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

[faster]

I've been fortunate enough to have played with women musicians virtually since I started improvising, although they've definitely been a minority. In Seoul, actually, there is currently no female improviser aside from Miyeon, who isn't involved in the community aside from her work with her husband Park Jechun and the saxophonist Kang Tae Hwan. When Hong Chulki and Choi Joonyong started, they had a group with a woman in it, but she lost interest and went back to school.

Bonnie Jones is heavily involved in the Transmodern Festival (mostly for performance arts, and mostly women performers) and the Los Solos series (woman musicians), and she and I have talked about this quite a bit, with few conclusions. I hope she joins in.

[treble ahead]

Your question is valid enough, but answers are probably not to be found in some quick two-liner on a message board. However, while the percentage of women in this field is very low look at other areas of music - I would be willing to go on record and say that contemporary jazz has almost no important female players, rock music is predominantly male with a stellar margin for that matter - not to speak about the different metal subgenres. Or for that matter when did you last see a female conductor of an orchestra? The loosely defined EAI-area actually has some vital, key players that also happens to be women - that was actually one of the things that struck me when I first started to delve into this area of music. And yes, I would say that it matters, what and who represents a cultural scene has always mattered.

[Geoff]

Your question is valid enough, but answers are probably not to be found in some quick two-liner on a message board. However, while the percentage of women in this field is very low look at other areas of music - I would be willing to go on record and say that contemporary jazz has almost no important female players, rock music is predominantly male with a stellar margin for that matter - not to speak about the different metal subgenres. Or for that matter when did you last see a female conductor of an orchestra? The loosely defined EAI-area actually has some vital, key players that also happens to be women - that was actually one of the things that struck me when I first started to delve into this area of music. And yes, I would say that it matters, what and who represents a cultural scene has always mattered.

I think it's a bit unfair to say that there aren't any important female contemporary jazz artists.

There are many; here's a site with some names here: http://www.jazzgrrls.com/

and there's more female conductors than you'd think, a site with some names here: http://www.kapralova.org/CONDUCTORS.htm

[ongaku]

Surely the profile of both performers and listeners of 'EAI' is similar to that of modern classical music: not only predominantly male and white (extend the latter term to 'the majority ethnic group' for Korea/Japan), but above averagely educated (in the institutional sense), with many university and conservatoire graduates involved.

In other words, it is an outpost of musical 'elitism'. It stands to reason that it will be absent from the poorest countries. As for the relative lack of women, some might wish to propose psychological explanations for female aversion to what are perceived as excessively dry or analytical musical styles; others, rejecting that theory as sexist, would point to the continuing under-representation of women within the institutions and coteries that sustain and promote the music, which might discourage their entry.

Based on my concert-going experiences of the last few years, the number of women in symphony orchestras has risen dramatically. And there are many notable female conductors, Marin Allsop being one of the most respected on the American scene.

[yonhosago]

Last february Christof Kurzmann set up a "girlfriends improv quartet" in Brasil, comprising two brasilian women and two chilean women, none of them musicians. They worked with some kind of ad hoc score. The musical results were more than interesting.

[AlbionMoonlight]

This seems more than objectionable, from even the most simple of feminist perspectives.

[will]

Are disproportionately fewer women involved in this than in other musics? Are there musical genres / areas that are majority female? If so, what are the salient differences?
This is an (for lack of a better term) avant-garde genre (form?) that has had significant numbers of women producing some of its core works. Take away MIMEO, ISO, Phosphor, and Filament and, circa 2000, there's not a whole hell of a lot left.

[mudd]

it might also be worth examining the gender distribution of the audience.

m

[RFKorp]

it might also be worth examining the gender distribution of the audience.

m

yeah. this. In NYC I'd say there are actually more women performing than in the audiences. And when you subtract the girls who got into it because they are partnered to guy who's into it or have a brother who plays gigs on the "scene" you're down to an almost invisible fraction.

edit: I should add, the Tandem Electrics gig with Bonnie last month was a fluke. Reed managed to draw the artsy college girls like woah. I think they even enjoyed it.

[Gerardo A]

Not to derail the thread, but like Jon, I wonder why there are not many African Americans (or black people from other countries) into this music. About women, they're definitely underrepresented in this area, but I have the impression that it happens in all genres of music performance, except perhaps classical.

[bedouin]

...In other words, it is an outpost of musical 'elitism'. It stands to reason that it will be absent from the poorest countries.

sorry i can't buy this. i mean there are folks in Lebanon doing eai, and Lebanon ain't quite G8. there are myriad other reasons but elitism comes way low in my view.

...As for the relative lack of women, some might wish to propose psychological explanations for female aversion to what are perceived as excessively dry or analytical musical styles; others, rejecting that theory as sexist...

implying that women go for the less analytical (and more for the emotional/visceral) doesn't cut it with me either.

looking at my CD collection, there is definitely more women musicians in my experimental/eai than my jazz. (but then again my collection is probably far too narrow!)

i'm coming to a conclusion that listeners (not just women) need to contextualize more. They need to be given a background (a reason, a story, some connection somewhere) before they start paying attention to experimental music.
Women maybe more. I mean, after all, I don't know many women prepared to spend 1hr in a room listening to any music as abstract as eai - maybe they should "trust" weed a little bit more

[J.F.]

This only serves a certain stereotype, but investing substancial amounts of time into something like this
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3138/261 ... 5a21_o.jpg
apparently tends to be more attractive to males than to females.
I want to understand and control this!
(which of course isn't meant with that pic's original poster in mind)


I also attempted to write something I'm not so sure about... (hehe, and my longer take on that issue weirded me out myself). But on the one hand, my impression is that a majority of females apparently tends to have certain ways of dealing with their emotions, often communicating more about that aspect of their personality (- than most guys tend to do), while on the other hand in EAI and related music, communicating emotions doesn't appear to play such a big (any?) role.
Or what?

[DarkAttraktor]

why would there be more women, african, middle-eastern, lgbt, islamic, etc people into cutting edge experimental music more than they are present nowadays? i don't say EAI is that, but lets say EAI is that for the sake of the argument. if we ask such false questions that we all know answer to*, isn't it not sheer evoking of all those minority groups to appear? what is the point of this question if not creating an atmosphere where those minority musicians are expected and needed? or in other words, i dont see a reason of this thread's existence aside from promoting contemporary mediocre politically correct values.

i agree [in theory] that all this minority groups would have an entirely bent, different approach if they would just come naturally, but this desperate evoking of those groups will give unneccesarry focus upon them when they appear and that focus will significantly harm Quality.



*i know that all of you are pretty much sick of them, but white caucasian males of predominantly christian family-heritage in western europe [belgium,netherlands,uk,germany] and both coasts of america [new york,boston,calif] made and will continue to make the most significant % of cutting edge experimental music because they are in the best financial, socio-cultural, psychological, traditional, etc situation to do so. which is just normal. everything else besides that is just wrong.

[franz bieberkopf]

the whole historical continuum weighs heavy on these fields i reckon. we might have a hard time with the idea that there's some sort of barrier preventing women from involving themselves to the same extent these days, but it's pretty plain to see that it was that obviously that way only a few decades ago... is it reasonable to think we'll shake that weight completely so fast? i wonder if Skrobek thinks that females in disciplines that they've traditionally dominated (textiles, say... for the sake of giving an example) and continue to ought to do the same sort of hand wringing about what a perverse world they occupy?

i don't think all disciplines are created equally, and i'm not trying to scare the question away, but whether we like it or not history and gender roles and the manner in which they intertwine do still play some semblance of a role at this point.

i'm not at all into an end-all be-all essentialism, but in spite of the exceptions, i think we could probe a bit more into the question of whether there aren't certain masculine or 'more masculine' qualities of the music itself, as opposed to mostly just fixating on outlying social factors--at least for the sake of having a potentially more interesting discussion (i think we've exhausted a lot of the other stuff so far maybe and avoided this more prickly part?).

yeah it's difficult here, and tends to the kind of abstraction that isn't always so useful (particularly when people have spent thousands of posts on quibbling over the identity of this music to begin with), but at other times the question seems somewhat valid... while i wouldn't claim to have as firm a grasp on the history, i've come to understand video art (or maybe just video?) as a medium or discipline (not the same thing and i can't decide which to commit to!) which has been and continues to be more conducive to female and queer practitioners. sure, part of it likely has/had to do with access issues (ie: a gal could get her hands on the much more inexpensive video camera as opposed to film...) but as artists of a particular stripe flood through whatever point of access it is that is initially given to them, you can probably see how they begin to develop their own language within the form that in turn informs the entry and reception of others (and thus ALSO plays a role along side this initial access). seems like something that is not 'innate' or 'inherent', but it's these sort of qualities that we begin to speak of using such terms (and so fine). in this more margin-positive context (ie: where we're talking about how a medium lends itself to women, as in the case of video), i think you will find more people willing to address questions of essence... or something quasi-kinda-sorta approaching those lines.

and going along that model, we might not just begin to speak about women in general (why they are mostly here or not here), but also woman (or women) in particular. does being a relatively marginal figure in this scene have an effect on the languages developed by female practitioners? do female performers play differently in groups with other women than they do with their male counterparts? (just for example)
you know i think this field is so scattered and tiny that speaking beyond the unit of the individual is a difficult thing to do (the road that led here up to now was decidedly obscure and scattered wouldn't you say? nobody's mommy sat them down at age 6 with a delay pedal and a contact-mic). that said i don't think the above questions are invalid.

i actually had no intention of speaking directly to this question (actually prolly some of you would say i never speak at anything directly or lucidly, i shouldn't flatter myself). initially i just wanted to provide you with an example that i know.

one of the first experimental shows i ever went to in Vancouver was an experimental night called Fake Jazz at this really scuzzy mostly-hardcore bar called the Cobalt. Fake Jazz is a weekly, and on this particular wednesday it was being guest curated by Her Jazz Noise Collective, an all female co-op of sorts. All the performers were female, as is often the case at Her Jazz shows. But performers aside, i think what shocked me more was just how many of the audience members were female--and not just female, young people of various fashions--punky types, dykes, etc. In brief, the milieu--the crowd, the performers, the space--was really like no other experimental show i'd ever been to in my life, by several degrees.

Part of the impetus behind Her Jazz (as dictated by members with whom i'm acquainted, and not guessed at by me) has to do with creating a comfortable space for experimentation for burgeoning female performers (musicians/non-musicians/dancers/etc.). I think it has been around for less than 2 years now, but even over that span i sense that they have developed a roster of fairly confident female musicians and perhaps more importantly a female audience where once such a presence did not exist to the same extent. all it takes is a few shows really, when you think about it... this was an affirmative act of sorts, and i think it was likely necessary to attain the state of the scene at present... whether it will naturalize into something more seamless an effortlessly equitable over time really remains to be seen.

[yonhosago]

This seems more than objectionable, from even the most simple of feminist perspectives.

well, Kurzmann presented it as "politically incorrect".

[MRS]

i know that all of you are pretty much sick of them, but white caucasian males of predominantly christian family-heritage in western europe [belgium,netherlands,uk,germany] and both coasts of america [new york,boston,calif] made and will continue to make the most significant % of cutting edge experimental music because they are in the best financial, socio-cultural, psychological, traditional, etc situation to do so. which is just normal. everything else besides that is just wrong.

Sorry but this is criminally reductive. Why isn't meth pestilent in Massachusetts but tips economic scales in southern Missouri? Who hosts the highest per capita PhD ratios? Boulder, CO, RTP, NC and Huntsville, AL. Why didn't the blues flourish in Long Island? This whole "coasts" postulate volleys right back to an opinion uninformed looking in via telescope.

But with this I agree:

i dont see a reason of this thread's existence aside from promoting contemporary mediocre politically correct values..

[lukaz]

I would kinda agree w Jon on this topic based on my experiances. If we speak about women in this music i think the number of artists involved in it is quite big (for sure the list is much bigger and of more importance they re on the same level of respect as male artists), but more importantly their creativity is not represented and judged thru gender (like just for example in rock or jazz or even in literature and poetry- where i am tired of reading about 'feminine sensibility', 'woman writing' or even on more absurd level about 'she has balls' kind of menatlity- (one of recent reviews here in Shitenia about a 'stoner rock' band fronted by girl singing and playing guitar went like this' cocky rock is passe even if played by woman' ...) .

Based on organizing concerts and visiting festivals, going on concerts, etc ... i would'nt even agree on old cliche that concerts of 'experimental music' are mostly 'sausage parties' (for sausages w glasses of course:).

I am not saying Julien's question doesn't have any substance, but thru broader historical perspective one could say that a question posed by Jon is of more interest (at least for me). If we see EAI as one of recent developments in the history of free improvisation one is tempted to say that EAI (considering lack of black artists) means a final, radical shift (cut?) from a continous line from jazz/ free jazz- free improv- ... from it's origins if we see them in the tradition of afro-american jazz/free jazz (not saying that these are only origins of course). especially if we see them in the line of electronic music (or use of electronics- out of my head i can only name few names from the free improv world- Pat Thomas, George Lewis, Butch Morris using them in some of his ensembles, Braxton (working w Teitelbaum for example, ...)

[P. Wretch]

sorry i can't buy this. i mean there are folks in Lebanon doing eai, and Lebanon ain't quite G8. there are myriad other reasons but elitism comes way low in my view.

Lebanon also has an urban Francophone elite (the former resident Will (?) could correct me on this): the Beirut musicians were obviously influenced by traffic with Paris. To take some examples, as some quick Googling informs me, Mazen Kerbaj is an art school graduate, and Christine Sehnaoui has a sociology degree. Not that any of this is essential to the music, but it still conforms to my theory that EAI is, in practice, about as elitist as classical music (obviously I use 'elite' in quite a loose sense: one could describe most of these artists as constituting a 'dominated fraction of the dominant class').

To look at it from a Bourdieu-type sociological angle, EAI (like modernist classical and to a lesser extent free jazz) is an artform purged of most of the qualities associated with popular music: melody, song, danceability, 'warmth', physicality. Obviously it could never gain mass popularity for these reasons, nor appeal to any social groups (e.g. working class and subordinate ethnic minorities) least exposed to the detached intellectualism of 'art music' values.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

Your question is valid enough, but answers are probably not to be found in some quick two-liner on a message board.

Yes it is, and it's actually very easy & obvious.

Women are, generally, more interested in producing biological offspring than in cultural offspring.

Although historical reflections like this one are correct & dead on, they are irrelevant.

the whole historical continuum weighs heavy on these fields i reckon. we might have a hard time with the idea that there's some sort of barrier preventing women from involving themselves to the same extent these days, but it's pretty plain to see that it was that obviously that way only a few decades ago... is it reasonable to think we'll shake that weight completely so fast?

The biological differences between men & women inevitably will out themselves in the social statistics.

Strobeks question kinda implies that there should be an equal amount of women & men in everything (in this case, the cultural scenes). This is an unnecessary, confusing & wrong assumption, since the category of 'men' & that of 'woman' are simply not the same - as a result both categories will behave differently & produce different results.

[mudd]

my theory that EAI is, in practice, about as elitist as classical music (obviously I use 'elite' in quite a loose sense: one could describe most of these artists as constituting a 'dominated fraction of the dominant class').

i wouldn't argue with the theory, but i'm not sure what 'dominated fraction' means in that definition.

m