to select some of her favorite female artists from around the Nashville area. The results are an engaging 35 minute listen but the writeup accompanying it is probably my favorite part (read that below). You can stream the podcast
.
Chalk it up to years of touring and being nailed to women-only bills, but I have a slight irritation of 'female centric' lists, line-ups, bios, and press. However, I do think it's imperative to point out that the gender gap is no closer to closing in 2015 than it was in 1995. The Guardian recently published this statistic: This year, 89.6% of the acts confirmed for Reading and Leeds are all-male. These are not the only festivals that seem to have a gender bias going on. Some execs have cited oversights, others have said it's just a matter of availability. With this kind of denial, we shouldn't be surprised that we're still dealing with women artists being 'othered' and treated as token minorities in mainstream music.
Here's my short list of some of Nashville's most talented ladies. I chose to stay in more rock/pop territory because I think Nashville is still pretty under represented when it comes to genres other than country, folk, and americana. In that case, I want to make sure I mention Margo Price, Caitlin Rose, Birdcloud, Those Darlins, Alana Royale, and Thelma and the Sleaze for working their asses off to make this town brim with great music. I'm also looking forward to new music by Adia Victoria, the Dead Deads, and Ariel Bui. Some of the artists I chose for this playlist are great friends, some are acquaintances, and some I barely know - but all I deeply respect for their artistry. Each of these songs are very special to me. When I was growing up here and starting to play music, I was aware of only a teaspoon of female musicians in this town. Today, Nashville has a healthy tablespoon. This progress excites me.
"We keep coming back to the question of representation because identity is always about representation. People forget that when they wanted white women to get into the workforce because of the world war, what did they start doing? They started having a lot of commercials, a lot of movies, a lot of things that were redoing the female image, saying, 'Hey, you can work for the war, but you can still be feminine.' So what we see is that the mass media, film, TV, all of these things, are powerful vehicles for maintaining the kinds of systems of domination we live under, imperialism, racism, sexism etc. Often there's a denial of this and art is presented as politically neutral, as though it is not shaped by a reality of domination."
-bell hooks
