“It’s really fucked up to call yourself Sophie and pretend you’re a girl when you’re a male producer,” Grimes, said earlier this year in an interview with the Guardian, referring to the PC music artist SOPHIE. “There are so few female producers.”
The artist, who’s been a prominent voice in the debate around electronic music’s disparity of women, was meant to be giving a lecture at the Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) in Montreal, a month-long project that attempts to cultivate collaboration between up and coming electronic artists in different cities every year.
The exclusive workshop - which gives accommodation, food and studio space to a small number of selected artists - runs lectures twice a day with people like Matana Roberts and Alex Tumay. Instead of being able to give her talk as intended, Grimes had to drop out at short notice due to an ongoing private matter. Being a public female figure in the electronic music scene is not easy.
Despite the legacy of female electronic producers and women pioneering within the genre (such as Laurie Spiegel, Daphne Oram, or even Kate Bush or Bjork) the vast majority of DJs booked for mainstream nights are men (9.6 percent worldwide in 2015 according to female:pressure blog), and electronic music/dance festivals have a similar disparity: WIRED discovered that this year’s Dimension Festival line-up had 13 percent women, while at Creamfields last year, women made up just 3 percent of the advertised line-up.
WIRED spoke to up-and-coming artists, as well as electronic legend Suzanne Ciani, about their experiences working in the genre.
Emma-Jean Thackray
Based in London, Thackray, 27, composes jazz and electronic music, released her Walrus EP in September, and will be re-scoring It Follows with a live orchestra on October 31st in Leeds.
How did you move from classical jazz to electronic music?
I don’t think I ever realised I was doing it. I just followed my ear and what I thought was interesting. I've always listened to a really broad range of stuff so in a lot of ways I’ve been ignorant of certain rules and certain ways of going about stuff, which meant I didn’t know when something couldn’t or shouldn’t be done.
How would describe your music?
Weird sounds with beats. I’m always trying to blend things that are cerebrally interesting and forward thinking in terms of harmony and rhythm, but I also love to dance, so I want to keep that visceral momentum in it.
How did you get into production?
I was making beats on my own in my bedroom because I loved people like J Dilla - that kind of Detroit era music. I didn’t think it fit with my jazz degree and my masters in composition. I just thought: 'I’m supposed to be writing pieces for orchestra! How does this fit?' and then I realised it definitely could.
What kind of space is electronic music - and jazz music - for women?
It’s a sausage fest, quite often. In the jazz world as well. When you look at the approaches in education, the boys are always pushed towards more practical, technical things, and the women are told to write a story, and not enough of each side are pushed to the other. Ultimately, we can't fix what's going on presently in terms of how women are being received in the electronic culture unless we fix the general educational attitudes.
Any anecdotes?
We’d be here all day. My life has been full of shitty dudes mansplaining. It happens all the time, even with men I’m really close to. In gigging culture, the bros want to hang out with the bros and then you don’t have the same relationship in a band, for example. As women, it feels like we always have to apologise for knowing things, and I find myself doing that. But I’m starting to realise I should stop apologising for knowing stuff.
Kučka
Based in Perth, 27-year-old Laura Jane Lowther makes electronic pop music, DJs, provides vocals for numerous producers and creates sound installations.
How did you get into music production?
I started off by messing around with GarageBand and had a super cheap electronic guitar. I’d record my vocals and add a shit load of reverb and effects - making the worst-sounding music. I was doing that then someone showed me Ableton. It took me a while to make anything that was not just me being angsty. I dropped out of my Psychology degree at uni and just started producing every day. I’m really drawn to the textures you can make with a computer and synths and how you can fill the whole spectrum from sub bass to twinkly sounds and everything in between.
How would you describe your musical aesthetic?
Textual electronic pop.
How welcoming is the electronic music scene for women?
It depends on the kind of scene you’re in. I think the internet is pretty ruthless for female producers; look at any female when they do a Boiler Room set. You have to prove yourself so much harder if you’re a woman. People still don’t believe you produce. On my Soundcloud, it says I'm a producer, and on heaps of my tracks there are comments saying ‘who produced this??’
From a live performance perspective, I’ve found it hard. I was once DJing at a venue and I heard these guys laughing and looking at me. I then went to test the decks and they’d changed all the settings to fuck with me or test whether I could actually DJ. I’ve also had industry people be super patronising.
Suzanne Ciani
Suzanne Ciani, 70, has been composing music on the Buchla since the 1970s, a complicated modular synth designed by Don Buchla. Based in California, she has recently released her new album 'Sunergy' in collaboration with fellow female Buchla player, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
What was the conceptual step between being a pianist and playing the Buchla?
Composition is a creative process and I've wanted to do it since I was a child. I majored in music and then got a master's degree - it was all very academic. My education came in the trenches of the New York music scene in the 70s. It was a different world. Technology was so much more expensive. We didn’t have home studios. Recording cost thousands of dollars. My first album cost over $1,000.
Do you think the Buchla gave you a certain freedom as a woman?
Absolutely. I wasn’t thinking of the Buchla as being complicated because it was what I knew. Being with an uncommon instrument did give me an edge. I could do things with that machine that other technologies of that time couldn’t do. There was a total creative freedom because nobody knew what you were doing. Electronic music makes women independent.
What is the music scene like now and before as a composer in electronic music?
I spoke to a young woman last night and some of the situations haven’t changed at all. If you think of yourself as a composer, the field is still very closed to women. If you want to do film scoring, or write your own orchestral piece, or you want to produce your own compositions, it’s very self-defeating. I don’t know why it hasn’t changed. It’s been built into the concept of music for hundreds of years that women don’t participate.
I learned to ignore all innuendo and all negative statements. There were places where I couldn’t go - corporations I couldn’t do music for because of their ethos and their misogyny - like some of the car companies in Detroit. It was demeaning. You have to develop a tough skin. Some of them had such an old boys club.
It hasn’t changed that much and honestly I am shocked. I have noticed a lot more women backstage though. Instead of trying to integrate with the existing group of men, we just need to create a critical mass of women. We can’t infiltrate.
Chloe Martini
Warsaw-based artist Anna Zmijewska a.k.a Chloe Martini, 23, makes electronic R&B, and has recently released her new EP, 'Private Joy'.
How did you get into music production?
I first started composing after I came across a piece by Ryuichi Sakamoto. I was 16 and when I heard his track, ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’, I realised that’s what I wanted to do. Two years later a friend of mine showed me FL studio, which is still the programme I’m using now. I learnt everything from YouTube. I had no one to teach me - I come from Poland and I know no Polish producers.
Where did your musical style come from?
Definitely 80s electronic music and R&B. My dad would listen to Phil Collins, Fleetwood Mac - so different, but melodic music.
How would you describe your relationship with technology?
If I had access to more analogue gear, I would definitely be using it because it sounds beautiful and has something that digital is lacking. I still want my music to sound warm and lush.
How welcoming is electronic music to women producers?
It takes time. It’s been a struggle for me. I think guys are taught to be more into the technical side. At colleges for engineering, you have way more guys. But I think women shouldn’t be afraid of it because once you get to know how to do it, you have so much freedom. The truth is, if we display women in music more, more women will be attracted to the idea. Male-dominated industries should showcase women more.
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Although the RBMA had roughly equal male and female participants, the anecdotes from the women WIRED spoke to suggest the scene is still distinctly closed off. Musicians like Grimes, FKA Twigs, Bjork (who recently spoke to how much better it was not having "the whole patriarchy of the studio"), Kelela, Kali Uchis are blazing a trail and shifting opinions, but it’s clear it's an uphill battle.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
