“Is this a gift for someone?” I was posed this question by a sales associate at a music supply store in 2008, while looking to purchase some Vic Firth American Jazz Drumsticks at the recommendation of my drum teacher. At the time, I had been playing drums and percussion for six years and wanted to start playing more jazz. So, no, the sticks were for me, not a gift for what I imagine the salesclerk thought was some man in my life. The salesclerk’s inability to conceptualize me as a drummer was frustrating (he responded to my answer by asking if the sticks were for the video game Rock Band), but not surprising. At that point I was accustomed to these realities of being a woman in the male-dominated field of drumming: from the assumptions of people who had never heard me play that I was not skilled, to being assigned the supposedly less challenging auxiliary percussion parts by a section leader in school band instead of the more difficult parts that I knew I was capable of playing.
Subsequently, it was in school band where I learned to speak up and advocate for myself (two valuable life skills for a young woman) in order to play the parts I wanted. In fact, I often think my experience as one of the few female drummers at my school facilitated my discovery of feminism. Although I’ve stopped playing since high school, as a woman drummer, I still feel a sense of solidarity with other women musicians, especially those playing instruments typically played by men. It comes as no surprise, then, that I was pumped when I found out about the upcoming Gender Amplified festival, which celebrates women and girls in music production. Like percussion, the music production and sound engineering fields are predominantly occupied by men, in part due to the lack of encouragement young women and girls get towards working with technology. Organized by producer Ebonie Smith ‘07, the BCRW’s current Alumnae Fellow, the Gender Amplified movement promotes female producers and sound engineers as another avenue for getting more women and girls into STEAM fields. Currently only 5% of music producers are women, and the number of women in other tech industries is also disappointingly low. Bringing together lots of women and girls interested in music production and sound engineering, the Gender Amplified Music Festival in September 2013 will bring exposure to women in the field and provide some hands on experience for those who are new to it. The festival, which is cosponsored by the Barnard Africana Studies Program, the Clive Davis Recorded Music Institute at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Femmixx.com, the Hip Hop Education Center, and the Female Music Producers Association, will have performances, panels on music production and gender, and instructional workshops for young people interested in pursuing music production and technology.
As Professor Janet Jakobsen said about the festival, the opportunities for experience with music production that Gender Amplified will provide will most definitely inspire young attendees to pursue a career or hobby they may have never considered before. It’s time for young women and girls to start seeing themselves as music producers, sound engineers and many other tech professionals, and for women and girls to feel support and solidarity within those fields. Dina Tyson is a Summer Research Assistant at BCRW and a 2013 graduate of Barnard College who majored in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Related: