Music and Gender

 

As we’ve already begun to notice, participation in music and the related arts is often proscribed by the gender of the potential participator. For instance, we've noticed that drumming in Native American music has traditionally been performed by men, but in recent years women--especially younger women--have begun to drum as well. And, though we didn't talk about it much, I've never seen a video of a traditional Andean harpist who is female--though we did see several female singers. We'll observe more of these disparities as we go on. 

For your Music and Gender Blog, I want you all to muse on how music and gender have intersected in your own musical experiences. 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? If you've had experience in any sort of music ensembles yourself, have you noticed a difference in who plays what instruments, or how different sections act in choir? And, just to be more inclusive (and perhaps give you more to write about), let's throw sexuality into the possible mix as well. 

As with the Music and Religion blog post, there are no right or wrong answers here--I simply want you to think both deeply and broadly and share what you've observed. To make sure that you think deeply and broadly enough, shoot for 400-500 words (or more). If you think that the use of media (videos, pictures, links) in your blog would be helpful, please provide them. Here is my contribution to our blog stories: 

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 seven 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 when she reached the appropriate age (5th grade) my kid 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 it was gleefully unwrapped and reassembled, and Tally started practicing it in our study. When we moved into a different house two years ago the first two things Tal 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, for some complicated Covid reasons, the Spartanburg High marching band isn't even using marimbas this fall, and so Tal and a number of friends--all girls-- played snare drum. (Well,  ok, there are still some guys on the snare line, but the numbers are pretty even.) Snare drums, for the uninitiated, are some of the most macho instruments in the marching band. And it's totally ok now for the girls to play them.

Oh, and Tally wants to work for NASA when she grows up. No one is telling her she can't do that either.

So this is just an example from my own world of how gender can affect someone’s personal interaction with music, and how that gender/music link can drastically change over the course of 50-60 years.