Drummers occupy an uncomfortable niche in music; their place as instrumentalists is central to the sounds of popular music, and yet their status and work as musicians can be derided and understanding of their role and craft is often limited. Gareth Dylan Smith's book on being a drummer is therefore a very welcome text and a timely contribution to studies of popular music, in particular, the study of those that create it.

The subtitle of the book ‘Being and Becoming a Drummer’, no doubt drawing on Margaret Barrett's work (Reference Barrett2011, p. 259) points to a focus on musical identity and learning. The book's being part of this SEMPRE/Ashgate series also underlines the emphasis on the psycho-social element of playing – the experiences and meanings that are part of ‘being and becoming a drummer’. Gareth Dylan Smith is, in addition to being an academic, a drummer of some standing and the author draws considerably on his own experience in asking ‘What is it like to be a drummer?’ Over eight chapters, the book addresses this question through its exploration of musical identity, learning and practice, all framed tightly within the context of drumming.

The primary material for the book consists of quantitative and qualitative data – anonymised questionnaires completed by a random sample of drummers (100 responses in total) and semi-structured interviews with around 30 drummers. This material is supplemented to a considerable degree by Smith's own experiences of playing and teaching drums, as well as borrowing from biographies and autobiographical accounts from players in the public eye such as Bill Bruford (the British progressive rock and jazz drummer), Joey Kramer (of Aerosmith) and others.

The combination of conventional social science data with auto-experiential material and secondary texts makes for a rich blend when presenting analysis of these rather different reports about drumming, and some readers may find the sometimes highly personal tone in the writing difficult to reconcile with the accompanying research methodology. In many ways, however, Smith's personal insights and experiences add a depth to the writing, and on the whole he conveys the experience of drumming, drawn from these different sources, in a sensitive manner. It is especially welcome that the book gives a central role to the many drummers, those in the process of learning or earning a modest living, whose experience of drumming leads us beyond the world of the exceptional and the well known (and in this sense the book sits alongside texts by authors such as Harris Berger (1995) and Faulkner and Becker (2008) in presenting the quotidian in music-making). It is an achievement of the book that the author presents and makes sense of the accounts of many ordinary players.

The theoretical spine of the book hinges on Smith's developing his notion of the ‘Snowball Self’, a framework for thinking about identity, its formation and evolution through time, culture and space. Developing a relatively broad model of identity (even with the caveats that Smith supplies) is not an easy task and while aspects of this model seem useful in highlighting the relationships between playing an instrument and our developing our various senses of self (particularly the emphasis on the active nature of identity realisation), at times the detailed working of the model as a framework for identity formation seemed a little awkward. In particular, this applied to the relationship between self and others in the formation of identities. Given that Smith seems to make considerable use of constructionist ideas, the sense of identity conveyed here at times appeared strangely lacking the sense of identity as a social construct.

In the later chapters of the book, Smith approaches drummers' identities and experiences from quite specific lenses; in Chapter 5 (‘A part and yet apart’) he looks at the ways in which drummers view themselves as part of groups. Intriguing issues of role, leadership and control, temporality, groove and the relationship between soloing and accompanying are all discussed here in sufficient detail to give readers a sense of the complex musical (and social) terrain that contemporary drummers inhabit. In the final two chapters, prior to the conclusion of the book, the focus moves a little more towards macro-sociological territory with discussions of ethnicity/cultural heritage (Chapter 6) and the knotted relationship between gender, drumming and representation (Chapter 7). The examination of ethnicity and heritage works best when Smith looks at the relationship between playing within or outside different styles. Players' appropriation of feels and grooves and their successful incorporation (or not) of these into their own experience is not just about cultural politics – it is a central part of the embodied and affective dimension of playing, and this came over well. The chapter on gender and drumming also deals with issues of ‘whose drumming?’ The sexual politics of drumming and what constitutes an authentic voice for women on this particularly masculinised instrument reminds the reader of the way in which the drumming ‘community’ is anything but. When exploring some form of musical grouping as is being done in this book, there is always the danger of claiming a greater cohesion and collectivity than perhaps ever exists. Although Smith often points to the many differences between drummers, there is nevertheless a more or less tacit assumption in parts of the book that we can talk about drummers as a fairly unambiguous group. It was in Chapters 6 and 7 that the sense of a rather more variegated, conflicted world became more apparent.

To summarise, Gareth Dylan Smith has done an excellent job of presenting the world(s) of drummers and their identities to a broader public. While this reviewer had some issues with the theoretical framework, I am sure many readers will find this model of self to be thought provoking and, perhaps, in the minefield that is scholarly writing on identity, that is all that is required. Overall, this book does an admirable job of conveying the ways in which drummers work and play, practise and perform, and make sense of themselves through all the constituent parts of drumming.