Rhythm Revelations Concert Series: Cathy LaManna Combo

Cathy LaManna recalls how she started banging on pots and pans when she was 8 years old. By the time she was 10, she had a kit and was playing along with her mother’s Hammond organ.

“It’s just not a common thing,” LaManna once told an interviewer. “Usually when a woman shows up with a band of all guys, people automatically assume she’s going to be the singer."

LaManna, for one, attributes the some of the misconceptions about female drummers to social taboos.

“Girls are supposed to play the flute or the clarinet,” she said. “Drums are for boys who just want to bang on things. It’s not very ‘lady-like.’”

LaManna now plays with a number of local artists, from Joe Whiting to Donna Colton, and teaches drum lessons at Subcat Studios. Despite the apparent lack of female drummers, she says most of her students are girls, ranging from age 9 to age 40.

Cathy is a graduate of the presitigious Berklee School of Music.

This project is a collaboration with Liverpool Is The Place Concert Committee and is made possible through the CNY Arts Grants for Regional Arts and Cultural Engagement regrant program thanks to a New York State Senate Initiative supported by the NYS Legislature, the Office of the Governor and administered by the New York State Council on the Arts.