Opening presentation: Breaching the Boundaries of the Boys’ Club: Women Making Noise in Sixties Rock Culture.Susan Schmidt-Horning, St. John’s UniversityIn 1964, American movie theaters screened The T.A.M.I. Show, a full-length live concert of rock, soul, pop, and vocal groups popular in the 1960s. Featuring artists from Chuck Berry to The Beach Boys and Rolling Stones, all the bands were male, all the musicians in the house band were male, and the only women performers were singers or dancers. The audience, on the other hand, was composed largely of girls clutching their faces, tears and make-up streaming down their cheeks as they screamed for their favorite boys in the bands. This imagery became emblematic of rock concerts in the 1960s, whether on television or in the movies. Young men played electric guitars, drums, and electronic keyboards, while girls sang, or danced, or dated the guys, or screamed. In fact, between 1962 and 1970, there were dozens of all-girl rock bands throughout not only the United States, but also in the England, Europe, the Nordic countries, Serbia, India, and Indonesia. Girls were not just responding to musical culture in the 1950s and ‘60s, as Susan Douglas argued in Where the Girls Are, they were making it, and doing so by playing electric guitars, amplifiers, drum sets, electronic organs—all technologies then considered masculine.
This presentation explores the hidden history of all-girl rock bands during the 1960s. These were the descendants of a long line of all-female bands that were seen as “novelty acts” from the 1920s to the 1940s. They were talented and accomplished, yet they failed to achieve the kind of acceptance, respect, and recognition that their male counterparts did. These girls defied parental expectations and rejected gender norms by embracing what historically had been considered (with a very few exceptions) the domain of boys and men. They proliferated before there was a fully developed rock music media or an overtly masculinized rock music culture. This story reframes the notion that guys were the only ones picking up electric guitars and forming “garage bands” after they saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964. Girls were doing that as well, at least one even enlisting her dad’s help to build a home recording studio, and their stories promise to reconfigure our understanding of women’s and young girls’ embrace of technology and power in electrified music making on a global scale.
Theresa Leonard Classical Production / Audio Education / AES
Theresa Leonard has served as Audio Engineering Society (AES) president and also as education chair and received an AES Fellowship in New York City for her professional achievements and dedication to the Society. An equally respected educator, she has held positions with Bang & Olufsen in Denmark (2008), at New York University Steinhardt School (2015) and with the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) summer workshop (2004). She has been invited as guest speaker and consulted with a variety of post-secondary institutions including The Peabody Institute at John Hopkins University, The Schulich School of Music at McGill University, Ball State University, University of Massachusetts Lowell, The Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Dance de Paris and The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Poland. She is currently consulting on the growth of music production within the Victoria Conservatory of Music (Canada) and is actively involved in the recording and producing of artists as part of a new area of study at VCM.
Darla HanleyJazz / Composing / Education / EQL
In partnership with Berklee College of Music and Electric Lady Studios, Spotify announced its EQL Studio Residency, which is aimed at opening the door for emerging female producers and engineers while shining a light on the great work already being done by women in the music industry. The program offers residencies in three cities: New York, Nashville, and London. During these paid, six-month residencies, one participant in each city will work in studios and gain access to invaluable networking and mentoring opportunities to further her career.
"This exciting collaboration recognizes the many contributions women make in the music industry," says Darla Hanley, dean of the Professional Education Division at Berklee. "We are happy to support and mentor the recipients of the EQL Studio Residency and look forward to sharing our expertise and many decades of combined experience across all corners of the industry with them.”
Katia IsakoffElectronic Composer Producer / Collaboration / WPM
In March 2019, WPM launched !N_K o L //\\ B an innovative composer producer series bringing together pioneering, established and emerging composer producers to collaborate in various studios and pop-up locations whilst utilising the studio as an instrument for the experimentation of sound, and as a compositional tool. Work on the pilot series, which is supported by the PRS Foundation Open Fund and Moog Music Inc., commences in May 2019. For the first in this series, Katia is joined by Moog Music Innovation Award recipient and electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, award winning engineer Marta Salogni and emerging artist Anil Aykan of Fragile Self.
Read more in this month's Pro Sound News Europe feature:
https://www.psneurope.com/live/inside-in-kolabWatch:
https://youtu.be/vkll7b7mRys
