The Irregular Riff is supposed to be about upcoming musical releases but today I am nudging my own rules to one side. What I'd like to talk about is something of great importance and something that consumers of music such as us are perhaps not fully aware of or not as engaged with, especially in such an honest and interesting way as through the Reversal of The Muse, a recently launched podcast series hosted by Laura Marling. Briefly, for those who don't know Laura Marling, she is a female singer-songwriter from England who has released five albums to date, each of which have been critically acclaimed and celebrated.
Stating on the Reversal of The Muse website, Marling says that in 10 years of making music she has only encountered two female engineers working in music studios. Through her conversations with women in the industry, thus far with studio engineer Vanessa Parr and the all girl band Haim, Marling ponders on why there might be a lack of women in the industry and what this deficiency means for music and for music creation. The two available podcasts bring up interesting points and Marling has a natural way of allowing her interviewee to fully delve into the topic whilst reigning them in and putting her questions and opinions forward.
The first podcast with Vanessa Parr is striking for how few female audio engineers studied alongside Parr at university with as little as 5% of the course participants being women (4:10). Parr muses on the stereotypes of jobs such as engineering traditionally appealing to men and says that as a very social job, one where you have to work long hours with artists and other people (men) in the studio, it is an environment where people have to "pal around" (6:38) and that this already male orientated environment is difficult to break into unless you are more of a tomboy. To my mind it also brought up questions of other such industries typically associated with men such as in the sciences, and just how difficult it is to deconstruct such solid stereotypes.
One of the most striking moments is when Marling asks Parr whether she had ever met a female producer (14:33). Parr's response; "No. Isn't that crazy". It is crazy and not something that your average music consumer, such as me, would necessarily think about or think is the case. The consumer is often only open to the artist themselves and we are lucky in that gender in music seems to not be such an issue, as Haim agree in the second podcast (21:00), and that gender is not seen by the consumer; Grimes is a fantastic example of this as a young woman making her own music in a genre as androcentric, as focused on men, as the electronic music scene.
The Haim podcast includes Haim's (male) producer who says that although he has worked with numerous female artists, female engineers make up less than 1% of the people he has worked with (14:09). Their conversation on sexism when going into a guitar shop is troubling, with one of the girls saying that she often feels she is demeaned and judged by those in the shop simply for being a woman and that this feeling often makes her want to prove herself and her ability simply to gain acceptance in this male environment (15:18-18:57). It's interesting to hear Marling say how commonplace this feeling of competition and of having to fight for acceptance is for a "threateningly talented female musician" (20:44). It makes me think how there is inevitably a feeling of competition in a guitar shop as there often is between bands or in other hobbies and areas where ones skill can be clearly ranked above anothers. Women are the ones that men feel they can almost immediately assert their feeling of superiority over before asserting it over as many men as they can rationalise a feeling of musical superiority over. That need to be the best means that the weakest are eliminated first and are trampled on to make you feel better, it's just that the weakest are seemingly perceived as women first, regardless of skill and talent.
Reversal of The Muse has been really eye-opening and made me consider that although there are many incredibly vocal and strong female performers and musicians, within the music industry, the creatives behind the scenes, something is being lost. Do tune in to Reversal of The Muse as it is that podcast and not this blog that can really enlighten and shock on this interesting and often disturbing topic.
Laura Marling
Reversal of The Muse
Check out the podcast at the official website: http://www.reversalofthemuse.com/
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