On Friday 20th February I went to see an an excellent show at the Band on the Wall in Manchester. As part of Brighter Sounds' Wall of Sounds Artistic Director Series Beth Orton had mentored a group of 14 women musicians and song writers during the week long residency. The event was an extremely impressive showcase of their accomplished work. The performances ranged from acoustic to electro loop interventions. According to the BBC the event was inspired by a shocking statistic from the Performing Rights Society that only 14% of their members are female. Women musicians are often defined by their gender e.g. female drummer, female guitarist, Sleater Kinney the infamous Riot Grrrl Group, who have just released a well received new album No Cities of Love after 10 years, have remarked that they think it is odd that they are still defined as a female band when paradoxically a band of all males is not called a male band. What appears to be lacking for female musicians is encouragement and mentoring, which the Brighter Sound series appears to have been addressing. and hopefully aspiring female musicians in the audience on Friday night, or even more experience musicians, will have been inspired by what they saw. Along with the incredible range of songs and the abilities of the women performing another pleasing aspect was how well they worked together both in their collaborative song writing and performing.
Details of the musicians and links to their soundcloud sites can be found on the the Brighter Sounds web site being particularly interested in electronic music and how technology can transform the human voice I found the work of Elizabeth Vince and Fiona Soa Paing compelling specifically Fiona's looping vocals which were quite hypnotic
I am little surprised that I have yet to see a review of the event in the local or national press, although there was a good overview in the Huffington Press. At the excellent 6 music hosted annual festival at Teeside last weekend I was a little bit disappointed that the top slots seem to have gone to male performers/bands, despite Kate Tempest, Sleater Kinney and Neneh Cherry being on the bill, although it was excellent to see female drummers supporting Hot Chip and Jamie T. The Independent last week ran article Reading and Leeds 2015 line-up: Festival accused of ignoring female artists where 9 out of 100 acts feature female artists so obviously there is a long way to go in the mainstream music world.
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