Feminism now: should boys play harps?

Last week the main BBC news (plus the Today programme) was full of a piece of research which demonstrated a gender bias  in choice of musical instruments.  Whereas 90% of young harpists are (apparently) female, almost 80% of young tuba players are (apparently ) male – and even more  electric guitarist. Indeed kids are encouraged in those choices by friends, teachers, society . . .you name it.

While parts of the planet were in melt-down, while Zimbabwe tottered, Kenya  simmered and  too few people were  killed in Iraq to be newsworthy . . .THIS was transmitted as a piece of gender discrimination akin to the revelation (the sort of news we faced when I was a kid) that more girls than boys were encouraged to become doctors and vice versa.

After a short time, feeling a bit bad about this, as I was obviously supposed to, I found myself reflecting….do I care really  if tuba players are largely male?

OK, I’ve seen Billy Elliot, and I know that it is rotten to be  looked on as a wimp if you’re a boy and you want to do ballet. I also know (from even more personal  experience) that it can be rotten to be a girl and want to do blokeish things.

But this didn’t seem to me to have much to do with the old doctors and nurses argument. The point about that was that girls chose to be nurses and got lower pay, less prestige, and a life time of emptying bed-pads; boys chose to be doctors and got more money, more prestige, while prancing round in a white coat/suit and marrying a nurse. The gender choices cashed out into economic and status disadvantage.

But is that the same with musical instruments? Is there a built in advantage in learning the harp over the tuba, or vice versa? If not shouldn’t we just let the kids be gendered and just be pleased that they are learning any musical instrument at all. If it takes a tuba or a Fender to get boys interested in learning an instrument, well, phew. . . . And if girls are inspired to go on with the cello by the sight of those old (and, of course, now sad) images of Jacqueline du Pre making love to her instrument, it’s a small price to pay.

I thought it might have been more interesting if the survey (and no, I haven’t read the original) had taken that other Billy Elliot theme and looked at class. How many working class kids now learn to play any instrument at all?

Isnt that more of a worry?

Comments

[evey]

As a very small-sized female, if I had to do it all over again, I would've chosen the oboe instead of the cello when first given the choice. Much as I love the cello.. talk about being subjected to sniggering schoolboys' jokes of how I have to "carry my house on my back" like a turtle! If size did matter however, then shouldn't girls be put off playing the harp? One of my best friends is both a harp and alto sax player, another two play both bass and tenor sax, and we had one amazing female tuba player in school.

[Lidwina]

It is a UK thing. Here in Germany most orchestras and brass bands could not survive without the women.

As a child I was obliged to learn the violin, because my parents decided it had class. I hated every minute. It put me off music for 20 years, till my children started learning. It is more important to let children pick which instruments they themselves want to play, then there is a chance they will take a genuine interest and practice.

Now I play the glorious bari sax and can pick and choose where I play. No-one wonders at a woman playing it, they wonder anyone plays it at all. The thing weighs 7 kg and I have a nasty case of sax shoulder after every date. Our best tenor sax is also female. I never yet saw a female trombonist, though.

[StB]

No comment here -- just an image
presenting the theme in a slightly
different tone from the one Mary
supplied:

http://www.hung-art.hu/preview/b/bereny/muvek/3/3cselloz.jpg

Róbert Berény
Woman Playing the Violoncello
1928
Oil on canvas, 135 x 102 cm
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

[Steve Kimberley]

"Vanessa Mae...beautiful and erotic...no difficulty playing the violin...attention is directed elsewhere."

That's my point. Vanessa Mae is a competent musician, as are Lesley Garrett (she sings) and Bond (glam pop-classical crossover quartet.)

If attention is directed 'elsewhere,' perhaps it's because they make a point of displaying their 'beauty and eroticism' rather than their musical talent. No bad thing, surely - after all, it's what performers have always done: it's the female equivalent of male rock singers wearing 'pants so tight you can see his religion.'

I don't mind good-looking women strutting their stuff, as long as they can cut the mustard. However, speaking as one who used to busk for his baguette on the Boulevard St Germain, there's a basic level of musical competence required if you're going to sell yourself as a musician.

There's a lot of pretty faces taking up airtime who couldn't carry a tune in a bag. Vanessa Mae et al. can at least do that, bless 'em.

[anthony alcock]

I don't know who the other women are, but I have seen and heard Vanessa Mae. She is beautiful and erotic, I doubt that she is anybody's object (sex or otherwise) and she seems to have no difficulty playing the violin. Some men may have a problem hearing the violin playing because their attention is directed elsewhere.

[Steve Kimberley]

There's no shortage of females who can do the business when it comes to musical performance but very often, they're only doing what appeals to a feminine persona - think Vanessa Mae, Lesley Garett, Bond et al. The idea of learning an instrument that may give you hands like a bricklayer or cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie won't appeal to many schoolgirls.

Personally, I would far rather hear any half-decent ensemble composed of males and/or females on instruments they can actually play than be subjected to any more videos of vacuous sex objects flashing their flesh and surviving only due to the sophistication of studio electronics.

[An American Observer]

As I think back to my high school band of a few decades ago, I recall girls playing mostly flutes and clarinets, but there were a few who played the saxophone. (We didn't have a string orchestra.) However, the brass section was nearly all boys, and I can't recall ever having seen a female trombone or tuba player, amateur or professional, despite years as a classical music fan.

Just the other day, National Public Radio's "Performance Today" had a report about a contest for young harpists. It noted that of the 32 contestants, 28 were women. I suppose that the ratio would be reversed at a French horn players' contest.

[Lucy]

Oliver Nicholson: Brilliant!

[anthony alcock]

I've just looked at the Wynton Marsalis forum and discovered that there are many good women trumpeters. The fact that I've never heard of them is most likely my problem.

[Sarah]

I knew plenty of girls who learnt the trumpet at school, but agree that there seems to be relatively few in orchestras/ensembles. Perhaps the question is not whether one learns a particular instrument at school but at what point a gender bias kicks in to (partially) influence continuation to a semi/professional level?

[Oliver Nicholson]

Dr. Bowdler was ahead of us all.
Othello famously raged against the supposed infidelity of Desdemona:
"And shall she play the strumpet in my bed ?"
The good doctor preserved the metre while making the line appropriate for family reading simply by deleting the initial 's' from the sixth word.

[Albert]

Who, of a certain age, can forget the scene in the film Genevieve, where the wonderful Kay Kendall seizes the trumpet and plays a blinder.

[CarolA]

Reading some of the other posts has made me wonder whether this is more of a UK problem. I live in Australia and these days there are plenty of female trumpeters and sax players, but sadly not as many drummers or bass players (perhaps it's an upper body strength thing). Things have certainly changed over the last 30 years since I changed to woodwinds (from guitar). There are a lot of female musicians in orchestras, perhaps not quite so many in the jazz & rock fields, but the numbers are certainly increasing.

[anthony alcock]

I agree with Carola. I can't think of any women who play the trumpet (an instrument I love and persist in trying to play). I'm fairly sure the noise has something to do with it.

[Tony Francis]

Most of the bone headed roving editors on Wiki are of the male gender. I can tell, since women wouldn't say and write the stupid things the roving editors write, especially saying things with great authority, even though they don't know what they are saying. By avoiding religion, I have found a relatively peaceful existence. An 18 year old "law student" from the Univerisity of Bristol placed a link on my Quia Emptores article to "English cases of land law". Then, after thinking about it, he withdrew it, writing me a profusely apologetic note about "putting an inappropriate link on the article". I wrote him back, informing him it was a good link. But he seems to have lost his nerve and hasn't put it back up. Another undergrad from Rensselear Polytechnic Insititute decided to become a roving editor after taking a rhetoric class. He put a tag on my new subpoena article indicating there were no references. I informed him there were references. He apologized, and said he had missed them. Anyway, Mr. Rensselear did make some useful suggestions to improve the appearance of the subpoena article I had just finished: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpoena_ad_testificandum
He also briefed up Quia Emptores, giving it a better look:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quia_emptores
I decided to write subpoena duces tecum:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpoena_duces_tecum
You can watch its progress. After that, I will do Bracton, in part, in the honor and interest of OPN. College kids don't seem to hide behind pseudonyms, but post their real names.

[Michael Bulley]

If music be... The hidden instrument story.

Tim panics in his cell over ravioli noodles. The flu tempts Tutu back to rum babas sooner than expected. In Kandahar, pirates strum pettily and will lob oestrogen into scampi another time.

[Lina]

My choice of instrument, aged 10, was based partly on the fact that almost everyone at my all-girls school played the flute or clarinet and I wanted to be different. I still play my bassoon, and have endured carrying the heavy weight around and also the endless comments of "you don't look like a bassoon player" (well what should one look like? Male?).

My school did suffer from a lack of brass players and borrowed them from the local boys school for concerts. Perhaps this could be looked on as a way of encouraging inter-school socialising rather than a terrible problem with girls not playing brass instruments.

Who cares what children want to play as long as they play something? Trying to force children to play something they don't want to is counterproductive - let them pick an instrument they like and enjoy playing it.

[PL]

On the question of "gendered" roles in life, I wonder if it isn't possible, without intellectual dishonor, to be an essentialist in metaphysics but an existentialist in morals; to say, for example, that the sexes are naturally suited to different (albeit overlapping) realms of activity, but that the proper response to a woman who wants to do a masculine thing or a man who wants to do a feminine one is a wholehearted "More power to you!" This tends to be my attitude. I'd be glad to hear of some philosophic credentials for it.

[klimt]

I'm a woman and a musician - and I play what men still see as a 'male' instrument. (The Bass.) I've been playing professionally for 20 years and, while meeting prejudice isn't now a 100 percent experience, it can still be a weekly one. It can be tiresome and upsetting, impacting not only on my income, but on creative opportunities. At times, I have considered giving up music becuase of it, but being brought up in feminism's halycon days when trying to become what I wanted to be as a woman was nearly as much a duty as a right, I have always dragged myself from my bed the next day to... face the music. Besides, playing the bass is what I do.

I would say to Mary: don't swap concern for one prejudice for a pet or preferred one. They are all important. Of course there is no contest between people starving in Zimbabwe or the mass rape and murder happening in the Congo, but thinking that sexism in British schools isn't important means we cannot demonstrate beautiful, healthy equality to the rest of the world either.

[abz]

Can baby boys be put in pink cots? According to my brother's partner they can be.

[PL]

If newspapers proportioned their coverage to the importance of events (in the sense of their actual or potential impact on our lives and the fate of the planet) it's doubtful if many would care to read them. Most of us, I suspect, could say with Paul Valéry: "Ce qui m'intéresse n'est pas toujours ce qui m'importe."

[Newn1]

It's wonky in a different way at the top, anyway -- orchestras are full of men, on any-every instrument. I don't really think it matters much, so long as *everyone* is given a chance at possibly becoming a good musician.

The real gender problem in music is with the conductors...where are all the women? (Barely any).

[Jackie]

The choice of instrument in schools is not necessarily down to gender. My daughter, bless her, had to travel on the school bus, so what instrument did she choose to cart backwards and forwards - a cello! She admitted later she was just being cussed, and changed to the clarinet when she realised she was the one who had to do the carting!

[Gi]

Good questions, IMHO.

I live in a country (Portugal) where children are not actively encouraged to learn music and play an instrument: my young cousin went to an English school and learned the violin for a while; he was the only one in my family as far as I know. Nowadays there are arguments about how the new education laws may further discourage musical learning.

This gender thing, though, seems to have concerned even the ancient Greeks - I remember how Athena decided not to play the flute because it made her look ugly, while Apollo and Pan didn't give that a second thought.

[Gauges]

i have read your article and it was so good. i just love reading your article coz i learn something new. :) hope to read more soon :)

~regards

[bingley]

When I was a boy I did have a mild hankering to play the harp. I don't think I was ever offered the opportunity to learn an instrument, but if I had been, the harp is probably what I would have chosen.

[CarolA]

Being a normal sized female and having tried to play a baritone sax a few times I can understand why there is a severe shortage of female tuba players - all that metal gets very heavy after a few hours! But you are right about the bias, when I started playing saxophone many years ago female sax players, esp. in jazz, were a rarity. Why? My alto & soprano saxes are just right as far as weight and hand stretch for someone my size. Was it just that some women were shy about playing such a noisy instrument? Girls should be quiet and ladylike? It certainly wasn't other male players who have been good friends over the years.