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women and music

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ruyi:

--- Quote from: KvP on 27 Feb 2011, 22:05 ---There's a lot of... I can't remember the name of it presently, I think it may be "tracking", but it's a term referring to the phenomenon of pushing people into areas of activity people are generally comfortable with (ex. men and women go into medicine, women become nurses and men become doctors, etc.) There's a fair bit of that in musical performance. Women play non-rock instruments usually as a supplement to a band - violin, cello, piano, synths, tambourine. Delicate instruments, pretty instruments, Not Serious instruments. Recently girl-group harmonizing is back in style so you'll see female vocalists playing the lead in that style. Back-up singing for a dude is fine too. As long as they stay within those strictures, you'll likely hear fewer complaints about their ability (though you'll probably hear about how the music itself is faggy). Within the traditional rock band, the cliche is the hot girl bassist, and I don't know where that started (Smashing Pumpkins?), but outside of that role it seems like women in rock are viewed as outliers notable for the fact that they are women playing rock music. That's not even touching pop music, which is widely hated even before gender gets into it.

--- End quote ---

This sounds similar to how, in the Western classical tradition, the position of the composer (i.e. the real author or creator of music) was stereotypically male, while it was only the position of performer (i.e. the vessel who had to be obedient to the composer) that allowed for females, so maybe that has some bearing on the roles men and women have in contemporary genres. The stuff that you've listed for girls, for instance, might be seen as decorative, as opposed to the stuff that you've noted for guys, which might be considered structural. Actually, I'm not sure if I really believe that this is the division that's operating here, since I think even my characterization of the relationship between composer and performer oversimplifies things a bit much, but it might be a useful starting point for thinking about this.


--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 28 Feb 2011, 02:18 ---Here's a question: what's the line between being sexualised and being in a band that sings about sex. Kinky sex is a pretty standard topic in some genres.

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Do you mean with the former, some other party sexualizes musicians--a record label, to sell records or whatever--and with the latter, the musician is engaging in a sexual register, but it's more their choice, and less about profit? I dunno. I feel like it's tricky to talk about agency, and then reception is pretty important too. We'd probably have to start linking to specific examples to get at the "line between."

pwhodges:
I was about to comment on classical music.  Women have been well accepted as performers for some time, as soloists as well as orchestral or ensemble musician.  As composers, none has reached the highest levels, but there are plenty in contemporary music who are at or near that level (though isolated examples exist throughout history, such as Hildegard of Bingen and Fanny Mendelssohn).  Conducting has perhaps been the most male-dominated area, but there are now a few women knocking at the door of the top levels.

Given the shameful continuing persistence of the glass ceiling in business and politics, I think that female musicians are doing at least as well as their sisters in other professions.

David_Dovey:

--- Quote from: sean on 27 Feb 2011, 18:40 ---way to make me sound sexist >:c

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I didn't have to try too hard. Maybe try not framing yr support of female musicians in terms of how attractive you find them in future?


Kim Gordon is an interesting case, namely because there was a period in Sonic Youth's history where she did very consciously make a shift from being just another band member to dressing up and playing ingenue, and this has certainly been read as a cynical move on the part of the band in an effort to draw more attention to themselves.

Ditto Kira Roessler, who started out looking more or less like "one of the boys"/jeans+t-shirt early in her stint with Black Flag but later (reportedly at the behest of the rest of the band) started playing in some pretty outlandish Madonna-esque get-up.

Of course it's much easier to believe Gordon had a more active role in the decision to change her on-stage presentation than Roessler.

valley_parade:

--- Quote from: KvP on 28 Feb 2011, 02:51 ---Boris!
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sean:
yeah dovey that is all i meant, i am attracted to female musicians.

maybe i need to word my statements better but uh can you please stop misconstruing my statements/hating on me, i feel like you do that a lot.

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