Music - just for the boys?

[WilsonFrickett]

just watching 'Scotland's greatest album' on catch up. A panel of 6 with one woman who (so far, I'm only 10 mins in) seems to be either struggling to be heard or has nothing to say, and Claire Grogan as the presenting toots. Was there really only one Scottish woman muso available? Or is music still just for the boys?

That was one of her musical polemics against the treatment of HIV victims, wasn't it? Check out "La Serpenta Canta" which is relatively recent. She covers old blues and country songs, including a gut wrenching funereal paced setting of Hank's "I'm so lonesome I could cry." She even includes a cheery little ditty of her own called "baby's insane" Defixiones is stunning too but much more extreme. I find it useful for clearing the room of unwanted guests.

Lovecat, what about Carol Clerk? Great music-loving journalist. Or Caroline Sullivan, Sylvie Simmons, Pippa Lang... and Caitlin Moran started out on the Melody Maker.

Carol Clerk it's late and I have had a drink or two and am not going to start blubbing.

I am ashamed to admit it, but although I know, having followed those links, I must have read Carol Clerk's pieces, I don't remember her the same way I recall the male journalists - possibly because I wasn't hugely into the kind of music she was (Pogues excepted) and the blokes wrote about the bands that I was following at the time. Poor excuse. I'm annoyed with my teenage self...

I do remember Caroline Sullivan, but the others... and given I had a subscription to the MM, you'd think I would remember Caitlin Moran, wouldn't you?

Lovecat: I don't think it's unreasonable to have taken more notice of music writing that was about the bands you liked. I was just the same WRT skipping through the stuff about the bands I wasn't keen on a lot of the time.

On the industry side, I find the equality situation much more positive. There are many wise and wonderful women in executive positions at labels, publishers, studios and artist management.

Which makes it more perplexing that on the whole, female artists targeted at the mass market are still encouraged to be styled in such a negative way.

kitty empire is another female journo, and sally can'trememberherlastname who teamed up with everett true to promote the godawful huggy bear in melody maker.

i do feel like progress is being made in the music industry to some extent, in that there are so many excellent female musicians and bands getting good press - certainly within the 6 Music arena there are loads of bands partly or wholly made up of women where that fact is uncommented on for its own sake, as it should be. but it's frustrating that women's musicianship is often unrecognised - PJ Harvey is roundly and rightly lauded as an exceptional songwriter and performer, but it's not often you see someone comment on her excellent guitar skills.

Anyway. Warpaint, Amanda Palmer, the Deal sisters, Nina Nastasia, Laura Marling, Annie Hardy....oh, some female drummers: Lori Barbero, Yoshimi P-We, Palmolive, Stella Mozgawa.

Miranda Sawyer used to write decent copy, as did Sylvia Paterson (isn't that her name?). There was another female journo with a foreign-sounding mono-name I used to like too - can't remember what the mononame was, but I'm not thinking of Bidisha.

No good music to come from riot grrl, have you not heard of Sleater-Kinney? Definitely not poor musicians and their lyrics were always brilliant. Likewise L7 were no slouches and I think it's a cruel world in which the Lunachicks weren't as big as Green Day.

AStabbing - V true about musicianship. How many people know that Dolly Parton is a highly skilled multi-instrumentalist? Also, if a women so much as lets a man inside the studio when she's recording, the subsequent record becomes All His Work and Genius and She Is Just A Muse. See all the praise Mark Ronson got for Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album, but at least she called him out for it. Likewise, supposedly Elastic was all Damon Albarn, Hole was all Kurt Cobain, MIA was all due to Diplo, Bat for Lashes last album was all Yeasayer and on and bloody on.

There also seems to big desire to get women away from those ugly instruments and have them up front and singing and looking pretty. Can't think of many examples off the top of my head, but Nelly Furtado used to play guitar in her early video, but not anymore.

There is still a dearth of women out there. Saturday at Reading (I think) only featured 2 women on the main stages all day (one of whom was the drummer in Metronomy).

GAG: L7, like Courtney Love, swiftly disassociated themselves from Riot Grrl as did any other women musicians who were actually interested in and good at music as opposed to screamy attention-seekers.

I cannot think of any good music that came out of the UK Riot grrl thing.

I'll grant you Sleater-Kinney from the US, although their previous bands and some of their side projects were/are very questionable.

I just think it's sad that a lot of female artists who don't jump on bandwagons get sidelined, when they are are excellent and worthy of attention. Diamanda Galas certainly fits in this category; Dolly Parton has also always done her own thing, but it's easier to make jokes about her breasts and cosmetic surgery than appreciate how good she really is. Even someone like PJ Harvey is only now being recognised in the wider world.

It's true. Siobhan Donaghy is a good case in point - she made some excellent left field pop music after she left Sugababes but was really let down by the industry because it had no idea how to promote her - she didn't sell enough to please her label and got dropped.

Some other good pop examples: Roisin Murphy and Robyn. Both making brilliant, catchy, bass-heavy pop music (music industry tick), both writing it themselves, writing intelligent lyrics and making videos that don't centre around them gyrating in revealing outfits (music industry cross).

Lykke Li is in a similar category, although her music style leans more towards the indie/alternative. From a more pop perspective, record labels don't seem to know what to do with VV Brown. From what I heard of her a couple of years ago, she is more than a pop singer and likes to be presented as such. It's annoying to see her modelling for M&S when she has so much more to offer.

At a very local level, there is a prejudice against female musicians. In the group of friends I have (all playing in bands), there are 17 men and 2 women. At jam sessions, I am frequently the only woman (sometimes the only woman in the pub, not just the only woman playing!) The women present tend to be wives and girlfriends - and they perpetuate it, my female friend and I have been on the receiving end of a good bit of abuse from them. (Clearly, by playing music, we are trying to steal the menz.)

I don't know what it is - I have said before on here that maybe women don't have the same amount of time to prioritise music. I have to make sacrifices - one of them is the judging I get. I am out playing at least 3 nights a week, as a single parent, this is a Bad Thing apparently.

I don't like the inequality, at all. And both my friend and I have noticed that we have to be twice as good in order to be accepted. Men arrive with their metaphorical arses hanging out their musical trousers, and are immediately accepted - as women we needed advocates (male friends who will push for us to be heard.)

I'm sure at least part of that is being Irish though - the gender inequality is far more pronounced here!

Nac - That's very interesting. What sort of music do you play? Does the acceptance vary from scene to scene? I wonder because I always thought the Irish folk scene had quite a lot of women in it, but I could well be wrong. It's sadly true about the being twice as good in order to be accepted.

Country, mainly. Yes, there's a lot more women in the folk scene, although it's still pretty man dominated.

Maybe part of it is the pub thing - you need a pretty thick skin.

I'm not sure about the folk scene. I know as many female fiddle and flute players as male ones and I've been to sessions where they outnumber them.
I've noticed a huge difference between rural and urban settings though. It seems that women stop going to sessions in rural areas when they marry and have children which is what was traditionally expected of them. There are exceptions but that still seems to be the pattern in Ireland.
In urban sessions, that doesn't seem to apply. I would say that the traditional music scene is actually more balanced over all than other types of live music.

There are pockets of tiresome sexism on the folk scene, but also a lot of very actively involved and well respected women musicians.

WilsonFrickett - 1980s Scotland had Sheena Easton, Bonnie Tyler, Annie Lennox, Lulu, Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins and is claimed to be one of the best vocalists in the world), Sharleen Spiteri (Texas), or was she 1990's ? and Claire Grogan.

The imbalance in music I haven't noticed, although it is obvious now it is pointed out.

I would say that I (and DH for that matter) listen to an equal number of male and female musicians. I think Tyr might have a point about genre - we mainly listen to folk, psychedelia and sixties or sixties inspired music. We were teens at the very end of punk (when it merged with other things) and there were always lots of women at gigs.

Without ever really considering it sensibly, I just assumed that both adult men and women will have a knowledge and love of a number of different musical genres, and that if somebody doesn't have that then something has gone wrong! That sounds ridiculous now I've written it out. It really hadn't occurred to me that women might be a bit excluded from music in various ways.

Oh for sure MsAnn, Scotland has had loads of female musicians and there have been a couple featured in the program as musicians, it was the imbalance in the commentary that me, because the program is trying to put together a sort of Scottish compilation album and I though that might mean that there could be, you know, birds on the judging panel? Silly me...

Claire Grogan is presenting, but that's not the same as having an opinion.

MsAnnTeak,

I have tried not to hold Sheena Easton against the Scots.

i know the guy who produced this so when i saw his wife last night i passed the message on that you thought there should have been more female panelists