Women in Music

This is the first ethnographic study of women's popular music-making. It is based on over 100 in-depth interviews as well as participant observation by the author, a sociologist, who has herself played in various bands since punk. Bayton covers the period from the late 1970s until the mid 1990s, focusing mainly on women instrumentalists in female and mixed bands. Amongst others, interviewees include Skin from Skunk Anansie, Debbie Smith from Echobelly, Candida Doyle from Pulp, Gail Greenwood from Belly and L7, Natasha Atlas from Transglobal Underground, and Vie Subversa from Poison Girls. Although female vocalists have always been common, women playing instruments in bands are still proportionally rare. Frock Rock explores the social factors that keep women from playing and those routes that have enabled women's involvement. The book then examines the everyday worlds of women's music-making from bands just starting up to the professional stage: songwriting, rehearsing, the first gig, getting a manager, record companies, recording, and touring. Easy to read and packed with fascinating quotes, Frock Rock makes an invaluable contribution to the field of popular music studies and will become a key text in cultural studies, media studies, women's studies, and sociology of culture courses.

Illustrations Preface An Introduction to Women, Music, and Culture by Ellen Koskoff From Singing to Lamenting: Women's Musical Role in a Greek Village by Susan Auerbach Balkan Women as Preservers of Traditional Music and Culture by Patricia K. Shehan "Ya Salio de la Mar": Judeo-Spanish Wedding Songs among Moroccan Jews in Canada by Judith R. Cohne A Sociohistorical Perspective on Tunisian Women as Professional Musicians by L. JaFran Jones Hazara Women in Afghanistan: Innovators and Preservers of a Musical Tradition by Hiromi Lorraine Sakata Professional Women in Indian Music: The Death of the Courtesan Tradition by Jennifer Post Identity and Individuality in an Ensemble Tradition: The Female Vocalist in Java by R. Anderson Sutton Inversion and Conjuncture: Male and Female Performance among the Temiar of Peninsular Malaysia by Marina Roseman Female Tayu in the Gidayu Narrative Tradition of Japan by A. Kimi Coaldrake Musical Expression and Gender Indentity in the Myth and Ritual of the Kalapalo of Central Brazil by Ellen B. Basso The Joyful Sound: Women in the Nineteenth-Century United States Hymnody Tradition by Esther Rothenbusch Close Harmony: Early Jazz Styles in the Music of the New Orleans Boswell Sisters by Jane Hassinger An Investigation into Women-Identified Music in the United States by Karen E. Petersen The Sound of a Woman's Voice: Gender and Music in a New York Hasidic Community by Ellen Koskoff Power and Gender in the Musical Experiences of Women by Carol E. Robertson Index About the Contributors

Introduction: Personality assessment 1. Musicianship from a different perspective 2. Introversion 3. Independence 4. Anxiety 5. Gender role adaptability 6. Music preferences and listening styles 7. Orchestral performers 9. Musicians in popular fields and conductors 10. Composers 11. Music teachers 12. Development of musical talent

This book presents for the first time an introductory, contextual study of three centuries of musical activity at the four major charitable foundations of the former Republic of Venice: the ospedali grandi. Berdes provides a comprehensive account of the institutional, social, religious, and civic dimensions of these welfare complexes, with particular reference to their musical subsidiaries, the cori. Involving over 800 professional women musicians, the cori also represent a vast repertory of over 4,000 original works by composers of whom Vivaldi is only the best known--works that are little known today but recognized as key elements in the historical evolution of musical genres.