Invisible Barriers: On Being a Female Rock Musician

Music is supposed to be about release, about freeing ourselves from something, (so the romantic’s story goes) yet as I become increasingly dedicated to my craft as a musician, more and more am I struck by its constraints.

The pathetic gender ratio of my personal iTunes library isn’t so surprising when perusing mainstream musical history of the last fifty-odd years. For instance, only since 1972 have women been allowed to play in the University of Minnesota’s marching band, and a mere 23 of the 159 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s inductees are women. There is a longstanding tradition of a male-dominated music sphere, reflected in the gender disparity of public voices disseminating our work to the public. According to this article, “among music writers with a regular byline in a major publication or radio outlet, 82% are men.”

Female artists like me suffer from a lack of role models, whom all musicians–singers especially–need to shape their talent around. If a woman sings along to too many dudes’ songs, she risks leaving the upper register of her voice underdeveloped. It has taken me hours of vocal exercises to strengthen my ability to sing higher pitches. I never sang in my upper register when I was growing up because the pop divas of the 1990s like Celine Dion and Mariah Carey just didn’t appeal to my tastes (and I have to wonder if “taste”–usually thought of as idiosyncratic–is just as implicated in upbringing and social norms as anything else.) I was raised on classic rock. As a result, my musical subconscious reverberates with the echoes of male voices, and while I will always love Jeff Mangum, I will never sound good singing like him. In mainstream music, men have a sparkling supermarket full of voices to model their singing after, and women are stuck with last week’s leftovers.

As a singer, I want to be edgy, ballsy (why is there not a generally-agreed-upon female equivalent to this?!), and raw, but able to pull out the chops when necessary. I’ve had to dig around quite a bit to find singers whose work I’m drawn to. Plenty of them exist—to name a few: Neko Case, post-Rilo Kiley Jenny Lewis, and Joni Mitchell (duh)—but these ladies, successful as they are, for whatever combination of reasons were never made immediately available to me when I was learning to sing. I make use of the immediately available material, too: although I consider myself an indie artist, I still learn songs by mainstream pop stars like Adele, Aaliyah, and even Miley Cyrus. And then my fellow musicians scoff at these cover choices, as if I had an endless selection and I just had to choose the most played out artists. No, that’s okay, you go ahead and cover some David Bowie or Freddie Mercury. Not an 1980s or power ballad guy? More into post-punk? How about some Ian Curtis, Michael Stipe? Oh so you like soft folk artists? May I suggest some Tallest Man on Earth, Fleet Foxes, Matt Costa?

I really believe that men do have more of a selection here. I’d like to be able to entertain you at parties, pulling out songs emblazoned in everyone’s memory, like Hotel California or Oh! Darling. Where are the female equivalents of these crowd-pleasers? I dare you to name three songs by a woman you’d like to hear at a party that are easily translatable to an acoustic guitar. No really, please do it, and leave it in the comments. I need help!

Still, despite the issues with a lack of role models, there are probably more female singers than any other type of musician. Female instrumentalists are another story. In my own musical life–as a singer, guitarist, keyboardist, and most recently, bassist–playing instruments makes me sort of a novelty. My boyfriend, who I play with in our 3-piece band Dr. Martino, often mockingly jokes that I’m the band’s “meal ticket.” I have heard fellow musicians remark on multiple occasions how it’s “cool” that a band has female members. Women instrumentalists are like the ironic, shiny buttons hipsters find at their local thrift stores; decorative commodities prized more for the image we exude than any objective quality. The subaltern has market value in rock and roll.

I’m happy for my music to get any attention at all, and at the end of the day, and maybe it doesn’t matter if that attention comes from the fact that I’m a chick and, “like, that’s so COOL that you’re a chick who plays music!” Thanks, most guys I’ve played in front of before, but at the same time, I care deeply about my songwriting and my artistic expression, and I’d rather you compliment those things. Extra points if you can give me a useful tip on my technique.

Truthfully, though, being complimented simply for being a woman who rocks out is pretty innocuous compared to some other types of attention that come with the gig. Some male musicians have seen me, and women like me, as a whole new avenue of sexual conquest, for instance. When I was playing around the South Florida scene several years ago, there was more than one occasion in which guys invited me over to “jam” at their places. At the time, I was eager to find people to collaborate with, so I accepted their offers with all of the happy-puppy enthusiasm any new musician would. Although many of these interactions turned out well, I didn’t know that “jamming” was code for bringing me into your bedroom to “give me a tour” and then touching my thigh after you tell me that one day, the woman of your dreams will put her clothes in your closet. I came here for your home studio, not to fulfill your weird domestic fantasy, you weirdo.

Before I became serious about playing music–for me, that meant composing songs and listening with a more critical ear–I had always thought of it as a wide-open field of near-limitless possibility. Pitches, timbres, and rhythms carried no meaning on their own. Unbiased and open to anyone who could play, music appealed to me specifically because it seemed so detached from the alienating world of social norms and regulations we are all subject to; it represented a wholly “other” means of communication that was, I had thought, divorced from the clichés and commonplaces of everyday speech and public opinion. Here was a language that appeared removed from social language. While music still largely provides that for me–even if it’s in the form of a rich, romantic illusion–I see now that my creative possibility is never limitless, never completely free. Art is retrospective, and I don’t want a legacy of voices so different from my own to drive my creativity completely. Of course I’ve picked up tricks here and there from male singers (Kevin Barnes, I heart you), but I want to get to the point where I hear a female voice singing the songs I write in my head.

It is up to us to seek out and support women artists. And yes, that means listening to artists even if they’re not your “taste” (especially if they’re not your taste), and yes, doing so just because they are women. What begins as underground eventually becomes the status quo; in pop music, this is law. The best people to do such excavating are those who are aware of the disparity in the first place: namely, feminists.

Moral of the story? If you’re a female rocker who makes good music, rock on: you’re awesome. If you’re a music lover, consider seeking out more female artists to listen to. Finally–and those goes for men and women in the audience–refrain from complimenting us on how much of a novelty we are, because we need encouragement and feedback on our art, not to be gawked at like space aliens or to be patronized in a “good for you, sweetie!” kind of way. We work hard–harder than we should have to–to do what we’re doing, and it’s about damn time we get some applause. There are plenty of us out here. Seek us out. Support us. Come to our shows. Bring your friends.

Tags: amy shaw, feminism, music, sexism, the popular rock and or roll music