Point of Discussion: Barriers in Music - Music

Romanelli

Bone Swah

Gender: Male

Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

sethmadsen wrote:

I listened to Johnny Cash live at Folsom Prison last night with my wife. She asked if June Carter was in the recording. We were listening to it on Spotify as we were driving and it didn't mention featuring June Carter, etc. Reminded me of this conversation.

Having said that, I don't think it was a sexist thing... they also didn't name the other backing members.

My copy of At Folsom Prison certainly does include "(With June Carter)" on the tracks she joins Cash on.
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Mercury

Turn your back on the pay-you-back last call

Gender: Male

Location: St. Louis

CryingGameDahlin wrote:

Yes, a man can be supportive towards a female artist in any particular genre and they can certainly *help* them, but her success is not beholden, or "owed", to him either.

Also, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to be honest and say "I prefer male artists, or I think men are generally more artistically successful in a particular genre", but that's a subjective opinion, not a fact. It's also silly to pretend that there's no gender biases in how one views particular music, or the comparison of music made by men and women, either. That can happen from all sides. One particular oddity remember is when I first viewed TheyCallMeStacy's chart, and there were actually some negative comments about why they were giving a low score, often in some way saying it was somehow "wrong" for her to exclude male artists from her chart. Now we could argue the exclusion of EITHER sex from a particular chart... but I have never seen a chart made up entirely of male artists to get the same type of criticism. Somehow, there's something "off" about a chart free from some type of male representation, but nobody gives it a second thought when it's reversed. Having all males is just somehow "normal", or unrecognizable. (Not to say at all this was a universal complaint, but it was definitely a pretty telling moment that gender biases do indeed exist- on both side).

This is possibly due to the fact that we're used to the underrepresentation of women musicians in charts. If the average ratio is 90/10 male to female then it's of course MUCH more obvious to an observer that that 90 is 0 on a chart rather than that 10 being a 0. It's just way way more of an obvious trait.

I think if you're using your chart as a means to empower a gender, okay. But I think it's probably more an intentional point of empower wrong and shedding light on female musicians more than a situation where this person literally didn't love any one album made by men in this person's top 100.

Anyway, I like this discussion.
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-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!

RoundTheBend

I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Romanelli wrote:

sethmadsen wrote:

I listened to Johnny Cash live at Folsom Prison last night with my wife. She asked if June Carter was in the recording. We were listening to it on Spotify as we were driving and it didn't mention featuring June Carter, etc. Reminded me of this conversation.

Having said that, I don't think it was a sexist thing... they also didn't name the other backing members.

My copy of At Folsom Prison certainly does include "(With June Carter)" on the tracks she joins Cash on.

Good to know.

cestuneblague

Eyebrow of the Hurricane

Location: Chi-Town

Mercury wrote:

This is possibly due to the fact that we're used to the underrepresentation of women musicians in charts. If the average ratio is 90/10 male to female then it's of course MUCH more obvious to an observer that that 90 is 0 on a chart rather than that 10 being a 0. It's just way way more of an obvious trait.

I think if you're using your chart as a means to empower a gender, okay. But I think it's probably more an intentional point of empower wrong and shedding light on female musicians more than a situation where this person literally didn't love any one album made by men in this person's top 100.

Anyway, I like this discussion.

Yeah I wasn't trying to anaylze why a particular chart would have only women and if that's something that hurts or helps more in the long run when trying to give more exposure to female artists, I know my current overall is 99 percent female (thought mainly I just did that as a kind of a launching pad for the new account and wasn't planning on keeping it in it's current form, but alas gotten too lazy to change anything). I guess the main thing that is interesting about a chart that happens to have all female artists is how people automatically took immediate notice "wow, this is all women" and seem to have wildly mixed reactions to why that may be so, and yet nobody (including myself till I actually looked over some charts afterwards) seems to notice or really care if all the albums on a particular chart are entirely made by male artists... mainly cause yes I think the point that has been hammered home here a few times is that yes the musical world as a whole is still often viewed as a very male-driven art form.

You can question the how and the why of the chart and if she's intentionally excluding male artists for whatever reason, or this could just be the genuine 40 albums she likes best, there doesn't have to be an ulterior motive. And again it just seems like a bit of a double standard that these questions are never asked of a male member who has 40-100 favorite albums and none are female artists, nobody seems to question his sincerity, whether he "intentionally" left female artists off or if anything seems a bit exclusionary about the chart as a whole.

And I guess what I think is your chart is your chart, you do what you want with it for whatever rhyme or reason. If it happens to be all male, that's fine... just as if it's all female. There's no right or wrong way to make a chart on BEA and shouldn't be subjected to the authenticity police.

And I guess to get back to a previous point made I do think it can be particularly hard for women to get into a certain type of music that is viewed as very "masculine music", and often can be kind of a damned-if-I-do-or-don't response to whatever route they take. I remember frequenting a lot of old, now-defunct metal forums back in the 00's and often they (unfortunately none too surprisingly as they let their more misogynistic views be known in the crudest way possible) would often ridicule bands with female singers. They would often go after the more melodic-sounding metal that was pretty frequent at the time and berate it (well the female singers in particular) for trying to "soften" or homogenize metal for the masses... but when some people did actually point them to metal albums sung by women that did go very hard and took a much more brutal death/doom metal approach, they were instantly compared and contrasted to male singers of the genre and were not so subtly accused of appropiatiting, or that this was just something a women couldn't do and dismissed the music entirely at face value.

Now this was a while ago and you could chasten these forum members for just (sadly) garden-variety online-misogyny, and I don't want to offend any of my good open-minded metal friends here with all of this Emotion Wink

but I do think there are particular genres and styles of music where it is much harder for female artists to gain respect and attention because there can seem to be just a really ingrained, structural bias of it being something only men can do, and do well. So it does bring more spotlight towards a female artist who does truly breakthrough in the art form and have more wide-reaching success... but she shouldn't be viewed as a "succesful female metal artist", rather just a successful metal artist.