Music and Gender

     While gender does not clash with my personal history in music, the environments I have grown up in have been. Being raised in the early 2000's, the mainstream music genres were majority male musicians and singers (with the occasional female support/chorus singer featured in the song for larger audiences, etc.) Although music has recently adapted to be more female-inclusive, many aspects still remain biased and unwelcoming to new female/non-male artists. This ranges from concepts such as "girly genres" associated with pop, the "non-feminine nature of rock and roll", and so forth. 

  

    Coming from a background of around 7 years in concert/symphonic ensembles, I have both played and listened to countless genres and instruments (including the flute, piano, violin, ocarina, guitar, ukulele, and percussion line/drum).  As such, my personal experience with music takes on a variety of forms including classical and modern/popular music (with the above example representing my classical and popular music sides respectively). One key difference however within these examples lies gender; or rather how it is regarded throughout popular music in comparison to classical. While classical can represent genderless emotion/expression, trendy music almost always reflects a specific gender-based and commonly stereotypical concepts in an attempt to pander (such as women with makeup/relationship issues and men with boredom/physical activity/anger). These beliefs then lead into the beginnings of gender divides within genres (such as pop and rock). It is because of this that I chose the example of Gwen Stefani and Pink singing Gwen's song "Just A Girl", as their history of being musical revolutionaries for their genres/gender represent the common struggles of gender bias in the music industry.

   

    For me and many others, music acts as both an escape and enjoyable pastime, as it allows access into new headspaces and emotions (my brief examples of this being "Tomorrow" by Kevin Penkin and the orchestral arrangement of John Powell's soundtrack for Dreamwork's "How To Train Your Dragon"). By using a full range of instruments including membranophones, idiophones, aerophones, and even choir/opera singers, music can provide multiple soundscapes at varying levels. Even so, classical music itself faces a challenging setback; its reception remains quite isolated to its specific audiences. As such, many dated traditional beliefs such as gender-specific instruments still exist to this day (for example the disapproval of female percussionists and male flutists). As time has progressed these issues have reduced in number, but unfortunately still face new musicians to this day (especially from social perspectives both in and out of performances from the public). Even so, the unity that can be derived from such music can heal and repair gender separation within the music industry, allowing for both increase in self-expression and personal/societal growth on all sides.