When you ask ten-year-old drummer Jamie Parker about gender stereotypes you get the pre-adolescent blank stare that says ?why on earth a girl play the drums??

Times are changing. It used to be that the drums were a male instrument, but today, more and more females are taking up drumming, although many Bermuda drumming classes are still predominantly male.

Upstairs in the school, Jamie explained the set-up. She pointed to three drum sets against a backwall. ?That one you wouldn?t want to play, and I play that one over there in the corner.? She aimed a drum stick at a white set of drums: ?Nobody plays those, only Mr. Ming.?

Meanwhile, a younger boy banged away silently on an electronic practice pad.

?You should hear this,? he said.

Jamie went over and slipped on headphones. Her head bobbed to the beat for a moment. ?Yeah, that?s great,? she said. ?Now let me play.? She took up to the sticks and whacked away, with her own unique rhythm.

Mr. Ming arrived and shooed the boy away.

?This is not your time,? he said sternly. ?This interview is for the girls.?

A squirming Jamie was quickly told to keep still. Sit down. Behave. It was pretty clear that Mr. Ming was master of this castle.

His students spoke of him with the utmost respect and a good deal of gratitude that he was teaching them to play.

?He has taught me a lot,? said Jamie. ?When my father first set my drums up, I was stumbling, and then Mr. Ming came.?

Jamie used to take lessons on weekends, but now goes to the school three times during the week.

?I still remember the first thing Mr. Ming taught me,? said Jamie, proudly demonstrated on the drums a number that sounded complicated to the untrained ear.

?It wasn?t difficult learning how to play. He started off showing me how to play what I just showed you. Then, after I learned some other stuff he showed me, we had a long music camp. The Government schools were off, so my father said I could come here.?

Jamie, a student at Star Academy, first fell in love with the drums when she saw a set in a store in the United States.

?When I was little I was looking through the stores and I got interested in the drums,? she said. ?I asked my daddy if he would get me some drums. He said sure. So he bought them and shipped them back to Bermuda. So now I have a drum set at home. My father looked in the telephone book and found Mr. Ming?s school listed.?

Although Jamie is lucky enough not to know about gender barriers, some of Mr. Ming?s older female students are much more aware of them.

Jennifer Martin, who is taking drumming and percussion lessons, said she always wanted to play the drums as a child, but was gently channelled towards other instruments considered more lady-like.

?I don?t know if it was due to financial reasons or my parents didn?t want their little girl to be a drummer,? said Miss Martin who is from Winnipeg, Canada. ?When I came here, I thought, you have all this time on your hands; if you don?t do it now, you?ll never do it.?

Miss Martin works for Conyers Dill & Pearman. Like Jamie?s father, she found Mr. Ming in the yellow pages.

?It was Friday,? she said. ?I told him I wanted to play the drums. He said come in on Sunday. That was it. It happened really fast.?

Now she comes to the drum school three times a week to practice and spends about two or three hours per session.

Mr. Ming has a way of finding new students; he met student Tamiko Black on the street in Hamilton.

?I have been tinkering with percussion for about 11 years,? said Miss Black. ?It was one of those things I thought would be nice to do. I had the time, and I am single with no children. I met Eddy on the street one day.?

Miss Black remembered Mr. Ming from the days when she took clarinet lessons at the Jackson School of Music where he teaches music.

?For years, I would just see him and say hello,? she said. ?Then a few years ago I met him on the street and we had a conversation. I work at TeleBermuda International Limited; I had just moved to St. David?s and he had just begun to set up his studio in St. George?s so it was convenient for me. I could practice straight after work.?

She said she greatly enjoys using the drums to play with people?s gender stereotypes.

?I would say people typically don?t expect a woman to play,? she said. ?What I enjoy doing is dressing up really feminine and then hitting the drums.?

For Miss Black, playing the drums is a spiritual thing that allows her to bring something special to her Salvation Army church community.

?I play with the Salvation Army in church every other Sunday,? she said. ?It is a wonderful experience. It is making music. It is important that I can connect with the people, because it is not just me playing on my own and doing my own little rhythm, it is actually connecting with the people and helping them to spiritually uplift the name of the Lord. It is really important.?

It used to be that if Miss Black?s church wanted to hold an all women?s conference with music and singing, they had to have a man in to handle the drums. All that is no more. The women?s conference is finally all women, thanks to Miss Black?s drumming lessons.

Diana Raynor was inspired to take drumming lessons by her son.

?What got me involved was that I signed my son up for drumming lessons,? she said. ?Mr. Ming saw that I was interested too and he said, ?join my group?. I play percussion with the group. He teaches me grooves and things like that.?

But the women said their aim wasn?t necessarily to form a band, but simply to get better and to enjoy the music.

?Everybody asks us if we want to start a band,? said Miss Black. ?This is not necessarily about forming our own band, it?s about getting better each time we play and feeling more confident when we have the opportunity to play. I enjoy getting the fills and learning how to really work them. There is a lot to learn. Eddy practices day in and day out and he?s been playing for years. There is always something to work towards. Even with the Congo there are different patterns that you never really perfect.?

Miss Black said she was really happy to have learned to read music from Mr. Ming.

?When I met Eddy the first thing I told him was that I wanted to learn how to read the music,? she said. ?In the Salvation Army the drum has a part that you have to be able to read. That is one thing that Eddy has been able to do ? teach me how to read music for the drum set and for the Congo.?

Ms Raynor said to attract more girls to the instrument, there has to be greater awareness:

?They have to see other female drummers,? she said.

Miss Black said she hoped that other girls would see her and be inspired to also take up drumming.

?Girls are always coming up to me and saying, that looks really cool,? she said. ?They?re mesmerised really, and it is great to see their minds opening to the opportunities that are there.?