GALILEO@UGA Subject Guides: Music: Women's History Month

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Women's History Month

The Library provides a variety of resources for exploring the achievements and challenges of women in music. Below are just a few examples--Search the Library Catalog for books, sound recordings, scores, etc. or search a Databases for journal articles.

Books

The Norton-Grove Dictionary of Woman Composers by Julie Anne Sadie; Rhian Samuel The few in earlier times who gained some renown were as often as not the sisters, daughters, wives, or muses of well-known men--the surnames of Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann speak for themselves. Even with the present-day increase in their number, women composers have largely failed to draw the attention of the public.In recognition of these nearly invisible yet greatly talented musicians, Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel have brought together an international corps of experts to produce The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. This definitive source provides detailed biographies of more than 1,000 creators of Western classical music. In signed articles, the Dictionary chronicles the lives and works of women composers from all corners of the world. Here you can read about the Medieval mystic Hildgard von Bingen, the Renaissance madrigalist Maddalena Casulana, the flamboyant seventeenth-century vocal composer Barbara Strozzi, the prolific New Englander Amy Beach, and the Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
Call Number: Main Ref ML105.N67 1995
ISBN: 9780393034875
Publication Date: 1995-09-17
The World of Women in Classical Music by Anne K. Gray This exciting compilation of the history of women in classical music covers female composers, conductors, performers, musiccologists, women in the business of music and fabulous philanthropists-from past to present. Each entry is a miniature masterpiece biography, revealing the talented women who pushed aside barriers and leapt over hurdles of social limitations to forge a path for themselves and future generations. Dr. Gray has fulfilled a destiny, drawing back the veil enshrouding centuries of women in music, bequeathing to us a detailed and colorful tapestry to feast our imagination, and forever enrich our minds, hearts and spirits.
Call Number: ML82.G73 2007
ISBN: 9781599753201
Publication Date: 2007-03-01
Sounds and Sweet Airs by Anna Beer A companion to the Classic FM series Francesca Caccini. Barbara Strozzi. Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Marianna Martines. Fanny Hensel. Clara Schumann. Lili Boulanger. Elizabeth Maconchy. Since the birth of classical music, women who dared compose have faced a bitter struggle to be heard. In spite of this, female composers continued to create, inspire and challenge. Yet even today so much of their work languishes unheard. Anna Beer reveals the highs and lows experienced by eight composers across the centuries, from Renaissance Florence to twentieth-century London, restoring to their rightful place exceptional women whom history has forgotten.
Call Number: ML82.S686 2016
ISBN: 9781780748566
Publication Date: 2016-04-07
Madame Jazz by Leslie Gourse Nadine Jansen, a flugelhornist and pianist, remembers a night in the 1940s when a man came out of the audience as she was playing both instruments. "I hate to see a woman do that," he explained as he hit the end of her horn, nearly chipping her tooth. Half a century later, a big band named Diva made its debut in New York on March 30, 1993, with Melissa Slocum on bass, Sue Terry on alto sax, Lolly Bienenfeld on trombone, Sherrie Maricle on drums, and a host of other first rate instrumentalists. The band made such a good impression that it was immediately booked to play at Carnegie Hall the following year. For those who had yet to notice, Diva signaled the emergence of women musicians as a significant force in jazz. Madame Jazz is a fascinating invitation to the inside world of women in jazz. Ranging primarily from the late 1970s to today's vanguard of performance jazz in New York City and on the West Coast, it chronicles a crucial time of transition as women make the leap from novelty acts regarded as second class citizens to sought-out professionals admired and hired for their consummate musicianship. Author Leslie Gourse surveys the scene in the jazz clubs, the concert halls, the festivals, and the recording studios from the musicians' point of view. She finds exciting progress on all fronts, but also lingering discrimination. The growing success of women instrumentalists has been a long time in coming, she writes. Long after women became accepted as writers and, to a lesser extent, as visual artists, women in music--classical, pop, or jazz--faced the nearly insuperable barrier of chauvinism and the still insidious force of tradition and habit that keeps most men performing with the musicians they have always worked with, other men. Gourse provides dozens of captivating no-holds-barred interviews with both rising stars and seasoned veterans. Here are up-and-coming pianists Renee Rosnes and Rachel Z., trumpeter Rebecca Coupe Frank, saxophonist Virginia Mayhew, bassist Tracy Wormworth, and drummer Terri Lynne Carrington, and enduring legends Dorothy Donegan, Marian McParland and Shirley Horne. Here, as well, are conversations with three pioneering business women: agent and producer Helen Keane, manager Linda Goldstein, and festival and concert producer Cobi Narita. All of the women speak insightfully about their inspiration and their commitment to pursuing the music they love. They are also frank about the realities of life on the road, and the extra dues women musicians pay in a tough and competitive field where everybody pays dues. A separate chapter offers a closer look at women musicians and the continual stress confronting those who would combine love, marriage, and/or motherhood with a life in music. Madame Jazz is about the history that women jazz instrumentalists are making now, as well as an inspiring preview of the even brighter days ahead. It concludes with Frankie Nemko's lively evaluation of the West Coast jazz scene, and appends the most comprehensive list ever assembled of women currently playing instruments professionally.
Call Number: ML82.G69 1995
ISBN: 9780195086966
Publication Date: 1995-02-02
The Kaleidoscope of Women's Sounds in Music of the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries by Kheng K. Koay "This book traces the development of music in the late 20th and early 21st centuries with regards to the work of six women composers: Sofia Gubaidulina, Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Libby Larsen, Chen Yi, and Judith Weir. The study integrates cultural contexts with the composers' biographies, their diverse compositional styles, and provides in-depth analyses of their musical works. The Kaleidoscope of Women's Sounds in Music of the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries offers a more detailed guide to not only these composers, but also their musical characters and styles, than previous studies on women's music. It discusses several aspects of these women's compositional perspectives and their personal experiences as they developed their music careers. The book also places emphasis on how these composers incorporated diverse musical styles and the idioms of others into the development of their own distinctly personal styles. The analytical approach adopted in this book is supplemented with illustrations of musical examples in order to provide a more complete understanding of the work of these composers."
Call Number: ML390.K622 2015
ISBN: 9781443876520
Publication Date: 2015-06-15
Women Making Music by Jane Bowers (Editor); Judith Tick (Editor) "Do look after my music!" Irene Wienawska Polowski exclaimed before her death in 1932. And from the urgency of that sentiment the authors here have taken their cue to reveal and "look after" the previously neglected contributions of women throughout the history of Western art music.   The first work of its kind, Women Making Music presents biographies of outstanding performers and composers, as well as analyses of women musicians as a class, and provides examples of music from all periods including medieval chant, Renaissance song, Baroque opera, German lieder, and twentieth-century composition. Unlike most standard historical surveys, the book not only sheds light upon the musical achievements of women, it also illuminates the historical contexts that shaped and defined those achievements.  
Call Number: ML82 .W67 1985
ISBN: 9780252014703
Publication Date: 1987-08-01
Women Composers: music through the ages by Martha F. Schleifer (Editor); Sylvia Glickman (Editor) Each volume of this historical overview of music created by women - from the 9th to the 20th century - features 10-25 complete musical scores or complete movements from multi-movement compositions, most of which have been previously inaccessible. Essays and biographies are also included.
Call Number: M2 .W87 1995
ISBN: 9780783816142
Publication Date: 1998-03-01
From Convent to Concert Hall by Sylvia Glickman (Editor); Martha Furman Schleifer (Editor) In the world of musical composition, men have long overshadowed women. But as the prominence of women composers increases, so does interest in their lives and works. This is the first substantive biographical reference book geared toward the student or non-specialist, featuring information on nearly 200 women composers of the Western music tradition from the 9th century to the 2st. Composers were chosen based on the excellence of their music, their importance in the period's daily musical life, and the availability of information on their lives, music, and recordings. Taken together, they represent a broad range of styles, countries, and eras. This book is a valuable resource for students from high school through university, and for anyone interested in musical history and composers. The book is arranged by style of music and chronology. Each profiled composer placed is related to the famous male composers, arts, sciences, and politics of her period. Profiles include biographical information and focus on the composer's work and association with other musicians. Also included for each composer are a discography of her recorded works (including a list of those available in modern editions) and a bibliography of additional print and electronic resources. Timelines place the women in historical context and appendixes organize them by country, century, and type of music. A syllabus of study is provided.
Call Number: ML82 .F76 2003
ISBN: 9781573564113
Publication Date: 2003-10-30
Women Singers in Global Contexts by Ruth Hellier (Editor); Ellen Koskoff (Afterword by)  Exploring and celebrating individual lives in diverse situations, Women Singers in Global Contexts is a new departure in the study of women's worldwide music-making. Ten unique women constitute the heart of this volume: each one has engaged her singing voice as a central element in her life, experiencing various opportunities, tensions, and choices through her vocality. These biographical and poetic narratives demonstrate how the act of vocalizing embodies dynamics of representation, power, agency, activism, and risk-taking. Engaging with performance practice, politics, and constructions of gender through vocality and vocal aesthetics, this collection offers valuable insights into the experiences of specific women singers in a range of sociocultural contexts. Contributors trace themes and threads that include childhood, families, motherhood, migration, fame, training, transmission, technology, and the interface of private lives and public identities.
Call Number: ML82 .W687 2013
ISBN: 9780252037245
Publication Date: 2013-02-07
Women, Music, Culture by Julie C. Dunbar Women, Music, Cultureis an undergraduate textbook on the history and contribution of women in a variety of musical genres and professions. Clear writing, compelling narrative, and more than fifty guided listening examples bring the world of women in music to life. It includes a wide array of pedagogical aids, including an abundance of photographs, a comprehensive companion website, critical thinking exercises, as well as a running glossary that reinforces key figures and terms. Covering important figures in art music and popular music, it examines a community of women involved in the world of music, including composers, producers, consumers, performers, technicians, mothers, educators and listeners.
Call Number: ML82 .D86 2011
ISBN: 9780415875639
Publication Date: 2010-12-20
Women in Music by Karin Pendle; Melinda Boyd Women in Music: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography emerging from more than twenty-five years of feminist scholarship on music. This book testifies to the great variety of subjects and approaches represented in over two decades of published writings on women, their work, and the important roles that feminist outlooks have played in formerly male-oriented academic scholarship or journalistic musings on women and music.
Call Number: ML128.W7 P46 2010
ISBN: 9780203891209
Publication Date: 2012-07-26
Women and Music in America Since 1900 by Kristine H. Burns (Editor) The 20th century heard a rich sound coming from America: women making music. Other works may be strictly biographical or cover only one type of musician. This two volume, A-to-Z encyclopedia represents the first major effort to describe the role of women in all forms of music in the U.S. since 1900. Entries cover such material as: Important individuals Biographical overviews Gender issues Education Music genres Honors and awards Organizations Professions The significance of an individual's contribution, rather than their popularity, determined who was featured in this collection. Included individuals must also have been born in, been a resident of, or made most of her contributions in the U.S. Each entry concludes with a short list of further readings. Photos accompany nearly 100 entries. A preface, an introductory historical overview, a chronology, a guide to related topics, a list of contributors, a general bibliography, and an index help to present the full spectrum of American women who changed the face of music in the 1900s."
Call Number: Main Ref ML82 .W625 2002
ISBN: 9781573563093
Publication Date: 2002-12-30
Towards a Twenty-First-Century Feminist Politics of Music by Sally Macarthur Towards a Twenty-First-Century Feminist Politics of Music opens up a new way of thinking about the absence of women's music. It does not aim to find 'a solution' in a liberal feminist sense, but to discover new potentialities, new possibilities for thought and action. Sally Macarthur encourages us, with the assistance of Deleuze, and feminist-Deleuzian work, to begin the important work of imagining what else might be possible, not in order to provide answers but to open up the as yet unknown. The power of thought - or what Deleuze calls the 'virtual' - opens up new possibilities. Macarthur suggests that the future for women's 'new' music is not tied to the predictable and known but to futures beyond the already-known. Previous research concludes that women's music is virtually absent from the concert hall, and yet fails to find a way of changing this situation. Macarthur finds that the flaw in the recommendations flowing from past research is that it envisages the future from the standpoint of the present, and it relies on a set of pre-determined goals. It thus replicates the present reality, so reinforcing rather than changing the status quo. Macarthur challenges this thinking, and argues that this repetitive way of thinking is stuck in the present, unable to move forward. Macarthur situates her argument in the context of current dominant neoliberal thought and practice. She argues that women have generally not thrived in the neoliberal model of the composer, which envisages the composer as an individual, autonomous creator and entrepreneur. Successful female composers must work with this dominant, modernist aesthetic and exploit the image of the neo-romantic, entrepreneurial creator. This book sets out in contrast to develop a new conception of subjectivity that sows the seeds of a twenty-first-century feminist politics of music.
Call Number: ML82 .M23 2010
ISBN: 9781409409823
Publication Date: 2010-12-28
A Feminist Ethnomusicology by Ellen Koskoff; Suzanne Cusick (Foreword by) One of the pioneers of gender studies in music, Ellen Koskoff edited the foundational text Women and Music in Cross Cultural Perspective, and her career evolved in tandem with the emergence and development of the field. In this intellectual memoir, Koskoff describes her journey through the maze of social history and scholarship related to her work examining the intersection of music and gender. Koskoff collects new, revised, and hard-to-find published material from mid-1970s through 2010 to trace the evolution of ethnomusicological thinking about women, gender, and music, offering a perspective of how questions emerged and changed in those years, as well as Koskoff's reassessment of the early years and development of the field. Her goal: a personal map of the different paths to understanding she took over the decades, and how each inspired, informed, and clarified her scholarship. For example, Koskoff shows how a preference for face-to-face interactions with living people served her best in her research, and how her now-classic work within Brooklyn's Hasidic community inflamed her feminist consciousness while leading her into ethnomusicological studies. An uncommon merging of retrospective and rumination, A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender offers a witty and disarmingly frank tour through the formative decades of the field and will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, scholars of the history and development of feminist thought, and those engaged in fieldwork. Includes a foreword by Suzanne Cusick framing Koskoff's career and an extensive bibliography provided by the author.
Call Number: ML3798 .K67 2014
ISBN: 9780252080074
Publication Date: 2014-04-11
Revenge of the She-Punks by Vivien Goldman As an industry insider and pioneering post-punk musician, Vivien Goldman?s perspective on music journalism is unusually well-rounded. In Revenge of the She-Punks, she probes four themes?identity, money, love, and protest?to explore what makes punk such a liberating art form for women. With her visceral style, Goldman blends interviews, history, and her personal experience as one of Britain?s first female music writers in a book that reads like a vivid documentary of a genre defined by dismantling boundaries. A discussion of the Patti Smith song ?Free Money,? for example, opens with Goldman on a shopping spree with Smith. Tamar-Kali, whose name pays homage to a Hindu goddess, describes the influence of her Gullah ancestors on her music, while the late Poly Styrene's daughter reflects on why her Somali-Scots-Irish mother wrote the 1978 punk anthem ?Identity,? with the refrain ?Identity is the crisis you can't see.? Other strands feature artists from farther afield (including in Colombia and Indonesia) and genre-busting revolutionaries such as Grace Jones, who wasn't exclusively punk but clearly influenced the movement while absorbing its liberating audacity. From punk's Euro origins to its international reach, this is an exhilarating world tour.
Call Number: ML82 .G64 2019
ISBN: 9781477316542
Publication Date: 2019-05-07
Beyond the Dance Floor by Rebekah Farrugia A pathbreaking study of the women who create electronic dance music, Beyond the Dance Floor focuses on the largely neglected relationship between these women and the conceptions of gender and technology that continue to inform the male-dominated culture surrounding electronic music. In this volume, Rebekah Farrugia explores a number of important issues, including the politics of identity and representation, the bonds formed by women within the DJ community, and the role female DJs and producers play in this dance music culture as well as in the larger public sphere.   Though Farrugia primarily focuses on women's relationship to music-related technologies--including vinyl, mp3s, and digital production software--she also deftly extends her argument to the strategic use of the Internet and web design skills for purposes tied to publicity, networking, and music distribution.
Call Number: ML3540.5 .F377 2012
ISBN: 9781841505664
Publication Date: 2012-08-13
Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry by Kristin J. Lieb Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry combines interview data with music industry professionals with theoretical frameworks from sociology, mass communication, and marketing to explain and explore the gender differences female artists experience. This book provides a rare lens on the rigid packaging process that transforms female artists of various genres into female pop stars. Stars¿and the industry power brokers who make their fortunes¿have learned to prioritize sexual attractiveness over talent as they fight a crowded field for movie deals, magazine covers, and fashion lines, let alone record deals. This focus on the female pop star¿s body as her core asset has resigned many women to being "short term brands," positioned to earn as much money as possible before burning out or aging ungracefully. This book, which includes interview data from music industry insiders, explores the sociological forces that drive women into these tired representations, and the ramifications for the greater social world.
Call Number: ML82 .L54 2018
ISBN: 9781138064164
Publication Date: 2018-01-24
Women in the Studio Creation Control and Gender in Popular Music Sound by Paula Wolfe The field of popular music production is overwhelmingly male dominated. Here, Paula Wolfe discusses gendered notions of creativity and examines the significant under-representation of women in studio production. Wolfe brings an invaluable perspective as both a working artist-producer and as a scholar, thereby offering a new body of research based on interviews and first hand observation. Wolfe demonstrates that patriarchal frameworks continue to form the backbone of the music industry establishment but that women's work in the creation and control of sound presents a potent challenge to gender stereotyping, marginalisation and containment of women's achievements that is still in evidence in music marketing practices and media representation in the digital era.
Call Number: ML82 .W59 2020
ISBN: 9781472474872
Publication Date: 2019-06-27
'Rock On' by Ros Jennings; Abigail Gardner For female pop stars, whose star bodies and star performances are undisputedly the objects of a sexualized external gaze, the process of ageing in public poses particular challenges. Taking a broadly feminist perspective, 'Rock On': Women, Ageing and Popular Music shifts popular music studies in a new direction. Focussing on British, American and Latina women performers and ageing, the collection investigates the cultural work performed by artists such as Shirley Bassey, Madonna, Celia Cruz, Courtney Love, Annie Lennox and Lady Gaga.
Call Number: ML82 .R636 2012
ISBN: 9781409428428
Publication Date: 2012-10-04
Respect by Dorothy Marcic An entertaining and unique look at the role of women in 20th century America through well-known songs. Dorothy Marcic has created a fascinating and original story chronicling the development of women. Using the country's Top 40 hits with archetypes, lyrics, and personal stories from 1900 through 2000, she shows how in the early part of the century song lyrics resonated with women's dependency and compliant natures; echoed their eventual rebellion in the late 1960s; and mirrored their development as mature, independent persons in the 90s.
Call Number: ML82 .M26 2002
ISBN: 9781587990830
Publication Date: 2002-03-20
Women and Popular Music by Sheila Whiteley Women and Popular Music explores the changing role of women musicians and the ways in which their songs resonate in popular culture. Sheila Whiteley begins by examining the counter-culture's reactionary attitudes to women through the lyrics of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. She explores the ways in which artists like Joplin and Joni Mitchell confronted issues of sexuality and freedom, redefining women's participation in the industry, and assesses the personal cost of their achievements. She considers how stars such as Annie Lennox, Madonna and k.d. lang have confronted issues of gender stereotyping and sexuality, through pop videos for 'Justify My Love' and 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)', and looks at the enduring importance of the singer-songwriter through artists such as Tracey Chapman. Lastly, she assesses the contribution of contemporary artists including Tori Amos, P.J. Harvey and Courtney Love, and asks whether the Spice Girls are just a 'cartoon feminist pop group' or if they provide positive role models for teenage girls.
Call Number: ML82 .W48 2000
ISBN: 9780415211901
Publication Date: 2000-08-31
She Bop by Lucy O'Brien She Bop is the definitive in-depth study of women in popular music. Drawing on more than 250 firsthand interviews, it covers nine decades of musical history, from ragtime and vaudeville to punk and hip-hop, and features a remarkable cast of trailblazing female performers: Ella Fitzgerald and Madonna, Billie Holiday and Whitney Houston, Dusty Springfield and Beyonce, and many, many more. First published in 1995, She Bop was widely praised as "a contemporary classic" and "a must for any serious muso's bookshelf". It became a key text on numerous university and college courses, and has had a major impact on writing about women in music. To coincide with the second edition, published in 2002, the National Portrait Gallery in London ran a She Bop exhibition of photographs inspired by the book, while BBC Radio 2 broadcast a two-part documentary series of the same name, which was scripted by O'Brien. In recent years there has been an explosion of female artists on the pop scene. Artists like Adele, Amy Winehouse, and Florence Welch have spearheaded a third British Invasion of the US charts, while American acts such as Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Katy Perry continue to dominate the global market. This revised and expanded third edition brings the story of She Bop into the 21st century, with extensive revisions throughout and a new final chapter covering the current generation of female performers and the ways in which the internet and digital culture have reconfigured the music industry for women.
Call Number: ML82 .O27 2012
ISBN: 9781908279279
Publication Date: 2012-12-01
Women Drummers by Angela Smith In 1942, drummer Viola Smith sent shock waves through the jazz world by claiming in Down Beat magazine that "hep girls" could sit in on any jam session and hold their own. In Women Drummers: A History from Rock and Jazz to Blues and Country, Angela Smith takes Viola at her word, offering a comprehensive look at the world of professional drumming and the women who had the courage and chops to break the barriers of this all-too-male field. Combining archival research with personal interviews of more than fifty female drummers representing more than eight decades in music history, Smith paints a vivid picture of their struggles to overcome discrimination--not only as professional musicians but in other parts of their lives. Women Drummers outlines the evolution of female drumming from pre-biblical times when women held important leadership roles to their silencing by the church during the Middle Ages to spearheading the fight for women's rights in the modern era. The stories and personal accounts of female drummers who bucked tradition and societal norms are told against the backdrop of the times in which they performed and the genres they represented, from rock and jazz to blues and country. Although women have proven time and time again that they can more than hold their own against their male counterparts, female drummers not only remain a minority, but their contributions have been obscured by the traditional chauvinistic attitudes in the music business and gender stereotypes that surround the drum itself as a "male" instrument. Women Drummers takes a major step forward in undoing this misconception by acknowledging the talent, contribution, and growing power of women drummers in today's music environment.
Call Number: ML385 .S592 2014
ISBN: 9780810895584
Publication Date: 2017-10-30

Online Library Resources

Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, an annual journal of scholarship about women, music, and culture, is published for the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) by the University of Nebraska Press. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and approaches, the refereed journal seeks to further the understanding of the relationships among gender, music, and culture, with special attention being given to the concerns of women.
GenderWatch
Articles from scholarly and popular journals and other publications on gender in cultural, social, and historical context. Gender Watch focuses on the impact of gender on women's lives. Athough it is not a musiic-specific resource, GenderWatch includes resources on the impact of gender on the arts, music and popular culture.

Free Resources

Exhibits & Collections (Library of Congress)
Achival materials celebrating the accomplishments of women in various areas, including the Performing Arts.
Audio & Video (Library of Congress)
A collection of audio and video clips of notable women in various areas, including the Performing Arts.
Institute for Composer Diversity
Our Composer Diversity Database is a resource for the musical community through which composers from underrepresented groups can be discovered. Composers can be found through several different search filters including gender, racial/ethnic demographics, sexual/romantic identity, residence, and various large ensemble and chamber ensemble genres.
Boulanger Initiative
Boulanger Initiative’s mission is to promote music composed by womxn through performance, education, and commissions. To work toward greater inclusivity, and to enrich our collective understanding of what music is, has been, and can be.

Music: Women's History Month

Women's History Month

Recordings

Books

Online Library Resources

Free Resources