As I left my office June 15, I had a heavy heart. Everyone was getting ready for Jubilee!JAM—the barricades were going up and parking had been a nightmare for two days.
I'm a musician, and I love music. Yet I felt strangely distant from the cheerful melee. Why? A simple fact: Not a single woman musician was in the line-up. Out of dozens of out-of-town performers and local acts, not a single one was female. (The Black Crowes had a few female back-up singers, but you get my point).
A similar event happened to me when I was a senior in college, majoring in music. One afternoon I had a small group study in my professor's office. We were writing 16th-century-style counterpoint (you know, Josquin and Palestrina, those guys), and a particular dissonance was consuming our discussion. The four guys in my class wanted to resolve it a certain way. I saw a different solution. I decided to ask my professor how a woman composer of that century might handle that particular compositional challenge. Might we hear an example?
"Why, no," he said. There aren't any recordings of women composers of 16th century counterpoint, at least not to his knowledge. I gazed at the rows of LP records lining the shelves. There must have been at least 2,000 recordings. A curious feeling came over me. I asked him, of all those 2,000 recordings, are any of compositions by women? He paused, then a strange, pained look came over him. "No, I'm afraid not," he said.
So here we are in 2007. Gender equity is much better than it used to be—women in our community are doctors, attorneys, you name it. But our music scene is lagging behind. Even when it's not Jubilee!JAM, you'll be hard pressed to find female faces and names when you look through the week's music listings. Yes, they're there every once in awhile, but if you're like me and used to living in cities where female performers are common—well, Jackson seems woefully uneven and behind the times.
My solution in college wasn't just to get mad and give up. Instead, I took on researching the works of women composers. Guess what? There were a lot more than anyone thought. They'd been forgotten, but their music was there to be found again. And in the end my professor allowed me to help him make additions to his course curricula, adding works by female composers where appropriate.
Since life does at times repeat itself, I wonder if a similar course of action may be useful here as well. I don't think the organizers of Jubilee!JAM left out women on purpose. Everyone knows they work hard, and most, if not all, organizers are volunteers. I know they are open; I watched Kamikaze criticize the lack of local musicians in the line-up last year—next thing you know, locals were on the bill.
So for next year, I'm offering my services (as well as those of at least a couple of friends) to the JAM committee. We'll do the legwork. We'll find names of national and local female performers and contact their publicists. Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, Eve, Rhonda Richmond, Infinite and Lizz Stroud come to mind. Others come to yours? Tell me. Women musicians work just as hard, rock just as hard and are just as well loved by their fans.
Laurel Isbister is a singer/songwriter in Jackson. Visit her Web site, and e-mail her at [e-mail missing].
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