Women, Gender and Identity in Popular Music-Making in Gauteng
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Women, Gender and Identity in Popular Music-Making in Gauteng, 1994 - 2012 by Ceri Moelwyn-Hughes A dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Music in the Wits School of Arts, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand ABSTRACT Women, Gender and Identity in Popular Music-Making in Gauteng, 1994 - 2012 This thesis offers an ethnographic study of the professional lives of twenty-eight women musicians working in Gauteng and their experiences in popular music-making in post- apartheid South Africa. The study is based primarily on interviews with a spectrum of women working as professional musicians, mostly as performers, but also in varied roles within the music industry. I focus on various aspects of women musicians' personal reports: identify patterns of experience in their formative years; discuss seminal relationships that influence their music-making; and note gender stereotypes, identifying and commenting on their effect on individuals. Feminist, cultural, post-colonial, musicological and ethnomusicological theory informs the empirical research and is used to interrogate meanings of identity, stereotypes about women on stage and strategies of performance that women adopt. The experiences of these twenty-eight women demonstrate that gender both positively and negatively affects their careers. Women are moving into previously male-dominated areas of contemporary music-making in South Africa such as jazz and playing certain instruments, both traditionally considered to be in the ‘male’ domain. However, despite women’s rights being well protected under current legislation, women in South Africa do not access legal recourse available to them in extreme situations of sexual harassment in the music industry. This study provides an imperative for anthropological methods of enquiry to be applied to popular music to interrogate individual and social meanings in music. It suggests practical ways of improving the lives of women in professional music careers by improving access to legal aid and educational training for women musicians. I suggest possible ways this knowledge can impact positively on the broad redefinition of gender roles in South Africa in the post-apartheid era, such as more sensitive media reporting and whistle-blowing on sexual harassment cases. ! iii! For my mother Valda Bailey ‘But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas … the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’ —GEORGE ELIOT (1871 [1994]: 383) iv! CONTENTS Abstract iii Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations viii ‘Saxophonist’ ix Preface x 1 Introduction: Research Methods and Theoretical Framework 1 Personal motivation and key approaches 1 Central aims and questions 4 Research methods 5 A decision against textual analysis 7 Format of the interviews 8 Ethical considerations 9 Theoretical framework 11 The South African music industry 25 Women in South African music performance 28 South African legislation on the rights of women 30 2 Formative Experiences, Relationships and Power Tensions 33 Introduction 33 Early influences and family attitudes affecting women’s choice of a musical career 35 Further important relationships: support and lack of support for women’s careers 42 Motherhood 54 Sexual Vibes 59 Sexual harassment and rape 60 The male protector 67 Conclusion 71 3 Identity 73 Introduction 74 Consciousness and identity 78 v! Race and identity 78 Sexuality, sexual persuasion and homophobia 85 Age, image and sexuality 90 Place, nationality and identity 95 Performance and identity 98 Confidence, musical identity and music-making 104 Solo artists 109 Conclusion 113 4 Sirens and Songbirds: How Women Negotiate Stereotypes 115 Embodiment 116 Stereotypes in discourse: divas and songbirds 119 Strategies of self-representation 126 The performance of girlhood 127 Women as sirens 129 Individualism: humour and quirkiness 134 Women instrumentalists 137 Embodiment: male desire and aberrant female images 138 Women instrumentalists as novelties: advantages and disadvantages 141 All women-bands: jazz bands, corporate entertainment and theatre shows 143 Conclusion 149 5 Conclusion 151 6 Bibliography 159 7 Discography 178 vi! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to Lara Allen, Christine Lucia and Marie Jorritsma for their guidance as my supervisors in the writing of this thesis. Most particularly, I wish to thank Marie Jorritsma for her patience and pragmatism in helping me to finish it. I am also grateful to two past supervisors from whom I learnt much: James Sey and Robert Kwami (whom I was privileged to know for a short time before his untimely death and who introduced me to Ruth Finnegan and Lucy Green’s work). My sincere thanks are given to the women who so kindly agreed to be interviewed towards this research. I wish you all many years of creative and fulfilling music-making to come. I am also particularly grateful to Gwen Ansell for always being a sounding board, and for stimulating debate. To Alan Webster, thank you for sharing your statistics and insights gained from directing the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Festival in Grahamstown annually which does so much for young musicians in this country, male and female, and their music educators too. I am also extremely grateful to Clare Loveday and Valda Bailey for help with proofreading. This thesis would not have been possible without several people: my university music teachers Mario Trinchero and Malcolm Nay who never saw gender as an impediment to talent or discipline; Clare Loveday, Danielle Crouse and Kirsty McLean for inspiring and unfailing friendship; Juan Scribante and David Culverwell for sound counsel; Dudley Trollope for encouraging me to put feminist ideas into practice in the classroom; Valda and Leon Bailey for love and support; Monica Mosuoe for looking after Luke so I could write, and to Kevin Goldstein for everything. vii! LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A&R Artist and Repertoire AIRCO The Association of Independent Record Companies AIRCO BCEA The Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997 BMSC Bantu Men’s Social Centre BMus Bachelor of Music BW Bantu World CCMA The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration CD compact disc CDs compact discs D Drum DJ disc-jockey ID Identity Document EEA The Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 ILN Ilanga Joburg Johnnesburg LRA The Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 NSA National School of the Arts ODP Oral Documentation Project PAWE Performing Arts Workers Equity POSA Performers’ Organisation of South Africa res university residence R&B Rhythm and Blues RISA The Recording Industry of South Africa SA South Africa SABC South African Broadcasting Corporation SAMAs South African Music Awards SAMRO South African Music Rights Organization SBNYJF Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Festival TUT Tswane University of Technology UCT The University of Cape Town UK United Kingdom US United States (of America) UNISA The University of South Africa Wits The University of the Witwatersrand Z Zonk viii! Saxophonist I told my friend that I’d been blown away by a lady saxophonist. He grinned. You know the story about the woman saxophone-player don’t you? No! I said. He said, Nor do I, but I’m sure there is one. Cheeky devil! I’ll remember that pursed mouth and those cool, rippling fingers, and… oh yes, that sublime music, yes, the improvised harmony; wonderful! She’ll live in my heart forever. Or at least until next week. —MIKE ALFRED (unpublished poem given to author) ix! Preface After hearing me perform impromptu at a social gathering, poet Mike Alfred wrote about my performance. He gave the poem to me as a present, saying with a naughty smile: ‘I think this will both delight and revile you.’ When I read it, my reaction was disappointment: yet another man comments on the spectacle of me—a woman playing saxophone—and not my music. This poem expresses his delight rather, captured in amused, imagined banter between male friends. He comments only secondarily on a woman making music, but first on her body as she does so. Ultimately it was the image of a woman playing a man’s instrument that struck him. He jests at the end: ‘She’ll live in my heart forever. Or at least until next week’— however, the otherness of a woman saxophonist did warrant writing a poem. This incident encapsulates how attention so frequently focuses on women musicians' bodies; in my experience, this is particularly so for women instrumentalists. The visual impression is often as striking as the music made, and this is a challenge women musicians must negotiate. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way, but you don’t play like a girl. You play with balls!’ This is a compliment I have been given many times, always generously, but one that leaves me reeling internally, wondering why the reference point of accomplishment for a musician is only ever masculine. What is the experience of other women musicians, I wondered? This question served as a point of departure for my work in this thesis based on the experience and perceptions of women making music professionally in South Africa. I hope their insights shed some light on this sometimes positive, sometime precarious career choice. ! x! CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: RESEARCH METHODS AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ‘And I’m tired of them talking about “women in music”, like it’s new. Women have always been in this music. But the men have been at the front of it.’ —ABBEY LINCOLN (Baraka 2001: 5) ‘What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in one’s glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity.’ —ALICE WALKER (In Kolmar and Bartkowski 2005: 508) ‘I always had this dream that one day I would become a good musician and I would go out there, and that people would think: wow, a female saxophonist!’ —NDITHINI MBALI (Int.