Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone…
These are some of the most celebrated female jazz performers. Yet across the entire jazz industry, women are disturbingly underrepresented, taking up only 5 percent of all jazz musicians.
It is counterintuitive for jazz to be a male-dominated industry, for it bears democratic spirits and values musicianship over ascribed status. But due to structural challenges and gender stereotypes, jazz has not been a freeing space for women.
Structural Challenges
In the early 20th century, much of American and British society perceived jazz to be “associated with narcotics, murky slum-area bars, prostitutes, the criminal element, loose morals and the renegades of society.” It was taboo for women to be professional jazz musicians in nightclubs and dance halls.
With male jazz musicians training in conservatoires, the genre shifted towards a middle-class existence and eventually transformed its image into elite music that is “complex, intelligent and inspiring.” Despite its rising prestige, women still encounter barriers entering the field, and those who tried couldn’t be seen as authentic musicians.
Not until World War II, did independent female musicians and all-female bands begin to fill the voids as men left to join the military. It was a flourishing time for all-female groups, notably the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, which was most popular at the time.
The Sweethearts faced numerous obstacles as an integrated ensemble when touring the Deep South. Rosalind Cron, a saxophonist in the group, shared,
“I hadn’t heard of the Jim Crow laws… And we were on a trip going straight down to the Deep South. They told me I had to have a story if I was stopped — what my parents were like, where were you from and that sort of thing — and I made up a story that my father was white and my mother was black.”
Sweethearts and other leading female groups and performers, such as The Coquettes and Ella Fitzgerald, continue to be influential in the industry.
Gender Stereotypes
France has celebrated the best jazz musicians each year since 1986 at the Les Victoires du Jazz Awards ceremony. In 2017, all the nominees in all categories for jazz were men. No female artists were nominated, which raised widespread concerns about the persisting gender inequality, followed by the #metoo movement in jazz.
Joelle Léandre, the 66-year-old veteran French bass player, wrote an open letter to Les Victoires and criticized,
“How is it possible that in the 21st Century again and again not one single woman was nominated?
Do you not think that a woman can think, reflect, compose, create projects, lead bands… hit the road and present her music everywhere?
What planet do you live on?
How do you want a young woman leaving the music academy with or without a degree, wonderfully playing her clarinet her sax her piano, to feel that she can take this adventure further, this curiosity for elsewhere, and to be attracted by another kind of music, more free and more creative and…
To be attracted by Jazz (because Jazz has always been a creative music, as for the rest, I won’t expand on it … even if I could).”
Looking back at the prominent female jazz musicians, they were mainly vocalists. In Circular Breathing, author George McKay reported that 60 percent of female musicians are vocalists compared with two percent of male musicians. Moreover, female musicians played fewer instruments on average than male musicians. This lower versatility is likely associated with the gender stereotyping of musical instruments.
A study conducted in 1978 showed that respondents unanimously considered instruments like the drums, trombone and trumpet as “masculine,” while the flute and violin as “feminine.” In the 1930s and 40s, women playing saxophone were considered as exotic and even an entertaining image to be laughed at.
But these obstacles and humiliation did not stop many resilient female instrumentalists. Saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, trombonist Melba Lisbon and pianist Alice Coltrane are inspiring examples of how females persisted through gender stereotypes and finally came to be respected in the late 1970s.
Today, the awareness of lifting female jazz musicians is rising, but it is still far from enough. Despite being aesthetically and musically appealing, La La Land and Whiplash, the Oscars-winning movies that feature jazz, don’t have a single female character that plays in the jazz bands. This critical factor might not be intentional, but it still exhibits modern-day jazz as a male-dominated industry.
Conclusion
Jazz, a style of music with infinite creativity and rhythms, should bring people together and bridge their differences. Gender inequality in jazz is never a problem of the music genre but a reflection of what societies are struggling. Music doesn’t care who plays it. Women should have equal freedom and promising opportunities as men to communicate through jazz and perform on stage.
