10 Best Female Drummers Of All Time
4. Cindy Blackman Santana
Beginning her successful musical career busking on the streets of New York in the 80s, rock and jazz drummer Cindy Blackman Santana first got her hands on the drums at the age of seven when she saw a set at a friend’s house. After joining her school’s band and persuading her parents to get her a toy drumkit, the rest was history.
Like the others on this list, Santana’s passion for music is evident with every hit. Not only is she an outstanding solo artist (listen to her album Another Lifetime to see just what she’s capable of), she has also collaborated with some of the biggest names from the worlds of rock and jazz. These include – but in no way are limited to – Pharaoh Sanders, Bucketheat, Sam Rivers, Lenny Kravitz, who she played with for years and featured in the video for “Are You Gonna Go My Way”, and Carlos Santana, her husband.
If listening to her drumming is (somehow) not enough to convince you about her passion for music, then listening to one of her many interviews about what drumming means to her surely will.
To describe her as anything other than virtuosic is a wild understatement.