Sounds of Power: An Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender

Abstract This article introduces the four case studies in the volume by outlining salient issues relating to musical instruments and gender. The basis of argument is that gendered meanings are constructed within relationships between humans and musical instruments. The article first examines various ways in which gendered meanings are invested in instruments. Consideration is then given to the general question of male dominance over instrumental musicianship, highlighting issues such as male exclusivity, gendered divisions of labour, gendered space, and male control over technology. Some typical female relationships with instruments are outlined, whereby certain instruments are deemed to be suitable or acceptable for women. Finally, the construction of gender by instrumentalists is related to issues of sexuality, gender role-reversals, and enactments that transcend gender. Keywords: Musical InstrumentsGendered MeaningGendered IdentitiesRelationshipsMale DominanceMale-Female PairingExclusivitySexualityAndrogyny Acknowledgements I owe a great debt to Ellen Koskoff, who has enthusiastically helped me over several years. She generously read some long drafts that led up to this publication, offering extremely useful advice. I also thank Asphodel Long, Lou Taylor, Nancy Lindisfarne and Peter Cooke for helpful comments on early drafts relating to this project. I am indebted to colleagues who offered me their valuable research findings, and wish to thank Edda Brandes, Clare Deniz, Stephen Jones, Maria Lord, Karl Neuenfeldt, Razia Sultanova, Nancy Thym-Hochrein, and Olga Velichkina. I am especially grateful to my four contributors, Wim van Zanten, Henry Stobart, Judith Cohen and Claire Jones, for their commitment and patience with a long-drawn-out gestation, and for their excellent case studies. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers who generously provided valuable feedback, to Carol Tingey for permission to use her eye-catching photo on the front cover, and to John Baily, for his continued encouragement. Finally, I am very grateful to the past editors, Tina Ramnarine and Rachel Harris, for supporting the project, and to Andrew Killick for his perceptive comments and for calmly seeing the project through its editing and production stages. Notes 1. Studies of gender and music and women's music include Bernstein Citation2004; Bowers and Tick Citation1987; Brett, Wood, and Thomas Citation1994; Citron Citation1993; Cook and Tsou Citation1994; Doubleday Citation2006b [1999]; Drinker Citation1995 [1948]; Green Citation1997; Herndon and Ziegler Citation1990; Keeling Citation1989; Koskoff Citation1989b; Magrini Citation2003; Marshall Citation1993; McClary Citation1991; Moisala and Diamond Citation2000; Neuls-Bates Citation1982; Pendle Citation1991; Solie Citation1993; Sultanova Citation2005; and Whiteley Citation1997. 2. Sue DeVale's Citation1989 article was an early inspiration for my work in this field. I would also like to thank the scholars cited in this present article for their valuable work. 3. Thanks to Sue Steward to bringing up the idea of a fetishistic relationship in a conversation about my work (2006). 4. For references to the extensive anthropological literature on cults of manhood in Papua New Guinea, see Gregor and Tuzin Citation2001. 5. I take this point about hegemonic masculinity from Cornwall and Lindisfarne (Citation1994, 20). 6. For gendered artefacts (but not musical instruments) see Kirkham's Citation1996 collection, which mostly focuses on dress. 7. Alternatively, some say the instrument symbolises the body of Saraswati (Reck Citation2000, 353). 8. The tradition of addressing tutelary deities has a long history. For instance, a victory ode from Ancient Greece (fifth century BCE) bestows on Apollo the epithet chrusophorminx 'god of the golden lyre' (Anderson Citation1994, 84–5). 9. Nunns and Thomas point out that the legend could encode esoteric associations because the cocoon is a liminal state between caterpillar and moth, perhaps representing the interface between human and spirit worlds (2005, 72 n. 5). 10. For more detail on paired symbolism in the [ddot]amaru, see Helffer Citation1989. She points out that there are numerous 'skull-drums' in museums of the Western world, but that their usage is now rare, if not forbidden, in monasteries (ibid., 42). 11. Jean During mentions this instrumental pairing in his discussion of 'the ideal couple', but he makes no specific reference to gender (Citation2005, 157). 12. The bàtá practitioner Ade Williams agreed with this formulation of mine (personal communication, 2000). 13. A classic cross-cultural enquiry into male dominance was Sanday Citation1981; also see Sanday and Goodenough Citation1990. More recent scholarship has shifted away from this topic. 14. There are always interesting exceptions, e.g. the notable women musicians of Venice trained in ospedali grandi (charitable foundations) over a period of three centuries (1525–1855), as documented in Baldauf-Berdes Citation1996. In Europe in general, after the 1870s women began entering established professional ensembles (Reich Citation1991, 117–19). Around this time all-women peripatetic entertainment ensembles sprang up in German-speaking areas of Central Europe (Myers Citation2000). 15. Thanks to Stephen Jones for this information. The stereotyping of the concert harp as feminine was a feature of this decision. For further details on women in European orchestras, see Cottrell (Citation2004, 189–90). 16. For the impact of female punk and female rock in Britain and the US, see Raphael Citation1995. 17. Also see Johnson's work relating to the Swedish motto 'Women don't play the fiddle, they play the horn' (Citation1990, 37). 18. Basso argues that the threatened gang-rape may not be a punishment so much as a logical outcome of sexual feeling resulting from female contact with the flutes (1989, 172–3). 19. Brandes also notes a few players from the esteemed blacksmith caste (1990, 119). 20. For details on these changes in Europe, the United States and Canada, see Koskoff (Citation2000b, 200–01) and Cook and McCartney (Citation2001, 94–8). 21. When women defy tradition in this way, they typically excite strong emotions of admiration or anger. Leslie Gourse documents an incident in the 1940s when an outraged man from the audience at a jazz venue assaulted a woman playing a flugelhorn (Citation1995, 8). 22. Deomaya Pariyar is an economically independent female śahanāī player from a tailor-musician caste (see Tingey Citation1994, 8). 23. In 1991, the Lale Turkish Classical Music Ensemble of Istanbul visited London. The group highlighted music of the Ottoman palace harem, especially featuring its female composers. In 1999, Neiriz, 'the first ever all-female Persian classical orchestra' from Iran, performed in several European countries. Since then Iranian female instrumental groups have been on the increase, and they have their own women's music festival in Iran. There has also been an upsurge of women son and salsa groups in Cuba (Barbara Bradby, personal communication 1999). Also see Bayton Citation1998 on British female rock musicians. 24. The experiment seems to have been better engineered and more successful than the liberalising Soviet policies that brought barely trained female instrumentalists onto the concert stage in Uzbekistan of the 1930s (see Sultanova Citation1993). 25. Lack of allure may become an argument for unsuitability. In 1930 the director of New York's Casino Theater said 'women cannot possibly play brass instruments and look pretty, and why should they spoil their good looks?' (cited in Morgan Citation1989, 164). Also see Kimberlin Citation1990 on expectations about female allure. 26. In the late 1970s girls were playing a mouth-resonated bow in connection with courtship, but Joseph concentrated her research on recently obsolete traditions concerning two types of single-stringed gourd-resonated bows (ugubhu and umakhweyana) which older women still remembered how to make and play. 27. CitationKubik makes a similar point with regard to the musical bow in Malawi and Tanzania (1998, 321). 28. This act of vocal substitution compares interestingly with situations in the Arab world, as noted by Rovsing Olsen, where women 'replace' wind instruments with their singing (2002, 306). 29. Among British ethnomusicologists examples include Carol Tingey playing the sahanai in Nepal, and Lucy Duran playing the kora in Gambia. It is not common for male ethnomusicologists to learn women's instruments. For a discussion of learning to perform as a research technique, see Baily Citation2001. 30. Genderism is a useful term proposed by Pirkko Moisala for gender studies (Diamond and Moisala Citation2000, 7). 31. Anthropologists note similar tendencies. Bowie comments that women have been considered less important than men as informants (Citation2000, 93), and Jolly points out that in Melanesian anthropology varieties of femaleness are typically ignored or treated as derivative (Citation2001, 191). 32. I am grateful to Ellen Koskoff for pointing to embodiment as a theoretical avenue. CitationRoman-Velazquez takes this approach (2006). Additional informationNotes on contributorsVeronica Doubleday Veronica Doubleday is a visiting lecturer in the School of Historical and Critical Studies at the University of Brighton. Following her fieldwork in Afghanistan during the 1970s, she published a narrative ethnography on Afghan women, Three Women of Herat (1988), with a particular focus on performance and expressive culture. Her analytical work on gender and musical instruments dates from 1999, with an article on Middle Eastern frame drums that explores broader theoretical issues. Her current research interests are Afghan music, musical instruments and meaning, women's music, and issues of gendered representation