Music, Teacher: Essays on Music and Women Written by Women
by Sinead Gleeson and Kim Gordon
Sixteen essays on women in the world of music (singer-songwriters, composers, activists, inventors, avant-garde artists, enlightened ones…) written by great writers
Often forgotten, almost always ignored, very rarely acknowledged. This has been the state of the female question in music until very recently. Considered mere performers, muses or simply visual seasoning in the performances of men, the few pioneers who dared to enter the music industry suffered ostracism and contempt, if not condemned to the darkest corner of historiographic memory – if not fodder for the most merciless anonymity.
Conceived and put together to counter the hegemonic male discourse in musical literature —mostly written by and for men—, Música, maestra aims, in addition to celebrating the work of such a diverse cast of creators, to settle a long-awaited account: to undermine at the root the sexist bias that has permeated the essences of the canon in music, literature and cinema. And it does so by means of profiles composed by writers who vindicate the women whose music, in one way or another, has accompanied them throughout their lives. Artists who climbed to the forefront of their time, committed women who combined musicmaking and activism in their making, tireless transgressors, singer-songwriters, performers all of them who come from all substrates of the musical spectrum —folk, rock, rap, country, jazz, classical, electronic, etc.—.
From Lhasa de Sela, a high school friend turned cult object by Maggie Nelson, to Wendy Carlos, the pioneer of electronic music who decided to move away from the madding crowd, evoked here by Sinéad Gleeson, or the ineffable Yoshimi, the Japanese drummer with whom Kim Gordon shared the stage and many experiences. Sixteen essays on music written by women that shed some light on the life and work of these and many other artists such as Laurie Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald or Agnes “Sis” Cunningham with the much-needed and urgent aim of beginning to balance the scales.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/musica-maestra
