Klarinet Archive - Posting 000040.txt from 1999/02

From: "Paulette W. Gulakowski" <pollyg@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Women and orchestras
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 21:07:24 -0500

Thank you!
I couldn't be a high school band director because "We need a man in that
position. Maybe you'd be interested in Elementary music." or even an
assistant band director (in a different district) " We'll move you from
your junior high band director position down to the elementary because
junior high is the assistant position and the director needs a man
assistant to control the band bus". Nothing about musicianship, teaching
skills etc.
True story, 1970.
Paulette

On Mon, 1 Feb 1999 19:53:46 EST LeliaLoban@-----.com writes:
>I was most interested in "The Women's Philharmonic makes a joyful
>noise" by
>the Mercury News Popular Culture Writer, Mike Antonucci, who wrote,
>>>They dream of creating memorable music, launching female virtuosos
>to stardom and, with a little luck, knocking some of the smugness
>out of their male-dominated industry.>>
>
>>>But even more, they dream of remaking the world so that nobody
>tells little girls -- not ever -- that playing the drums is for
>boys.>>
>
>>>Build a symphony, change the world. It's that basic -- and that
>ambitious, as it has been throughout the San Francisco
>organization's 19-year history.>>
>
>I'm 50 and grew up all too familiar with sexism in music, so those
>goals sound
>good to me. As a kid, I only needed one finger to count the women
>conductors
>with serious international reputations: Nadia Boulanger, whom Harold
>C.
>Schonberg dismissed in one sentence in _The Great Conductors_ (1966),
>although
>at least he didn't say, as several other music critics did, that she
>only slid
>onto the podium on the coattails of the famous men in her family's
>musical
>dynasty. Grade school: "Girls don't play the drums. Girls don't play
>the
>trumpet." Junior high: "Girls don't play baritone sax. No, they
>don't play
>bass clarinet, either. Here's a nice alto clarinet." I got so sick
>of being
>a gooood little girl. I wanted to cut loose and MAKE SOME NOISE!
>
>Yet despite that background, I think that the idea of the Women's
>Philharmonic, though well- intentioned, is wrong-headed. Go through
>Antonucci's article and substitute religious or racial words for
>gender words
>and my first reason will become squirm-producingly obvious. See what
>such
>changes would do to the first sentence: "They dream of creating
>memorable
>music, launching Christian virtuosos to stardom and, with a little
>luck,
>knocking some of the smugness out of their Jewish-dominated industry."
> Is
>that offensive enough? Hey, while we're at it, if we call an
>orchestra the
>"Black Philharmonic," maybe that would mean we don't have to let
>African
>Americans into the New York Philharmonic any more. I can't wait for
>the class
>action lawsuit by the male musicians the Women's Philharmonic rejects
>because
>of their gender. Guess the orchestra probably circumvents civil
>rights law by
>setting itself up as a private organization, the same way the private
>country
>clubs keep out the black golfers. The concept of this all-female
>orchestra is
>every bit as sexist as the Vienna Philharmonic's traditionally
>all-male
>concept. IMHO, the way to combat sexism or any other "ism" is by
>rejecting
>it, not by perpetrating more of it.
>
>My second reason is that all-female orchestras (formerly known as
>"all-girl
>orchestras") are nothing new and that such orchestras have a long and
>disreputable tradition of further marginalizing female musicians by
>turning
>them into a freak show or a peep show. See them in any number of
>movies from
>the 1930s and 1940s, coyly cross-dressed in boiled shirts and tails,
>or all
>decked out in ball gowns, or looking extra-perky in shorts and
>midriff-baring
>satin halters. Ooooh, what good musicians they were, for girls.
>
>Take a look at the advertising reprinted in Paul Lindemeyer's
>_Celebrating the
>Saxophone_ (not to pick on him; I think he did right to show the
>reality of
>the way advertising portrayed female musicians), including 20th
>Century Fox's
>glam-babes from the musical "Sing, Baby, Sing" on pages 8 and 9, or
>the saxy
>lady in the pink flapper dress on the poster of "Pennsylvanians in
>Syncopation" on p. 11, or, better yet, the lavender-tinted pinup on p.
>52
>who's wearing lace-trimmed tap-panties, stiletto heels, a great big
>rock of a
>ring, a saxophone and nothing else. From the way she's posing, with
>her
>fingers in an ineffectual position and only about a quarter of an inch
>of the
>beak in her kissable lips, she looks as though she doesn't have a clue
>how to
>play the sax. (All the sadder if she does know how and she agrees to
>model
>like that anyway.) She's not presented as a real musician, but as a
>starlet
>posing with a phallic object.
>
>Changing to more dignified apparel is less of an improvement than it
>superficially seems, because the wardrobe only masks the real problem.
> How
>nice that the women in the "Women's Philharmonic" actually know how to
>play
>music; yet, according to this article, they're still pitching their
>gender
>appeal, not just to men now that times have changed, but to lesbians,
>too.
>Excuse me: This is progress? The emphasis here, once again, is not
>on music-
>making as such, but on the sex of the musicians. The idea of putting
>women
>musicians in a women's orchestra is fundamentally demeaning, in the
>same
>catagory with "separate but equal" and the Colored Restroom. What if
>a male
>philanthropic group had announced, "We're so generous that we'll give
>you
>ladies your very own orchestra." We would have suspected a subtext:
>"And
>don't even think about barging into OUR orchestra. And be grateful,
>or we'll
>take yours away. And, by the way, since you women have your very own
>Women's
>Philharmonic, then what do you think you're doing, making nuisances of
>yourselves by trying to compete for a real man's job that you're not
>good
>enough to do?" If a group of men had proposed an all-female
>orchestra, I'll
>bet we'd raise hell.
>
>So why is it better for women to voluntarily separate ourselves from
>male
>musicians and thus accomplish exactly the same thing? Sounds to me a
>whole
>lot like the child ordered, "Go to your room!" who whimpers tearfully
>but
>defiantly over her shoulder, "I'll do it because I want to and not
>because you
>tell me to!" The women who join the Women's Philharmonic take
>themselves out
>of the marketplace, out of open competition. I don't see this as
>empowerment.
>I think these women are marching into the ghetto and slamming the gate
>closed
>on themselves, and only deluding themselves that they can come back
>out any
>time they please. A woman's place is in the Vienna Philharmonic, not
>the
>Women's Philharmonic.
>
>Lelia
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>"Imagine with your self what an unsightly matter it were to see a
>woman play
>upon a tabor or drum, or blow in a flute or trumpet, or any like
>instrument:
>and this because the boisterousness of them doth both cover and take
>away that
>sweet mildness which setteth so forth every deed that a woman doth."
>-- Baldassare Castiglione, _The Book of the Courtier_, 1528
>(translated by
>Hoby, 1561).
>
>"Break it, break another little piece of my heart,
>yyyyeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
>-- Janis Joplin, ca. 1968
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
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