Holding Her Own Among All the Guys
by David Yaffe for The New York Times May 30, 1999

In 1964, the jazz critic Whitney Balliet theorized that women seldom made an impact as jazz instrumentalists because they lacked the physical strength necessary to blow on a horn or beat on the drums. But on a recent night at Tonic, a performance space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the drummer Susie Ibarra ferociously disproved Mr. Balliett's theory.

In a trio performance with the pianist Cooper-Moore and the violinist Charles Burnham, Ms. Ibarra deftly maneuvered from delicate brushwork to crashing rim-shots as the ensemble alternated between soft harmonies and sharp dissonance. Even the cushioned mallets could dull her insistent, inchoate rhythmic splashes. The band became so revved up during a spiritual tune that a tambourine flew from the stage onto the head of a nearby man (who, by the way, came back for more in the second set).

This act of inspired violence was part of a month long series, organized by Ms. Ibarra, featuring jazz ensembles led by women. After decades of exclusion-- with trailblazers like Mary Lou Williams proving to be the exception to the rule-- female instrumentalists like the violinist Regina Carter and the pianist Renee Rosness are finally scoring major label deals. Yet Ms. Ibarra's series still reminds us that there is still much to redress in what is perhaps the last art form to wake up to feminism. Even female bandleaders fail to level the playing field: Carla Bley, Maria Schnieder and Toshiko Akiyoshi have no other women in their ensembles. In a scene dominated by male critics and male instrumentalists, even many devoted jazz fans would have difficulty naming any female jazz drummers on the scene beyond the 28-year-old Ms. Ibarra.

" I was in London with the Ware quartet, and this guy who produced it was unfamiliar with female drummers, even through he puts together a great drum festival," Ms. Ibarra recalled. "When he saw my name, he somehow assumed I was a man! Then, when he saw the picture of the Ware quartet, he assumed that I was the pianist and that William Parker, the bassist, was the drummer. Then, even after I played, he told me that he was amazed that I could produce those sounds onstage."

Although Ms. Ibarra may seem anomalous, she is hardly the first female drummer in jazz. Fleetingly, Benny Goodman, Gil Evans, and Miles Davis used the female percussionists Dottie Dodgion, Sue Evans (no relation) and Marilyn Mazur, respectively. Nevertheless, female jazz drummers have traditionally been in short supply. Even the ostensibly female International Sweethearts of Rhythm had trouble finding a woman to sit at the set, and that was during World War II.

For her part, Ms. Ibarra's favorite drummers have been men: Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Billy Higgins, and her mentor Milford Graves, among others. :Growing up, I never had any female role models in music, but my mother was a strong role model in my life," Ms. Ibarra said. "She was very bright and entered medical school at age 16. When she went for an interview, they asked her why she wanted to go to school. The committee told her that they would rather accept a man with mediocre grades. She said: 'I have the grades. I want to go in.' And they couldn't do anything. She went in."

In the spirit of her mother's defiance, Ms. Ibarra followed a path with little precedent. After a year at Sarah Lawrence College, inspired by a Sun Ra gig, she embarked on the precarious life of the downtown musician, in which her sex added an even greater hurdle. "It's hard to be a musician, and it's hard to be a minority," she said. "I had already learned to adapt as a minority growing up in a small Filipino community in Houston, and I suppose I take on that attitude as a woman in jazz. When I came to New York, I didn't know anyone. It's hard to be totally alone and a woman on the jazz scene.

" But I know that I must have a strong love of music, because I had to go through a lot. Sometimes, professional musicians have either vibed me out or made passes at me. I tried to shrug it off, but it can be discouraging whether you have a teacher of a famous musician hitting on you."
This is nothing unusual, though "Many female jazz musicians have similar stories," she said. "Sometimes it can get you down, but for every tough situation I have had more situations with people who are way above that and are about the music."

Undaunted, Ms. Ibarra forged ahead with a style that is really a hybrid of many styles, a result of a scavenger hunt that has taken her from Asian Gong and Javanese Gamelan to Afro-Cuban, West African, be-bop and beyond. Having recently parted from the Ware quartet after three years ("It was time to move on," she said laconically), Ms. Ibarra is blissfully unsettled. In fact, a running motif that tied her Tonic trio performance and "Home Cookin'," her duo recording with tenor saxophonist Assif Tsahar was their dissatisfaction with fixed tempos, without the rhythmic anchor of a bass line. For Ms. Ibarra, space is the place.

Making her way through syncopated rhythms, Middle Eastern motifs, and blues feeling, Ms. Ibarra revels in the expanse between the beats. Just when you think she's never let up, she has the instinct to lay low. Whether she's banging a gong, caressing a thumb piano or riding the cymbals, her consistency is her restlessness.

Grounded in her rootlessness, Ms. Ibarra bristles at fixed definitions of music, just as she flinches at assumptions about gender. "People often misinterpret this music and think that 'free jazz' or 'free anything' is loud noise or coming from anger," she said. "But the music I play has emerged from 40 years of studied development, certainly in terms of drum conception. True 'freedom' can only come from discipline."

Working in an avant-garde scene that has traditionally attracted a select (but often fanatical) following, Ms. Ibarra must not only bring access to music often labeled inaccessible but also subvert traditional ideas of femininity. If she can pull it off, her series-- which also included the avant-garde keyboard doyennes Myra Melford and Andrea Parkins as well as the funk-driven trombonist Reut Regev-- could signal the beginnings of the jazz equivalent of alternative rock's Riot Grrrl phenomenon of the early 1990's.

" I think the question of feminine or masculine is relative to each individual anyway," she said. "When I play, it is about the music, not about the person. I recently had the great fortune to work with he composer-accordionist Pauline Oliveros. It was the first night of the series, and before the gig, we talked about some of the gender issues that this music naturally brings up. 'Music is music,' she said. 'It's society that puts these political issues out there. We're just trying to balance the equation.' I work with men 99 percent of the time, so I thought it would be nice to balance the equation a bit myself."