Miriam’s beat: From Exodus to modern Israel, women reclaim rhythm and resilience

Drumming for the vast majority of rock fans, no doubt, is generally associated with a brawny exclusively male pursuit. Many of the instrumentalists in question perform kitted out in something less than sartorial elegance, complete with sleeveless tops with exposed bulging sinewy arms blatantly conveying that message to fans.

But percussion is a much broader, multifarious field of musical endeavor. It is not confined to expending calories of energy and producing hefty wattage and decibel levels. And it is not the sole domain of men. The proof is there for the taking, all the way back to biblical times.

It was a moment for spontaneous celebration and thanksgiving for a miraculous escape from Pharaoh’s formidable galloping army. And it was a woman who instigated the joyous outpouring.

“Miriam, the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women came out after her with timbrels and with dances,” the Good Book tells us.

In Hebrew, one should point out, the tambourine is called “Miriam’s drum.”

ZOHAR FRESCO knows more than most about that line of rhythmic and tonal endeavor. The internationally acclaimed percussionist has a learned professional handle on putting out deftly crafted lines that underscore vocal and other instrumental sounds, as well as leading from the front himself, and in the company of like-minded colleagues.

In between touring the world with the likes of celebrated vocalist Achinoam Nini – known globally as Noa – he has worked with purveyors of ethnic music, and others from a broad swath of cultural and stylistic areas.

Fresco, who has been performing and recording for over 30 years, was alert to the feminine side that is intrinsic to percussion and, in particular, frame drums from an early age.

“I have been working with a women’s circle called Pe’imat Miriam (“Miriam’s Beat”) for 15 years. The lineup changes, but there are some who have been there since the beginning. I connected with frame drums when I was young. At some stage, I realized that they were Miriam’s drum. I researched the whole field from a cultural point of view.”

He had his work cut out for him. “That was back in the 1980s and 1990s. No one engaged in that, and there was no Internet yet. I listened to a lot of Middle Eastern music – Persian, Turkish, and others. I sought out people who had made aliyah from other parts of the Middle East who played music – Iraqi, Moroccan, and Indian. I played with that, and combined different techniques in my playing.”

Over time Fresco, who has Turkish roots, grasped the strong bond between frame drums and his own background.

“I understood that this drum belongs to the Jewish people, not exclusively. Of course, it is mentioned in the Bible.”

He cemented that important piece of information in a song he wrote titled “Miriam the Moabite.”

Before long, he made a couple of important connections which led him further down the female percussive path. American Grammy Award-winning percussionist, vocalist, and composer Glen Velez was a big help.

“Glen introduced me to an important figure in the global female percussionist arena, Layne Redmond. She had a women’s group in Cyprus. She contracted cancer and called me and said I was the right person to continue her work. The penny dropped.”

Fresco got himself across the Mediterranean to work with the women’s circle there and returned home fired up to take a similar step here in Israel. Pe’imat Miriam came into being and performed music written by Fresco.

“I wrote music which they sang and played, and now I am arranging for the group to do some shows.”

Indeed, if somehow at some stage of the next few weeks, the powers that be decide to stop this current round of violence and some degree of normalcy is restored, Fresco and his sisters in percussive arms will take the stage at Confederation House in Jerusalem for a gig on April 25.

Yet another great reason for ceasing fire.

In fact, I recall seeing the respected mentor lead his female disciples perform at the Israel Museum some years back. Apparently, my memory still serves. “Yes that’s right,” Fresco confirmed. “That was quite a while back, and we’re going to get back to that and go into a recording studio.”

If that show at the museum is anything to go by, we should be in for some captivating, stirring stuff.

It is, said Fresco, only a natural turn of events. “This means that women are returning to tambourines – Miriam’s drums – returning to the source because that is the way it used to be.”

The venture has become a lifework for Fresco. “I am really happy this is happening, that we are getting back to this. This is my ideology. I have no other interest than to restore this to the Jewish culture.”

As a kid attending Torah classes, I remember being verily stunned by the post-Red Sea crossing episode when suddenly a female figure, Miriam, takes the initiative and leads the celebrations.

Many decades on, I wonder whether that indicates that producing percussive sounds is an intrinsically female activity.

Or, put it into even more contemporary terms, email or any means of social media.

“They used them to convey messages to each other. Women generally stayed closed to home, while the men went out to hunt or fight, or some other kind of work. So women would send out messages such as announcing weddings, the start of Shabbat or chag, or send out distress calls if there was, say, a storm or a war approaching.”

However, Miriam’s drum – basically many sorts of frame drums – fell in the popularity stakes over time. Perhaps humankind gradually came up with more efficient means for passing on information. But, Fresco stated, Jewish women kept on pounding their drums unabated.

“It is only in Jewish culture that women teachers use this phenomenon to this very day. It is only the teachers, in schools and kindergartens, who sustained this tradition and, again, as a means of communication – to call the children back inside, to do all sort of things.”

This wasn’t an act of music-making. “They didn’t play music. They moved the drums in such a way as to produce a particular sound.”

Traditionally, there has always been a liturgical side to female percussion. “Women would gather together, to chant prayers, accompanied by tambourines,” Fresco explained. That, presumably, connects smoothly with the Red Sea event.

He added that the ritual was a lot different several millennia back. “Women would get together in prayer and chant and dance – women only.”

Fresco has a different take on it. “Meholot is a percussion instrument – actually bells.” The percussion-related linguistic plot thickens.

Mahol – “the dance” – was spawned by the bells [of the same name]. Women played the bells, cymbals, and when they were added to the drum [thus creating the tambourine], there was no need for mahol as bells anymore, and mahol became dance. “That is a fascinating morsel of information,” he said.

WITH ALL due respect to the maestro, it was time to hear from the more pertinent distaff side of the gender spread. Shir Lev has been drumming and singing away under Fresco’s tutelage for a full decade. Her percussive endeavor is underscored by prior instrumental experience, and she clearly subscribes to the idea of producing rhythmic sounds and textures on frame drums as pertaining more to the female side.

“I feel that connection [as a woman to frame drums]. I played piano and saxophone, and I gradually gravitated to the world of drumming and singing. I feel there is something of an almost redemptive element to women who drum together in harmony. When we work with Zohar, there is the power of the unison. Everyone plays the same thing together. That’s the main thing.”

Lev homed in on the thematic biblical passage and said her enduring work with Fresco ticks several core boxes of personal credo. “I grew up in a very religious home, but today I am in a very different place vis-à-vis religion. I want to relate the [biblical] stories in a different way, to place less emphasis on the technical details and look to the heart.”

Considering her married name Lev, which translates as “heart,” that seems like a neat titular and philosophical arrangement.

That immersive line of thought naturally comes into play with the prophetess’s demonstrative exuberance on the northern side of the Red Sea.

“To understand Miriam in depth, for example not only during the Exodus but also beforehand, you have to appreciate her ability to see far, the part inside us that believes things will be all right, the part that knows that there is a war now but it will end. There is the place that tells us, ‘Prepare your drums because things will work out, we will sing, we will celebrate.’”

Now that’s a notion we could all do with taking on board these grim days. “I am very connected with Miriam in that respect,” Lev said. “She holds her drum and, through that, she holds great optimism.”

I asked Lev, as a representative of the gender in question, why she thought it was Miriam, a woman, who instigated the celebrations. “I feel that there is something about women that connects more powerfully with the spiritual side, while men have taken on the roles connected with the soil and physical labor. From that perspective, it is sometimes hard to believe that things will be well in the end. You need to take a higher overview of the situation. That’s something that women possess,” she stated.

There’s a Zen aspect to the Lev percussion-channeled take which, she said, is all the more important right now.

“For me, drumming and being in Pe’imat Miriam help me express myself more fully. If you pick up a drum, that can help you find a way to your inner freedom. And especially these days, when, as it were, reality tells you you’re constrained and that there is no freedom; but you can choose at this very moment to pick up a drum and sing, and to feel there is life at this very moment. You don’t have to wait for the war to be over.”

Interestingly she, like Lev, followed a meandering instrumental course before settling on drums. “I played on all sorts of instruments as a child and teenager – piano, guitar, and others. But I felt that I always had to follow the rules. There are notes, the melody and the rhythm, and I had to practice and prove my capabilities every week at my lessons. It made me wary of disappointing the teacher and myself. I felt I couldn’t express myself,” she recounted.

A trip down south, to a part of the world the Israelites got to know well, sparked the sorely needed epiphany and the springboard to her musical and personal deliverance. “I discovered the drum in Sinai from a very intuitive part of me. I started playing a darbouka at some jam session.”

Encouragement was there from the off. “The feedback I got from the Bedouin and others there affirmed that I blend in well, and I have a good sense of rhythm.”

She never looked back.

Like Lev, Meyuhas believed it was not just a matter of serendipity that it was Miriam who took the lead in expressing gratitude and joy. “A man would probably have moved forward on a camel, with a burning torch or some weapon, while a woman, with her voice, her singing, expresses something more tender, something that unites the tribe.”

Miriam, Meyuhas said, knew what instrument to employ to achieve that. “The drum is something that brings people together. It creates rhythm. It’s the heartbeat, and it’s emotion.”

PERHAPS THE former also leads us to a feminine connection. Naturally, we all have a heartbeat, but pregnant women actually host another living being, with a growing beating heart, for several months.

All that, for Meyuhas, brings us back to the wise and sensitive biblical prophetess. “We can drum slowly, with a rhythm that unites us in a meditative state of mind that is more relaxed and grounded. And we can drum fast together to reach a state of ecstasy or generate a link to higher spheres. I believe that, according to the biblical story, in that situation [by the Red Sea] there were both, possibly mainly ecstasy and great joy.”

There are, apparently, some scientific grounds for claiming the essentially feminine core of the frame drum. Meyuhas cited a couple of sources with whom Fresco is well acquainted.

“Layne Redmond researched the frame drum together with Glen Velez. In the late 1970s to early 1980s, they researched the subject and redesigned the frame drum. They made it more accessible to the general public. It hadn’t been played the way it is today for many years. Layne said that the frame drum is entirely female in essence. Her research work showed her that it was women who took the frame drum to hand. It is round; it symbolizes the moon, which symbolizes the woman’s cyclical rhythm. And there is woman’s bond with the ground and nature. And there are the rhythms and taking them to a more dynamic place in the music. They [women] revived ancient technique and knowledge.”

By now, I had fully imbibed the idea of the frame drum acting as a catalyst for optimism and instilling us all with hope for a better tomorrow.

Meyuhas gave that sentiment yet another considered push in the desired direction, yet again with reference to women’s role in that encouraging pursuit.

“At jam sessions, for example, women always take a step back – I know that from myself, too. But I have seen, primarily over the last four or five years, there is a powerful call for women to lead from the front.

“The frame drum is such an intuitive, primitive instrument, it is so easy to make some sort of sound with it. And as soon as it becomes a group activity, that gives you strength and security. It releases inner joy that, possibly, on a deeper level, was repressed for generations. Today there is a lot of demand for women who play frame drums, much more than on other drums.”

Now that has to be good news and proffers several glimmers of hope in these dark times.