually a professional musician. I had grown up playing guitar, singing, and dancing. I was actually studying Latin percussion – congas – when I discovered this drum. But for everyone else in the band, they completely came from the class and they were just drawn to it in their early 20s. It’s like they had found their instrument, and I notice that with a lot of people. You try one or two instruments, and then you give up because you don’t like it. But it has to be the right instrument to connect with. I studied a little piano, and it only went so far, and then I studied guitar, and it only went so far. But I knew I loved music, and I just needed to find it. Of course, being a woman, it made it even more difficult for me to find the drum. These days, they have hand drums in schools everywhere, but when I was growing up, they weren’t there. It took me a little while to find the drum, so I really started my percussion training in my 20s. I think we really could be a drumming culture, like any other culture on the planet. We just have to start playing.

How much of the music that Inanna records is original music? Do you do a lot of traditional songs?

It’s about half and half. We always put in some traditional pieces – in fact, it might even be more traditional African music. We always try to put at least 2, 3 or 4 original songs per album. But it’s all based on African music. We take our different world rhythmic lessons and styles that we’ve learned and put that into our original music.

What about live? Is it the same ratio of new and traditional stuff?

Yes, I’d say so. But it really depends on what people want. If it’s a group that really just wants to dance, we probably end up doing more of the African music. Our original pieces tend to be more meditative, on some level, but they’ve also got a nice hook to them. Some of them are a little peppy, but they’re more feminine. Some of the African music can be really fast, and driving, and sharp. Our stuff is a bit softer. We use melodic instruments in our originals as well, like violin and dulcimer.

A little more mainstream, perhaps?

Definitely a little bit more mainstream, and Americanized.

Speaking of, what about more popular, mainstream songs? Do you ever perform cover songs of things that people might know, but more in your own unique style?

We have. We’ve done a few reggae songs, like “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley and the Wailers, and “Three Little Birds,” also by Bob Marley. We’ve also done James Brown’s “Get Up Offa’ That Thing.” Sometimes we’ll do those songs in workshops, and perform them with our students. Our vocalist, Anne-Marie D’amico, brings in a lot of cool folk tunes that are choral pieces. So we do some cover tunes.

Obviously there are a lot of traditional African lyrics and vocal styles in your music as well. Is that something that you’re all very particular about when it comes to writing lyrics and singing in a certain style?

I don’t know if I ever think of it that way. The one style is the rhythm and percussion. I think we kind of have a mixture of styles sometimes. We have one woman in the band who’s a jazz singer, and we have one woman who’s classically trained, and one woman who’s the choral conductor, and she teaches lots of different choral songs, from classical to folk to jazz, and then we have a woman who does a variety of music like I do. We’ve both been in a variety of bands. I’ve been in a couple of different reggae bands. So there’s a mixture of styles, and of course we all love Latin, Brazilian, and Middle Eastern music. So you hear those styles in our original pieces.

How are your songs composed? Is it kind of a group effort? Does one person come with an idea, and you all collaborate?

It’s done a couple of different ways. One person might come with something pretty complete, then the band offers suggestions, tweaks, and changes. That always seems to be the best way to do it. When people come with just a little bit of a snippet, we don’t usually have enough there, although that has been done. Usually, though, someone will have an idea and have it pretty much mapped out – like the lyrics written, the melody done, and a groove that they’re thinking – and we just add in the extra groove, or the break.

Does everyone contribute songs, or are there certain people who do most of the songwriting?

I’d say at this point, it’s really shared. At the beginning, I did most of the songwriting. Now everyone’s writing, and it’s really great to see.

How often do you perform together? Do you do a lot of rehearsing?

We perform on average about 2 to 3 times a month. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less, but that’s an average. In the winter, it’s pretty slow. We try to practice every other week. We’d like to practice more, of course, but schedules make that difficult.

Tell me a little bit about the instruments that you use.

We all play djembes, and that comes with a variety of bass drums – Dundun, Kenkenni, and Sangban. These three bass drums complete the ensemble of the Malinke style of African drumming, which is what we perform. And then we sometimes use Balafone, dulcimer, violin, and Udu.

And these are shared within the members of the group?

Yes, and frame drums are a huge part. Plus small percussion, of course, like bells and shakeres.

What’s a frame drum?

It’s basically a drum with a diameter that’s longer than the width. A lot of cultures have variations of frame drums. The ones you are probably most familiar with are Shamanic frame drums, which are what Native Americans use, with a mallet. That’s a variation of a frame drum. The frame drums in Brazil and the Middle East are very similar – they’re called Tars. It’s a whole variety of drums, but the basic definition is that they have this wide surface to play on in the front, and the width is maybe three or four inches. They can be played with fingers, or Bodhrans from Ireland use mallets. There are variations in how they’re played, but there’s some version of a frame drum in nearly every culture.

So tell me about your workshops?

When we do the workshops as a group, they’re usually 4-5 hours long, although they can be longer – sometimes up to 2 days. What we like to teach everyone in the workshops is a rhythm to play, the basic and techniques of the drum, and they usually learn a song they can sing with this rhythm that we teach, and we teach them a dance movement that goes along with it. We have some easy stuff for beginners, and we have intermediate and advanced. We can pretty much teach any level, and even in one class that’s possible. We can always give people harder parts to play. One of the good things about the workshops is that you learn how to put a piece together, and often we might have our students perform with us that night. That’s usually a goal. We also put in a little meditation, talk a little about the spiritual parts of the drums, and tell people about ourselves.

Are you all still in Maine?

Actually, one person – Andrea Antognoni – lives in Colorado right now, and she comes up a couple of months a year. The rest of us still live in Maine.

Let’s talk about your live show. What should folks coming to Special Gifts expect next Saturday?

Well, it’s energizing, and uplifting, and happy, and fun.

Is it interactive at all? Any call and response with the audience?

Sometimes we do that. And with this gig, we’ll actually be ending the performance with a drum circle. That’s always a lot of fun. There are beautiful songs, too. We mix it up with songs people can dance to, and then songs where they can relax.

How do you research and discover traditional songs?

Well, every single one of us has studied with different African teachers. We learned probably ten or more songs from Mamma Tongue, but then we went to Montreal and studied with Yaya Diallo, and learned a whole bunch of stuff from Mali, and then we’ve been studying with Famoudou Konate and learning a whole bunch of Malinke rhythms. Annegret Baier – one of the women in our band – studied with him when she lived in Germany, then she’s been to Africa two or three times to study with him. She’s an incredible percussionist and soloist, and he honors her as one of his really good students. We were really lucky to get her, because she was the person who was a classical violinist, and she understands how to write music really well. She would just sit there and notate all these songs she was hearing. Some people have mixed opinions about writing it down. Africans don’t write their music down – you just have to go and remember it recorded. But Famoudou said to us last time that he really envies us that we can write it down, because he doesn’t want this music to be lost. In the US, the music is out there now, but when Inanna first started, we really had to search.

What else is on the horizon for the band?

We just put out our fifth recording, and it’s a live album from a Summer Solstice performance. That album really captured the energy that we get live versus in the studio. We would love to do more stuff, and we’re thinking of starting to travel a little bit. We’ve all had babies, and are raising kids, but we are feeling like it would be nice to get out and travel more. So hopefully that’s on the horizon. And always more recording – we have so many more songs to put out, it’s unbelievable.