This week's post is about the effect gender has in our personal musical worlds. In my world, I have found that music is often not gender specific. Let me explain…
Probably my earliest exposure to mixed-gender musical experiences was in my home school band when I was 13. I played intermediate clarinet and there were only two boys among the eight or ten of us. James went on to play clarinet at Clemson and even got to play in the last Olympics. I have continued playing clarinet into college, and who knows where I'll end up in a few years. In the band, all genders were treated equally as talented players, as long as you continued to work hard for your position in the band.
My next exposure to mixed-gender music was in orchestra. I played violin in orchestra for three years and loved it. Here, I will say it was definitely dominantly female. There were maybe six males in the entire youth orchestra. BUT they were all very talented, and they worked very hard. Whereas the females generally were the type that didn't practice much and were much too social for their own good as far as music came (there were exceptions of course). The gender-specificity was more obvious in only this way. The music we played was non-gender-specific (like most music), and there was no bias from any of the players or from the director (who was female) toward either gender.
The most prominent aspect of music in my life has been through church. This is the place where gender has been more distinctly separated. I have had mostly female choir directors, and there are generally more females IN the choir. However, music directors in the only big church I have been in have been male, and the female choir director I had there was not comfortable standing in front of the church in any sort of leadership position. Most of the instrumentalists have been female, from pianos and organs to guitars and violins when we have them. I don't know that this is intentional, it just seems to happen this way.
Evaluating gender roles in music in a church is always tricky, because it's hard to tell if they are because of musical gender roles or church-dictated gender roles. The Methodist church I grew up in always had female choir directors, and that was the top of the musical heap, so they were always in charge of everything.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting that you brought up church and gender. I agree, the women are always singing out and the ones who show up to choir practice regularly. In my mass, it always a female cantor that sings and when a male is doing it that Sunday, people actually listen to the the psalm.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why the female choir director want comfortable standing in front of the church in a leadership position... Was it because of her gender or just her personality?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, it was both. But I haven't asked
DeleteHey Lydia,
DeleteI occurred to me halfway through reading your blog that in the instrumental world gender has nothing to do with how you play your instrument, stereotypes do. This is somewhat different from the vocal world because your gender partly determines your instrument and how you use it. Thanks for making me think.
- Michelle