Dede Alder

Dede Alder began her music studies in the fifth grade, as a member of her school's band. Her interest in percussion led her to study ethnic and hand drumming. During high school at TC Central, she started her own percussion business, "Rhythmic Adventures." Dede received her Associate's Degree in Music at Northwestern Michigan College and later studied African Drum and Dance with Titos Sompa and Cheikh Thiam. She studied world percussion through Layne Redmond, Judy Piazza, the North American Frame Drum Association, and in Ireland and Hawaii. She has studied classical percussion with David Warne (Sun Radius Music), John Alfieri (Interlochen), and Gwendolyn Burgett Thrasher (MSU). She attended Interlochen's adult band camp in 2006 and 2007 and has performed at Interlochen's Korson Auditorium on several other occasions. Dede has just added Drumset to her list of musical itinerary with a new teal blue Tama GrandStar.

Dede has attended workshops on Health Rhythms Empowerment Drumming, Facilitators Playshop Skill Training, and Drum Circle Music. She has played with many bands of different genres and is an experienced studio musician. Children and adults alike are continually delighted and mesmerized by her teaching and performance possibilities. Dede also has been developing her dance skills over the past years and is a talented dance performer in the styles of bellydance, tribal bellydance, partner, modern, and improv.

Jean Brereton

Jean got her first drum in 1989. She says: “While the power of the drum called to me, it also frightened me.” But inspired by words of ecofeminist/activist, Starhawk: ‘Where there is fear, there is power’, Jean stuck with it and came to understand the drum as a sacred tool for healing, for empowering women & for building community. As writer/poet/activist, Audre Lorde wrote: 'When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.'

Jean absolutely loves teaching beginners! She has facilitated recreational drum circles and taught workshops in schools, camps, conferences, & longterm care residences since the mid 90s. For 10 years she taught courses on rhythm & drumming at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ontario. And for the past 20 years she has drummed for both “The Dances of Universal Peace” well as her community Kirtan chanting group. Jean has been a counseling & experiential astrologer for over 40 years.

Janice Edgar

Janice began her healing journey on the 'Red Road' in November 1996 at the Kumik, a traditional Anishnaabe Lodge located at Indigenous Service Canada's Head Office in Gatineau, following a mental breakthrough. She made her first Indigenous hand drum in 2009, at a workshop offered by Health Canada shortly after she began working as a Strategic Communications Officer with the federal department's First Nations and Inuit Health Branch and began learning the traditional songs and Teachings soon after. She has been a member of the Iskotew Lodge's Peace Flame drum circle since August 2009.

When Julie Vachon, facilitator of the Peace Flame drum circle and a Drum Camp facilitator, told her about Drum Camp, she was eager to attend. Since then, she has enjoyed supporting Julie with her workshops and was honoured when a proposal to facilitate colouring workshops that offered drum camp participants a chance to slow things down, be creative and go within, was accepted. She loves to colour and pairing her love of drumming with colouring offers a unique opportunity to give back. With heartfelt thanks to Julie Vachon for her friendship, guidance and ongoing support.

Karen Egoff

Karen Egoff is an internationally respected Reiki Master, Teacher and Practitioner. In addition to the incredible Healing Energy she manifests through Reiki, she is also a very accomplished Cranial-Sacral Practitioner, a technique she incorporates into most of her client’s sessions, with Reiki.

In addition to Karen’s energy work, she has been teaching and practicing yoga and meditation for 25+ years. She continues working with both of these modalities, including recently developing a Chakra Meditation Series covering the Seven Major Chakras.

Lori Fithian

Lori Fithian has been facilitating drum circles and leading workshops since 1998. She grew up in a musical family, starting out early banging on Tupperware as a toddler, tapping on 7-up bottles and an old set of bongos in family porch jams as a kid, playing the french horn in school – all before discovering the world of hand drumming and drum circling, around 1989.

A “folk” student of many different drum traditions: West African, Brazilian, Japanese, Cuban, Middle Eastern and more, she travels around Michigan with a van-load of all kinds of drums and percussion sharing her love for the universal groove that touches hearts and brings folks together in rhythm. She’ll try any musical instrument, and encourages others to get spontaneous, creative, silly and connected through music and all kinds of rhythmic expressions – drum, dance, voice, etc.

Jenn Foley

Jenn is crazy about the djembe! She believes that the djembe has an incredible power to heal, transform and energize, and she loves to share it with anyone who wants to learn. Jenn teaches kids and adults in all different settings – schools, camps, private classes, group classes, and even workshops in the workplace. She has taught private, semi-private and group lessons, as well as workshops at Deep River’s Art Camp and at schools in the Deep River area.

The first time she went to the Ontario Womyn’s Drum Camp she experienced the full energy that the djembe could give, and the sounds it could have when using West African technique…and she’s been hooked ever since. She bought a drum after her first day at camp, and even traveled to Guinea that winter to study at the source! Jenn loves to drum more and more every day, and jovially describes her relationship with the djembe as a “sickness”. That said, she is in no rush to cure her djembe fever!

Suzanne Grigg

Suzanne's love of music and performance began back in the 60's in the coffeehouse circuit. As part of a sweet trio, she played guitar, sang and 'tapped' on her tambourine for enthusiastic young people.

The 70's took her to her degrees then to the West Coast of Canada as a Physical Education Teacher, hiking teens up mountainsides to camp or ski, taking groups on canoe trips and creating a senior credit course in Dance, in many forms.

Upon her return to Southern Ontario, Suzanne created a successful business 'FITNESS AND HEALING....as you like it', offering One-on-one Training, Group Fitness Classes of various descriptions, Yoga and Children's Dance Classes.

The business and the land evolved over the years, feeding her spiritually and leading her toward more Yoga, Reiki Healing Work, Labyrinth Work and Meditation. The Labyrinth and Fire Circle were magical places to hold Women's Drum Circles and Drum Making Workshops.

It has been such an honour to have led our early morning and evening Yoga sessions here at Drum Camp for all of these 25 years or so. My years of work experience and my passion for flowing with others to a place of gratitude, peace and well-being are the perfect blend for leading 'AWAKEN THE DAY', a very gentle, stretching, relaxing way to work out those drumming kinks and to start the day feeling renewed. Note: no previous Yoga experience necessary.

Caroll Halford

Caroll Halford CLMC, Crone, grandmother, mother, sacred circle dance facilitator and Lebed Method of Movement & Healing. Weaver of dance & ritual to help build and strengthen community, celebrate birth, death & all the many milestones in between. Caroll has facilitated SCD at Drum Camp, Dance Camp, Red Tent, many different spiritual gatherings and facilitates a weekly dance group in London. Dance has been her teacher and continues to provide her with gifts beyond measure.

The dances she will bring will add a richness to the everyday whether alone or in group gatherings. We will dance for community, for joy, for healing and for finding the quiet space in the center of our being as we honour the sacred both in ourselves and in each other.

Queen Hollins

Queen is a visionary and holds sacred ancestral traditions while channeling Nu and tangible ways to apply these birth rites to our daily lives. She is creatress of ancestor’s daughters and ongoing young women’s rite of passage community empowerment movement, since 1999, located in Long Beach, California. This community movement encourages awareness of our oneness with all that is, self-empowerment and an inner knowing that we are infinite possibilities.

Queen teaches Nu Traditional Afrikan Dance Movement. She is visionary to a combination of ancient ancestral movements and modern concepts that fill each movement with intentions of physical, emotional balance and well being whereby self-empowerment via self expression unfolds harmony and the desired state of being.

Sheila Horrell

Sheila has been drumming for the last 30 years, ever since being introduced to the primal magic of the drum by master percussionist Ubaka Hill.

After studying percussion with various drummers here and internationally, she has been facilitating workshops and drum circles for many groups in Southwestern Ontario, including schools, universities, camps, nursing homes, conferences and agencies.

In addition to facilitating drumming, Sheila is also a member of percussion groups in London, including "The London Groove Collective", and sings and plays with WomenSpiritSong choir and Joyful Noise choir. Sheila is a proud volunteer at My Sister's Place, the Grand Theatre, the Women's Circle at Brescia, and Heart-Links, a small London NGO which walks in solidarity with a community of women and children in the desert regions of Northern Peru.

The experience of introducing new drummers to the ease and joy of music making with the drum has been a prime motivator for Sheila's continued success. There is nothing like witnessing someone relaxing into their own rhythm and having fun contributing to the music of the whole drumming community.

Elisha MacMillan

Elisha is a mixed-ancestry storyteller, dancer, sociologist and filmmaker. Embodied healing, inter-generational connection, communing with nature and envisioning equity are resonant threads woven through her community projects, movement retreats and online courses. Drum and dance medicine is essential to her work, an integral part of life for her ancestors from Jamaica, Scotland, Europe and West Africa. Info for Elisha's online and in-person workshops can be found at: www.drumanddancemedicine.com.

Kathleen McGriff-Powers (Mahasti)

Kathleen began dancing at age 4, with the usual ballet and tap and continued through college. After a break to have children, 13 years ago Kathleen attended a beginner’s belly dance class and fell in love with it. She decided to start formal training, and sought out classes and instructors that taught the classic Egyptian, as well as folkloric style. From there, Kathleen discovered American Tribal Style (ATS) and studied Carolena Nereccio of Fat Chance Belly Dance. Kathleen keeps current with both tribal and cabaret styles of belly dance through studying with master instructors such as Ranya Renee, Morocco, Dahlena, Elena Lentini, The Indigo, Zafira Dance Company and Ultra Gypsy as often as possible, and also conducts research of the history of Middle Eastern dance, music, and culture.

Kathleen first began performing with Folkloric Dance Studio. With two other womyn from that studio she formed Hip Chik Raks, a cabaret and ATS dance troupe. Today, Kathleen studies and performs with Kadri of Sol Vibes in Buffalo, New York. She is also one half of the belly dance duet Khyf.

Kathleen performs and studies all styles of belly dance from Classical Egyptian to World Fusion Tribal. She also enjoys performing and has a deep passion for African drumming and dance, Studying with masters like Ubaka Hill, Queen and Afia Walking Tree has done everything to enhance her appreciation of all dance and music.

Anna Melnikoff

Anna stumbled upon her first djembe in 1996 and was called to study traditional Mande drumming as a parallel learning path to her studies in advanced metaphysics, meditation and vibrational healing. Her love affair with traditional Mande polyrhythms led her to seek teachers in West Africa, and all over North America. After her first few years of intensive study, Anna began teaching djembe at York University, where she was the course director for the Mande Drum Ensemble for over 16 years. She remains an enthusiastic student of the djembe to this day, whenever the opportunity arises to learn from a master drummer, and is currently attempting to learn frame drums.

Committed to the djembe as a lifelong practice, Anna still teaches weekly classes out of her downtown studio. She is also an ordained minister and spiritual counselor, a certified teacher of meditation and elemental shamanism, and a certified Integration Coach for psychedelic-assisted healing, having worked with entheogens in a healing modality for over 30 years. Both drumming and psychedelic-assisted healing offer powerful ways of re-wiring the brain for healing trauma imprints, and for treating addiction, depression, anxiety and existential despair.

She's relentless in her commitment to accurately transmitting traditional djembe and dundun teaching to her students, with an emphasis on cultural reciprocity and a focus on decolonizing our extractive relationship with indigenous forms of knowledge and culture. As a teacher, she's gifted in her ability to translate traditional Mande musical and cultural concepts for Western students. Anna has been instrumental in planting the seeds of traditional djembe music in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond..

Tara Mhic Coinnigh

Tara is a voice coach, music teacher and international touring artist who specializes in vocal music of all genres, Bhakti yoga chanting and various percussion disciplines. Bodhrán was the first Instrument Tara learned at 4 years old, after voice, from her Gaelic family. She learned Sean Nós Singing and harp traditions indigenously, and loves to share the craft of celtic drumming style from this earthy bardic, social and simple perspective. She also has passion for sound medicine through frame and hand drumming, drone and gong devotional playing.

Terri Segal

Terri is an Expressive Arts Therapist, Facilitator, and Educator who is dedicated to sharing the therapeutic value of creative expression through Drumming and Expressive Arts workshops. For the past 10 years, Terri has studied and taught West African Drumming and World Percussion. She is a trained Expressive Arts Therapist and Drum Circle Facilitator. Terri participated in HealthRhythm’s Group Empowerment Drumming Facilitator Training Program, Village Music Facilitator Training Program, completed a three week West African Drum and Dance Intensive with Company Fore-Fote in Guinea, Africa, holds a BA Honors in English from McMaster University, and is a graduate of Expressive Arts Therapy at The C.R.E.A.T.E. Institute.

Through her business Rhythmic by Nature, Terri facilitates Drumming Programs at schools, social service agencies, and for small and large businesses for the purpose of teambuilding, wellness, recreation, and education.

Terri brings her gentle and affirming leadership skills to her empowering, resourceful, and community building workshops. She honors each participant’s unique gifts, is an empathetic role model, a good listener and an intuitive guide.

Julie Vachon

Julie Vachon is a woman of mixed ancestry who has overcome violence, addictions, anxiety, and depression through the help of many Elders, ceremonies, and therapy. The drum, that sacred heartbeat of Mother Earth, called to her and has helped Julie find her voice, connect with her ancestors and to grow spiritually. On a healing journey since 1995 she has developed a deep connection with Spirit, Water and Mother Earth, and continues to learn through ceremonies.

Through her life experiences Julie has become intuitive and compassionate to the needs of others. She is passionate about helping women find their voice and to heal, leading circles, and offering ceremonies. Julie brings authenticity and passion in all her interactions. She encourages others to experience the power of the drum and to connect with their emotional self. She uses many different tools for wellbeing; energy work, creative art therapy, drumming and singing. With love, laughter, and her strong connection with nature she lives the sacred teachings passed on by many Elders.

Afia Walking Tree

Afia Walking Tree, M.Ed. Jamaican-born and raised, internationally acclaimed percussionist and visionary facilitator. Afia blends her love for earth and drum into sustainable life-art practices. Her work is dedicated to authentic edutainment performances, lectures, coaching, and permaculture garden and landscape designs. She utilizes her passion for drum medicine to create artistic forums for dismantling gender, racial, and intersectional violence. Afia is an adjunct professor at California Institute for Integral Studies, Artist in Residence at African American Policy Forum, and One Billion Rising V-Day Jamaica representative. She hosts Drum and Dance Retreats in Jamaica, and looks travels across the country in her drum mobile bring sustainable transformations though drumming & permaculture to low income, black and brown families! Larissa Montfort and Mar Stevens (http://www.sistahsofthedrums.org) joins Afia for another stunning year. They have been in the MA Ajuba Nana Buruku Drum Legacy with Afia since 2002, first as students, drum activists, apprentices, and now share the medicine in communities of their own, spreading this joyous drum medicine.

Jeannine Welton

Jeannine believes that if you raise your vibration and frequency, you will emanate this out to the world and affect everyone that you come into contact with making the world a better place. You will walk away from one of her classes feeling lighter, rejuvenated and with the knowledge to help your body heal itself.

Jeannine is a RYT 200 receiving her training in Costa Rica through Awakened life School of Yoga in 2017. Recently she completed a Therapeutic Yin teacher training and more recently has become a Fascial bodywork coach with Human Garage. Jeannine also has many energy work practices such as Reiki that she likes to infuse into her gentle sessions. Jeannine also works hands on and online with people helping them to release traumas, past injuries, and improve mobility in their body.

Pele Yemaya

Pele Yemaya was formally trained in piano at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago Illinois from age 6-16. Beethoven soon became Boogie. In 1990, the tragic loss of her sister first made her give up on music. However, time passed and she was quietly led to the path of the drum. Unknowingly she let go of her thinking of never playing another note again, and learned to say “never say never”. Pele found herself intrigued with the rhythms of Ubaka Hill at Michfest in 1993, and this began her path with the drum with the 1st Drumsong Orchestra.

Over the last 21 years, Pele has studied with Ubaka Hill, Linda Thomas Jones, Edwinda Lee Tyler, Fatu, Deb Mc Gee (Ase’), Paloma (Repercussions), and Afia Walking Tree. She has had the pleasure of being a part of The Drumsong Orchestra on Ubaka Hill’s CDs Dance the Spiral Dance and ShapeShifters.

In 2008, she traveled to Roume, Guinea (Africa) to study drum and dance with Afia Walking Tree and M. Lamine ‘Dibo’ Camara, principle soloist for Les Ballets d’Afrique Noire de Mansour Gueye. During that time, she fell in love with drumming for traditional African dance, and has since become Queen’s lead drummer for Nu Traditional African Dance.

Over the past 21 years, Pele has not only studied djembe but has also learned rhythm with Dundun, Samban and Kenkeni drums and enjoys hosting local drum circles for the empowerment of womyn.