Marla Leigh’s music contains the magic of long additive cycles – mysterious, yet easy to follow when you move with them. This episode celebrates the wisdom of female drumming.

Marla continues the work of Layne Redmond (When the Drummers Were Women) and takes it to a whole new level. Her featured composition „Rhythms of Tof Miriam” goes back to the Exodus of the old testament: “Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine (called “Tof Miriam” or “Frame Drum”) in her hand, and all the women followed her with tambourines and dancing”. 

“In frame drumming we have a lot of ghost notes. So you can choose to play the ghost notes quietly or you can also choose to have space and rests.”

Watch it on YouTube:

Transcript of this Episode

REINHARD: Hi and welcome to episode 32 of my podcast. When I started to teach drums in 1980 I was surprised to see almost no female drummers on stage or on any drum classes. I don’t know if this was the result of a wrong education or the discouragement of some male macho drummers. What was clear to me is that this had to change. Men and women are different. That’s the beauty of polarity. And that means that women enrich us with a playing style that men cannot provide. That also explains why in ancient times in many shamanic traditions women always have been drummers. Today I am really honored to welcome a guest who is not only a great musician but also lives her drumming in a spiritual context. She is one of the few professional female frame drummers in the world today. She is a grammy-nominated percussionist and flautist and an internationally recognized educator, performer and composer.

Welcome Marla Leigh.

MARLA: Oh! So nice to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation and wow, what beautiful thing you just shared you know. It’s so true, it’s really true about the female drummers.

REINHARD: Yes! We’ll talk about this in length but first i’m really curious… How did frame drum and flute come into your life?

MARLA: Well, I had the blessing of growing up with a very musical family. So my great… I think it’s my great uncle was the violinist for the Zar. The story is that my great grandmother was a piano player, my father was an opera singer and a doctor. So music was very warmly welcomed and I actually started piano when I was a little girl. I started at three and then my sister played the clarinet and so she was older and I used to go to her concerts and I always see this silver thing and I was like “I want to play the flute”. So you know I started flute lessons, I think in fourth grade, and my flute teacher had really bad breath and so I couldn’t handle it and I quit. Then I decided that if I give my flute teacher mints at my lessons then I can continue with flute because I really like the flute. So I had a very classical upbringing with the flute and the piano. I was doing competitions and first chair, that whole thing with bands and orchestras and I really loved classical music and I also really wanted to improvise. And my teachers would never encourage that. They would say “okay, yeah, you can do that but let’s play the pieces”, which is it’s beautiful to play the classics and i’m so grateful for that. But then when my teachers would go I would just put the radio on and play along and improvise. And so then I decided to pursue music professionally. I thought I was going to be a music teacher and I was going to be like a jazz flautist. That was the kind of what I wanted to do. And I went to CalArts which is a wonderful school in California and literally the first month, like the second week of school, there’s this man sitting in the corner with all these really cool drums and like these sunglasses on. I didn’t know anything about who this man was or what these instruments were and I said “what are these?” and he goes “just sit down and listen”. And when he played I got the chills like you’ve never heard, like you’ve never seen, like you could see them from another country, they were so like “what is this?”. So I went up to this man afterwards and this man actually was John Bergamo and for those who do not know, John Bergamo was a legend. He was an incredible human first of all, and teacher, an incredible musician. He played with Zappa. He’s a really incredible… He was the head of percussion at CalArts and so his whole thing was improvising, taking Indian concepts and taking all these worldly concepts and improvising on the frame drum and other instruments. So he played a solo and I just got the chills and he said “well, you’re a student. Even though you’re a flute major, you can still study with me”. So then I started studying with John frame drum and then all of a sudden I started taking tabla lessons with Swapanda Chaudhuri. I started taking a way drumming lessons with the look zepco’s and all of a sudden like my flute curriculum kind of went smaller and smaller and I ended up getting a masters in percussion. I just completely fell in love and at that time I also met Glen Velez in my master’s degree and studied with him for over a decade. So I had no idea this was gonna happen but I just got the chills and it was just like a full body “yes” and i’m still a student. I still love learning. It’s like an amazing thing how you can just… It’s an endless journey.

REINHARD: And what you just said gives us a first hint – as I was researching all of your videos –  that you are really into improvisational music. That means you teach from the very beginning your students to improvise which I think is beautiful because there’s a lot of even tabla players that learn the khandas and relas and if you ask them to just improvise, play along, they don’t know what to do. So improvisation is really a big thing. Let’s go into what we are doing here. The first song, the first track we’re gonna hear is the Tof Miriam, it’s called Rhythms of Tof Miriam. And so, what is Tof? It’s of course a drum, the Daf, right? And Miriam was Aaron’s sister. Let me see if i’m right here. And Aaron and Moses let the Israelites out of Egypt and this was this opening of the red sea then. And here you have an exodus 1520. Then Miriam, the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took the tambourin called Tof Miriam or the frame drum in her hand and all the women followed her with tambourines and dancing. What a seed! So tell us a little bit… Your background of course is Israel and is all of that scene we just described. Tell us a little bit about how you came with this title and what it means for you, in your life and spiritually.

MARLA: Well, you just did a great job explaining the history. That was wonderful. So the frame drum has this incredible ancient lineage with women. It’s actually one of the only instruments that women played thousands of years ago and when we look at the history we see that they play them in different cultures and in the jewish culture it was known that Miriam the prophetess played the frame drum. Now I fell in love with the frame drum because of its timbre, and its sound, and its possibilities and the improvisation and the freedom. I had no idea about the history of women until I was probably six months of really hardcore into the study of this instrument. So when I found this out I was like “wow that’s amazing” and particularly with the jewish story because my name at birth is Miriam and I am jewish. And so when i’ve heard about the story and how they were in the desert, and Miriam was a prophetess and she sowed the future and… They’re going into the desert and “you’re going to bring your water, you’re going to bring your supplies”. But Miriam brought Tof, the frame drum, because she knew that the Israelites were going to be freed. Which I think is amazing. So at the moment when the red sea split, Miriam and the women celebrated with song and drum and dance. That’s just so powerful of what the instrument represents. It has this amazing symbolism for freedom and joy. And so I had always wanted to go to Israel to just go to this country. I’d been when I was 15 but because I’m a frame drummer, middle eastern music is like my beloved and there’s nothing like going to the source. So in 2019 I decided “that’s it, i’m going to”. I did a world tour – the longest tour I did – I played at Tamburi Mundi festival, actually in Germany and then I played in Italy and then I just did this tour in Europe and then I ended up in Israel. I didn’t know… I went to Israel to do a video honoring Miriam and the ancient women. It was called the Rhythms of Tof Mariam. That’s what I went there to do and I didn’t really know anybody in Israel. I met somebody at Tamburi Mundi who gave me recommendations of people to work with and I just ran with it and I connected with Noahm Yojaski who did the video and he totally got my vision and then I met Shahar Kaufman at Onyx studios and he totally was into the project, he was my engineer. And I just went for it and it was so positive that I ended up recording a full album when I was in Israel. I ended up having extra time in my schedule, the engineer had time in his schedule and it was like magic and I fundraised through my students and my fans and friends for the whole project. And we reached beyond the goal. So it was so amazing to step foot into the ancient lands and do this project honoring Miriam. I felt that when we went… We did a lot of the video footage in the Negev desert and I had been there before when I was 15 and I just loved the Negev desert. That’s where I first actually saw the frame drums. I actually snuck out of my tent and played frame drums with the bed ones and drank tea. So it was like stepping on these lands and like doing this offering honoring Miriam was like I got chills like all the time because it was like rebirth, “have I done this before?” and it was powerful. And then we had incredible people involved in the project. So in this song we had Yaer Dalal who was an incredible Udhist, Israeli Uds, incredible composer. He played on it and we had Mira Segal, an incredible Nay player. It was just so beautiful. And the music of the song is pretty complex and I was telling REINHARD:, I was telling you this in my emails too, that I really like these long time cycles and so this is a super duper long time cycle. But it’s broken into two sections. So the first section it’s kind of like a biblio drama of the story of Miriam. The first section is when they’re walking through the desert so we have some beautiful dancers that are in this video, Lavita and Zola and it’s like we’re walking through the desert and we’re like slaves in the desert. And then the second part is like the freedom and the red sea split and it’s more upbeat and so yeah, I mean, I could go down into like tell you the details of the time cycles of each section but maybe… I don’t know…

REINHARD: Well, is there any hint for our listeners that you can kind of…? Before we listen, how could they feel this cycle? Any hint from your side?

MARLA: No. Well, first when I composed it I really wanted it to be an 18 beat time cycle because it’s a very symbolic number in Judaism and I messed up. It wasn’t. I thought it was.

REINHARD: So what is it?

MARLA: Well, the first section it’s three nines and one eight.

REINHARD: Okay, wow, cool.

MARLA: So 27 plus 8 is 30… What is 27 plus 8? 35. Okay, and then the second section actually did stand true to the 18. Then there’s a break and it’s an obvious break, then we go into this heartbeat. And I feel like listeners could actually click more to the second section because it’s very…The numbers are very straightforward. It’s a five, five and a four and a four. So if anybody wants to count along that’s where I would encourage you to do it, it is in the second section. The first section is a little trickier you know. But I am going to create an online program where I’m going to teach this because I think people need to be fun.

REINHARD: I was just cracking up because if you have three nines and then an eight it’s kind of a rhythm in itself. Because there are the three nines that build the circle, there is another section, then you have another three nines so you can also look at not just as a 35 but as a three time nine plus one time eight. I love these big structures myself having studied in India so long. So I think our listeners are ready now to hear Tof Miriam. [Music]

Rhythms of Tof Miriam composed and performed by MARLA: Leigh. All right! What a powerful music that is. Now there is one Oud or string instrument…

MARLA: The Oud, yes, Yaer Dalal playing that.

REINHARD: And all the rest is just you?

MARLA: No. Mira Sagal is playing the nay, the flute. And then that’s me and I’m playing all the percussion.

REINHARD: Beautiful, beautiful! Now, of course you are teaching as well and I see you are teaching with a lot of passion which is so great. And you’re using of course the syllables that are like “dum tak ka” and so on that are usually for frame drums, different syllables for tabla or pakhawaj in north India and then you also went into solkkatu, which is again a south Indian drum language. How did you get into south Indian drum language?

MARLA: Well, when as a student at CalArts this was just like my upbringing and so John Bergamo was…John Bergamo… did you know John at all?

REINHARD: Yes!

MARLA: I had a feeling you did! So you know what a man he was. But he was really innovative for he spent a lot of years in India studying tabla and then he came back to America and he would use these vocalizations on his drumming, on his other types of drumming, whether it be playing a pot pan a frame drum, and so he really taught me a lot about using the vocalizations. And so did Glen Velez you know, I had a lot of training with him. And it’s a mixture because I don’t play it professionally but i’ve had 20 plus years of tabla lessons with Pani swap Chaudhary so i’m like a hidden tabla player who I use a lot of the language in my frame i’m playing and so it’s kind of like mixed together. But I really believe that the solkkatu system…So when I was learning solkkatu I was learning it from Privilar srinivasan at CalArts and also I studied with Suchi sankran and growing up being Westernly trained “one i a na two i a na three…” You know when I learned how to count four instead of one, two, three, four with the phrase for example “Takadimi” it was life-changing. Not only helped with my hand drumming but it helped in my classical flute playing. Helped in my flute playing, my piano playing, my improvisation…It was like this key that unlocked so many things especially when you’re thinking about improvising you know. When you’re thinking about improvising you don’t want to recite your head one, two, three, four like say you’re improvising in four.

REINHARD: You can’t, it’s impossible.

MARLA: Impossible… But it’s really fun when you improvise the solkkatu phrases, the “takadimi” and the different speeds that they teach you to recite the rhythms in, the triplet speeds… So it was amazing. You know how this work is in Indian music, it’s endless. So it’s like how can we take some just like tiny bits of the information from south Indian and north Indian music and infuse it into our playing?

REINHARD: Yes, and a lot of people always ask me well, is TaKeTiNa or are these syllables solkattu? So it’s not you know. I came to a very different conclusion with this. I was in India, in Delhi, and I was about to develop this body work TaKeTiNa and I had a teacher who met me there and I was asking “look there is syllables for tabla, syllables for dance, syllables for anything… is there not a general movement syllables?” He said “no, you have to find this”. This was Harish Johari in the Similar House in Delhi. So I laid on the bed and was just starting to go for a walk so if you say “ga ma la”, which is GaMaLa, it’s throat, lips and palate. So you have a three already going. Or you say “Ta Ke Ti Na”, you go like Ta, front, Ke, back Ti and up. So it’s more an orientation. Whereas solkkatu is more the drum language that you will apply on the mridangam or on the tabla. So it’s more an orientation language and then if we go in an improvisation we use improvisational syllables. For example if I do a five it’s like “Ga Ma La Ta Ki Ga Ma La Ta _ “. Then, “_chi ki di di bam ba tu re di _ chi ki di di bamba tu le ri”. So you have to kind of always two or three layers and so this is a little different system. How would you respond with your solkkatu let’s say?

MARLA: This is so cool. I loved hearing just like how you developed you know,  how the ga ma la ta ki. Because I’ve taken a few of your workshops, not with you, but the Ga Ma La Ta Ki was very cool. I remember that and it’s really nice to hear how it developed towards you. In five I would just keep the hand clapping and then I would just let my voice go like “ta ka…” I think all of these are phrases that we can play in the frame drum too which is really fun. And they’re not traditional phrases.

REINHARD: They’re like tabla. It sounds very much like tabla.

MARLA: It is tabla. A lot of it is tabla mixed with solkkatu. It’s kind of, it’s a middle thing.  But yeah those were tabla phrases, a lot of that were tabla phrases.

REINHARD: But of course this is so great to hear all the differences of the abundance of what this is.  Solkkatu and then you have the tabla phrases, pakhawaj phrases will be different again, mridangam phrases and yeah. So I was happy to explain to you that my system comes completely out of a different… Has nothing to do with an Indian origin or African origin.

MARLA: Amazing! It’s very cool. When you’re improvising what language are you using? You get Ga Ma La Ta Ka?

REINHARD: You have a couple of syllables that just give you the orientation that’s Ta Ke Ti Na, Mu San Ga La, Ga Ma La Ta Ki. They don’t change you know. They are the underlying matrix but then over this you can go like _para yete go go _ para yete gon go ba ba. ……… So you’re kind of sketched out.

Let’s go to this place where you are when I see you teaching drumming. That is a fantastic thing. I see you always keeping the basic pulse you know. So you teach your students as you said you’re keeping here the maintenance of the rhythm and you teach them to do that and then play the drum here. That’s very rare. I love that approach very much because a lot of people just try to play the rhythm and they don’t do any stepping or any you know basic underlying pulse which is the main thing that carries everything. So I really enjoyed you seeing how you teach on the videos that I’ve seen.

MARLA: That’s great. Yes. I run this frame drum academy online school and in all of my videos I’m really adamant about the metronome and keeping like a polyrhythm with your foot like bells or something like that. Because I think you’re right, it’s so important to have a reference point for the rhythm. And we could play rhythm and we think we’re in tempo, we think we’re playing it great and then we get with a metronome we’re like “oh my gosh, I am completely rushing”. And so it sinks the brain also when you have a reference point, when you play a rhythm as a polyrhythm with a metronome or foot bells, I think it’s a really good practice. And then of course you can add something to the other foot so then you’re really a rhythm machine you know.

REINHARD: Yes. Glen did this a lot. Like he puts a rattling one and then plays frames from here. I enjoyed playing with him. Now I think we’re ready for another beautiful piece of music from you. It’s called “Awakening”. It’s so up-to-date because I really feel, honestly, in the mess we are right now people are really waking up in big numbers like never before. I see a great awakening happening. Many might say “oh i’m so optimistic”. No! I really see it happening and before we hear I have to really give you a big compliment about how you record music. That’s amazing. When we start this you will see this is like the right echo and it wakes you up and it’s kind of amazing. Where did you record this? Also in Israel?

MARLA: Yes. So all the recording credits go to Shahar Kaufman from Onyx studios in Israel. It’s one thing as a musician to go into a studio and record but it’s another thing to go into a studio and record with somebody who actually knows how to record your specific instrument. So when I went into the studio he had all these mics set up particularly for the frame drum and I was like “oh my gosh, oh this is heaven”. So I feel like I was recorded like the frame drum princess and so we really spent a lot of time tuning the drums. Tuning was very important and you know, really sound was very important for this album and we had it mastered by an incredible person too. So yeah, and thank you for that because we really focused on the sound too, you know.

REINHARD: So here it is. “Awakening” [Music]

Awakening, composed and performed by MARLA: Leigh. What powerful music, wow! And turning from here actually to healing. I really feel that a big aspect of what music is for you is the healing aspect and we would really appreciate you telling us a little bit about the background. How you see it, how you applied, how you manifested?

MARLA: Well, I grew up, again you know, studying music. It was all I did. I just… I loved music. When you do it as a young child you don’t realize you’re doing it, you just do it. And then when I was in college it just was like I needed a spiritual connection to music. It was like I needed it to be more than just reading notes on a paper and so I started to just approach it in more of a spiritual way and I also became more spiritual in college with yoga and meditation and really taking that aspect important in my life. And drumming has been used for thousands of years as a spiritual tool but I’d never used it that way. I had only really focused on it as a scholastic way in college. And so it’s endless explorations as using the drum and music as a spiritual tool. And in my own personal life I’ve had a lot of people close to me pass away and the drum helps me so much. I think music is just, it’s your best friend. It’s like something that won’t ever be taken away from you. It’s something that’s always there for you.You can visit it at any time and you know it always lifts my spirits and I’m so grateful for that. I don’t know how the shamans were using the drums years ago but I do know that they were using it a long time ago and people have been using music for healing and work in that kind of manner thousands of years ago. So I think it’s more about tapping into it instead of just playing notes on a page. You really like… You can close your eyes and try to improvise something and then open your eyes and play the notes on the page. I think it’s just balancing. Balancing it is really important.

REINHARD: Have you ever tried to apply your playing to therapy in various settings?

MARLA: I have done workshops in healing centers. I’ve done tons of yoga in yoga studios. I have done for the elderly therapeutic workshops. But my passion is composing and teaching, teaching a holistic approach to drumming. Because some people go at it and they just think they have to play with the metronome and that’s it. But it’s so much more! I really like… I call my teaching like college level training with a spiritual twist. I think it’s important to infuse that in there or like taking a break when you’re learning something to just close your eyes and breathe or stretch your body.

REINHARD: What I find again interesting is… Our next tune is a very amazing tune. It’s “The Dawn of Truth”. And it is kind of recommended from you as… Lying on the floor, meditation kind of. And at this point I would recommend it for all our TaKeTiNa listeners… Because in TaKeTiNa when you do these processes you need to lay down and integrate otherwise you lose half of the effect. So that’s a beautiful way to being in shavasana on the floor and kind of get the integration. So this is the next thing. “Dawn of Truth”.

“The Dawn of Truth”. MARLA: Leigh! It’s fantastic music for shavasana like the asana where you lie on the floor, you open yourself up to here, to now, to listen. Wow. Can I ask you something? What is the significance of space, emptiness, stillness in music for you?

MARLA: Oh, music is the silence between the notes, right? It’s really important, it’s the ghost notes, it’s the ones we don’t hear, it’s the quiet ones. Very beautiful question. And I think it’s really important to add that into your practice and playing. Not just to play “brrrrrrrrr” but to give some space and to breathe with the music. You ever breathe when you play music [Laughter]. The flute teaches you about breathing and breath but the frame drum too because of its resonant sound you have the space that you can have… any instrument.

REINHARD: How do you convey this to your students? Like they listen to the background, to the stillness, to the inaudible movement underneath. How do you teach that? How do you convey that to your students?

MARLA: I have them do a lot of breathing when I have them play. Like I have them pause and like connect to their breath. How’s their jaws, the tense and then I have them… In frame drumming we have a lot of ghost notes. So you can choose to play the ghost notes quietly or you can also choose to have space and rests. So a lot of the material I write when I teach I don’t fill in everything. I always have rests and I teach them to internalize the rhythm because a lot of people have never played a drum before coming to me and they’re new to how to understand rhythm and so teaching them how to feel the beat, feel the pulse inside is really important. And then through that I feel like they learn to feel the space in music where it’s not just like “brrrrrrrrr”.  They’re feeling the pulse, they see there’s a rest and they pause. They’re also paying attention to their jaw and their breath and they are relaxed. So it’s like a little combo pack.

REINHARD: So you’re also teaching people who have never touched the drum! Okay! And you have a drum academy you said. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What is it about?

MARLA: I have a master’s degree in percussion and my dream was to be a professor. That’s kind of what I wanted to be. Composing my own music which I’ve been doing forever and being a teacher, a professor in a college. And so when I graduated I started looking for jobs and all of the jobs I found they wanted you to play not just world music, they wanted you to do classical western percussion and I don’t have that training. And so I was like “Man I have so much I want to teach”. Then I decided to do my own academy and it was going to be first like educational dvd’s and then I just took it online. About five years ago I started this academy. And we have two programs now. A frame drum 101 which is a beginner level and a frame drum 202. And they’re like four-month journeys where we learn how to play the frame drum and all three styles. And then we have a module dedicated to composing and improvisation which I really like. So I teach them a lot of the solkattu. And it’s quite amazing what people can learn online and I love the community that’s formed of this. Like people have joined us from all over the world. I think I’ve graduated now over 800 students and then I have over about 3000 students in my programs that are not paid. So it’s a really sweet community and people are posting videos of themselves teaching and that makes me so happy. Or when they do an improvisation or like they have a tear in their eye that they’ve just played their first groove solo they’ve never done that before. It’s powerful. It’s really powerful medicine and I’m so grateful. One of my students actually, this Awakening song that you played, she loved it so much she made a video of herself playing it. Like she learned these parts and I was like “oh my gosh” you know. And I work with Cooperman frame drums there, I endorse their drums. I have signature series with them. And we have this challenge and so I don’t know about you, but I like to have challenges for my students and so in my academy we have the “share the drum” challenge and what they have to do there is they have to make a video of themselves playing something, anything, okay?. And I like to encourage them to compose something. Because they make this video I get to put it online. So they have to come out of the drum closet. And I choose a raffle winner and they get a Cooperman drum. And so it’s really great to see a lot of people who have never played a drum before who are shy come out and play a rhythm that they compose. It’s great, it’s really special.

REINHARD: Congrats to all of that and I can confirm in the last year that I was locked in here more or less… I mean we’re not locked in because we are in the middle of nature and there’s a huge garden and pond and everything so we never felt this pressure. But we started this whole online teaching and I didn’t expect how deep you can go in that. You can do a lot online. So I can really imagine how you teach that and yes, challenge, that’s great because people now get more confident, go out, show themselves. And so for the last song I chose “Longing” because I believe in this grand awakening where we are, you need a deep longing for the spiritual connection, you need the deep longing for love, for all these good elements to come into our life, for everyone you know. So, “Longing” [Music]

“Longing” by MARLA: Leigh. Well, thank you so much for sharing so much of your name.

MARLA: I would love to share a few things about this song “Longing”. 

REINHARD: Yes, please, of course.

MARLA: So “Longing” was really special. It actually features a rhythm, a traditional rhythm called the Zarfat rhythm and it is a 13 beat rhythm. And when I heard that rhythm I just fell in love with it and then my producer, the person who recorded the album, came up with this beautiful melody and the instrument you’re hearing there, you’re hearing a Mandolin. The mandolin is the Loud-like instrument, the string instrument. And then you’re hearing a Comanche. We had a beautiful Comanche player come in. And it’s a really beautiful track. And we actually have a music video coming out for this in a few months. So there’s going to be a video with this coming soon.

REINHARD: Cool, wow!

MARLA: People can learn to play along with. Those of you guys interested.

REINHARD: Thank you so much for this information. And with all of that you kind of promised to do something for us, live!

MARLA: Do you want that? Would you like that?

REINHARD: I would, I would love it. Come on! You know this is a podcast where people see live sings and whatever you want to do… You can sing, you can drum, whatever.

MARLA: I want to try this thing but you know, you just had like amazing exquisite recording and now you’re going to have like live… Okay. Let me just put some powder on my hands and then…

REINHARD: Yes it’s live!

MARLA: Okay, here we go. I am going to do something that i’m still working on. So this is like… I’ve been fascinated with looping for like over 20 years and I’ve never really focused on it and sometimes you think you’re doing a loop in a time cycle and then you’re doing it live and then it’s in the wrong time cycle and you have to just go with it. So it’s kind of like…. But I really like the beauty as you’ve heard in my music of layering drums. Layering you know, so this allows me to do that.

REINHARD: So we’re excited, we’re excited to hear you.

MARLA: Me too!

(MUSIC)

REINHARD: Wow! Wow! Thank you so much. This was a real special treat. Thank you for the courage, I mean to do all this fancy looping. Wow! For me, I felt the 15 or…

MARLA: It was three fours and then a six. No, then a three. So it was three fours and a three. Did you get with that 15?

Yeah I had the rhythms in my head but I didn’t count it out. I didn’t do the math. But yeah, again, I love these long time cycles you know. It’s just so fun.

REINHARD: Beautiful rhythms. Really beautiful rhythms. MARLA:, thank you so much. Beyond belief you know you really went to the very edge. That’s very daring. People will just really love what they see. So for now we are actually ending our episode with deep gratitude to you, with a little bit of my last symphonic music that I composed together with Johnny also.

MARLA: Wow!

REINHARD: Yes! It’s called “Space Beyond Space”. MARLA:, where can people find you on the net?

MARLA: Well, www.MARLA:leigh.com and my academy is called Frame Drum Academy and you can purchase my album there. If you guys like what you heard you can come and drum with me if you want to learn to drum…

REINHARD: Please check her out. It’s really unique. I’m still really blown away by that you take the courage to do this online you know like… Not just hiding behind fancy recordings but really getting out. Thank you so much for that.

MARLA: Gotta live passionately and you’ve got to take risks you know. It’s like life is short.

REINHARD: So thank you again for all this abundance. And you listeners thank you for following us all this way. If you like my podcast you go please to www.powerofrhythm.com/podcast, leave a comment or suggest another guest that you want to hear and I’ll do my best to make it happen. For now please digest this, please let it resonate into a new beautiful future for all of us, have a great day and keep on growing.

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Please leave a comment below, and let me know what you think!
I’m curious about your sharings, thoughts and feedback.

Thanks, Reinhard

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