For the first time in a very long time, I spent an entire day with high school boys.
No, I’m not The Cougar, I simply went to the Star Trek movie and then to the Village Vanguard to see jazz pianist Brad Mehldau this past Saturday.
As previously planned, my mom, Aliza and I got to the movie theater at Lincoln Center precisely one hour and a half early for Star Trek. I’d guesstimate we were about People 29, 30 and 31 in line at that point, and out of those people, we probably doubled the number of women.
That said, after posting about the Mother’s Day/Star Trek correlation on Friday, I’ve received five additional reports of friends taking their mothers to the movie for Mother’s Day. [I also learned, by going with a friend on Sunday, that people actually took their mothers – and daughters – to Next to Normal on Mother’s Day, which is just too bizarre for me to handle. Did they know what the musical was about? More on Next to Normal‘s classical music bashing at a later date.]
When I was watching The Kentucky Derby a few weekends back, I was entertaining myself by pounding mint juleps and wondering if there was some young horse publicist person out there whining (whinnying?) about how everybody pays attention to The Kentucky Derby but people just aren’t into horse-racing the rest of the year. How do we harness the Derby audience for other races? When will we stop young people from bridling at the costs in involved in the sport? Why are we saddled with an old, rich-person stigma? That led me to think about how every industry – even those that are flourishing – wants a specific demographic they don’t yet have. A few years back, for example, the Red Sox had three players on the show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in an attempt to reach out to the gay/lesbian communities of Boston.
If jazz publicists and marketers are not concerned with the gender situation, they certainly should be. In my (albeit limited) experience with jazz, the genre is men playing music for men. Like football. (Yes, I realize women watch football, but you see my point.) In the four years I was at Dartmouth, there was one woman in the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble. Girls auditioned, but none except this one was good enough to make it, apparently. I asked members of Stefon Harris‘ Blackout about this issue when we were at a Chamber Music America New Music Institute together, and they said most of the time women are singers in jazz, but rarely instrumentalist performers. The sign at the Village Vanguard says the capacity is 123 people. At the 11:30pm set on Saturday, I counted 17 women including myself watching the three men on stage. What is that all about? It really bothered me.
Some Google work led to these:
Yahoo – Why don’t girls like jazz? One prize of a man named “george g” offered, “Because it’s not lightweight music”, and another gem – “Jeff Taylor” – suggested, “Although greatly generalizing I would have to say that why ‘girls’
(under the age of 30) as well as plenty of ‘guys’ don’t usually like
jazz is because jazz is art music and requires much *effort* to enjoy.” george g. and Jeff….call me. Groan.
An NPR Women in Jazz profile –
When we think of women in jazz, we automatically think of singers, but
there have been a number of female instrumentalists dating all the way
back to the early 1920s. Musicologist Ingrid Monson points out that the
piano, one of the earliest instruments that women played in jazz,
allowed female artists a degree of social acceptance.
In jazz’s early years, female instrumentalists usually formed all-women
jazz bands or played in family-based groups. Stepping up into the
professional jazz world was a difficult feat for many women, but an
interesting twist, according to author Sherrie Tucker, author of Swing Shift: All-Girl Bands of the 1940s, jazz provided better working opportunities for many African-American women.
And Women in Jazz from PBS –
Women who play jazz on saxophone, brass instruments, bass, or drums
still encounter befuddled reception to their very presence: “I’ve never
seen a woman do that!” or the ubiquitous, “You play good for a girl!”
or “You play like a man!” Commentary about women in jazz still sticks
at fundamental questions: Do they exist? Are they serious? Can they
play?
These mostly discuss women playing jazz, whereas I’m more interested in women as jazz audience members. (Of course these things are probably related). I pounced on a friend of my friend when she told me she was a jazz trumpeter and asked if I could interview her for the blog on this topic, so hopefully I should get some answers from someone on the inside soon. If anyone knows of literature on the topic, though, please comment.
I have to say, spooked as I was by the gender imbalance, I was extremely impressed by the age range at the Mehldau concert. We were sitting behind a table of about eight high school boys (ordering soda – so cute) and next to two couples, one pair well over 60 and the other mid-40s. My kingdom for that range around me at a classical concert. So like I said, we all have our own demographic issues to grapple with.
The lack of women who appreciate jazz has always amazed me. I’ve loved it from my teens, when I started following Count Basie and Art Blakey. I had no particular reason to like it. I liked classical music and pop as well. I’ve grown more and more impassioned about it and write about it when I get a chance. But I hardly can ever interest a woman friend in going to performances. (I was at the Mehldau with a man friend). Some men friends have sarcastically said it’s too intellectual for most women and a woman friend has said it appeals to men in their groins and women don’t react to things that way. I’ve asked jazz musicians and they haven’t been able to say. Very strange. I hope your column inspires some answers.
Miles Davis would be on your side of this issue. I was once told by a reliable source (a member of Davis’ band) that Davis would find it upsetting if audiences were predominantly male, remarking that “it looks like a gym in here” [expletives deleted] when he perceived a gender imbalance in clubs.
Me and Miles Davis: like twins separated at birth. Thanks for commenting! -AA
Women instrumentalists in jazz have been comparatively few, historically, though there’s never been a shortage of female jazz vocalists. But consider Carla Bley, incredible composer-bandleader-piano soloist, or Toshiko Akiyoshi, another amazing pianist; or the later Emily Remler, or Jane Bunnett, or more recently Teri Lynn Carrington, or Hiromi, to name a few. They’re out there, they’re gifted artists, and they deserve a much wider hearing. Compared with other genres, jazz itself has a small (but passionately devoted!) audience,but as an art form its nature is such that there are no barriers, no limits. Wherever you’re from, whatever your ethnicity or background, whatever your gender (or sexual preference),this music offers every aesthetic satisfaction there is– earthy and cerebral,nitty-gritty and abstract, introspective and gentle or boiling with rage and fire, no boundaries contain the possibilities of expression that have been liberated by jazz music. For the past 40 years critics have been pronouncing jazz dead, but for those of us who “get it,” this vital art form will continue to grow and change, transcending all artificial constraints and petty labels. Through the deep empathy and honesty this music fosters among musicians, and the life-enhancing experience it provides for those listeners, women and men, who are prepared to HEAR, jazz music will continue to survive and thrive, even though 98% of humanity may choose to ignore it.
I think you’re asking a really good question–I didn’t realize there was a shortage of women in the jazz audience. Keep at it, and let us know what you find out!
Musicologist Susan McClary has taken a lot of heat for suggesting that the the deepest structures and technical apparatus of classical music may reflect the patriarchal values of the wider society, but why should it be a surprise that an art form would deeply embody its culture’s values? (McClary has also pointed out that some of the earliest bluesmen were women, but men got the credit for inventing the form.) Until very recently men were entirely in charge of public musical life, saying what music was good, what music mattered, what music would be heard, and the most basic issue: what music should sound like.
If women listeners are staying away from jazz, maybe that’s because they suspect that it won’t speak to them. This impression might flow from the way the music is presented, from the way it is promoted, from the way it is performed, from its sound and structure, or from all of the above. Meanwhile, just as women writers are bringing perspectives and experiences that were previously absent from literature, women musicians aren’t just competing successfully with men; they are probably expanding music’s possibilities.
I think a good explanation for the gender imbalance at a Brad Mehldau concert is that he’s considered a “musician’s musician”, which is to say that other jazz musicians are apt to come out to hear him so they can study and reproduce what he’s doing. Since the majority of jazz instrumentalists are still men, that would result in a higher number of men in the audience. Add to that the fact that it’s fairly unusual for a single woman to go out to a jazz club at night by herself (I’ll let the sociologists explain why that might be), and you end up with a higher ratio of males to females.
I think there would be a higher ratio of women at a Cassandra Wilson show. The fact that she’s a singer would attract other singers (she’s a singer’s singer). But more significantly, her songs (usually) have lyrics, and lyrics talk about people and feelings. That’s not to say that _all_ men are emotionally distant and prefer “things and abstraction”. Nor am I saying that _all_ women care more about people and relationships than men do, however statistically speaking, I would say that things are slightly more skewed in that direction. One might ask, “why then aren’t the audiences for Bach, Beethoven and Mozart skewed this same way?” Perhaps because traditional classical music is concrete (the melodies are written out and relatively predictable), where as jazz is usually more abstract, and improvised to a higher degree. Since the vast majority of people, (both male and female) feel more comfortable with the concrete than with the abstract, both genders feel more or less equally comfortable with classical music. The notion of classical music being “proper” and “suitable” for a young lady also keeps the number of female players (and potential listeners) higher than it might be otherwise.