Why aren't there more women involved in this music ?

[jon abbey]

just got a myspace friend request from this all-female quartet, thought it was worth noting here:

angélica castelló - recorders & electronic devices
maja osojnik - recorders & voice & electronics
katharina klement - prepared piano & electronics
billy roisz - electronics & video

http://www.myspace.com/subshrubs

[ryansupak]

I've been in some scenes where 30-40% of the players were women but that's indeed exceptional.

No girlfriend I've ever had has ever really been into the stuff -- but God bless them, they all tried. My wife-to-be (tomorrow!) is a singer/songwriter on the rich people bar scene and she says what, I think, most "regular" people would agree with:

Music appreciation on higher/weirder levels is a good thing, and is a reward to the faithful listener. But, with most great music there's something easily, emotionally accessible that pulls you in to begin with. It seems like much of this music lacks the "easy accessibility" part. (Either it's 28 minutes of the same sine wave, or it's shrill and hurts your ears, or the performers don't engage the audience, or whatever.)

***

My turntables are set up in line-of-sight from the kitchen table where she works. When anything avant-garde happens on the decks, her iPod-knockoff earbuds go on.

This is a cliche and also, of course, not always true -- but I think that in general women favor an emotional language and men are more apt to appreciate things strictly on technical merits. A burst of white noise is rarely touching in the exact same way that sweeping strings and heartfelt lyrics are.

rs

[Joda]

This is a cliche and also, of course, not always true -- but I think that in general women favor an emotional language and men are more apt to appreciate things strictly on technical merits

Didn't we already go through this?

Also, how do homosexual and transgendered people fit into this kind of generalization?

Most art and music appeal to an emotional sensibility, and that familiarity is what makes it accessible of course. EAI is one of the rarer art forms that seems to operate comfortably outside the usual dependence on emotional or expressive aethetic content, not that it is always devoid of such elements. From my experience, it is this factor that makes it difficult for some people to access this music, regardless of gender.

In an exploratory art form practiced by men and women, with significant influence and activity on both side of the gender coin, this kind of statement is utterly useless and insulting.

[J.F.]

In an exploratory art form practiced by men and women, with significant influence and activity on both side of the gender coin, this kind of statement is utterly useless and insulting.

Well, that's what some people here think.

[ryansupak]

Joda:

Do you think the reams and reams of academic empirical data suggesting things along these lines is a conspiracy, or a fabrication, then?

Am I hallucinating when I repeatedly see rooms 90+% full of educated white dudes at these shows? How about the statistically-confirmed male majority at video game expos/comics conventions/gear stores of all kinds? Is this also the result of conspiracy or societal programming?

What's wrong with generalizations, as long as you allow individuals the latitude to defy them (as I prescribed)?

Why is your personal experience valid, but mine is necessarily useless and insulting? Have the numerous women I've talked to about this, who have the audacity to think women are generally wired differently, been brainwashed -- and are they in need of your enlightened secret information?

How about that tiny subset of women I've spoken to who perform this kind of music, who have acknowledged a certain "woman's touch" that female artists bring to things? Are they being utterly useless and insulting with that assumption?

Do you happen to have a personal axe to grind in this area?

rs

[mudd]

actually ryan we went through this just over a page ago.

the general feeling is that general feelings are pretty worthless.

m

[ryansupak]

Hey flauminator -- yeah I paged back and saw it *blush*

***

Aaaaaanyway, whether it's biology, politics, society -- or some combination of them in varying degrees (which is what I think), the net effect is that this kind of music is generally a "boy's club" whether people want to admit it or not.

If I want to find books I go to a library. If I want to try and figure out what kind of music women might tend to like that guys don't, I ask women, and I do some homework. My homework tells me that women trend (just a trend, there are exceptions and that's OK) towards stuff that's lyrical and overtly emotional.

So, I think if you want to get more women in the door, one way (and surely not the only way) would be to assimilate the influences of stuff that women tend to like. How that looks would have to come out in the wash -- it seems to me an artistic problem at that point.

(A bit about me: this is a subject I've explored in my own work/life for a long time. I started out DJing at clubs, then focused on avant-garde, then moved to mainstream DJing again. I'd love to find a balance between both, and I've worked very hard at achieving this. It's always made me sad that more people don't get into avant-garde stuff.

One thing I've figured out is that if you want a lot of people in the door, it helps to get a balance of women and men. I don't think this is changing anytime soon -- whether this is palatable or not. I remember, even back in the rave days, that the House room was 50%+ women, the Techno room was 25% women, and the IDM/Experimental room was a sausage party.

I understand that many injustices have been done because of the abuse of broad generalizations. But, that doesn't mean the ideas themselves should be tainted -- especially if they are a good predictive tool. Don't forcibly cast me as an abuser of generalizations just because somebody else was. I care a lot about this subject and have been back, forth, and back again on it.)

rs

[Jesse]

EAI is one of the rarer art forms that seems to operate comfortably outside the usual dependence on emotional or expressive aethetic content, not that it is always devoid of such elements. From my experience, it is this factor that makes it difficult for some people to access this music, regardless of gender.

This is close to articulating what I hear from the small sample of people I torment/turn on to this area of music. Using sensory nomenclature, I hear "dry", "cold", and (in a dualistic sense, i.e. versus "emotional"), "intellectual", "conceptual."

This was, of course, a fairly pervasive response to the Abstract Expressionists in the 50's.
I was amused by a post in which Mark expressed a diffidence towards calling it "experimental" music, as opposed to "empirical", nice point there.

There are some gender generalizations tossed in this thread that would make some of my generation blanch/blush.

[skrobek]

Do you think the reams and reams of academic empirical data suggesting things along these lines is a conspiracy, or a fabrication, then?

I think it's a fabrication.

Am I hallucinating when I repeatedly see rooms 90+% full of educated white dudes at these shows? How about the statistically-confirmed male majority at video game expos/comics conventions/gear stores of all kinds? Is this also the result of conspiracy or societal programming?

I believe it's the result of societal programming.

Have the numerous women I've talked to about this, who have the audacity to think women are generally wired differently, been brainwashed?

They've obviously been brainwashed.

[niwi]

How about that tiny subset of women I've spoken to who perform this kind of music, who have acknowledged a certain "woman's touch" that female artists bring to things?

ick.

[J.F.]

How about that tiny subset of women I've spoken to who perform this kind of music, who have acknowledged a certain "woman's touch" that female artists bring to things?

ick.

Oh - I believe to have recognised that as well...
- not in electro acoustic improvisation, but in european free improvisation; think Feminist Improvising Group, for instance. Judging from what I heard of them, that was quite a special band (leaving aside that I find them quite awful).

I'll also delve a little again into the sampler-LP of the Canaille Festival I have somewhere.

I think I have some articles about and interviews from F.I.G./Canaille-associated musicians, maybe they say something about why those female musicians sometimes felt like playing in all-woman-surroundings.
Marilyn Crispell avoided that all-women-stuff, and found that concept discriminating, but the other participants apparently had different ideas about that issue.

[skrobek]

I live in Paris. The most regular venue for experimental venue is Les Instants Chavirés, in Montreuil (the suburbs, but near Paris). Most gigs start around 9 pm, which means that you have to take the last tube to get home. I know many girls who don't goto gigs because they dont want to take the tube late at night because that might mean trouble.

Now if there were more women involved in the scene, they'd have said 'wait a minute, that's not possible, we don't want to take the tube at midnight !'

To me, this means the problem is very deep. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN THE BRAIN. If you believe that, I think you're as retarded as the people who claimed black people had no souls. I mean that. Experimantal music is a very subtle and challenging worl, whatevery yo say there's no reason women shouldn't be interested in this. If they arenn't, and I insist they arent't, today I've been to both of the best experimental music shops in Pais in Paris and there where NO WOMEN except for my mum who was having a walk with me...

like, I met 20 people I knew but NO WOMEN !!! We can make lists of women involved, and I'm interested and glad for that, but still, there is a PROBLEM.

P.S: I got a Rosy Parlane CD today and it rocks.

[mudd]

rosy parlane is a dude. if you're implying otherwise.

i don't think anyone would dispute the disparity you are describing, though.

m

[skrobek]

rosy parlane is a dude. if you're implying otherwise.

i don't think anyone would dispute the disparity you are describing, though.

m

wtf ????????? I want my money back !!!

[skrobek]

.

[howsthatsound]

"Although the two sexes seem to be doing the same thing, and doing it equally well, they are using two different neurocognitive brain processes to do it," Ullman said. "Men and women may process words differently because of different levels of the hormone estrogen, which is much higher in females and affects brain processing".
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sex-Horm ... 2726.shtml

"Our research suggests language processing is different between men and women, but it doesn't necessarily mean performance is going to be different," said Joseph T. Lurito, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology at IU School of Medicine. "We don't know if the difference is because of the way we're raised, or if it's hard-wired in the brain."
http://www.medicine.indiana.edu/news_re ... ing00.html

"The expanded data confirmed higher neuronal densities in males than in females without a gender difference in cortical thickness. These findings indicate that fundamental gender differences exist in the structure of the human cerebral cortex, with more numerous, smaller neuronal units in men and fewer, larger ones in women"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11829343

"overall cerebral blood flow is 11% higher in women"
http://books.google.com/books?id=FroDVk ... &ct=result

i guess believing any of this is not very PC, but who cares? why is cerebral dimorphism so controversial? and if we are all neurologically and psychologically identical, who cares about diversity?

isn't part of this argument based on a false hierarchy anyway? aren't we somehow assuming that it is better to spend all this time thinking about, reading about, talking about, and listening to, very "difficult" music? how is that any better than doing anything else (that is obviously not directly negative in a more universal sense)?

and still, why on earth should anyone, male or female be interested in what we are doing here, who is not somehow naturally so inclined?

[mudd]

there is nothing non-pc about believing everything you've linked. extending beyond the research to claim they are valid explanations for generalized behavioral observations, on the other hand, would be bunk. so let's not.

i think your last two points are quite valid, though. there is no special prize for being a musician involved in this music, no added value or bonus points for choosing to learn to play feedback on the no-input mixing board rather than beethoven on the violin. there certainly isn't any money in it.

so maybe rather than the question that launched this thread, we should be asking 'why do people choose to play music in this manner?' hell, we can't even entirely agree what this manner is, of course we can't come to a satisfactory answer about why.

m

[howsthatsound]

all i'm saying is that there are differences, and it is as ridiculous to rule them out as it is to say that they the defining factor.

there is no special prize for being a musician involved in this music, no added value or bonus points for choosing to learn to play feedback on the no-input mixing board rather than beethoven on the violin. there certainly isn't any money in it.

i'd take it even further, being involved in this music is no better than being a great gardener, or throwing a kick-ass knuckle-ball.

so maybe rather than the question that launched this thread, we should be asking 'why do people choose to play music in this manner?'

does something like this not exist? i'd be interested in a why do you make/listen to this sort of thing thread.

[jkudler]

there is nothing non-pc about believing everything you've linked. extending beyond the research to claim they are valid explanations for generalized behavioral observations, on the other hand, would be bunk. so let's not.

i think your last two points are quite valid, though. there is no special prize for being a musician involved in this music, no added value or bonus points for choosing to learn to play feedback on the no-input mixing board rather than beethoven on the violin. there certainly isn't any money in it.

so maybe rather than the question that launched this thread, we should be asking 'why do people choose to play music in this manner?' hell, we can't even entirely agree what this manner is, of course we can't come to a satisfactory answer about why.

m

or, like i asked a bunch of pages ago:

i do think the obsessiveness that leads to a deep interest in *any* obscure area of esoteric knowledge does seem much more common in men than in women, anecdotally speaking. this could easily be formulated as "why do women have so much healthier egos and personalities that they don't feel a need to waste time reading blogs to be up on every new cd-r of scraping noises?"

[mudd]

does something like this not exist? i'd be interested in a why do you make/listen to this sort of thing thread.

none terribly successful, but you're welcome to start a new one and see if it picks up momentum. in the past we've found ourselves bogged down by attempts to define the music itself, i'm not sure it's ever made the crossover successfully into personal reasons.

m