Female rock/punk bands in Ireland? (1 Viewer)

As a member of the female persuasion who used to be in a band I'm maybe not best placed to answer the question as to why more girls aren't in bands, but a couple of things came to mind while reading this thread.

I've played a few 'female band showcases'/ladyfest over the years, and although at the time I thought they might be useful in terms of encouraging women in rock music or whatever, I now think that maybe they're not a great idea. One of the things that used to piss me off was that every interview we ever did referred to us as a 'girl band'. Never just as a band. Also, we were often referred to as Riot Grrrl. Now to my mind RG as a movement/thing/scene died out some time in the mid-90s and so it's plain inaccurate if nothing else to refer to current bands containing wimmins as such. There seems to be a serious lack of understanding as to what the specific term 'riot grrrl' referred to. It did not mean 'any rock/punk band comprised wholly or in part of females'. Not that I think anyone was trying to be insulting by using the term, but I think that unintentionally it ends up pigeon-holing band members as being women first, musicians second, when really what we want is the opposite.

The second point that occurred to me is that the biggest obstacle to women being in bands is probably themselves. Now this may be for societal or cultural reasons but in fairness women have made great strides into plenty of other female-dominated industries so why not this? In my experience it is harder to be taken seriously when you're a girl in a band (or a band full of girls). You get more than a few snide remarks from sound engineers or promoters, and a lot of shocked "wow you guys are actually pretty good," as if the automatic expectation was that you'd be shite. However, there are also plenty of very sound people (men and women) who will be nothing but helpful and encouraging and so overall the obstacles are nothing that can't be overcome with a bit of moaning, a lot of rehearsing, and a brass neck.

In fact I think the latter is probably the biggest impediment to girls being in bands. In my experience the main thing that made me reluctant to join new bands was feeling intimidated and that I wouldn't be up to a good enough standard as a musician (possibly correctly...) For some reason this lack of self-confidence seems to afflict girls more than guys (this isn't just in music - it's been well established in psychological research that as girls progress through their teenage years their self-confidence decreases whereas boys' self-confidence increases over the same time period). Therefore what I now think would be particularly helpful in encouraging girls to join bands would not be organising showcases of other female-dominated bands, but instead maybe providing lessons or workshops in instrumentation or sound production that are explicitly girl-friendly. If you know what you're at, you're far more likely to feel confident enough to take part.

::clef:: .|..|
 
In fact I think the latter is probably the biggest impediment to girls being in bands. In my experience the main thing that made me reluctant to join new bands was feeling intimidated and that I wouldn't be up to a good enough standard as a musician (possibly correctly...) For some reason this lack of self-confidence seems to afflict girls more than guys (this isn't just in music - it's been well established in psychological research that as girls progress through their teenage years their self-confidence decreases whereas boys' self-confidence increases over the same time period). Therefore what I now think would be particularly helpful in encouraging girls to join bands would not be organising showcases of other female-dominated bands, but instead maybe providing lessons or workshops in instrumentation or sound production that are explicitly girl-friendly. If you know what you're at, you're far more likely to feel confident enough to take part.

I was thinking about this last night with regard to something Washingcattle wrote about women forming bands or why they don't. When I think of someone forming (as opposed to joining) a band I think of them as being one of the main forces driving the band's creative direction. Yes there are bands that are more collaborative in nature but it's not uncommon to have some little fascist going "here's my songs, play what you're told" as a dynamic (yeah, yeah it can be put more delicately but still ...) to that end I think this is where typical gender roles and relations come in and cause difficulty insofar as like you said a women may typically be less willing to be assertive or lack the self confidence to be so*, equally there may be less-sound dudes in a band who take the attitude of "I'm not doing what some bird tells me to do" or at least be less receptive to the idea.

On that train of thought in the indie sphere of things in the past 5 or so years there are a number of female musicians (not all of these are to my tastes) who have come to prominance, people like St. Vincent, Marnie Stern, Tune Yards, Grimes, Julia Holter, Joanna Newsom who even if they're playing under a band soundy monikor the project is essentially just her and if she tours with a band the impression I take from that is that the audience are watching that one person's thing, and oh look she has some hired hands with her (obviously this dynamic isn't just a female musician phenomenon, do all that many people care about people in say The Fall or Bright Eyes who aren't Mark E. Smith or Conor Oberst) and this is how these people have chosen to circumvent the push-back that they might otherwise experience, it's just easier when you can decide to fire someone as opposed to asking them to leave their band.

Perhaps it's significant that of those i mentioned, whatever one thinks of their music Annie Clark, Merrill Garbus, Stern and Newsom really can play the shit out of their instruments and perhaps they don't feel the need to put up with shit from lesser players regardless of gender who might hold them back.

* Really this isn't just a female thing though. I've loved going into rooms with people and making a racket in the past and even now if someone asked me to join up with them to play bass or guitar in their band if I was into the stuff there's a good chance I'd do it but the music I currently make is 97% all done by me because I've got a very clear idea of what I want to get out of a song and as I'm not a particularly good player I would feel terribly awkward trying to give direction to someone in a "this is our band scenario" and if there was someone who I trusted to just be good and write good parts that I might never be able to come up with I'd have an attitude of why on earth would they want to play in my band on my shitty songs?
 
In this particular case no one is trying to provoke you, if posters are trying to provoke anyone it's Green Goblin because his past history here demonstrates that he's really easy to wind up and that's easier/more fun than trying to end sexism in indie/punk rock.

Well, winding up and making others feel stupid should be in Thumped manifesto:p
 
I don't know why, but whenever there is a thread of girls night or feminism topics it all turns out into internet fight-club? Are you guys scared, frustrated or hell knows what?Or are you just trying to provoke us? What for? Haven't seen any girls slagging you when you put on your big rocksy events, someone wrote earlier that girls night make him cringe. Have any of you been to Ladyfest Dublin with La Fraction as a headliner? It was pure fire , also the Magical Girl that Siobhan used to put on, never a dissapointment. I sometimes think that most of you post just to look cool in front of other lads, well I'm used to guy's talk from various bands I was in, but for some girls who'd be new to thumped some of the posts would be quite threatening, with written word it's sometimes hard to tell the joke from an insult you know. I also sometimes don't know, if there is any point writing anything meaningful here. P.S some of you are really sound

him being a woman.... who plays in bands... just to clear that up....

Just out of interest are you involved in playing music yourself Green Goblin?
 
As a member of the female persuasion who used to be in a band I'm maybe not best placed to answer the question as to why more girls aren't in bands, but a couple of things came to mind while reading this thread.

I've played a few 'female band showcases'/ladyfest over the years, and although at the time I thought they might be useful in terms of encouraging women in rock music or whatever, I now think that maybe they're not a great idea. One of the things that used to piss me off was that every interview we ever did referred to us as a 'girl band'. Never just as a band. Also, we were often referred to as Riot Grrrl. Now to my mind RG as a movement/thing/scene died out some time in the mid-90s and so it's plain inaccurate if nothing else to refer to current bands containing wimmins as such. There seems to be a serious lack of understanding as to what the specific term 'riot grrrl' referred to. It did not mean 'any rock/punk band comprised wholly or in part of females'. Not that I think anyone was trying to be insulting by using the term, but I think that unintentionally it ends up pigeon-holing band members as being women first, musicians second, when really what we want is the opposite.

The second point that occurred to me is that the biggest obstacle to women being in bands is probably themselves. Now this may be for societal or cultural reasons but in fairness women have made great strides into plenty of other female-dominated industries so why not this? In my experience it is harder to be taken seriously when you're a girl in a band (or a band full of girls). You get more than a few snide remarks from sound engineers or promoters, and a lot of shocked "wow you guys are actually pretty good," as if the automatic expectation was that you'd be shite. However, there are also plenty of very sound people (men and women) who will be nothing but helpful and encouraging and so overall the obstacles are nothing that can't be overcome with a bit of moaning, a lot of rehearsing, and a brass neck.

In fact I think the latter is probably the biggest impediment to girls being in bands. In my experience the main thing that made me reluctant to join new bands was feeling intimidated and that I wouldn't be up to a good enough standard as a musician (possibly correctly...) For some reason this lack of self-confidence seems to afflict girls more than guys (this isn't just in music - it's been well established in psychological research that as girls progress through their teenage years their self-confidence decreases whereas boys' self-confidence increases over the same time period). Therefore what I now think would be particularly helpful in encouraging girls to join bands would not be organising showcases of other female-dominated bands, but instead maybe providing lessons or workshops in instrumentation or sound production that are explicitly girl-friendly. If you know what you're at, you're far more likely to feel confident enough to take part.

::clef:: .|..|

While I don't have as much direct experience perhaps, I have to disagree with parts of this because I think you're making a fundamental mistake with where a lot of these issues are coming from.

In particular being labelled as a "girl band" and not just "a band", and sort of implying that having nights for "girl bands" just helps reinforce this distinction.

I'm really uncomfortable with this sort of mentality for a number of reasons - mostly because it's one used, for example, against loud gay rights activists, and that in fact making a distinction of "gay rights" at all from human rights is actually just adding to the problem. I could explain the issues with this but I'm hoping people at least why that sort of invisibility doesn't really help that cause at all.

For the same reasons I don't think that increased female invisibility(me not going through with this) would help anything. I think too that the lack of women in music is in of itself, a large cause for the lack of women in music. It's a sort of feedback loop that makes people afraid to take the plunge, or not even consider it to begin with, because it's not what our culture prescribes to women. The very concept of there being a night like this potentially addresses a lot of the issues that may be keeping women from music, concerns for safety, being too male dominated, no female role models etc. even if you can claim it's "Pigeonholing", in the here and now it sets a positive message that's a necessary stepping stone towards there being no "girl bands".

The reason you're getting "girl band" isn't because of efforts from frumpy feminists such as myself to draw more attention to female in music. If anything, it's the other way around - it's because we have so few women in those sorts of bands especially that people see them as notable in that way. I don't see having workshops that are specifically "girl friendly" would help an awful lot - maybe in the long term, but how do you even go about that? If I advertise such a thing as "female friendly" would you be angry at me for still bothering to distinct females at all instead of acting like there's no issue "officially"? If I didn't, how would women know beforehand it was female friendly? To me, that sort of comes across as more patronising than what I'm proposing.

I don't think you can blame anything on a gender, so saying "women themselves" doesn't really help us get to the root of it.

Whenever you read up on the history of various bands, you often read these stories about how they were at a gig, the 'Stones, the Sex Pistols, whatever, and were inspired by that to go off doing what they did. Helping create an environment where a female voice is more prominent is likely to inspire fence sitting musicians and the like and is probably the best way of encouraging girls & women to pick up an instrument, or promote what they're already doing more thoroughly.

I don't buy this sort of anti-activist mentality at all and I don't think it helps. Just because it might be a bit uncomfortable for the boyos on thumped, or a couple of ex-"girl band" types who are perhaps misplacing the source of their issues, doesn't mean there isn't still a potentially huge positive effect.
 
First off this is not a personal attack on you this is my personal response to the post above, others may have a different view but hows never.

You really need to go post riot grrl for a bit, this isn't Washington and its not the early nineties any more. Of course its ok to take influence and what not but its not an "economic scene theory" by any means, plus I'm not a musician but I do to gigs.

For the best part of ten years I've been surrounded by musicians through friendships, house mates and partners. I've had plenty of opportunities to learn an instrument or be a part of something, no shortage of gear to learn on etc (mostly male encouragement too might I add) but I've just never been bothered and I'm fairly ok with the fact that I still struggle to hold a guitar properly its not because I'm afraid of the consequences of interrupting some dick riff love in with queef rock I'm just happy enough to sit back and be entertained be it by a male or a female musicians.

From my experience the only boundaries in place in Dublin(sic) are the ones you set yourself. If I wanted to start something in the morning I'm sure someone would be good enough to help me along :). Not because I'm a helpless girl but its another person making their own music.


For years a vested interest in riot grrl/queercore bands coming off of the same record labels clouded my judgement in regards to music. Once you start viewing the world with a gender neutral less chip on the shoulder eye things become a lot easier. I don't walk into gigs and give extra cudos to a band because its made up of or partly made up of women. If they're good they're good regardless of gender. From the people I know who put on gigs I've never ever once heard any kind of gender bias ever and if there ever was I can only imagine the backlash.

I don't know why there are fewer women musicians but its a ratio thing as already mentioned here to. You can't force people to like a certain style of music etc and I'm 100% sure its not because women don't feel safe at gigs. I actually think that line is fairly offensive to male gig goers here tbh. I haven't seen anyone mosh in a while and I tend to stay clear of windmillers but tarring everyone with the same one big brush is fairly horrible. Especially when most of the guys I know would be upset if they thought or heard women felt like this. So I really can't see it being a reason.

As for the bass thing, the bass sounds fucking cool that's the why.
 
Another point-why was ladyfest so well received and now green goblins idea for something similar is not so popular?

Actually I remember that the idea of ladyfest had its fair share of critics on thumped at the time. It ended up being a really cool weekend and maybe that's why it seems in retrospect that everyone was supportive of it at the time, but that was definitely not the case.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Activity
So far there's no one here
Old Thread: Hello . There have been no replies in this thread for 365 days.
Content in this thread may no longer be relevant.
Perhaps it would be better to start a new thread instead.

21 Day Calendar

Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Bloody Head, Hubert Selby Jr Infants, Creepy Future - Dublin
Anseo
18 Camden Street Lower, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland

Support thumped.com

Support thumped.com and upgrade your account

Upgrade your account now to disable all ads... If we had any... Which we don't right now.

Upgrade now

Latest threads

Latest Activity

Loading…
Back
Top