About the Movie | About Barbara Borden | About David Brown

About the Movie

Keeper of the Beat is a feature-length autobiographical documentary in which Barbara Borden, an acclaimed 62-year-old drummer, composer, teacher and peacemaker, tells her story in words and music.  Footage from She Dares to Drum, Barbara’s autobiographical “percussion play” which debuted in San Francisco in 1995, is used throughout the film as a performance narration. In excerpts from this play, Barbara provides dramatic accounts of her early drumming roots and developing career as a musician and performer while drumming on everything from her body to her first toy drum, pots and pans, a drumset and an array of ethnic drums and percussion instruments. Including interviews with a range of noted artists and thinkers, students, family and friends who know her and the social history of her times,Keeper of the Beat showcases the unfolding of Barbara’s identity as a world musician. Archival footage shows her career in performance, her leadership in drumming circles and peace and reconciliation projects, her teaching methods to bring drumming into all areas of life, and her exploration into the deeper cultural and ceremonial dimensions of drumming. Guided by Barbara's ongoing work to use drumming to raise joy and compassion, the film tells the fascinating story of a woman whose love of drumming and music gave her the courage to be her unique self and to find connectedness within a widening circle of communities throughout the world.

Born into a Jewish immigrant family, Barbara was the kid sister of the show business Borden Twins, who performed on TV shows from the 1950s through the ‘80s. Given a drumset by her sisters, Barbara soon established herself as a hotshot "girl drummer," performing at the Hollywood Bowl and in nightclubs in L.A. and San Francisco. Marriage and self-doubt led her to abandon her burgeoning career for "normal life." In the '70s, when the marriage ended, Barbara found herself at the center of the feminist cultural revolution as the drummer in a women's jazz band, Alive! After eight years of worldwide touring, her five-women musical family fell apart, and Barbara once again had to face the conflict between her love of drumming and her doubts about her ability to keep the beat on her own.

Since then, Barbara has become a citizen of the world, traveling and drumming in the former Yugoslavia in the midst of civil war and in Zimbabwe at a time of brutal dictatorship and economic collapse. To people in both countries, amid their suffering, Barbara brought joy with drumbeat diplomacy. In the United States she also expanded the circle of her connectedness. For a decade, Barbara has taught the art of drumming at The Redwoods, a retirement community, helping individuals emerge from their inner exile and express themselves among their peers. A timeless spiritual dimension of her art opened up when Barbara gave a heart-shaped drum that had been made especially for her to a woman drummer of the Suquamish tribe who had responded deeply to the call of the Heart Drum.

Using excerpts from She Dares to Drum combined with still photographs, archival films, and interviews, Keeper of the Beat chronicles Barbara’s path as "a different drummer.” In addition, ethnomusicologists and anthropologists shed light on an art form that may reach back to the origins of humanity itself: drumming as a unifying tool that can facilitate group harmony, greater fellowship, and personal transformation.