Music & Gender

This blog is going to be a lot like the previous one, but this time you'll be exploring the intersection of music and gender. We've already noticed several gender norms in the cultures we've studied--in Native American music, dances are generally segregated by gender, with men dancing the more flamboyant dances. In the music of the Andes, men generally play the harp, but often they'll be accompanying a woman who might be both singing and playing the part of the golpeador. And we've seen how gender norms can change over time--the Gambia has its first professional female kora player in Sona Jobarteh, and young women are starting to be seen at Native American drums. 

I'm sure that, if you stop to think about it, you've noticed gender expectations in the music you've experienced. Have different genders listened to different types of music, or been expected to listen to different types of music? Within the style of music that you like to listen to, does the media treat different genders differently? In music ensembles, have you noticed a difference in who plays what instruments, or how different sections act in choir? Do you find that folks performing music-related jobs that aren't actually performing (dealing with sound equipment, conducting, teaching, managing, etc.) lean to one gender or the other? 

As with the Music & Rituals blog, you're welcome to share your own observations about the ways music and gender interact, or to explore other cultures to see how gender expectations play out in their music, or to do a little bit of both. And the guidelines are the same:

• Your blog should be at least 400 words long.
• Your blog should include a minimum of two media selections--videos, pictures, sound files, links, etc. More is better.
• Please don't just rehash information that we've already talked about in class--introduce us to something new. (So, no, you may not talk about gender norms in Native American drumming, unless you have something quite new and significant to add to our understanding.)
• If you use sources beyond your own experiences, be sure to share them with us--you can provide links within your text or actual bibliographical citations at the end of your blog. (In informal blog writing, youtube videos act as their own link--you don't need to cite them in any other way.)

For me, I'm going to talk about one of my personal experiences, mostly because I have a good story to tell :-)

My mother-in-law, Karen, was an amazing woman. She received her Ph.D. in English while raising her son (my husband), ironed her sheets before putting them on her bed, took her 4-year-old granddaughter (my kid) downtown on the city bus regularly so that the granddaughter would have an appreciation for public transportation, and got up to go jogging in the morning before we'd all go hiking. She was dauntless. While growing up in Dayton, Ohio in the 1950s, though, she hit a snag: music.  She really wanted to play percussion in the band, but girls just did not do that in Dayton in the 1950s. So she took piano lessons, like a good girl. She actually got quite good at the piano, and played it for the rest of her life. Her two sisters followed in her footsteps, playing the piano and the flute--both were perfectly acceptable "girl" instruments of the day.

Fast forward from Ohio in the 1950s to Flint, Michigan in the late 1990s. Karen, all grown up and in her mid-50s, decided it was never too late to live the dream--it was high time she started those percussion lessons. She found a marimba at a pawn shop and signed up for private lessons at the Community Music School in Flint. Over the next few years she practiced diligently, getting good enough to play on a number of student recitals, use four mallets at a time, and give herself carpal tunnel syndrome. She and my father-in-law eventually moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and the marimba came with them. The marimba, in fact, lived in the spare bedroom--the one that my kid would stay in when we went to visit them. About nine years ago Karen passed away after a long trek with brain cancer, and the marimba sat and collected dust for a few years.

Perhaps it was all of those evenings sharing a bedroom with a marimba--we'll never know--but upon reaching the appropriate age (5th grade) the grandchild, Tally, decided to follow in Mom-Mom's footsteps and play the marimba! Tally signed up for band at school and we went shopping for a beginning percussion kit, bringing home a set of bells (like a small marimba made of metal) and a snare drum. Then, on Tally's 13th birthday, the marimba traveled from Asheville down to Spartanburg, where Tal gleefully unwrapped it, reassembled it, and started practicing it in our study. When we moved into a different house four years ago the first two things Tally did the day we moved in was to hook up the wifi and to set up the marimba in the sunroom. 

And did anyone tell Tally that "girls just don't play percussion"? No, they did not. Over the course of the intervening generation it's become pretty normalized for folks of all genders to play percussion in the band. 

In fact, a few years ago the Spartanburg Philharmonic hosted the most famous percussion soloist in the world today: Dame Evelyn Glennie, a Scottish woman who travels the world, performing as a percussionist and advocating for the arts. Performing with her was truly amazing. (She's also been profoundly deaf since the age of 12, which adds another interesting layer to her story.)

Oh, and back to my kid: Tally wants to work for NASA some day. And no one in 2023 is saying that that's gender-specific either :-)