Beyond Woman With Cakes: The Spiritual Drumming of Layne Redmond is a 30-minute documentary inspired by the music and work of Layne Redmond and by her book, When The Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm.

 

Redmond spent a decade reconstructing the history of women’s relationship to the drum and exploring how the loss of women’s right to play the drum paralleled their loss of rights generally. She presents images of ancient figurines holding shallow circular objects to the chest that others have interpreted as simply “women with cakes.” She challenges this interpretation, hypothesizing that thousands of years ago women played drums and held positions of spiritual leadership.