Klarinet Archive - Posting 000129.txt from 1999/02

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Women and orchestras
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 21:08:09 -0500

At 01:42 PM 2/3/99 -0500, Ken Wolman wrote:
>This breaks down into issues of gender as well as race. Where I went to
>school, in the Bronx in the 1950s, my neighborhood didn't HAVE any black
>kids, so racism never became an issue. I shiver to think of what might
>have happened if a black child had shown up at PS 102 in 1953, when I
>was handed my first clarinet. No, our prejudice was of another kind.
>You had two choices of instrument: clarinet or violin. Guess how it
>broke down? See, it wasn't really a CHOICE at all because the boys all
>got assigned to the clarinet and the girls got assigned to the violin.
>Somehow, down there in the Bronx gut back in the mid-50s, the violin was
>thought of as a "girl's instrument" and the boy who took it up would
>most likely be labelled a "faggot." Oh, forget those guys like Heifetz,
>Francescatti, Stern, or Milstein. If you took up the violin you were
>going to wake up as Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. This was my introduction
>to Folk Wisdom USA circa 1953.
>
>> drummer! (Hmm, familiar stereotypes about African Americans sure fit in
well
>> with the drummer jokes that assume that drummers are drugged, drunk,
crazy and
>> stupid....)
>
>Yeah, like that famous black drummer Gene Krupa, I guess:-).
>
In this neck of the woods, at least, male clarinet players (at the school
level) are, unfortunately, viewed with considerable suspicion as well.
Male flute players might as well wear pink dresses to school, the artistry
of Jean-Pierre Rampal and James Galway notwithstanding.

And, just for the record, Gene Krupa's well-publicised marijuana arrest,
while it cost him his band and his freedom for several weeks, came to
naught when the chief witness, a recently hired valet, recanted. Krupa was
actually one of the most hard-working, intelligent, and reliable drummers
of the era, not a druggie at all.

Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
Essexville, MI 48732 http://members.wbs.net/homepages/z/o/o/zoot14.html
ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.

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