Category: Music

Saturday, 17 November, 2018

This is a serious post! (I know!)

I’d never met my cousin Terry’s daughter, Suzy. We’ve chatted a few times on Facebook. I’ve seen she’s been in London (she lives in York) and also Toronto this year but she’s a quiet, private sort of person, and not really who you’d expect to be a musician – or a filmmaker for that matter. But she’s made a documentary film and it was showing as part of the Doc’n Roll Festival at the Genesis cinema.

So, which band is your boyfriend in? is a documentary exploring gender in the UK’s DIY and underground music scenes. That’s how it’s described. And after the documentary there’d be a Q&A with Suzy. I asked if she wanted to meet and, yes….and so we did. Suzy, her husband Simon, and me.

We had a nice chat, ate some awful Pieminster pie – mine was chicken and mushroom (mostly sauce and sliced mushroom). We talked about family and about how nervous she felt about the size of the audience and being interviewed afterwards. She described the film as ‘rough’ but fueled by her obsession with music. Obsessions are interesting but I’d call hers a passion. With her shy personality, it would have to be for her to get up on stage and perform – she plays trumpet, unusual for a female she said.

So the documentary. She’s interviewed maybe a dozen people who identify as female’ in music. Most are musicians, with a journalist, a sound engineer and a road manager in the mix. I think I have that right. The interviews are edited and spliced into segments, each telling the story of why and how these various women have chosen their craft and what it feels like to be non-male in a male-dominated industry.

I enjoyed it, some bits more than others. Surprisingly, it wasn’t just about prejudice and I was even more surprised to hear very little about harassment. I wondered if this was because the musicians didn’t talk about it or simply didn’t really experience it. Although Suzy mentioned it, the #metoo spectre wasn’t really present. If I can pin Suzy down, I’d like to ask her.

Another surprising, but not new, thing I noticed was how casual the women are. There’s no real dress up, as if they’ve arrived on the stage wearing whatever they usually wear or were wearing that day. Is this a generational thing, or is it more? Interesting since it takes away the sexual nature of the stage performer, often seen as the object of desire for audience members. So for this reason I would like to have known more about their attitudes and experiences around harassment.

Talking about my own experiences as a woman in this man’s world is something I reserve for all-female audiences or sympathetic mixed or male ones. I absolutely believe that women are seen as being less. Less valuable, less important, less powerful, less worthy of attention. And that, although we’ve come a long way, we have so much further to go. There are biological reasons for the prevailing attitudes . But it’s how those things are viewed and treated that make things so annoyingly difficult. It’s a case of women being told to fit into the male-oriented world and somehow not that we all need to fit together regardless of gender. We each have much to offer but we can’t do that if we’re seen to not fit the mould, and that mould is decidedly male.

Briefly about the #metoo movement. Me too! Way too many times. In the workplace, while dating, just by walking along, sitting in a room, by being. Most of us are products of our environment, and upbringing. In a rape prevention workshop, the leader told us that when he asked a room of women could they gouge a man’s eyeballs if he attacked, almost all of them said no. We’re taught to be ‘nice girls,’ desirable, sweet, and compliant. Saying no is not on the table. Sometimes saying yes or staying silent is really an unspoken no. How does this work? That’s the trick. But no is more than just what’s spoken, there’s body language, and other visual and physical clues that only a sensitive and caring person would pick up and act on. So, without talking specifically about my personal experiences – some horrific but many just disturbing – that’s how I feel. No debate.

So back to Suzy’s documentary. I enjoyed it a lot. These were strong people, passionate about what they were doing, honest and earnest in their interviews. Interesting people, some of whom I could happily sit and chat to for hours. Talented people. It didn’t feel rough – it felt real.

And her Q&A was good, nothing to have been scared about. She did amazingly well, sounded expert and confident, only becoming timid and worried after it was all over. She sounded and looked like family.

I thought that maybe we could do this precisely because we’re all unreasonable people and progress depends on our changing the world to fit us. Not the other way around. I want to believe that. I must believe that.