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Layne Redmond
Title: Drummer
Location: Salvador, Brazil
About Me:
I've moved to Salvador!! Not settled into my condo yet and back and forth to the states to work. However I'm totally excited about living in Salvador, which Time Magazine called the New Orleans of Brazil.
My life is dedicated to the frame drum – the world’s oldest known drum, played predominantly by women in the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean world. And the power the drum has to unify people from all states of consciousness.
Also newly immersed in filming and editing music videos, in particular on the Afro Brazilian traditions of the Orixas´. I spend much of my time traveling to Cyprus, Europe and Brazil and around the US teaching workshops and studying drumming and filming. Over and over again I see the great power rhythm has to unify and create powerful states of shared consciousness than can be used for personal and communal transformation.
I've been so profoundly moved by the music and rhythms of Bahia that I'm moving to Brazil on December 30 in time to begin the new year there. I believe Brazil has a great gift for us in terms of the powerful transformative rhythms that came out of the unspeakable suffering of slavery. After a day or unrelenting hard work in the brutal heat people would spend hours drumming and dancing deep into the night to sustain themselves, to reach into the very being of the sacred. Out of terrible misery and suffering, a most uplifted and joyous rhythmic music came into being.
Below are links to some of the projects I'm working on there:
Xango, God of Fire
And a new CD with my group, Sundaryalahari, in Salvador, Brazil,
Flowers of Fire: Sacred Chants and Rhythms of Candomble´
At this time my students and I are helping to support two children's drumming groups in the poorer neighborhoods of Mussarungi and Alagados:
For years I have been teaching women to play the frame drum again. Also men! My first group of women drummers performed on the sacred holidays (solstice, equinox, Mother's Day!) in New York. This was winter solstice, full moon eclipse, 1992.
This June I was in Cairo, Egypt where I filmed a powerful pre-Islamic healing ritual called the Zar in which women played the frame drum, sang and danced for three hours. It was unbelievable, I'm working on the video now. Even though I had qualms about being an American in Egypt at this time, I couldn't have been treated with more respect and kindness. It was incredibly heartening. This is a clip of a young Nubian percussionist I met, godson of the great Hamza El Din:
Mizo, Mohamed Gamal
On the same trip I worked and performed with a group of women from Cyprus along with Zohar Fresco, a great Israeli percussionist. Cyprus is the ancient birthplace of Aphrodite and her priestesses were renown frame drummers. Several years ago a group of dedicated women started bringing me and then eventually Zohar to teach them to drum again. We are hoping to create a ritual for Kyprogenea, the ancient Cypriot Born goddess in the ancient Roman amphitheater outside of Paphos next September. We are recording the music now, including the Ancient Hymn to the Muse, written in the second century AD by Mesomedes of Crete, sung by Laurel Masse´ and chanted in ancient Greek by the women on Cyprus.
Kyprogenea
Our latest project is working on The Book of the Bee Priestess, a book and internet site. Some of the new music made with recordings of bees is up on the
www.myspace.com/thebeepriestess
There's much more on my website, including my calendar of workshops and events:
www.LayneRedmond.com
Deep blessings, Layne
Member Since: Tuesday, February 21 2006
Last Visit: 74 days ago.
Profile Viewed: 4948 times (last viewed less than a minute ago)
Things layne Loves
Goals
- Master Final Cut Pro HD
- Learn Portuguese
- Direct a concert in Kourium, an ancient amphitheater on Cyprus
- To continue to bush hog the samskaras of my mind
