Feminist Theory in Music - Essay Example

Third Year; Music: Media, Identity and Cultures. Music and Feminist Theory “It makes no difference if yourerich or poor Or if youre smart or dumb A womans place in this old world Is under some mans thumb And if youre born a woman Youre born to be hurt Youre born to be stepped on, lied to, cheated on And treated like dirt Ah if youre born a woman Youre born to be hurt A womans lot is to give and give And go on giving A womans got to love and lose And go on living Well I was born a woman I didnt have no say And when my man finally comes home He makes me glad it happened that way Because to be his woman No price is too great to pay Yes I was born a woman Im glad it happened that way Oh I was born a woman Im glad it happened that way” Lyrics of Born a Woman (1966) by Sandy Posey Karin Pendle (2000) describes feminist aesthetics in her book Women & Music: A History: “Adherents of feminism seek to discover ways that women or the feminine are undermined in various cultures and to identify ways to raise the status of women. Broadly speaking, aesthetics is the philosophy of art. A feminist aesthetician, then, would philosophize about art in ways that would serve feminist end… In music there is a current interest in relating musical processes to personal, social, or political processes, including gender and sexual practices. These tendencies serve the interests of feminism. While there is at present relatively little work in philosophy that could qualify as feminist musical aesthetics, there is an increasing body of work on women or gender in musicology, music theory, or music criticism that is relevant to this area of study.” Although women have always been part of music in one way or the other, their work has been recognized fairly recently. It was in the 1700s that female musicians’ and some female composers’ names made their way into music lexicography and history. The word “Damenmusik” (women’s music) was found in Germany in 1811, when an anonymous critic apprehensively approached a piano sonata by a female composer only to be pleasantly surprised. Although the number of female composers increased in the 19th century, recognition in dictionaries and histories decreased. Emil Naumann wrote that “all creative work in music is well-known as being the exclusive work of men” in Illustrierte Musikgeschichte (1880–85), which is also known as A History of Music (1862-8) in England and the United States of America (Pendle, 2000). It was between 1870 and 1910 that cultural feminism challenged the limits of such discrepancies in music history. Fanny Ritter’s “Woman as a Musician” (1876) in the United States of America and Jessel’s monograph “Warum giebt es so wenige Componistinnen!” (1898) in Germany were explicitly associated with feminism. Between 1900 and 1940, the collective approach to women’s history was emphasized. Female musicologists including Marie Bobillier (publishing as Michel Brenet), Yvonne Rokseth and Kathi Meyer, researched and evaluated women’s musical institutions such as the convent and the female choir and emphasized the social vitality of women’s roles in society. In 1948, Sophie Drinker expanded her research beyond particular eras and pioneered the historiography of women and music as a separate topic. In 1970, numerous female historians acquired professional training in musicology in the United States of America and along with reviving feminism, produced a new discipline called “women’s studies” (Pendle, 2000). By 1980, ‘women in music’ courses started being taught at American universities and the demand for sound recordings and scores increased. Leonarda (founded by Marnie Hall, 1977) was one of the recording companies which started specializing in historical and contemporary work by women in the 1970s. Furore Verlag (founded in 1986) was the first publishing house to seriously print books about and music by women composers. The comprehensive “New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (1994)” contains over 900 entries (Hopper, 2006). Although women’s choruses played an important role in festivals and rituals of ancient Greece and Rome, music-making by women aroused a lot of commentary by Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle and they differentiated respectable women from female musicians and entertainers. This is notion is supported by Karin Pendle (2000). Authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Clement, Basil, and Boethius associated manly music with reason, restraint and order, whereas music associated with women or effeminacy was though to give rise to sensuality, excitement, passion, or madness. Socrates warned that music in the Mixolydian and “intense Lydian” modes, which were associated with women and goddess worship, would give rise to drunkenness, softness, and sloth. He preferred a harmony that “would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business. (qtd in: Hopper 2006)” Aristotle claimed that professional musicians were vulgar, that performing music was unmanly, except when the performer was drunk or just having fun. He stated that the Phrygian mode, associated with the great goddess Cybele, should not be allowed, “for the Phrygian harmony has the same effect among harmonies as the aulos among instruments – both are violently exciting and emotional. (qtd in: Rodintzky, 1999)” Some songs, which date back to before the feminist movement, carry out the same function as the feminist movement does nowadays, for example, warn young women against the dangers of deceptive men, getting involved with wrong partners before birth control was available, or getting married. Such songs include “Omie Wise”, “Careless Love”, and “Beautiful, Beautiful Brown eyes”. “Omie Wise” is a song about an American murder victim. She was an orphan, adopted by William and Mary Adams. She had an affair with Jonathan Lewis, who married another woman, who was of better social and financial status. They did not stop their affair after the marriage, one day in 1808, Naomi’s body was found in a river (McClary, 1990). On examination of the body, it was found that Naomi was pregnant. Jonathan confessed to her murder on his deathbed in 1820. Contemporary songwriters such as Ani DiFranco, Jewel, Nancy Griffith and Toni Childs also warn young women against such dangers (McClary, 1990). Some songwriters such as Joe Hill (1879 – 1915) recognized the oppression of women from a class background and the importance of women to the rebel cause. He was inspired by the communist, socialist, feminist, labour organizer, orator and campaigner for civil liberties, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964) and wrote the song “The Rebel Girl”, which was dedicated to the women of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Women’s rights have always been an issue and some blues singers expressed this frustration through songs. They felt powerless because of their gender and even though they could not explicitly narrate what happened to them, they expressed how angry they were about it (Lyotard, 1998). This part from the song “See See Rider” show such feelings of oppression: See see rider, see what you have done You made me love you , now your womans come You caused me Rider, to hang my head and cry You put me down, God knows I dont see why Im gonna buy me a pistol, as long as it is tall Gonna kill my man and catch the Cannon Ball If he wont have me, he wont have no man at all Joan Baez, folksinger and activist born on 9th January, 1941 in New York. Her father was Mexican and mother of Scottish and English descent. She grw up in New York and California. When her father, who was a physicist, took up a teaching assignment in Massachusetts, she attended Boston University. It was there that she began to sing in coffee houses and small clubs (Macarthur, 2002). Joan Baez was subjected to racial disgrace and discrimination because of her Mexican heritage and Latino features. She was involved in numerous social causes early in her career including civil rights and non-violence. She was even jailed. Joan Baez signed a contract with Vanguard Records and in 1960, her first album “Joan Baez” was released. She was known for her soprano voice and haunting songs. She performed with Bob Dylan and toured with him in the 1970s. She laid stress on historical fold songs always including political messages. She continues to speak and sing for peaceful solutions to violence in the Middle East and Latin America. She married David Harris, a Vietnam Draft protestor in 1968. They got divorced in 1973 after having one child, Gabriel Earl. Her husband spent most of their married life in jail. Joan Baez was one of the young and gifted singers who reached for a wider audience. Although overt antiwar songs did not make it to the top of the charts, a few general pacifist songs did. Among them was John Lenon’s 1970 pacifist hit “Imagine” which attacked religion and wealth in favour of universal togetherness. Joan Baez sang it on “Come from the Shadows” in a very dramatic manner. Although she did not identify with feminism, she along with Judy Collins and Malvina Reynolds was an excellent feminist role model in the 1960s. They sang about strong, independent, aggressive women and competed well with the best male topical singers (Cook, 1994). They predated women’s liberation, a term which was coined for the first time in 1968, after the women’s movement, which originated in early 1966. The early 1960s, women’s movement was completely transformed by the younger feminists whose stress was on equal rights. They transformed it into a counter cultural movement that concentrated on capturing and changing the next generation of men and women. They were joined by more talented songwriters and musicians who had themselves grown up with the movement. Feminist songwriters felt everything they wrote, brought new ground whether it was traditional songs, topical ballads or their own experiences. They felt that they were speaking to the conditions of all women. Women songwriters were greatly encouraged by the women’s liberation (Cook, 1994). Cheney et al. in the 1976 introduction of All Our Lives: A Women’s Songbook summed up the fruits of the past decade in these words: ‘As women and as feminists who love folk music and who love to sing, we have produced this book as a reflection as our own struggles in society which still has so little room for a woman with a mind of her own – even less for a woman with a song of her own (Hopper, 2006). ‘ The second wave of feminist singers in the 1970s was producing diverse music which was reflective of the wide world of feminism. Two of their best songs which were original to the core were Gerard’s “Custom Made Woman Blues”, a song which covered the problems of a rural wife trying to hold on to her man by following Cosmopolitan magazine’s advice and Hazel Dickinson’s “Don’t put her down, you helped put her there”, a song which puts the blame for the female bar floozy squarely on her male companions (Hopper, 2006). Hazel and Alice neatly bridged the gap between the consciousness raising and countercultural feminist records and those that were overtly political belonging to the socialist left. Two good musical examples of the socialist feminist relationship were Barbara Dane’s 1973 album “I Hate the Capitalist System”. The album ends with the song “Working Class Woman” which is filled with the socialist woman’s liberation themes. The song’s heroine works in a factory and has kids studying in high school but the boss still calls her “girl” (Rodintzky, 1999). Despite many problems the song’s heroine always sees a brighter future for women. One verse ends with the triumphant declaration that because she is a hardworking woman, the future is hers; and Red Stars Singers’ 1974 album “The Force of Life”, with a totally contemporary 1960s anger. The songs were all upbeat and hit hard at the image of an oppressive state (Rodintzky, 1999). Prince started off as a wonder kid, a black teenager from North Minneapolis, an isolated city, an eight hours car drive from Chicago, the nearest largest city with an African-American population. He was a kid from a broken home who taught himself every basic instrument while playing in cover bands during high school. People found growing up with Prince politically awakening, not because of the strict political message but because of the underlying rage, anger, sadness, passion and rawness. It was as if his songs spoke to them on a mysterious unconscious level (Hopper, 2006). Prince had a worshipping stance for women. He was the first popular-funk-sex-singer to introduce women in his bands and that kind of makes him a feminist. And it was not just dancers but proper musicians who he included in his bands. Starting somewhere in the 1990s, he disappeared only to appear again by his election to the Rock n Roll hall of fame. It was a reminder of the potent, irresistible and ground breaking force that he once was. The overriding theme during the CMJ Music Marathon panel “Backlash: Is Frat rock killing Feminist Rock?” (2000) was, ‘Clashing images of sexism and freedom make the music industry a confusing landscape for women’. Many of the panelists feel that there is a lack of strong women in popular music who can combat the sexist music that is selling millions of albums, with cool rock singers of the 90s gone, retired to the sidelines. As one panelist pointed out, ‘All you see now is Britney Spears.’ There is a lack of feminist element in the present musical climate. Suddenly it seems that it is not cocol to be a feminist. The singers have shed their feminism and independent portrayals for a more industrially standard image (McClary, 1990). The feminist movements of 1960s and 1970s proved to be the driving force behind music scholars’ interest in the contribution of women in music history and development. Women’s contribution to music was realized slower than in other fields because musicology was and still is male-dominated. These men have been schooled in traditional methodologies (McClary, 1990). But modern women make their livings as performers playing traditionally ‘made’ instruments such as the trumpet, trombone and double bass. Yet there are many women composers who prefer to be thought of as composers; this is because they think that women’s music is limiting. More and more compositions by women are being held in higher esteem even though they do not conform to current musical traditions. Composer Miriam Gideon feels that women tend to be more generous in the musical expression of emotion (Lyotard, 1998). Pulitzer Prize winning composer Shulamil-Ran however feels that there is far more to personal expression than expression of gender; but there are others who feel that there is more to hearing music than listening to it as an expression of women’s experiences and feelings. That is because even feminist women may not be able to distinguish between women’s experiences and patriarchal conceptions that they have internalized. Female singers and songwriters still may not have any equal voice in the music industry but their voices are louder and stronger than those of men and will not be silenced. However, most women are back to basics and have forgotten their feminist aims. They treat themselves like other men treat them, like objects. References: Pendle, Karin. 2000. Women & Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cook, Susan C. & Tsou, Judy S. 1994. Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. McClary, Susan. 1990. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. University of Minnesota Press. Rodintzky, Jerome L. 1999. Feminist Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of a Feminist Counterculture. Greenwood Publishing Group. Macarthur, Sally. 2002. Feminist Aesthetics in Music. Grove Press. Hopper, Giles. 2006. The Discourse of Musicology. Ashgate Publisher. Lyotard, Jean François., Krims, Adam & Klumpenhouwer, Henry James. 1998. Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic. Routledge. Read More