State of Female Musicians

AKIE BERMISS: I feel a little out of place trying to speak authoritatively about female musicians.  Or maybe just a bit silly.  This would be a much more powerful piece if it came, perhaps, from a woman.  However, I think there is something to be said for a man coming forward to aid in the dispelling the stereotypes about female musicians.  Lame as it sounds, its something like solidarity.

The first step is for me to make it clear that, since I am a man (or so some people tell me), I will not be trying to explain what its like for female musicians outside of the pop world.  Nor will I attempt to galvanize and/or encourage young women who are aspiring musicians to “go for it!”  While I do endorse people who want to do music doing just that, I’m not writing this as a call to arms  Or as an insiders account.  Consider it more like an offensive against the established stereotypes of the “male-as-musicians” concept.

I hate to blame popular music, but a it is a reflection of our societal norms and mores (even when its supposed to be shocking or scandalous) and, as such, it has acted as strong reinforcement for male musician stereotypes.  There’s this unspoken comfort-zone in seeing four guys on stage playing their instruments and singing love songs about/to girls.  A guy knocking out a wicked guitar solo where he humps the guitar and gesticulates with from his crotch.  Something about performance just says to us, you gotta have a pair of balls to get up there and be on display for people.

Women, in our minds however, are meant to observe.  To enjoy a performance.  We appreciate them for their looks and the sex appeal not for their talents with instruments!  And by that I mean instruments of any kind: be they intellectual or manual or musical or what-have-you.  Its the old hold-over from the long, abysmal history of “mankind” — a woman’s “job” is to be pretty, to give birth to children, to raise and nurture them, and men go out and kill things and drag them home for supper.  Despite all out cultural advances since those ancient times, we still apply these basic tenets to the subtler activities of our modern culture.

The men are in charge of the tools, and the women are in charge of the nurturing.  So even when you do have female musicians being a fine notion we expect them to be singing and writing and emoting in a basic and straight-forward way.  A chick-singer fronting a rock band is cool.  But where are the female rock bands with the male singer?  That’s a notion that seems a bit foreign, doesn’t it?  We’re totally cool with the Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez of the world — girls with guitars singing songs about their lives.  But you have to look a little harder to find those female guitar players who step up to an axe and crank out skin-flaying solos — and don’t then step away and singing about how much they loved some guy or some other girl, even.

In the jazz world, where are the recognizable female titans?  Singers one and all.  If you went to school or boned-up on your jazz history, then you’re probably aware great female instrumentalist going as far back as Lil Harding (who was part of the original Louis Armstrong Hot Five recordings).  But if you ask a lay person on the street about famous women in jazz — what do you get?  Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Annie Ross, Carmen McRae… singers all.  And I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m trying to take away from the talent and skill and craft all those women had.  But, speaking of Carmen McRae (who is one of my all time favorite musicians) she was rather good piano player.  She, not infrequently, accompanied herself.  Nina Simone is another great jazz vocalist, but she was also a fantastic pianist.  I’m often surprised by how few people know that she’s playing piano on many of her records.

Shall we skip ahead to current day?  I’m not expert, but in my experience as a working musician I’ve come across dozens of competent (more than competent really, but I want to stress the idea of accomplishment) female musicians on any number of instruments.  I’m not writing this to be shocking or show just how hip I am or how egalitarian the ranks of us working-musicians are — I’m writing this as factual information.  If its news to you — more’s the pity.

Someday I’d love to write about the concepts of human, masculine, and feminine energies in music and art.  These are things that I think many musicians thinks about on a regular basis but that often we don’t interpret correctly. We think feminine energy or concepts or qualities are informed by out societal concepts of what it is to be feminine.  We — and here I mean mostly men, but quite a few women as well! — don’t dig deeper into what it may mean on visceral, physical level to be male or female and how that may inform our perceptions of higher, more ephemeral functions.

What’s peculiar is that there are so many wonderful female musicians out there working constantly and we still think of them as a rare breed.  I’ve never seen any formalized numbers of professional musicians broken down by gender, but I bet the numbers would surprise us.  You might say, “If there are so many female musicians working out there, where the hell are they?  Why don’t I see them all the time?”

And I might respond that perhaps you do see them — and simply don’t recognize them.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: There’s something missing from the women of mainstream American music today. I don’t want to generalize and say ALL of American music, because I know that’s not true. But among those females whom fate or luck or talent has elevated to the heights of fame and fortune, I feel that there is a distinct lack of a certain je ne se quoi that for simplicity’s sake I’m going to refer to as SWAGGER.

Where are you, crazy rock goddesses? Where is your cheerful destructiveness, your wild and devil may care ‘go fuck yourself’ attitude? Your MOXIE?! Why, when I want to live vicariously through a rough and ready rock musician, does it STILL always have to be a man—and one who is usually over fifty, to boot? Who is going to step up and take the torch of the ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners rock star away from Keith Richards, before he smokes it down to nothing? And why can’t it that person be a woman?

I’ve endured so many disappointments during my search for a smart, self-assured female musician with flinty eyes, awesome hair and staggering talent who doesn’t take shit from anybody. In the beginning I had high hopes for Amy Winehouse, but then she started losing weight and doing drugs and that went nowhere fast. Pink piqued my interest for a little while, but there’s still something kind of manufactured and by-the-numbers about her. Britney Spears is a puppet; Christina Aguilera is a ghoul. Lady Gaga is a pretentious twit. Katy Perry is like the Hello Kitty of pop music. Fergie is kind of a bad-ass in her own right, and there’s something a little crazy and half-baked about her; she might be the closest thing I can find to what I’m looking for, but I’m still unsatisfied. She’s no Pat Benatar.

And don’t come at me talking about Beyonce or Miley Cyrus. I’m not looking for a diva, or a child. Rihanna either; the kind of icon I crave would have eaten Chris Brown for breakfast. Bjork is borderline; she’s half out of this world, although she doesn’t seem to give a shit what anyone things of her, which I appreciate. Modern female pop stars on the whole, though, lack the charisma and charm of Cyndi Lauper; the poise of Stevie Nicks—not to mention the steely, hungry ambition that has made Madonna a force to reckon with for going on thirty years.

So-called ‘girl groups’ are also a whole lot of nothing. You could replace each member of the Pussycat Dolls or Danity Kane with a different person, and I’d bet you 75% of their fans wouldn’t notice right away. Each member of those bands is carefully crafted and coiffed and insultingly counterfeit. At least bands like the Spice Girls knew they were a fluffy, manufactured joke—and they were in on it.

Hugely successful all-female bands didn’t used to be cotton-candy assemblages. The Go-Go’s, the Bangles—these were bands whose members played their own instruments and even wrote some of their own songs. Instead of being cobbled together from soul-shriveling auditions filled with aspiring models and actresses, they sprang organically from hard-working and talented female singers and musicians. Somehow we managed to go from, “Hi, I’m Kathy Valentine, and I’m out of my fucking mind and having the best time ever.” to “Hi, I’m the Blond Pussycat Doll, and these are my tits.” Is the genre de-evolving?!

Maybe it’s the times we live in. Maybe it’s difficult for celebrities of any kind to be reckless and raw and learn lessons the hard way anymore. Maybe by the time you attain a certain level of fame in the music business these days, you’ve already got publicists and stylists and handlers and an image to uphold. Or maybe I’m wrong! Am I forgetting someone? I’m throwing down a gauntlet here, but I’d be ever so pleased to be schooled in the world of female musicians who are actually inspiring to either females or musicians. Please, PLEASE, give me some hope. Hit me with your best shot.

JILLIAN LOVEJOY LOWERY: I always tease my husband that he’s a misogynist, due to the remarkable lack of female artists on his iPod.  And when I call him out on it, he wrinkles his nose and says something snarky, along the lines of, “Yeah, sorry.  I didn’t find Britney’s newest offering particularly compelling.”

Not that my spouse is a fan of “popular” music; his tastes tend to be more punk and metal, where I daresay there is something of a lack of a female presence.  Still, the truth is, there are a ton of incredibly talented and unique female musicians out there.  You just won’t hear the vast majority of them on commercial radio.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not here to rail against Britney Spears, condemn Miley Cyrus or question Christina Aguilera’s astounding voice.  All of these women are good performers and, as a result, have found success within the pop star mold.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  There’s nothing wrong with pop, per se.  It does trouble me, though, that if you don’t look a little harder, these might be the only types of female performers you know.

Sometimes, it’s not that difficult.  The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have enjoyed radio play and commercial success, and Karen O, their quirky lead singer, is the antithesis of the cookie-cutter pop diva.  Tori Amos has been in the game for almost 20 years, and though you rarely hear her while idly flipping through the stations, she’s one of the best known and respected singer-songwriters of our time.  And we can’t forget Bjork, who had been making interesting, evocative music long before she and her swan dress worked their way into the country’s collective consciousness at the 2001 Academy Awards ceremony.

Imogen Heap, Allison Goldfrapp and Brooklyn-based trio Au Revoir Simone all create gorgeous electronica.  Beth Gibbons, the lead singer of Portishead, is the undisputed queen of trip-hop, with a stunning, quivery and mournful voice.   And Amanda Palmer never ceases to move me, whether she’s performing solo, or as half of the Dresden Dolls.  Like Palmer, indie icon Jenny Lewis is enjoying a successful solo career in addition to her work with Rilo Kiley (and The Postal Service).  Another Jenny, Jenny Owens Young, a folksy singer songwriter from northern New Jersey, does an irreverent cover of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” but it’s her original song, “Fuck Was I” that really resonates.  And speaking of songs that bring you to your knees, I would be horribly remiss if I didn’t mention “The Way It Is” by Nicole Atkins.  I hear it, and I instantly mist up.  Sometimes, I openly weep.

Sometimes, even pop superstars manage to break the mold.  I’m willing to make a case for Lady Gaga, whose music is pure fluff, but whose avant-garde persona transcends the bubblegum.  Gaga writes solid pop songs.   They’re catchy, they’re fun, and they’re vaguely clever.  They’re nothing special.  What’s special is Gaga herself, who sucks you in with her wigs and costumes, and wins you over with her theatrical live performances.  Unlike many of her Top 40 counterparts, you won’t see her lip synching.  She revamps her songs for different televised appearances, tweaking them, making them better, more interesting.  Her voice is strong, and she’s far better on the piano that I’d have ever imagined.   I am sorry that I underestimated Lady Gaga, and I’m curious to see what her sophomore album will bring.

Of course, there are many more – too many to name, and there’s a whole lot of wiggle room between Aubrey O’Day and the Lilith Fair.  Women are making a lot of really interesting, diverse and compelling music, right now, right this very second.   No matter what Clear Channel would have you believe, it’s not all auto-tune, hair extensions and stilettos.

Tags: Beyonce, Britney Spears, female musicians, Kathy Valentine, Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks, The Bangles, The Go-Go's, The Pussycat Dolls

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Arts & Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.