Editorial: Gender Politics in the Music Industry (original) (raw)
Related papers
Female labour and leadership in music Contexts, constraints, future(s
DEBATS, 2022
Here we explore the contemporary practices of female participation in the music scenes in Serbia, and to an extent, in the Balkans. This research identified and described the possibilities, gendered constraints, and acts of transgressions that together weave a complex dynamic of female participation in popular music, in relation to the changing field of dominant gender ideologies in Serbia and the surrounding region. This work provides a critical analysis of gender issues in music-making and performing and of the topic of gendered labour in music, by relying on multiple case studies grounded in local contexts. We consider the mores and demands of the music market and everyday culture, their link to personal experiences, and the reach of the social institutions regarding music. Either as role models or cherished leaders, female musicians employ different tactics to fight stereotypes, strengthen communities, and ensure female participation. This work maps the strategies and tools they have been putting in place in order to sustain their audience, income, and presence to the best possible extent. Bearing in mind the imperative of transforming a standard way of working, communicating with audiences, and maintaining earning potential, this text singles out practices that could be recognised as (female) leadership in contemporary circumstances. We also consider a wider spectrum of roles that female musicians and music professionals have taken on or were awarded within their professional circles, local scenes, communities, or wider society.
Claiming Space: Discourses on Gender, Popular Music, and Social Change
This compilation (portfolio) thesis explores how language is used in the context of gender-equity music initiatives to construct ideas about gender, popular music, and social change. More specifically, it examines the use of spatial metaphors and concepts revolving round the idea that girls and women need to “claim space” to participate in popular music practices. The empirical material consists of recorded round-table discussions with staff and participants from four different initiatives in Sweden, all with the explicit aim to increase the number of girls and women involved in popular music production and performance. They include a time-limited project by a youth organization, a grass-roots network for young musicians, an adult education course, and a pop/rock music camp for girls. A Foucault-inspired discourse analysis method in six stages was used to examine the data in terms of discursive constructions, discourses, action orientation, positionings, practice, and subjectivity. The results are organized in four themes – Sound, Body, Territory, and Room – and are discussed in relation to the concepts of performativity (Judith Butler), feminine body spatiality (Iris Marion Young), and gaze (Michel Foucault and others). The idea of “claiming space” is found to be involved in two dialectics. The first dialectic is formed by space-claiming understood as on the one hand extrovert self-promotion to be seen and heard, and on the other hand, as introvert focus on the musical craft. A second dialectic is formed by an ongoing struggle between empowerment and objectification, i.e., between being an acting subject and being the object of a disciplining gaze.
OnCurating #47: Gender Relations in New Music x OnCurating
2020
Even before the current pandemic, contemporary music existed in a state of crisis. Its structures and institutions struggle to support any minority, let alone artistic practices outside of a narrow Western European style, meaning fundamental change is inexorable if this field is to remain societally relevant. With this issue of OnCurating journal, the curatorial collective GRiNM (Gender Relations in New Music) gathers texts based on its 2019 conference at the Zurich University of the Arts that explore practical and theoretical approaches to opening and diversifying the field. Our intention with this issue is to articulate these voices as central to curating music, and to call its outdated investment in a European monoculture into question. We hope that it serves in the eye of this current storm as the most urgent of demands for fundamental, immediate change. With contributions by Kajsa Antonsson, Sandeep Bhagwati, Valentina Bertolani, Dahlia Borsche, Sharon Chan, Anke Charton, Lucie...
This article reports from a two-phase study that involved an analysis of the extant literature followed by a three-part survey answered by seventy-one women composers. Through these theoretical and empirical data, the authors explore the relationship between gender and music’s symbolic and cultural capital. Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus is employed to understand the gendered experiences of the female composers who participated in the survey. The article suggests that these female composers have different investments in gender but that, overall, they reinforce the male habitus given that the female habitus occupies a subordinate position in relation to that of the male. The findings of the study also suggest a connection between contemporary feminism and the attitudes towards gender held by the participants. The article concludes that female composers classify themselves, and others, according to gendered norms and that these perpetuate the social order in music in which the male norm dominates.
Introduction. Women's Modes, Legacies and Futures in Music
Women's Leadership in Music, 2023
So far, women's participation in global music history has been explored by various disciplines that study music and culture, especially after the expansion of feminist music research in the late 20 th century. The gender turn in ethnomusicology and related disciplines, often coupled with feminist theory and practice, initially shed light on genderexclusive music practices, thus adding insights into the less known domains of female music-related activity to the broader map of the knowledge centered on global sonic cultures (Koskoff 2014). A long line of scholars, musicians and activists put their efforts into correcting the negligent consideration of women's activities in maintaining and creating music cultures by critically discussing the conditions and roles of womanhood in music and society. More specifically, they have highlighted the contributions by female performers, authors and cultural workers, but also pinpointed the constraints and hardship that women face while making music (Herndon and Ziegler 1990; Koskoff 1989; Magrini 2003; Moisala and Diamond 2000; Solie 1993). However, the specific topic of female cultural leadership in relation to music has not been widely examined cross-culturally in contemporary scholarship, especially regarding a conceptual background that avoids the tropes of exceptionality and difference, bringing forth the issues of agency, resistance, collaboration and networking instead. Several locally oriented ethnographic studies (Coe 2021; Downing 2010; Sunardi 2015; Tsitsishvili 2006), as well as more general, cross-cultural edited collections (Mathias 2022), have recently opened up the issues of leadership and gender in music, thus expanding the conventional approaches focused on the figure of a bandleader in music practices (Waterman 1982), the issue of leading roles within ensembles (Clayton and Leante 2015; Dueck 2011) and the intersection between religious and cultural leadership (Gidal 2013), to name a few common research directions. While exceptional female performers were indeed praised and androcentric research perspectives were criticized and corrected within academia, the very idea of leadership-throughsound, which stipulates that women perform from/through their gendered position, remains to be further explored outside the confinement of business-oriented leadership studies and similar fields that promote the corporate models of efficacy and do not investigate cultural leadership related to different communities at stake. As an alternative
Feminism, Gender and Popular Music
This chapter considers how gender identities and gendered meanings are explored in popular music. In the evaluation of popular music, supposedly ‘masculine’ qualities – authenticity, originality, innovation – are often privileged over ‘feminine’ qualities – the formulaic, inauthentic, superficial and banal. These hierarchies go back to the aesthetic tradition and the art/entertainment contrast, a contrast that has reappeared in popular music as the hierarchy of rock over pop. Although these conceptual hierarchies create difficulties for female popular musicians, many of them have creatively re-negotiated these hierarchies, amongst them Kate Bush and Madonna, both discussed in this chapter.
2021
Figures are re-used according to the "Fair dealing" principle for the purpose of criticism or review.Pop music has long contributed to feminist discourse and practice as performers use their global platforms to disseminate ideas that combat sexism, gender discrimination, gender-based violence, and promote gender equality. The music industry’s engagement with feminism occurs at the same time, however, as many young women distance themselves from feminism. With this apparent tension in mind, this research is concerned with new expressions of feminism in pop music and, specifically, how these expressions are perceived by an audience of young women. To explore this, a feminist research methodology was adopted that centred young women’s views, amplified their experiential knowledge and sense-making practices, and fostered a space of reflexivity. Multiple integrated qualitative research methods (the production of a music portfolio, followed by two focus groups) were used to expl...