{"id":2694,"date":"2011-01-25T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T09:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=2694"},"modified":"2011-01-25T09:00:51","modified_gmt":"2011-01-25T09:00:51","slug":"women-men-and-music-the-xy-factor-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2011\/01\/25\/women-men-and-music-the-xy-factor-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Women, Men, and Music: the XY Factor, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me begin with some residual New Year bonhomie <\/em>by saying that the New Yorker<\/strong>\u2019s music critic Alex Ross<\/a> is not the problem here. It\u2019s just that one sometimes needs to take an inventory of the symptoms before starting on the cause. Last month I attended a talk by Ross on the release of his latest book<\/a>. The talk and the discussion which followed were was interesting enough, but throughout the evening I couldn\u2019t help noticing that, although there were several women in attendance, every single raised voice in the room was male.<\/p>\n

Hardly revelatory, I know. This time last year, I contributed to a relatively prominent and very good music blog\u2019s retrospective on the best songs of the past decade. More depressing if grimly predictable than Kate Nash\u2019s inclusion in the best-of was the fact that, out of over forty contributors, I was one of only two women. From the demise of \u00a0Plan B magazine<\/a><\/strong>, with its conscious commitment to encouraging female writers, to Anwyn Crawford\u2019s recent rebuke of The Wire<\/strong>, the current lack of female voices in mainstream music criticism is a truth universally acknowledged.<\/p>\n

\"Photograph<\/a>

It takes all sorts. Image by Flickr user Derek K Miller shared under Creative Commons licensing.<\/p><\/div>\n

As part of Ross\u2019s audience, I\u2019m not saying I felt excluded or unwelcome, nor did I find the questions less interesting, relevant or articulate for being asked in a masculine rather than feminine register. But something did click with me when, towards the discussion\u2019s end, a man towards the front reticently asked Ross: “This might sound a silly question, but \u2013 do you like to dance?”<\/p>\n

The opening caveat there is as important as the question itself. Let\u2019s start with the latter, which threw into sharp relief the varying ways one can engage with music. Let’s call the difference that of Pure versus Applied. Where Alex Ross excels is his ability to demystify music, separating and examining its component parts. This scholarly and almost clinical approach can succeed brilliantly, particularly when discussing Ross\u2019s first love, classical music. But, as an exclusive approach, I find it lacking, and the absence of attention to dancing helps explain why.<\/p>\n

I find it very hard to think of any song I truly love that I cannot also dance to – whether by \u2018dance\u2019 I mean drunken mock-waltzing to (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais<\/a><\/strong> or that routine one does to Killing in the Name Of<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>which involves attempting to stab your knees with your eyebrows. I intellectually analyse the music I love, scouring its lyrical content and its social and cultural context for meaning to enhance my enjoyment of it, but not necessarily to justify my enjoying it in the first place. I am equally interested simply in experiencing its rhythm, its flow, its grind, its melody, the way it makes me want to move as well as the mechanics of how it achieves that, its impact on my body as well as my brain. I attach as much weight to a physical and emotional response as to a cerebral anatomising of music. Until that question was asked, the talk had concentrated wholly on the latter, lacking any consideration of the former, equally useful, dimension of how music works. So no, it wasn\u2019t \u2018a silly question\u2019. Why the questioner, and we, might feel that it is, perhaps approaches the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sceptical of the patronising and reductive idea that men and women appreciate music in intrinsically different ways, men with a cold and technical analysis and women with an exclusively personal and emotional response. But this scepticism is a continual struggle against the weight of cultural conditioning and its success in bequeathing to boys and girls approved modes of engagement.<\/em> The male = analytical\/female = emotional dichotomy is a counterproductive product of social training, and identifying and questioning this assumption in relation to engagement with music is part of breaking down the barriers between genders and combating sexism in general. Doing so is hindered, however, by the extent to which these different approaches are accorded varying weight in wider discourse, with prevailing attitudes in music criticism privileging one over another. The implications of this will be explored in Part Two.<\/p>\n

Part Two is now online here. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

For Rhian Jones’s own blog, hop over to Velvet Coalmine<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> <\/strong><\/a>
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