Women About Sound has First Meeting, 19 March 2017

Women About Sound convened their first meeting this week with a panel discussion about challenges facing women musicians. 13th Floor reporter Dedee Wirjapranata was on hand and filed this story.

There was a great turnout when I arrived at Audio Foundation, the seats filled with women and a few men standing at the back. The discussion was chaired by Johanna McDavitt. This panel discussion was the first of a series of events, and will be followed up with workshops on songwriting and recording aimed specifically at female musicians.

Organiser Jess Haugh was inspired by the Secondskin Collective, an Auckland-based collective that had its first meeting in 2016 “with the aim to facilitate a creative community that is inclusive.” They got a huge response, the Whammy Backroom was so full they had to turn people away. This lead to Jess coming up with the concept of Women About Sound, which aims to create a community of musicians to provide women with an ongoing support network within the music industry.

Today’s panel consisted of:
Caitlin Smith – jazz vocalist, singing/songwriting teacher, NZ Musician magazine columnist
Jess Haugh – audio engineer, composer and performer – ‘Scarlett Lashes,’ organiser of the Women About Sound workshops)
Liz Stokes – lead singer and guitarist for The Beths, trumpet player in Sal Valentine & The Babyshakes

Topics included:

• Institutionalised sexism, casual sexism
• Women being sexist towards other women, or towards themselves, sometimes without realising it
• Gendering of instruments
• Some of the ‘gatekeepers’ in the music industry being resistant to change, or getting defensive when they’re called out on their sexism

Johanna opened the discussion by asking the panellists to talk about times when they had been treated differently as a female musician, or in Jess’ case as a female audio engineer. Followed by an exploration of why girls tend to stop playing music after high school, and the “gendering of instruments” (this could be why there are still less female trumpet players, guitarists or drummers.) Other topics included: why a lot of gigs and festivals still have all male, or mostly male line-ups. Johanna asked, “Are the organisers and promoters aware of what a male space they’re creating for themselves?”
Caitlin replied, “I think that’s privilege. And privilege is blind.”

One thing that came up a few times was “Impostor Syndrome.” Caitlin referred to this as something she’s suffered from in the past (and still does sometimes.) Impostor Syndrome is when you feel like a fraud, or you’re about to be found out, even when you’re good at what you do. You’re still thinking, “Am I good enough to be here?”

Caitlin also spoke about how things have changed since she started out as a singer. “I think attitudes have dramatically changed, but we’ve got this residue, and we’ve still got the patriarchy, and we’ve still got issues that exist.
“I’ve been teaching full-time for about twenty years now and I’ve noticed that there is a huge chasm. It’s a gendered chasm. And I can treat male students completely differently to female students.”
She said that male students tend to step up to a challenge more easily, whereas with female students, “I won’t hear from them again. They’ll just give up. And that’s because of self-belief, and a whole heap of other issues which I have immense compassion for, because I’m really maladaptive and sort of dysfunctional as well…”
This prompted the question from Johanna: “Do women have more of a perfectionist streak? Or are we socialised to be more perfectionist?”

Caitlin referred to a NZ Musician column she wrote, entitled “The Myth of Self-confidence.”
Johanna added, “Maybe self-confidence is just practise?” This could well be true, as it’s not something everyone’s born with.

A key part of self-confidence is acquiring skills. Caitlin spoke about the importance of acknowledging and honouring the skills you have – and sharing those skills with others. She gave the example of having to go and get her PA and help set up the mics properly for a gig she was at recently. Even though she wouldn’t call herself a technical person, she realised she did have the skills to do these things.

This lead to the subject of “Technophobia – do you have it?” The message here is – the technical side of music isn’t that hard once you have a go. “It’s not magic”, as Liz put it. You don’t have to rely on others to help you all the time, you can learn the skills to take care of your own technical set-up.

Jess spoke about the importance of putting yourself out there, so you can learn from your mistakes, get better, and gain confidence. You don’t get this by sitting in your room, working away in isolation, trapped by your own perfectionism. She gave the example of performing as Scarlett Lashes for the past nine years, and how much she’s improved, even if she now looks back on her first shows and thinks, “I can’t believe I did that, some of it wasn’t that good!”. But without going through that, with all the heckling at those early shows, she wouldn’t have built up her act to what it is today – with a number of professionally made music videos, and a much slicker live show.

Referring to the fact that guys (as opposed to women) seem quite happy to jam and play gigs just for fun, even if they aren’t that good – Liz added, “I think Auckland would be much better if we had more average female musicians.” We all laughed at that. It’s funny cos it’s true.

The message I took away from today was this: We can work towards changing things, as a community. We are all part of the ‘main customer base’ for people putting on gigs, the people who run record labels, or streaming services like Spotify. We can build on the networks we already have, or create new ones that are more inclusive of females from all walks of life. Striving to promote strong female voices, redress the balance, and take positive steps towards equality.
I would encourage anyone reading this to support your networks, support your fellow female artists, and help each other out. Share your skills and band together.

I felt it was so inspiring and valuable to share these conversations out in the open. It was refreshing and reassuring to hear that a lot of women in music, or other creative professions, experience the same struggles and personal battles.

There was a real buzz in the room as people chatted afterwards, swapping contact details for future gigs and projects they might collaborate on. It was heartening to see so many people getting involved, and many will return for the songwriting and recording workshops in the coming weeks.

Things have certainly improved, but there’s still some work to be done.

Article by Dedee Wirjapranata

For details about the Women About Sound songwriting and recording workshops, go here