Anya, age 19, says the color of her skin has been more of a problem than her sex, when it comes to drumming in her neighborhood.

I think I was in eighth grade, and I was living in Santa Cruz California at the time, and I got kicked out of my parents’ house and I ended up living with the Hare Krishnas, and they do a lot of drumming in their religious rituals. So it’s all very normal to me, to be drumming.

And then, after I started going to festivals and things like that, when I got a little bit older, I’d see a drum circle, and I’d want to be a part of it, and it just kind of pulls me in. I remember, the first one I went to, I ended up dancing from 11 o’clock at night till 8 in the morning. Back then I was drumming every once in a while, but I was mostly dancing … drumming and dancing, it’s pretty much the same thing.

Drumming is religious and spiritual, more than anything else. Some people go to a church on Sundays; I go to Central Park and drum on Sundays. I’m a fashion designer, and I’m in school for it, full time, and my real life is very different than what I do on Sundays. One time, I came out to the drum circle, and I was really stressed; I’d had a really rough week. So I was drumming and I started crying. I didn’t even notice it. Crying and sweating, I was completely drenched in liquid. It’s just like an outlet for everything.

Me being a female isn’t as much an obstacle as me being white, in certain circles. I live in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, and there, I can’t even go to a drum shop, because they will not give service, because I’m white. It’s an African community, in my neighborhood, and there’s a neighbor that heard me drumming one time, and he didn’t know who I was. So, he called my roomate, and he’s like, “Who was drumming at your house last night? I heard it through the wall, and it sounded amazing. I’d like to drum with that person.” And my roomate said, “Oh, it was Anya drumming,” and he’s like, “Oh, never mind.”