M Magazine International Women's Day Edition

IWD

CHOOSE TO CHALLENGE International Women’s Day Edition

March 2021 prsformusic.com/m-magazine

Contents Ones to Watch

4

Lavida Loca

8

Editor’s welcome

Making history at PRS

10

Women in hip hop

14

This edition of M Magazine has been created, with the help of Guest Editor Maxie Gedge, to celebrate International Women’s Day 2021.

Kate Nash

20

Girls in the band

24

Róisín Murphy

26

Girls make beats too

30

Bishi

34

Changing the soundtrack

36

Independent women in publishing

40

Peggy Seeger

42

Moderate Rebels

46

Meet the people redefining what it means to be a woman in the music business, and those supporting the women bold enough to enter it.

Bringing Black women into the live music industry

50

Maya Radcliffe - Editor M Magazine

How the pandemic has affected women in the industry

54

Is leadership gendered?

56

Female iniatives helping smash glass ceiling for women

58

Misogyny and inequality are carved into the walls of the music industry and if we want to create a sector where there is genuine equality, we need to bring more women out of the shadows and into the light. By championing women in every corner of the industry we are actively choosing to challenge gender-based stereotypes. The whole business, including that behind the scenes, needs to reflect and promote the incredible diversity of those making the music.

The proportion of female-identifying PRS for Music writer members may be low in comparison to the total (less than 20 percent) but the talent within that small percentage is extraordinary.

Guest Editor

Maxie Gedge Maxie is best known for her work as PRS Foundation and Keychange Project Manager and founder of Gravy Records. She is also a member of PRS for Music’s employee-run diversity and inclusion taskforce, with a focus on creating a working culture where we are all equal, regardless of gender.

Check out Maxie’s International Women’s Day Playlist at www.m-magazine.co.uk

prsformusic.com/m-magazine Editor Maya Radcliffe Art Director Carl English Creative Manager Paul Nichols Contact magazine@prsformusic.com

The differing uses of womxn/women in this issue is a reflection of the contributors personal preference. In both instances, it is meant to include trans and non-binary, female-identifying people.

26

Ones to watch PRS for Music Outreach Manager, Claire Rose, gives us the skinny on some of the artists she’s had her eyes on through the Outreach Talent Identification programme (TIP).

TIP seeks to identify and engage with emerging artists.

PRS for Music members identified under TIP have gone on to be featured in the BBC Music Sound Of lists, nominated for BRITs Critics’ Choice Awards and have won at the Grammys, the AIM Awards and the Mercurys.

SHYGIRL South East London’s Shygirl released ALIAS in 2020 and it was just what the world needed. The EP teleports us to the future where we find ourselves in a dark, sweaty club, dancing euphorically like no one is watching. Shygirl’s delivery is sharp and venomous and is perfectly paired with her bold, focused production. Her music is honest, shameless and empowering and brings us closer to the nightlife that we so desperately crave.

Photo: Zach Mahrouche

Pixey Are we lost in a psychedelic dream world or are we listening to Pixey? It is hard to tell but wherever we are, we would very much like to stay. Pixey’s soft, harmonic voice partnered with her hypnotic sound is simply made to disappear into. Pixey is getting attention in all the right places, with support from Radio 1 and Radio X, as well as taking on major festivals like The Great Escape, Live at Leeds and Liverpool Sound City. We are loving what Pixey is giving us and we are thirsty for more.

Griff Following an outstanding 2020, Griff is pop music’s new rising star. Not only is she a brilliant songwriter, but her own producer, stylist and video director. She even makes her own clothes. A formidable songwriter, Griff explores loss, heartbreak, betrayal and dealing with being a hormonal teenager and found herself fifth in the BBC Sound of 2021 list.

M Magazine | 05

Ones to watch

Photo: Alice Adhley

Sunflower Thieves Sunflower Thieves create harmonies to transport you to warmer climes. The duo provide intimate, atmospheric, synth-folk which is full of emotion, yet are expert in summoning a sense of calm. Their latest single, Hide and Seek, is a triumph and proves that Sunflower Thieves are an unstoppable team who have complete creative control in every aspect of their music.

Los Bitchos Championed by the likes of Mark Riley, NME, DIY and SXSW, Los Bitchos are on track for a massive 2021. A cumbia-inspired, groove-heavy indie dance band, they’ve toured with Mac De Marco and Bill Ryder-Jones and recently launched their own radio show, Planet Bitchos. The radio show is the perfect way to escape the realities of lockdown and sees the band exploring culture, music and people from all over the world. We highly recommended pairing with a cocktail.

Pip Millet Pip Millet has a voice you could get lost in forever. She released her debut EP, Lost In June, last year and it expertly showcases her talent as a songwriter. Pip is an incredible, emotional lyricist who tells stories of heartbreak, long-distance relationships, turmoil and self-care. These subjects are prevalent in one of her most popular tracks, Make Me Cry. Through her music and her reassuring tone, Pip gives us permission to embrace our emotions, which is not always easy.

OneDa Born and raised in Manchester, OneDa is high on our list of ones to watch. OneDa has been championed by BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra and in 2019, headlined Manchester Pride and BBC Introducing at Manchester Festival; the first female to do so. She is a total powerhouse who not only writes incredible music, but also realises the importance of giving back to the scene and helping others on their journey. In 2020, she released her latest EP, OneDa Land which proves that she is continuing to hone her craft, deliver us banger after banger and let nothing block her path to success.

JGrrey If you haven’t listened to JGrrey, then we implore you to do so. Her silky tones, honest and relatable lyrics and her sophisticated style are awe-inspiring. JGrrey has been making waves for a little while but always stays true to herself, ensuring she is making music for her own benefit and only releasing it when she is ready. JGrrey has made fans of Annie Mac and Billie Eilish since the release of her debut EP, Grrey Daze, and has certainly found fans in us too.

Nuha Ruby Ra Nuha Ruby Ra is the powerful, punk queen we have all been waiting for. Her writing covers love, loss, depression, desire and also what it means to overcome personal and emotional obstacles.

She has toured alongside Amyl and the Sniffers, Snapped Ankles and Bo Nigen and has a firm spot on our ‘Must See Live’ list. Following her latest single release, Sparky, Nuha Ruby Ra is releasing her debut new album, How To Move, this spring and we cannot wait.

Arxx The garage-rock duo ARXX released their new track Call Me Crazy last year and were praised by the likes of Steve Lamacq and Sophie K. The track itself contains honest lyrics about mental health struggles which is evidently something the duo are passionate about, as well as championing women and non-binary artists. Catch the pair supporting Muncie Girls this year at Oslo in Hackney and check out their podcast ARXX US ANYTHING.

Baby Queen

Photo: David Strawbridge

If there is someone we need more of to make 2021 a bit more bearable, it’s Baby Queen.

Combining her dreamy vocals, melodic guitar riffs and synth pop, Baby Queen is sure to soon take over the music industry, if not, the world. She released her debut new single Raw Thoughts this year, a track which has been heavily supported by BBC Radio 1, has been in our ears, on repeat.

Bored At My Grandma’s House We are in love with Bored At My Grandma’s House. Having released her debut EP, Sometimes I Forget You’re Human in February, Bored At My Grandma’s House has received industry-wide support. Her music is melodic, emotional and only elevates her soft voice and her stunning lyrics. We can’t wait to see what’s next for her.

M Magazine | 07

Lavida Loca Born in Malawi, raised in Nottingham and now based in south London, Lavida Loca is carving out her own lane in UK rap on her own terms.

Below the surface of Lavida Loca’s razor-sharp lyrics is a brutal tale of surviving inner city poverty, crime and a drive to spotlight the pitfalls that many women fall into–whose stories are so rarely heard.

The young rapper has built a solid foundation, like many before her, with hard-hitting freestyles like King Is Back through organic social media promo she swiftly went viral. She further made her mark with tracks like No ID and her well received 2-Sides EP saw her showcase her assertive flows on hardcore drill to light upbeat afro-swing. While Lavida can boast working with long-time Giggs producer Bayoz Muzik and renowned hit-making legend Fraser T. Smith, it was her feature in YouTube Originals’ Terms & Conditions: A Drill Story that really captured their full magnetic personality. Lavida is certainly next in line for rap royalty’s crown.

Laura Brosnan caught up with Lavida Loca to discuss her love for writing, how women being pitted against each other can create issues and the importance of telling your own story.

Laura: When did you first fall in love with music?

Lavida Loca: From when I was a child, growing up in quite an unstable house, I found peace in music. I used to use music to block things out and turned into a real love for music in general. The first CD I used to do that with was my mum’s Whitney Houston CD. Every time I was upset or just being that child, I would blast music out.

Then I discovered Nicki Minaj when I was about nine or ten and I absolutely loved her, but I didn’t really know there was a whole world of women in rap.

From then I just continued to dig into this new world. Then I came across the UK women who were rapping at the time, which was like Lady Leshurr, Lioness, Baby Blue, Mz Bratt and more. There was quite a few of them doing their thing at that point. In my head, at that time, it was like ‘these are UK Nickis, they’re trying to do what Nicki’s doing’ because I didn’t know. As ignorant as it sounds, I didn’t know there was other women rapping. I was too young to know Ms Dynamite and people before. So, those were the first females

‘Music has definitely kept me grounded; it’s giving me something to like to live for in a weird, cliche sense. But yeah, it’s giving me something to do, something that’s mine. I didn’t have anything.’

I’d heard of in the UK and then they influenced me to start writing.

That’s the moment I first picked up a pen and I wrote to the Game Over instrumental and I haven’t looked back since.

Laura: How would you compare the music you’re making now to the lyrics you wrote then?

Lavida Loca: Now I can write about anything that’s close to me. I let it all out through the pen. I think back then I didn’t know how to do that. I was just rhyming. Now, I’m so indulged in the whole creative process.

Laura: UK rap is really breaking new boundaries in the landscape of British music and beyond. How are you carving out your own lane, especially in a male dominated arena?

Lavida Loca: My music is real, gritty but at the same time quite girly. It’s a pure ‘bossy’ type of vibe. I’m a rapper, I feel like I’m very lyrical. It’s important to me to empower women and I want to send out the message in my work, that ‘regardless of where you come from, you can definitely boss up!’ I feel like my story shows that in a sense. I want to make them feel uplifted and bounce back from any setbacks.

Laura: Do you feel there’s certain expectations, topics and stereotypes projected on to women in the music industry to sing or rap?

Lavida Loca: I think initially when I first started rapping, I was told a lot that I should become sexier and rap more like what’s hot right now in the U.S, with women in rap. I was like ‘So, you want me to be the same as everybody else?’. I feel like that was because people weren’t used to hearing a woman talk about the life that I’ve lived. As time has gone on and I’ve continued to be myself, people are just taking me in and just made me very happy that I haven’t had to change myself or fit into some sort of box for people to actually start listening to my music and for me to generally gain support. I feel like that’s happened organically and it’s going to continue to grow over time.

Laura: I do see though, time after time, parts of the music industry, media and fans pitting women against each other. Rarely are women celebrated for what their work without putting other women down.

Lavida Loca: Yes, It’s the female rivalry thing. I definitely feel like that is what people are entertained by and I’m not sure why, every time maybe you have two females on a song, they’ll be compared rather than, you know, ‘they both went hard’. We get a lot of that projected on to us. I feel like that does kind of add tension to what’s going on. I feel like that’s why it can be a lot harder for women to support each other behind the scenes. Maybe it does get into, maybe a

few people’s heads. The comments and the audience have made it a thing of who’s better than who, I feel like, then that obviously plants seeds in people’s heads of wanting to be better than the other rather than supporting each other. It goes hands in hand, but I would say it’s both.

Laura: I can imagine that being frustrating, but I suppose if you’re working in a corporate job in a male-dominated industry and there’s only one or two women, similar things would eventually happen too.

Lavida Loca: I am feeling a lot of love right now. So, hopefully we’re changing that. The group of us that are coming up. I’m not feeling any tension right now, everyone’s supporting each other and just loving the fact that it is the time of the female rapper.

Laura: In your music you speak quite candidly about the struggles you were going through growing up. How has music helped through that journey?

Lavida Loca: Music has really helped me since I came out of jail because without it, I would have nothing else to focus on. I’m noticing now, more than before, that a lot of people are now trapped in the cycle. A lot of people that came out of prison at a similar time as me, have been recalled back. It’s easy to be trapped in the swinging door so, I’m thankful that I had something else to put my time into. Music has definitely kept me grounded; it’s giving me something to like to live for in a weird, cliche sense. But yeah, it’s giving me something to do, something that’s mine. I didn’t have anything. I wasn’t really into school. It was, it was just the roads, plus having my criminal record as well. I just kind of felt like I didn’t have many options.

In prison it was basically therapy for me. I used to write a lot in my cell. I wish I kept my notebooks from prison. I really used to lay out my emotions then. Before then I was too focussed on the roads and all of that stuff.

Laura: I really appreciate you sharing that. I think that’s a really, important story to tell. What advice would give to your younger self?

Lavida Loca: I’ve experienced different parts of life. I’ve experienced struggle. I hope now I’m experiencing growth and then I’ll get to experience success. And I think that will just be a lovely story to be able to tell. Just don’t give up, keep going, stay strong. I would just remind her there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Laura: What are you working on the moment that we should look out for?

Lavida Loca: I’ve got an EP coming very soon, which will be my second project. I’m very excited for that. I feel like I learnt a lot from my first project. I’ve been working on this project for maybe a little while, for about seven months now. So, I’ve had time to really digest music, make songs, listen to them over and over again. I think I’ve been a lot more specific in what I’m trying to get across and what I’m trying to do, what I’m trying to show of myself.

This piece was guest edited by Maxie Gedge.

M Magazine | 09

I think it’s important to listen to others, but I think it’s also important to have a clear vision,

Photo: Ernest Simons

and to have a strong voice

History Makers: Andrea Czapary Martin and Michelle Escoffery

Michelle Escoffery President of the PRS Members’ Council

PRS for Music chief executive Andrea Czapary Martin and Member Council President Michelle Escoffery discuss career pathways, how women in senior management and leadership roles can help to forge a gender-equal music industry and share insight into obstacles faced.

Andrea: What job did you dream of doing when you were young?

Michelle: I wanted to study graphic design. I did it at school, and I wanted to be either an interior designer or a fashion designer, and none of that happened. I didn’t study art at school, but I got accepted into Birkbeck Art School to do fine art for a year, but my dad wouldn’t let me do it (laughter). Dad said no, no arts for you.

So, I went onto do A-Levels, I did English, sociology, maths and computer science, but I was recording an album at the same time. I was going to college in the day, going to the studio at night, and so something had to give. I came out with my English and my sociology. Nothing art-based at all.

Andrea: When I was young I wanted to be a model and I’m older than you, so my idol was Twiggy. Twiggy had short, short, short hair and so I wanted my hair short like Twiggy and my mother had to bring me to the barber, because her hairdresser wouldn’t cut my hair short like that (laughter).

Michelle: And did you get it cut? Did you have it cut?

Andrea: Oh, I used to have it cut short like Twiggy, but my parents did not want me to be a model!

Michelle: Oh wow.

Andrea: So, who has been your biggest advocate in your career and why?

Michelle: Two people. My sister because she passed on the skill of songwriting, and while she was alive, I would always bounce things back and forwards with her. She would show me her ideas and I’d show her my ideas and she’d say, ‘I think you need to work on that a little bit more,’ or ‘this is great, why don’t you run with this.’ Also my dad, because my dad was very much an advocate for excellence. He was all about discipline and consistency. When I was in the girl group, my dad used to come to a lot of our shows and I didn’t care about anybody else in the audience. The only person I needed to impress was my dad. He would say ‘you were flat there, and you need to work on your breathing.’ He had four daughters and a wife so he was completely outnumbered. His thing was, it doesn’t matter what sex you are, you’ve just got to be excellent. So I’ve always been striving to be better. I felt there was always something to learn. So, I think, yes, he was my biggest advocate in that his thing was, you never stop learning and you can always be better.

Andrea: So would you say he was quite demanding?

Michelle: He just expected you to do your best. No matter what that was. I always felt amazing if my dad was there and I saw him smile, because then I knew I’d done well.

Andrea: The only fan that you need to impress!

Michelle: The only fan I need to impress (laughter), yes.

Andrea: What would you say have been your career highlights?

Michelle: I think getting a song on a Tina Turner greatest hits album was amazing and it was more the fact that it was a very personal touch. She called and said she loved the song, and then she kept my backing vocals on, and she literally didn’t touch the song, she just went in and performed it, and it was just like, ‘oh my gosh, Tina Turner’s just sung one of my songs.’

Andrea: I love Tina Turner, isn’t she incredible?

Michelle: Yes. And she’s been through so much and she’s just kept going.

Liberty X and Artful Dodger were also highlights. My Ivor Novello was down to the Liberty X track. I remember the group calling me early in the morning. I hadn’t woken up yet and all I heard was screaming. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ (laughter) and it was like, ‘We’re midweek number one, we’re midweek number one.’ That was an amazing moment.

Andrea: What do you want to achieve as President of the PRS Members’ Council?

Michelle: I think I’d feel really accomplished if, number one, we addressed some of the inequalities that are happening within the organisation, and that there was more representation across the board in terms of membership, in terms of recognising different genres, different gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and just having more engagement with our membership. Also building more of a community of writers, composers, publishers. I’d feel like we’ve done something really great. I’m an advocate for technology as well and I’d really love for us to catch up. Not just to catch up, to then start being on the leading edge of technology, for our members to be able to have that technology in their hands and for it to be streamlined and really easy for them to connect and for them to understand it. Just having I think, more of a greater sense of value for our members, that they feel heard, they feel valued, and they feel like there’s a space for them to connect with other members. I’d feel really good about that.

M Magazine | 11

Andrea: The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is #ChooseToChallenge, what are the challenges you’ve faced in the industry?

Michelle: Not being taken seriously as a contender, and not being heard in a space. People assuming you can’t do something because you’re a woman. I think that’s been the greatest challenge, challenging those stereotypes. Also being pigeonholed into a certain genre. So, it’s, ‘Oh you’re Black, so you write R&B.’ It’s like, ‘well no, actually I write pop, I write dance, I write rock-influenced music.’ One of the things that I kind of adopted quite early in my career was ‘try it’. Try it at least once and see if you’re good at it, see if you like it, see if you’re capable, and if you are, keep going. People see you and have a perception of who you are and what you’re capable of.

We have to always challenge that.

Andrea: And what has been the biggest obstacle in the way of your progression?

Michelle: Again, being pigeonholed, and not being taken seriously.

It is also our responsibility to know ourselves, and to have confidence. We can do things differently. We don’t have to be the same. We don’t have to lead the same way. We don’t have to compete the same way. I think the biggest challenge is actually turning up fully as ourselves, celebrating ourselves and taking up space. The more we do that, the more we have conversations amongst each other, and the more we realise we’re not alone in this, the stronger that we’ll be.

Andrea: Yes, like you say, it’s about confidence. I think we lack confidence. Women have a lot to bring to the table: communication, empathy, intuition. Men are often very confident, they take on things that they may not have the ability to do, but women make sure they have it at 150 percent.

Michelle: Yes, totally. But you need to learn to just jump, and you will learn on the way. A lot of the time I think that we downplay our abilities and say, ‘Oh you know, I don’t really know about that.’ But actually we do, and we’ve done it and we’ve been doing it.

Andrea: Of course, absolutely, and don’t be afraid to be different.

When I first came to the UK, I always thought that the UK embraced diversity, and what I’m realising is that I think it’s almost harder than the US. It’s just that it’s not as open. It’s very closed and no-one talks about it. Everything has to look perfect.

Michelle: Yes, yes. And perfection is the enemy. It’s like the biggest cause for procrastination, you know.

Andrea: Absolutely Michelle. And what key qualities do you think a leader needs to have?

Michelle: Listening skills and vision. I think it’s important to listen to others, but I think it’s also important to have a clear vision, and to have a strong voice. Not everyone’s going to agree with you, and you might not agree with everyone else.

But when you have that vision and the clarity of direction, then you can lead. As you said, it’s important to be able to have empathy and to put yourself in the place of somebody else, to understand where they’re coming from. I think that’s really important in leadership, because then you can bring other people with you. If you have no understanding of where other people are at, you can’t bring them with you.

Women have a lot to bring to the table: communication, empathy, intuition.

Andrea: Absolutely, because they have different starting points. Would you say that leadership is gendered?

Michelle: I really don’t feel like it’s gendered. I really don’t. I think that those qualities surpass gender. You need to listen to people, you need to have a clear direction, you need to be able to communicate your ideas clearly and be able to also break them down so that everybody can understand what it is that you’re aiming at, and you need to be able to be decisive, you know?.

Leaders are decisive, they’re quick to decide and slow to change their mind. I don’t think that that’s gendered.

Andrea: Do you think it’s how you’re brought up?

Michelle: It could be, but it could also be about mindset. You look at so many leaders and they’ve come from very humble beginnings.

At some point in your development, I think you decide. You decide that this is what you’re going to go for, and this is what you’re going to do, and you’re not going to let anything stop you, you’re just going to go for it.

Andrea: Growing up, I had a twin sister but then I found out I had a brother when I was 30 years old. So, it was only the two of us and my father brought us up a lot like boys. It sounds like he was a little bit like your father, demanding but not in a mean way. For me I think the way I was brought up did make a difference in allowing me to be a leader.

Michelle: But sometimes it’s the opposite. You decide, actually, I don’t want to live that way, and that pushes you to leadership. Sometimes we don’t even know that we’re leaders.

Andrea: Yes that’s true. How do you think that women in senior roles can help forge gender equality in the music industry?

Michelle: By shouting about other women (laughter). It’s about representation and recognising the skills of other women.

I definitely feel that it’s about advocacy and sharing your knowledge and skills. I think sometimes we get into spaces where we compete with each other, or we don’t want to share because we think there’s only enough room for one or two. In my experience, I’ve always seen that there’s more than enough room, and we all bring something very different to the table, and it’s valuable, so celebrating that and really amplifying that is really very important.

Andrea: Do you think that women lead differently to men?

Michelle: I do. I think, like you were saying earlier, there’s empathy, there’s compassion, there’s intuition. And sometimes these are the things that we’re taught not to bring. We’re taught to ignore our intuition that it’s weak to be compassionate. But actually I think those are skills that really help us to be strong leaders because they help us to connect in a very different way. I don’t see them as a weakness at all.

Andrea: How important do you think it is to encourage more female writers to join PRS? Michelle: I think it’s hugely important because there is so much talent out there. I see it all the time in university. Young women want to learn production but aren’t necessarily getting let into those rooms and again, we express ourselves differently, we think differently and we just need to level the playing field. PRS’ membership is only 18 percent female. It’s about education and creating spaces so that women can upskill in a safe environment, maybe possibly with other females, female-led camps or female-led courses, where they can really get into production and not feel like they are the outsider.

Andrea: I am pleased to say that below the age of 30-yearsold, we’re heading towards a 50/50 gender split? How do we encourage that upper age bracket?

Michelle: Yes, I think creating opportunities for them to collaborate, and for them to skill-swap as well. Because we’ve got a lot of females that have got incredible skills, but there’s no outlet for them to share.

Andrea: What is one piece of advice you wish somebody had given you at the beginning of your career?

Michelle: Perfection is not the goal. There’s never ever just one road to success. There’s many different roads. I thought it was just one way and I had to just be perfect and get it right. I think I would tell my younger self, ‘Please don’t put so much pressure on yourself, perfection is not the goal here.’

Also that sacrifice doesn’t equal success, balance creates success. I think a lot of the time, particularly early in our careers, we’re taught that you have to sacrifice your whole life to be successful.

Sacrifice is not necessary, especially now. We’ve been in this whole year of sacrifice, where we haven’t been able to see our friends and our family and we’ve seen the effect it has on our mental health. If you are fulfilled in all areas of your life, you’re more able to go out and be that person, you’re more able to go out in the limelight, you’re more able to go out and lead a community, because you’re fulfilled in other areas of your life.

Andrea Czapary Martin CEO, PRS for Music

M Magazine | 13

Women in UK hip-hop Isatta Sheriff takes us on a journey through different eras in UK rap music via the experiences of women MCs, exploring whether attitudes towards women have evolved and whether there has been a reduction in misogyny.

Women have been part of hip-hop’s fabric since its inception. The first hip-hop group to ever appear on national television in 1981 included rap’s first Lady, Sha Roc. A 14-year-old Roxanne Shanté also started the world’s first rap beef in 1984 with Roxanne’s Revenge, when she fired back at UTFO’s sexist rhymes on Roxanne Roxanne.

The Cookie Crew appeared on mainstream TV in 1987 and the Battersea-raised Monie Love joined Queen Latifa in 1989 to highlight misogyny and sexism on Ladies First.

During this period, an international hip-hop community was developing and according to Professors Janell Hobson and Dianne Bartlow, marginalised Black girls were using rap as a device to talk about their experiences.

have to endure homogenisation from the media in which they are only acknowledged as part of a group and are overlooked as individuals. As a result, many choose to distance themselves from the ‘female link up’ categorisation; appearing in an all-women editorial features, or one off ‘all female’ collaborations, as the depiction often fails to reflect their creative reality.

But historically, the creative input of women in music has been minimised, further impacted by society’s narrow view of women’s roles. A report by Women in CTRL highlighted that merely 34 percent of board members in the UK music industry are women, and only 3 percent of those are Black.

The patriarchal system on which the music industry is built both restricts women’s creative work and generates toxic environments, generally promoting competition amongst women and enhancing the erasure of marginalised groups.

Highlighting the input of women in order to combat erasure is important. As I explore the various stages of women in UK hip-hop, I speak to rappers across generations to discuss their experiences and thoughts on these everpresent power dynamics.

Colourism in the industry is also problematic for Black women. The issue becomes even more evident when looking at shorter career spans of women, who often

The corporate involvement in hip-hop has shaped the genre’s values and uses women for profit and commodification, hence the reason I welcome spaces where women are the focus. It allows us to address the issues that dominate our usual surroundings.

M Magazine | 15

Photo: Jack Bridgland

2000 – 2008 - Channel U Days UK hip-hop saw many transformations throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s and by the millennium, Estelle, Wildflower and Tempa featured on the DJ Skitz anthem Domestic Science. Baby Blue could also be seen performing regularly with Estelle before launching her solo career.

Lady Leshurr UK Music, 2020. UK Music Diversity Report 2020. [online] London: UK Music, p.25. Available at: <https://www.ukmusic.org/equality-diversity/uk-music-diversity-report-2020/> Hobson, J. and Bartlow, R., 2008. Introduction. Meridians, 8(1), pp.1-14.

Photo: Jennifer McCord

Big Dada and Low Life Records were the desired independent labels and most of the prominent rappers were performing in venues like Deal Real, Kung Fu, The Jump off and iluvlive in London. Award-winning poet and rapper Kae Tempest could be found in Deal Real spitting Wu Tang Clan inspired rhymes. Ms Dynamite, Stush and Nolay emerged via garage and grime and would ‘genre hop’ as part of a tradition of gliding effortlessly between MC lead subgenres. Ms Dynamite’s Mercury-winning album provides an accurate depiction of the varied listening habits of this generation, often incorporating reggae, dancehall, hip-hop and soul into newer styles.

‘the women that do come through are only able to because of co-signs from men, not because of the co-signs from other women.’

It’s Not Just a London Thing The Floacist fused rap vocals with neo soul and regional rappers like Envy, C-Mone and Lady Paradox demonstrated that it wasn’t just a London thing.

Pariz 1, who is one of the most skillful rappers in the UK, sits effortlessly in the pockets of every beat she graces. When speaking about her experiences in Nottingham’s scene she affirms, ‘it was small, but that helped us to stand out’. London wasn’t as welcoming. ‘I would go to some cyphers and open mic nights and people would not only leave me out because I was from Nottingham, but also because I was a girl. They used to say they hated the way I rapped because of my accent.’ These attitudes were only silenced once Pariz 1 left no room for debate. ‘It never became cool, it just became accepted. They were like ‘no matter what her accent sounds like, the girl’s got skills.’’

Hip Hop Connection, Touch Magazine and Blues & Soul were some of the outlets to be seen in, while Channel U and MTV Base were the top video platforms. If a rapper wanted a track to be heard on the radio, they sent it to BBC 1Xtra, Choice FM and

Itch FM. Pariz 1 adds, ‘everybody who had a voice was able to come through and say something. We were about the music, rather than the fame of it.’

Modern technology has provided avenues for women to market themselves and this has been a useful tool in carving out individual identities. The new era of hip-hop has a louder voice in its protests against being policed by the patriarchy. There is greater representation and a recognition that women are able make choices about their freedom of expression, with more agency on how they use their body.

Discussing the misogyny that are still exists, Pariz 1 shares: ‘It was a lot worse back then to be honest, but it’s only changed now because dudes want to see women in their underwear in music videos. More women are up for it and the ones that aren’t, are the ones that stay relatively unknown. It’s still very male dominated and the women that do come through are only able to because of co-signs from men, not because of the co-signs from other women. The men still decide what happens.’

Monie Love M Magazine | 17

Photo: Jennifer McCord

Speech Debelle

2009 – 2014 - YouTube Platforms Assemble Black music in Britain was in a rocky place at this point and artists were trying new things in order to navigate an industry that didn’t want to hear their voices. SBTV, GRM Daily and LinkUpTV were established as the new leading media platform for Black youth in Britain, with grime being the dominant sound.

Women continued to make headway during this time.

Little Simz was making a name for herself via Soundcloud while Damae aka Bubblerap was dropping Fugee style verses in her trio Hawk House. The tradition of ‘genre hopping’ continued to grow, and it became an everyday occurrence for grime MCs like Lioness, Roxanne, Amplify Dot, Lady Leshurr and Shystie to jump on tracks at a slower hip-hop tempo.

Speech Debelle’s Mercury Prize Win Speech Debelle had signed to Big Dada in 2007 and would be the first woman to win the Mercury prize in 2009, seven years in after Ms Dynamite’s win.

Speech Debelle’s outstanding debut album used storytelling through rap in the same way as disenfranchised Black girls of the ‘80s. Her success

created work opportunities for friends and women around her. ‘My tour manager was my best friend, she’d never done it before, but it was an opportunity for her to see the world.’

When reflecting specifically about the music industry Debelle recounts, ‘there were not many women in any positions of power, there certainly weren’t Black people in positions of power in the majority of the places. You had Darcus, but Darcus was a one off, it wasn’t standard. Over the years it has got better for Black men. You’ve got your Benny Boom’s and the Twins (Alec and Alex Boateng), so there’s a lot of people who are there to open the door for Black people. As things stand in this industry and across the world, the open doors have let Black men in, which is good, it’s just that Black women, or female-identifying women have got to still wait.’

2015 - 2021 - Live Streams Within Scenes The growth of streaming gave an even bigger platform to underground subgenres such as trap and drill. Little Simz became the first woman from the UK to perform in a BET cypher and versatile lyricists like Nadia Rose, Lady Lykez, C-Cane, Stefflon Don, Paigey Cakey and Ms Banks stepped onto the scene.

We are speaking up, coming together and speaking our truth which cannot be ignored.

In recent times, taking into account the frequent crossovers between genres, Dis, Teezandoos, Ivorian Doll, Miss Lafamilia, Brixx, Keedz, Baby Elz, Cristale, Reemunni and Trillary Banks are some of those coming through on drill and UK rap. There is a wave of African-inspired instrumentals held down by the likes of Shaybo, Br3nya, Lavida Loca and iceè tgm. Experimental and trap soul sounds are explored by rappers such as IAMDDB, Flohio, Juice Menace, Dreya Mac, and Nayana IZ. An interesting emergence in the present day is the renaissance of traditional sounding UK hip-hop explored by artists such as Truemendous, Lady Sanity, Kay Young, R.A.E, Jaz Kahina and Bobbi Johnson, to name a few.

The north London poet and rapper Shay D created the first ever all women hip-hop tour within the UK, showing that a bright future lies ahead. The exceptional talents of south London rappers Lex Amor and Enny have brought a breath of fresh air to the artform, with Enny also shining a muchneeded spotlight internationally on hip-hop from Black women in the UK.

Kay Young

Photo: Will Beach

Rising Talents Another rising talent embracing soulful hip-hop blends with poetry-infused rhymes is Deyah. Her faith inspired themes and vulnerability are a testament to the varied voices coming from the UK. Thinking about the challenges women in hip-hop have faced, Deyah is optimistic about how things are developing, ‘I think there has definitely been development in terms of people coming together now forming different movements to bring awareness. Girls I Rate for example is a movement that is solely focused on the development of women, the protection of women, the creativity of women.’

The multi-talented Roc Nation signing Kay Young, who is a rapper, producer and singer, is a testament to the multifaceted talents that women possess adds, ‘I personally feel like there has been a slight shift. We are speaking up, coming together and speaking our truth which cannot be ignored. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but it’s important to me that I help create a space for the next generation of female creatives to fight intimation with courage.’

Deyah

M Magazine | 19

Kate Nash Kate Nash is part of the cultural fabric of British music. A name embedded in our collective vocabulary from a time when it was Tom from MySpace, not Mark Zuckerberg, for a lot of then-teenagers, now late-twenty-somethings Nash represents a well-loved, much-missed era.

Fast forward to 2021 and the award-winning singer songwriter has widened her professional net. Having starred in eccentric wrestling drama GLOW, Kate now appears in headlines as ‘actor’, as much as she does ‘musician’. But, as documented in the 2019 BBC Three documentary Underestimate the Girl, a lot happened in between her Made of Bricks debut and appearing alongside Marc Maron in an acclaimed Netflix show. The subject of many a Daily Mail showbiz section headline, a 19-year-old Nash was targeted by the media for being, as she recalled, ‘too ugly, too fat, an idiot’, and was soon after dropped by her label having decided to veer off in a commercially unpalatable musical direction.

But speaking to Kate, who is now LA-based, her resilience, charisma and intelligence is palpable. Nash, it seems, is a fighter both on screen and off.

Throughout their conversation, Kate Nash and M Magazine Editor Maya Radcliffe discuss Kate’s meteoric rise, the misogyny she has endured and how she plans on using her platform to revolutionise the sex education of young men setting sail into the murky waters of the music industry.

Maya: Tell me a bit about your entry into the music industry.

Kate: In 2006 I was rejected from all universities and drama schools that I wanted to go for and ended up working in Nando’s. I then broke my foot so my mum and dad bought me my first guitar to cheer me up.

I did theatre at The Brit School but I had always grown up playing piano and writing songs and I just decided to go back to it.

I think the first song I wrote was Nicest Thing and I felt like I’d found my voice. I decided as soon as my foot was healed I was going to work on my songs, record them and build a MySpace music profile and put them out.

I think MySpace was one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the music industry. There’s never been a period of time like it where there were no playlisters, no gatekeepers. It was literally teenagers running things.

Maya: Who was in your top eight?

Kate: Oh my God, it was so important. It was actually amazing when you think about how many bands you found just from searching through another band’s top eight.

I don’t think a lot of us would have really cut through today. But it didn’t take long for me to get traction and have labels interested and then my first gig was 13 April 2006 and by June the next year I had Foundations and Made of Bricks, a number one album. It was crazy.

Maya: I’ve been rewatching Underestimate The Girl in which you go into detail about being dropped by Polydor and touring your next album with your own funds. Why were you so committed to doing that?

Kate: Honestly, I don’t think I really thought about anything else. Touring is the only place that makes sense in your career as an artist because you can’t really feel any connection to numbers. People are in front of you emotionally reacting to your music, that’s when you think, ‘Okay, this is what I do, this is what my music means, this is who I am and I’m really sure about it in this moment’. It’s an hour and a half every day and the rest of the day is a shit show because you’re in a scummy venue trying to shower in a horrible back room with the gross toilets and you can be like different country every day, losing your mind, not healthy, not sleeping and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so tired, I can’t do a show.

How am I going to do this?’ Right up until the last second and then you go on stage and it all makes sense.

Maya: And there is a point in the documentary where your tour manager says that getting dropped by your label was probably the making of you. Do you agree with that?

Kate: I think there is something in that. You learn a lot really. It’s hard to talk about but I am who I am now because of that and I am so free and I am really a lucky artist. When I got dropped it was really difficult because suddenly everything becomes a mess. When you’re on a label, on a major label, you arrive in Germany, for example, and there’s this in-house machine that takes care of everything for you.

It was a bit of a culture shock, but I do look back on that and think fucking hell, we did amazing. We got to Lollapalooza. Then obviously everything was destroyed by my manager and I had to learn again the hard way. I think if you learn the hard way it does make you, it shapes you as a person because you’ve got so much to recover from. Enough years have gone past now for me to look back at it all and be like, ‘Wow, I’m really proud of that’. Now that I’m more stable it’s like I can breathe again.

Maya: You’ve spoken really openly about the way everything that happened impacted your mental health. It’s hard to say during a pandemic, but do you feel like you have a better hold on things now?

Kate: I think as an artist one thing you have to learn to accept is that you’ll never have it completely figured out. You’re constantly treading water and you need stamina for that. It’s like you’re working, you’re not working, you’re getting support, you’re not getting support, and I think I’ve learned to deal with that in my own way. I think it was when I turned 30 I was like, ‘Okay, I need to change my life now’, because I was dating people that were bad for my health as well and that added to it. When your self-esteem is in the gutter you just make bad decisions like that. But the women in my life, the girls I toured with, got me through everything.

Maya: Your band came across as the kind of bunch of girls that should be prescribed to everyone having a rough time.

Kate: Honestly, they got me through so much. Then I got GLOW, which really saved me because there’s no better way to heal from trauma, from men than learning how to wrestle with fifteen women.

M Magazine | 21

I remember a moment on my tour bus when, after a show, I went into my bunk because I was tired and it was so loud and crazy and the guys were all telling awful stories. I was like, ‘I’m really uncomfortable. I’m going to go to bed.’ I got up in my bed and I was like, I’m the only girl on this bus and I’m going to bed because I’m uncomfortable. And it’s my fucking bus. I paid for this bus. That’s when I made my first change. I got a female sound engineer and I got a female monitor engineer and then in 2011, it all came to a head and I fired everyone and I got a whole female band.’

Maya: Why did you decide to become a Keychange ambassador and why is it so important to you?

Kate : I’ve always tried to fight for there to be more room for girls in the music industry, we need more diversity. Women are still in danger and people still don’t respect women. How many instances has there been recently of many men abusing their power? It’s really uncomfortable for people to face it because it’s been so normalised.

I realised not too long ago that I have had my back up because of how the media treated me after Made in Bricks. I used to meet people and think, before I even meet them, I’ll be like, ‘I bet they don’t like me. I bet they think I’m an idiot. I only put it together recently because I noticed it in another musician my age. And I was like, ‘They act like that. Why do they act like that?’ I saw it in myself.

Maya: At the time, I don’t think I realised how closely you were compared to other female artists, especially Lily Allen. It’s sad and unsurprising that Lily too has suffered with mental health issues, in part as a result of the hounding she got in the press.

Kate : I mean, I don’t think you could not have them. As much as I hate all social media, one of the positives that’s come from it is that women have reclaimed some power. I think now, there’s a lot of camaraderie between women online. Paparazzi and all of that have less importance and women will stand up for themselves. And I don’t think you could write about teenage girls the same way you could write about them when, like, me and Lily Allen were starting out.

Maya: Were there any systems in place to protect you when you propelled into the limelight?

Kate: I don’t even think someone asked me how I was. No one actually gave a shit how I actually was doing. No one checked in with me. I’m 33 now and if I meet a nineteen-year-old who’s in the music industry, I give them my number like, ‘If you ever need anything. If you ever want to talk, just anytime. I can’t believe some of the stuff that men who were probably in their forties would do with me at that age. I know sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll but as a 33-year-old now, we’ve all seen at this point in our lives, like, some people are addicts.

Guess what else is really normal? Me being fucked up to do my job. What other job is there where it’s, like, ‘I need a bottle of whisky or I’m not going on tonight. I’m not going into the office.’

Maya: Did you ever feel safe with the men that you were working with?

Kate : I think I felt like I had a couple of people around me that made me feel safe. But I had an unstable manager. I had a bad tour manager. I had management, higher up, that were just more concerned about money. I had an accountant that was shit. I had a label that dropped me.

Maya: Let’s talk about The Safety Chain. What is it and why did you decide to start it?

Kate: There was a scandal in LA with Burger Records and I knew a lot of people in that scene. I knew women that were coming out with stories and the men that were being accused and called out. It just destroyed everybody. Within three days, the label was gone. Every musician I knew in LA was making statements and I watched it thinking, What do I do here?’ I felt I had a responsibility to use my platform.

Now this isn’t new, but it’s now being dealt with in this new way. Women now have a platform to say ‘I know what it is. It’s abuse. Don’t do it anymore.’ It got media attention and they shut down an entire label in three days. Usually my go-to would be organisations that work directly with girls, to help girls. But I decided to turn to the men because I knew some involved. Some of them were asking me for help. I had to strike a very delicate balance, like ‘Okay, I want to help you because you’re my friend. But I need to be really, really honest with you. I need to say exactly what’s not okay and I need to give you my opinion on what I think you should do.’ We can heal so much with education.

Thinking about what my own sex education was. It was literally a video of two robots in a bed making a baby.

Maya: Putting a condom on a banana.

Kate: Or a ruler.

A lot of people haven’t been given tools and we learn from each other.

Women are more inclined to talk to each other but with men, I think there are two categories. Without stereotyping too much, there’s men that talk about sex with a bit of bravado and, like, shagging. And there are men who are, like, ‘I don’t talk about it because it’s disrespectful to talk about women like that.’

They’re not sharing their weird experiences. They’re not learning from each other about sex. Now, all of our heroes have basically raped teenage girls, like, just to be really blunt. The seventies was all about ‘baby groupies’, that’s what they called them. Rockstars would sleep with thirteen-year-olds. And what have we done? Put them on the covers on magazine and told them how adored they are.

We need to clean house and we need women in positions of power

‘Oh, it was the seventies.’ Okay but it was also the eighties, it was also the nineties. It’s noughties and it’s now.

Then you add in drugs and alcohol into the mix. I’ve seen these seventeen-year-old boys so excited, can’t believe they’re on a festival bill with their heroes. Cut to six years later, they’re all redfaced, chubby alcoholics struggling with their third album. Might be dropped. Probably haven’t got a stable relationship. Who the fuck cares anymore? No one, they’re signing the next, young cool band.

And that’s the cycle as well for men.

Musicians aren’t in education as long as most people. We don’t go into traditional structures in the workplace, so we don’t know about professionalism. We’re all just learning from each other’s bad behaviour, aspiring to addicts. Those are our idols. So, you put all that together and then you say to a nineteen-year-old boy, ‘Here you go. You’re signed.

Here’s a bunch of money. Go and tour. Go and travel. Be in a different town or a different city every single day. Girls are going to message you.

Girls are going to love you. You’re going to be on the cover of magazines.

Here’s a load of drugs and alcohol. Shit food. Your health’s going to be up the wall but, like, just go out there and have a good one. What the fuck do we expect from that situation, if we consider who their heroes are?

No one’s talked to them about what power dynamics are. The fact that when they go on stage, and if they sleep with a fan in a new town, she is having a completely different experience to the one they’re having.

She also might be lying about her age and who knows what her mental health state is. Sometimes you do things you don’t want to do with someone who’s in a position of power.

Safety Chain is something that when you sign a deal, you have to have done one of our courses. You get sat down with someone from the Safety Chain and they talk to you about power dynamics, sex education, sex on the road. The danger it is to you. Like, how to interact with girls about this. What I noticed from some of the men I was talking to is that a lot of them had no idea. They wanted to be told.

There’s a sex appeal to being a musician. We’re existing at night, out of hours, when people are, people are attracted to you on stage and maybe a bit drunk and looking to hook up. And it’s a recipe for disaster.

I’m working with intimacy coordinators to build training programmes specifically for the touring musician, so that they can be equipped before they go on tour, to let them know what they’re getting themselves into.

Maya: So are you hoping that major labels will have a responsibility to make sure this kind of Safety Chain training is given to all of the bands or all of the young male artists that they sign?

Kate: That’s my dream for it. Before they ever go on tour, if they haven’t sat down with us, they’re not ready to go on tour. It becomes industry standard. It’s the same as you’d go to rehearsal, you need to practise

your guitar before you play a guitar on stage. You need to go to the Safety Chain, so you’ve had some training and tutorials on sex and power dynamics because you are going to come across it in your workplace.

And it won’t be coming from me. I’m going to be the founder and I’m going to facilitate all of it but the point of it all will be that it is delivered by professionals. Mental health, sexual health, therapists, professionals and intimacy coordinators that will give you help.

Maya: So you won’t be visiting all the bands in their hotel rooms. ‘Kate Nash is here for you.’

Kate: Get my banana out.

Maya: How successfully do you think we are working towards a genderequal music industry?

Kate: I think we have a long way to go. But I’ve seen improvements in my career, I look at lots of young bands and I think there’s so many more female bands now than there was when I even starting in 2007.

There are a lot of women out there taking control and doing it their way. But there’s still so many men at the top. We need to clean house and we need women in positions of power. We can have us all on the ground doing this work but it needs to be the bosses, start to become more diverse and there needs to be more women of colour, more of the LGBTQ+ community in charge. There’s a glass ceiling and unless we shatter that, it’s all been in vain.

Maya: Did you know that of PRS Music’s membership, 18.3 percent identify as female and 81.7 percent identify as male?

Kate: It’s a bummer, but all that we can do is continue to lift up and support as many women as possible that are doing it so that we can, like, show other women that they can do it and help other women see themselves in that person. You do have to be vulnerable to be an artist. We need to be championing the women that are out there.

Organisations like Keychange, Girls Rock London and Reeperbhan Festival are doing so much work to spotlight women and meet those quotas. I think we need more support from the people with money and power in the industry.

Maya: Absolutely. Speaking of championing girls, what should we be looking for from you in 2021?

Kate: I’m going to release music this year and I’m busy working on my new music video right now. My first single should be coming out in the next couple of months so look out for an announcement about that soon.

This piece was guest edited by Maxie Gedge.

M Magazine | 23

Features

Girls in the band Sports Team drummer Al Greenwood speaks to PVA guitarist Ella Harris about the challenges they have both faced in the music industry, the need to out-perform men for validation within the same space and the complexity of these issues.

International Women’s Day offers a moment for reflection. Its heritage is of collective action. Initially, International Working Women’s Day was about campaigning for women’s rights and recognising women as workers, both in the home and in production. Reflection is something that a lot of people in music have had ample time for of late, and in our pre-postpandemic moment, as the music industry stands primed for reignition, what better time to review accessibility. I caught up with musician Ella Harris from the exciting electronic trio PVA to discuss her experience of the industry, opportunities for change and how solidarity for women in production is perhaps more relevant than ever over 100 years later.

Like most people in the industry, Ella’s career was borne out of a love of music. She regularly attended shows and promoted small DIY gigs across London, so making music felt like a natural progression. Ella lamented how the further they progressed, the more distanced she felt from the inclusive DIY ethos she’d started

out in and instead how exposed she felt to the inequalities that are so deeply ingrained in the professional industry. ‘I’ve really experienced a lot of microaggressions being a woman playing music. No one explicitly comes up to you and says you shouldn’t be here you’re a woman, but there’s a feeling that you have to fight an uphill battle to validate your creativity and your role. There’s a constant need to prove yourself as a musician or someone working in the industry.’

This struck a chord with me. The sheer lack of visibility of women across music industry spaces reflects an exclusionary culture and sense that your very presence tacitly demands justification. This feeling of illegitimacy is then compounded by the narratives other people write you into, rooted in gender-based assumptions. I have always found it difficult to articulate this, as drawing on explicit examples risks sounding bitter or overly-sensitive, but Ella really aptly summarised the experience when reflecting on their first single release.

NOTE: The term ‘women’ is used throughout to mean all women (trans, inter-sex and cis) and as well as non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centres the experiences of women.

Our sound-technician and manager are women, and I think having them on the team Photo: Dill Steele

does make a real difference.

‘When our first single came out, I was really happy and it was all very exciting when we were starting to get press. I noticed, being a talk/ singy style of vocalist, [like many contemporary acts] I had the word ‘sexy’ thrown about a lot in reviews and people messaging me. It made me feel uncomfortable because I don’t want to be sexualised.

I didn’t give my consent for people to message me out of the blue or portray me in that way.’

Indeed, despite the number of singers identifying as men who have a similar delivery style, between us we couldn’t recall one reference to them as sexy.

The extension of this is that women exist in these spaces as products of a masculine world: Ella reflected, ‘women can be in music now if they’re the hot girl, or radical activist’, but they exist as exceptions to the rule; functioning as objects exoticised, rather than normalised.

As a result, the barriers women face in the industry are great. This ‘uphill battle’, as Ella described it, isn’t just ‘exhausting’ for artists, it is evident across the sector. Technical roles in sound and production are still regarded as a boys’ club and that can be overwhelming and daunting for anyone else interested in those jobs. We have shared the same experience of walking into studio settings and being the only woman in the room and indeed the building.

Ella was keen to emphasise how positive her experience was working with a male producer, and in my work, I couldn’t have asked for a more holistically brilliant collaborator than our producer Burke Reid. But the disparity reflects deep-rooted inequality, and this is depressingly evident in statistics. Forbes reported last year that less than three percent of producers identify as women.

The potential impact of having more diverse workspaces is evident.

‘I feel empowered when I’m in the same space and creating with women, in a way I didn’t even realise I could’, Ella tells me. ‘Our soundtechnician and manager are women, and I think having them on the team does make a real difference.’

A musical polymath, Ella shared how she too has taught herself the basics of production, and how the process was relatively intuitive once you grasp the key principles. She described how beneficial this is for her creative her creative process and ability to showcase work.

Whether it’s sound and production or label management, it’s crucial that we champion other women to increase their visibility. But issues surrounding representation are by no means limited to gender and as

Al Greenwood

Ella rightly explains, ‘We need to ensure the industry is accessible for people of colour, trans and non-binary people, and build truly diverse spaces.’ The UK Music Diversity Report (2020) found that people of colour represented only one in five senior positions in the industry.

Ella mused, ‘I feel like you have more trust in a label if there are people there you can identify with.’ This principle is pertinent across all roles in the sector, not just at an artist/label level.

In real terms, as Ella suggests, that requires better education and the ability to ask ‘stupid questions’. Driven by this need, Ella has set up a series of free workshops taking place in March via her charity label, Group Therapy.

Alongside manager, promoter, activist and my general music industry hero Tash Cutts, Group Therapy was established last year to raise money for charities supporting those hit hard by the pandemic. In partnership with The Route, the workshops aim to demystify parts of the music industry, from music video production to mental welfare, they’ll be hosting talks and Q&As with tips to get started. This is just one tangible means of affecting change at an industry level. By creating inclusive spaces and inviting free and open conversation, we can start to redress some of the key barriers to access and ensure ‘it’s not such an uphill battle to start in the industry if you’re not a white man’.

As the sector groans back into life with the dizzying prospect of summer festivals back on the cards, this is the perfect opportunity to take stock. Recapturing the IWD spirit of early 20th Century activism, through campaign and conversation, let’s visibly celebrate and champion diversity across all roles in the sector and ensure ‘people don’t have to feel like they’re constantly fighting to have a place.

Instead, they can focus on making their music or working the jobs they enjoy.’ As Ella so aptly closed, ‘love of music is why we’re all here at the end of the day.’

M Magazine | 25

Róisín Machine A diamond in the lockdown darkness Róisín Murphy and her critically acclaimed 2020 album Róisín Machine did more than teach us how to pronounce her first name. It brought memories of dancefloors much missed, forging communities together desperate for reunions with the hope that whatever this new reality is, it will always have a sleazy Murphy bassline as its soundtrack. Kate Wildblood caught up with Róisín to talk about the collaborative process behind her work, the art of the remix, the realities of virtual performances, the future of nightlife culture and how Ms Jones giving good Grace inspired a lifetime of creativity.

Kate: The album is a collaboration with Richard Barratt aka Parrot aka Crooked Man, the infamous Sheffield producer.

How did that come to be?

Róisín: We’ve known each other a long time but having left Moloko I went off with Matthew Herbert to make my first solo album Ruby Blue and it was sort of a chrysalis moment really, I went in a worm and I came out a butterfly! Then when I started doing Overpowered, I knew I’d be working with lots of different people, but I wanted Parrot to be involved somehow. I began to play him stuff I was reaching for, things influencing me and things that I’d been working on. I wanted to go deeper into dance music and I wanted to do it with him. I’ve always got lots of music people in my life but he’s the one I trust the most, I know he won’t tear it asunder, even if he doesn’t like it.

Kate: What were the mechanics behind the songwriting and production process with Parrot?

Róisín: I work remotely with everyone now, I have the music software here, the microphone, the soundcard, it’s like playing with a little four-track used to be but I can do it to a level where I can use the vocals. But in a lot of cases, Parrot wouldn’t use those vocals, he would make sure I’d do ‘proper, proper vocals’ (Róisín adopts a Sheffield accent) ‘come to Sheffield, stand’t in’t booth!’ as he would say. But then say when working with DJ Koze on the next record that’s nearly finished, he likes it remote.

His world is Ableton, his instrument is that, and so he wants the whole session from me, the mistakes, all the options and so he‘s much more sonically inclined whereas Parrot always has his eye on the song. That’s his strength.

I was watching the Clive Davis’ Soundtrack Of Our Lives documentary and he had this genius for saying to an artist, say Barry Manilow an established composer and arranger, ‘yeah you’re really great and you’ve done some really good songs but you’re going to have to do these other songs I’ve picked out that other people have written. Manilow would be screaming and shouting ‘that’s not what I’m about, I’m not doing it’ and yet, well a zillion, million sales later... And Parrot’s really good at that, that’s his strength, an architectural understanding of songs and hooks.

Kate: Track one of Róisín Machine and the moment Simulation starts you just know you are on a promise. It’s an older tune from 2012 so did you have it waiting in the wings for its moment?

Róisín: I knew Simulation was part of an album anyway back then but Parrot and I went off the path for some reason or another as I was putting out the Maurice Fulton stuff (2018’s series of EP’s All My Dreams / Innocence, Plaything / Like, Jacuzzi Rollercoaster / Can’t Hang On and The Rumble and World’s Crazy on The Vinyl Factory). The chance to work with Maurice was a sort of burning ambition. Yeah, there’s a sense of deep appreciation of all these guys that I have worked with, but I’ve not pursued them as much as I did with Maurice, as soon as he said he was ready I had to jump. Parrot really wanted to put out Incapable then though and I said you’ll have to wait till the Maurice releases are out! And this is my problem you know; I’ve got all this great music and more and more great people asking to work with me and I’m having to not work with people I normally would in a heartbeat because there isn’t the room to put it out. I don’t want to annoy people with new music every five seconds, everyone thinking ‘oh no, here she is again!’ What

M Magazine | 27

kicked us into place with releasing Róisín Machine was being signed by Damian Harris at Skint. Going back to when we finally released Incapable on Bitter End in 2018 everyone went mad for it and Damian was just lovely, wanted to make an album and saw that there was some kind of market for it.

Kate: The sublimely subversive singer-songwriter Amy Douglas wrote Something More for you but just how did this connection to the most fabulous of native New Yorkers come to be?

Róisín: She had worked with Parrot, so we became friends on social media and then we had a date in London about two years ago, going to a talk with Andrew Weatherall about the science of dub. Amy wanted to do something for me and I thought, ‘I already have Murphy’s Law’, I knew that was there and incredibly strong but it needed something of that strength to hang the other end of Róisín Machine off. I didn’t want the pressure, so I let her take the pressure, which was a great idea of mine, it was rather Clive Davis-ish of me in fact! I’ve never done that before, asked somebody to write a song for me, never said here you go, there’s your challenge, Challenge Anneka.

I envisaged it as a classic Hi-NRG thing and so did she but it wasn’t fast enough as it scanned so the initial version Parrot and I did was a bit more funky and jivey, more ‘80s, more fun pop but that still didn’t feel right. Then we went into lockdown and Parrot had done a load of remixes of it and the main version turned out to be one of those remixes – it just felt right at that moment. I didn’t want to come in all guns blazing and nice. It always had a bit of melancholy in it and it felt like there was a bit of Andrew Weatherall in it too.

Kate: And seeing as we’re on a female rollcall of extremely talented souls, how did you get Colleen Cosmo Murphy, DJ, audiophile and founder of Classic Album Sundays to do her remix of Murphy’s Law? Róisín: I think she just wanted to remix it, that’s the way she operates, she does very few remixes and if she wants to mix something then it’s bonanza times! God, it was an amazing mix when it came in, I was flabbergasted.

Working out who does remixes can be a bit of a headache, it’s complicated and when it gets all confused with ‘not artist things’, it can be a pain in the arse. It was my final straw with my first label because I wouldn’t put out a remix that they had commissioned on one of the Herbert tracks, so they fucking finished with me. (Róisín laughs) I felt like I was dumped, like a girlfriend!

The art of the remix is so important, some remixes and reworks are some of my most favourite things in the world ever. Dance music is meant to live on, to be repurposed and even at the point of consuming it on a dancefloor it can be manipulated, changed, looped and different frequencies can be pulled out of it, if you are clever enough sonically. And the remixer has to feel something for the tune. The same was true of Moloko’s Sing It Back, it was a calling that Boris Dlugosch had, and from that came something wonderful. A great remix happens for a reason. Parrot and I have a remix album coming called Crooked

Machine coming out soon and it’s better than the album, it’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Parrot has done these suites of mixes or dubs of the songs every time there’s been a single and he’s taken all those songs to places, to complete different rooms and spaces, he’s repurposed it and that’s part of the DNA of the music itself of where it’s come from. It’s not come from a nice place, it’s come from a dirty place (Róisín’s attempt at a Sheffield accent is back), a dirty bastard cellar in Sheff!

Kate: Your social media has always been iconically ironic with your Instagram account a lockdown saviour! How important is it for you as an artist?

Róisín: Ha! Compared to most popstars I’ve got about forty-five people on there. (Laughs). But yeah, I’ve used it like a notebook in a way, used it to advertise and I’ve also used it as a reference for imagery. If you make the right friends there you find great stuff. Luke Unabomber keeps me alive like he does many people, as does his radio show on Worldwide FM. Every single day I’m listening to it, I’m going around the countryside here in Campo listening, just walking and dancing, walking and dancing. He’s here with me. Those kind of things are amazing about the internet.

Kate: How are you finding the world of virtual gigs?

HomoElectric’s StayHomo, and your incredible Mixcloud Live concert showed us how an artist could redefine this new world of performing. How did the creative process differ for you?

Róisín: It’s not that different, it’s just a pivot. I’ve always been making videos and creatively directing my visuals myself.

I’ve never had a creative director do it for me on a show. I pour myself into all these things for as much as I can until it kills me. The Mixcloud gig was running the gamut, it was the first time I had ever done anything like that, direct, set and style it, work with the lighting guys, performing at the same time, to be thinking about a visual edit while you’re singing songs.

We only had one day to shoot it, so it was more or less shot in one continuous flow which gives it an energy, like a live performance. I think it really worked out; it was a beautiful film. It didn’t make any money at all though. You’ve got to bear in mind an artist like me has a band and to put together a show, just to rehearse it, costs thousands and thousands of pounds. Just a very small fraction of your fan base will sign up for it because it’s complicated to do. Then people assume they will see it online for free so I’m not sure if it’s such a fantastic model going forward for the industry to make money. The other important thing is my crew, normally they’d be paid night after night, but this is just one day’s work for the crew, one gig. It hasn’t proven itself to be a great project money-wise, but creatively it’s very interesting to be putting together a gig and for me as an artist to have that ability, that’s a bow for my arrow.

Kate: What have you learnt as an artist since you started and is the confidence you appear to have something learned or given? How has it developed over your career?

Róisín: Oh yes, I really am very confident. (The laugh returns).

I’m very determined and I’m very driven but I’m not always 100 percent confident. I’m driven by the feeling I might fail or about being insecure. But it creates a kinda fire in my eyes that obviously I didn’t learn, I was born with it I suppose because

I’ve always had this certain reaction to things and it frightens people a little bit but it’s not confidence, it’s just drive, it’s just destiny.

Kate: Female beacons – who lit the way for you?

Róisín: I saw Laurie Anderson on telly when I was a kid and I never forgot it. My mother has got fantastic taste even if it’s weird shit, she was always into mad music, knew what a good tune was. Grace Jones, always Grace Jones. When I was a kid back in little town Ireland our family friends had put the Island Life album on the fireplace in their front room so everybody who came in saw it. She’s there with like the one leg with the microphone in her hand and everyone would say like ‘what the fuck?’ Honestly, we didn’t know if it was a man, a woman, an alien. Because it was extended, beyond human, that really left an impression on me and then when I heard Pull Up To The Bumper on Top Of The Pops and she was there with the fucking suit on!

I loved Madonna when she came out first, Dee-Lite when I was in Manchester and Siouxsie Sioux. I got really into Cosey Fanni Tutti imagery when I was getting juiced up to roll around in black PVC for my Róisín Machine album cover. I like maverick women who are unclassifiable, women who want a break, who come up with clever ways of subverting the restraints and being more than what you expect and surprising you.

Kate: So do you fancy working with any unclassifiable women in the future?

Róisín: Well, they frighten the shit out of me just as much as they frighten the shit out of you, so no, I like to control my situation!

Kate: If you could sit with a young female artist starting out on the career path you have so gloriously trodden, what advice would you give her?

Róisín: I’d really have to absorb who she was to think about what I would say. Each individual artist regardless of gender

requires a totally individual plan and all I can say is that I did everything I did for the love of the music. I think anybody can see that. That is partially responsible in itself for keeping me safe, the two things are not disconnected and I’ve always been safe in the industry, nobody has ever fucked with me. I’m really lucky that I’m not famous, that’s the honest truth. The older I get the more sure I am that that is a blessing. I’ve got children, I have a career, I get to go to Sheff! I would love to work with more performers, bringing performances out of people, especially young women if I think about it whether that is in acting or in music. Not so much have a duet with Grace Jones but to find a voice and a face that really ignites something in me and makes me think I’ve got something to share and teach and then to just stand back and be in awe of a performer, there’s something very magical about that.

Kate: FInally, watching the video for All My Dreams seems like a nightlife reality we can only fantasise about right now. When this is all over which dancefloor will you be heading to first?

Róisín: Nowhere big, I don’t really miss humongous parties with thousands of people. I think we should start small and rebuild bit by bit, to go back to the micro, especially in dance music culture and build something that acknowledges the moment and the things that we have been through, that’s assuming that we get through them, before we move into the madness again. It was getting a bit crazy, you know, people were travelling thousands of miles to parties with thousands and thousands of people and it’s not all about that. It’s about going back to where ever you are and asking what can I make here, that can stay here, that can have some solidity because out of those kind of scenes you get great record labels, musicians, studios being built, fantastic clubs, wonderful parties, great graphic designers, all these kind of things spring up around that kind of energy. The dance music culture itself is not just about consuming it, creating it, consuming it, creating it. That’s what’s beautiful about it, that’s what’s better about it than rock. It’s better, it’s more real, it is more grounded than that.

M Magazine | 29

Features

Girls make beats too Annique Simpson meets the female producers shaking up the UK music industry, analysing gender imbalance in the sector and celebrating those taking strides.

On Sunday 14 March, music fans from across the world will watch their favourite artists battle it out for the top prize at the 63rd Grammy Awards. Proceedings will probably look a little different this year, but their tradition for snubbing female popular music producers remains. For the second year running, there are no female nominees for Producer of the Year (Non-Classical). Only nine women, including Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey, have made the award’s shortlist since its inception in 1974, but none have won.

This underrepresentation of female music producers is echoed across the industry. Analysis of the Top 100 UK radio airplay chart last year revealed that women made up only 3 percent of music producers credited on tracks by British artists. However, with the Music Producers Guild (MPG) reporting an increase in female members – from 6 percent in 2018 to 13 percent this year – and a majorityfemale board of directors, things appear to be changing for the better.

shot to number two in the US pop charts. Last year, she partnered with BMG Production Music UK, writing and producing two ballads to be released this year. Aubrey’s eying up a UK chart position now – although she knows it won’t be easy. ‘If you want to chart, you need to work with a big artist and they tend to be signed to the major record labels who will go with producers they know. There’s unconscious bias - they don’t see many female producers so assume we can’t be too good. We have to shout louder to get their attention.’

Electronic producer Anna Meredith MBE has also experienced unconscious gender bias, partly due to her experimental and genrebending sound. ‘People sometimes assume I’m a man because my music is loud and bombastic. Or they think I’m a folk artist based on my name,’ she says.

As a proud MPG member, Aubrey Whitfield is heartened by this news.

Her 25-year career as a commercial pop producer has seen her go from self-producing as an artist to making tracks for stars like Kelly Clarkson and Little Mix. ‘I definitely feel like there’s a positive change.

It’s normal now to see women behind the desk compared to when I started,’ she says.

She stepped away from an accomplished career as a classical composer to produce Varmints, her 2016 award-winning debut album. Her second project, FIBS, earned her a spot on the 2020 Mercury Prize shortlist – a historical moment as female and femalefronted bands outnumbered male nominees. ‘It was great to see so much music diversity among the women on the list. It wasn’t all singer-songwriter stuff – you had electronic, punky music too.’

Despite her tenure in the industry, Aubrey only recently gave up her successful civil service career to focus on production full-time, and she’s gone from strength to strength. Crash and Burn, a song she wrote and produced as one half of pop-rock duo The Utopia,

Anna believes this creative spirit could be key to beating gender bias in the music industry. ‘It’s about being imaginative and challenging your assumptions, especially when finding panels or choosing prize winners or programming for live music events.’

Photo: Gem Harris

Anna Meredith M Magazine | 31

Gnarly

Similarly, Anna wants to see more female producers boldly tap into their inner innovators. ‘Don’t be put off by the technology or paralysed by fear. Just get stuck in and find what works best for you.’

This is the ethos that future hip-hop producer Gnarly lives by. She’s spent the past five years experimenting with finger drumming to create her sound. ‘I like that it’s interactive and engaging. I might start with low-fi hip hop and move to drum and bass, depending on how the audience reacts or where I want to take them,’ she says.

Gnarly’s work has proven popular online – with over 25k followers on Instagram alone. However, as a hyper-visible woman of South Asian heritage working in a white male-dominated world, the threat of trolls is omnipresent. ‘I sometimes get stupid comments – negative things about my appearance or people asking me to marry them – and racist comments too. Often I just block them and move on.’

A source of strength for Gnarly is the positive messages she gets from other women and people of South Asian descent who find her work inspiring. ‘One follower told me his young daughter watched one of my videos and said ‘Wow, she’s a girl doing it and she’s so good!’.

That made me smile.’

For Gnarly, interactions like this highlight the importance of having female producers front brand campaigns and do product demonstrations. She’s also a big fan of production projects with an even gender-split or an all-female line-up. ‘The responsibility is with the labels and companies. There are so many women in production so there’s no excuse to have all-male rosters anymore.’

As an emerging talent in a genre dominated by male artists, teenage drill producer Ceebeaats is used to being one of the few women in the studio – not that it bothers her. ‘My experience has been very positive and easy so far. My audience is really supportive and artists often tell me they’re happy to see a female producer killing it in drill.’

Female producers are nothing new to Ceebeaats. Her mum is a singer, songwriter and producer and helped Ceebeaats get started from a young age. ‘I always saw my mum working so I assumed there were a lot of women like her. It was only 2016 that I realised that female producers are not the norm which surprised me.’

But her biggest surprise was yet to come. Last year, she co-produced rapper Digga D’s Top 40 single Woi which was an instant hit. Despite the song’s popularity, Ceebeaats – who juggles her music career

Photo: Kayt Webster-Brown

with her college studies – has only told a few close friends about her involvement. ‘I want to be a normal teenager and be able to live my life freely. No one at my college knew I worked on the song. Most of them don’t know I’m a producer.’ Ceebeaats is equally protective of her identity on social media, although she proudly promotes her gender. She’s built a supportive community with other female producers, many of whom are young and ambitious but are struggling to get their big break. ‘Some of them feel they won’t be accepted in certain genres, like drill, or they don’t have the right contacts or opportunities like men do. I want to help change this by running boot camps, doing producer projects and talking about the industry.’

However, she agrees with Aubrey, Anna and Gnarly that industry execs need to do more to help women succeed. ‘Labels need to go on social media, check out #femaleproducer and see what’s out there. It doesn’t even need to be big actions – small steps like this can make all the difference.’

Thankfully, the music industry appears to be listening to the rallying cry for gender equality. Last year, Universal Music Group partnered with shesaid.so, one of the largest independent communities for women, to create the world’s first library music album composed, produced and performed by women. Titled 100% HER, the project attracted nearly 500 track submissions from women across the globe, with the chosen 10 ending up on Universal’s licensing roster. The second edition of 100% HER is due to be released 8 March.

Ceebeaats

Aubrey Whitfield

There are so many women in production so there’s no excuse to have all-male rosters anymore.’

Like shesaid.so, music label and tech initiative Saffron is also fighting the good fight for female and minority gender producers. In January, it ran its first week-long digital workshop event giving attendees the chance to explore creative production, TV and film music production, mixing and mastering. There were also sessions on wellbeing and the music business – lessons which seem all the more important given the lack of female producers and universal gender differences when it comes to money-based negotiations in the workplace.

Photo: Shenell Kennedy

‘We want to end outdated environments that breed toxic cultures from micro-aggressions to harassment, and instead create places that are inclusive, creative and collaborative,’ said Saffron’s founder Laura Lewis-Paul in a recent interview.

And with the number of female producers like Aubrey, Anna, Gnarly and Ceebeaats on the rise, the efforts of Saffron, shesaid.so and other like-minded organisations seem to be working. Could we see a (British) woman named Producer of the Year winner at the Grammys in the next few years? Only time will tell.

M Magazine | 33

Bishi

‘We’ve now gone past the point of no return,’ says multi-hyphenate Bishi as she stresses that denying issues about representation and equality in music is no longer an option.

Photo: Frederic Aranda

Of Bengali heritage and born in London, a large part of Bishi’s dynamic career has been dedicated to advocating for inclusivity in the music industry and the gender equality of women in tech.

Speaking about where issues in inclusivity stand at the moment, she says, ‘Because of movements like Black Lives Matter, I think a really huge message has gone out to the world that you cannot afford to not be inclusive anymore. You have to be inclusive. You have to think about your line-ups. You have to think about inclusivity and visibility.’

For this to happen, she adds, there is a need to consider not only who is front and centre but those who are behind the scenes, those in decision-making positions with the power to effect change.

Bishi is a multi-instrumentalist influenced by and trained in both Hindustani and Western Classical styles and has spent time and effort reshaping her own career to fit the new pandemic-influenced digitalisation of music. She explains that online resources are a great starting point to bring about this change. ‘There’s been the rise of the online directory. There’s been multiple Facebook groups and online communities. There are entire digital festivals. All of these facilitate spaces for people to learn, spaces for them to share information and feel safe.’

Always ready to act on her beliefs, Bishi is the founder and artistic director of WITCiH: The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, an inclusive platform aimed at elevating the voices of Womxn in Tech.

The singer and producer, who launched a podcast Creative Women in Tech in May 2020, describes some of activities that she has completed in her pursuit of inclusivity and visibility. She tells me, ‘I’ve hosted sessions for Saffron Records at the National Portrait Gallery and for the Peabody Essex Museum based in Boston who have the largest South Asian collection of Salvation Contemporary Art.’ Praising the efforts of many others walking the same path towards diversity in music as herself, she explains ‘there’s this South Asian film composer in LA called Shruti Kumar who started a project called Sound Travels with the idea to help musicians facilitate their practice so they can take on session work and other things online. There’s a brilliant artist called Self-Esteem; she and a friend of hers posted an online fundraiser for a women’s shelter. She managed to raise about £9,000 over the course of the weekend. So I think there’s been a real explosion of people with the same goals coming together.’

Bishi believes that nothing can replace the creative connection that comes from making music together in person, but online spaces have proven to be a place where representation can develop organically, ‘Online communities such as Women In CTRL focus on the industry side rather than the artist side while online directories like The F-List are trying to have conversations in a way that I’ve never experienced before. I think musicians and artists have got very inventive. People have started to pull together and realise how much they need each other.’

it’s hard to know whether any of these movements are actual step ups or simply talk to fit in with current trends. However, she’s proud to say that she knows that she has been making a difference with everything she’s been doing since late 2016.

‘I’m really fascinated by how people experience music, their relationship to technology and how they are manifesting ideas to carry themselves forward’, she explains of the podcast. ‘On the latest episode, I interviewed a really incredible woman call Adler Paris delving into her journey through her experience of technology.’

She adds, ‘I’m trying to build it as a bigger platform so that more people would come on board and we can reach other people. I want to make an impact through the things that interest me like the stories of women and how they are achieving what they achieved through music and technology.’

Harking back to the past for a second, Bishi discusses a point from a conversation in 2019 where she had said, ‘I find myself getting invited to all these different events and I’m usually the only South Asian woman there. That needs to change.’ Questioned on whether things have improved since, she says, ‘Before, I think I was having a conversation with people who either didn’t want to hear the conversation or who weren’t ready to have it. Now more people are having that conversation and I’ve realised that inclusivity is about calling people in rather than calling people out.’

‘You have to really think about how you’re critiquing things. I’m trying to let people know it’s more from the point of advocacy rather than activism’, Bishi tells me when I ask what advice she has to align with #ChooseToChallenge. ‘I don’t think that starting too many fights is really going to do a lot of good.’

She adds, ‘The most effective thing that you can do is to be creative and to organise yourself within a space where people can join in to share skills and knowledge. Real power doesn’t come from screaming something at the top of your voice, it comes from people getting together and building a community which encourages visibility and conversations.’

These communities are the first of many steps in preventing South Asian women in music being at risk of being pushed into a corner.

With hopes that in a post-pandemic world inclusivity and accessibility will no longer be seen as risks, she says, with an air of certainty ‘We need to be welcomed in as a part of the mainstream culture and for people to invest in us like other industries have begun to invest in women in Priyanka Chopra, Madame Gandhi or Mindy Kaling, because its shown that it can pay dividends.’

In an industry where the lack of South Asian and female representation can feel like an unmoving needle, Bishi admits that

M Magazine | 35

inclusivity is about calling people in rather than calling people out

Isobel Waller-Bridge

Changing the Soundtrack Sophie Rashbrook speaks to award-winning British film and TV composers, Nainita Desai, Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, Donna McKevitt and Isobel Waller-Bridge, about visibility, genre-stereotyping and their hopes for the next generation of women composers

In 2020, of the 250 top-grossing films, only 5 percent had scores that were written by women – a decrease on the previous year’s figure of 6 percent – while in 2020, Hildur Guðnadóttir became the first woman composer to win at the Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs for her soundtrack to The Joker. Although the award winners for 2021 won’t be known until next month, one thing is certain: change is coming to the film and TV industry. But how soon?

‘There is a problem,’ says Donna McKevitt, reflecting on the statistics; ‘It might not even be conscious, but there has to be a bias, a level of sexism there. I can’t see any other reason for it. Having said that, I’m not too worried because I can see that it is getting better. ‘And,’ she adds, ‘all the old dinosaurs will die off!” Donna’s career has spanned three decades and multiple genres, including scores for film and fashion,

and several years as a performer in the band Miranda Sex Garden. Yet, despite the grim figures, she is optimistic, and maintains that she never felt her gender was an issue when it came to being taken seriously as a composer: ‘I think I was the first female composer, along with Roxanna Panufnik, to be signed to Warner Classics. Nobody said anything about me being a woman. It was all about the music.’

It’s worth noting that although women composers are at the sharp end of the gender imbalance across the film and TV sector, they are not the ones responsible for assembling creative teams: those discussions happen much earlier in the commissioning process, and any change that benefits female composers will come as a result of a wholesale rebalancing of gender equalities in the industry, as Nainita Desai explains.

M Magazine | 37

Nainita Desai

‘It stems from the writers. If you have writers who are creating diverse stories, and the executives at the channels and broadcasters are commissioning them, then that filters down to female composers being employed.’ Nainita has composed scores across a wide range of media, from film and TV, to documentaries and video games. Yet despite the broad scope of her work, she recalls one instance of socalled ‘genre-stereotyping’ – whereby women are deemed less capable of writing in a particular style on account of their gender: ‘I remember, I was up for a project and a producer asked me, ‘Can you write action music?’ And I just thought, ‘What?!’. Music doesn’t have a gender, and yet, when it comes to film, people think, ‘Oh, women can’t write masculine, or what’s traditionally called ‘testosterone-filled’ film music.’’

For Nainita, the goal is to normalise the idea of women composers, both at a grassroots level, (‘We have to ensure that we have an inclusive and diverse syllabus for students to learn from,’) to within the industry itself; a cause she promotes through her diversity and inclusion work for the Ivors Academy and BAFTA. Isobel Waller-Bridge, whose early work as a composer for theatre has informed her transition to film and TV, ponders her artistic development: ‘At University I was the only female on my course, but I never really noticed it; I was just a composer. Then when I started working, and people started talking about the lack of diversity, I got kind

of defensive about the fact that I was a woman. And now that I’m a bit older I don’t mind being visible, because I want other young female composers to know that there is space for everyone. But it has to be handled so tactfully - you can’t just do it for the sake of it.’ That wariness of tokenism, or being part of a box-ticking exercise, is something that Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres recognises.

‘We’re all aware of it,’ says Alexandra, known for her classical-electronic sound and her creative collaborations across film and dance: ‘The unspoken thought: Was I hired because I’m actually good, or was I hired because I’m a womxn? In a way [the quotas] are great, because it encourages people who maybe wouldn’t have even considered womxn composers before to think differently.

But you just want to be recognised as an artist and because you’re good at what you do.’

As an active member of The Alliance of Women Film Composers, Alexandra is a firm believer in joining a community of artists: ‘What’s been so nice with The Alliance is meeting so many other creatives, and having important conversations for example, about motherhood, which has been seen as a big barrier in the past to freelancers. Having access to lots of people at different stages of their career is invaluable. It means we can mentor and help each other.’

Alexandra feels it’s crucial that the Alliance is a space where all are welcome: ‘This is not about separating us

into groups; it’s about bringing the less represented composers into the mainstream. And the more we can steer the conversation away from the ‘issues’, and towards the amazing things that people are doing, the better.’ In that spirit, it’s worth mentioning Alexandra’s forthcoming release with the UK’s first womxn string orchestra, the newly-formed Her Ensemble: ‘They are platforming womxn composers, and I’m releasing an arrangement of Coma, from my debut album, for International Women’s Day.’ With the #Choosetochallenge theme of this year’s IWD in mind, what advice can our composers offer to the next generation of women entering the industry?

‘Confidence,’ says Donna. ‘And a nice firm handshake.’

Nainita recommends embracing the technological side of the job, citing Saffron, a group devoted to redressing the gender imbalance in music technology skills, while Isobel suggests seeking opportunities within the workplace: ‘I assisted three or four composers when I was just starting in TV and film. You get to see the setup and learn a few things - and once you start working, people always need a bit of help.’ For Alexandra, meeting people is key: ‘There are some brilliant networks: PRS, Primetime Network, Women in Film and TV, Free The Work, Reclaim The Frame, shesaid.so. I’ve met so many people [through them] that I’ve worked with since. It’s about forming relationships with the people you want to work with in the future and rising together.’

Donna McKevitt

Music doesn’t have a gender

And if young composers still feel disheartened by the statistics and the awards ceremonies? ‘For big change – which does need to happen – it will take time,’ says Isobel; ‘Probably another decade. But I hope that the younger women a) don’t feel discouraged and b) don’t feel tired already. And as for the awards, the worst thing you can do is to set out [in your career] with a gong in mind! Just try to be in the music and the work, and the rest can take care of itself. Look to the composers that you admire and use them as your focus and inspiration.’

Photo: Mark Arrigo

With so many dynamic, innovative artists already making progress, the next generation won’t have long to wait before the soundtrack to the film and TV industry changes for good.

Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres

M Magazine | 39

Photos: Ana Lemos, Alex Kozobolis Top left to bottom right - Catherine Manners, Laura May, Sarah Liversedge, Shauni Cabellero

Independent Women in Music Publishing Coral Williamson speaks to four women who have either founded or run their own publishing companies to find out how they did it, how supportive the sector has been and what being a good leader looks like.

As Destiny’s Child once sang: Ladies, it ain’t easy being independent.

But it can be a way to take charge of your publishing career without having to spend years climbing a corporate ladder. Given how few top spots there are at the major publishing houses, it can also be a way for women in particular to become senior leaders in the industry.

For example, as the founder of May Music, Laura May sits on the MPA Board. She got her first start in the publishing world through being spotted by Eaton Music’s Mandy Oates on the MPA jobseekers

list and jokes about coming ‘full circle’. She says she didn’t necessarily run on the platform of being a woman but came at thinking the sector needed ‘fresh blood and a different perspective’.

She adds of her career so far: ‘I didn’t know that there was a women in music problem, because I was always surrounded by women, and then I’ve come in from a different angle. And there’s definitely an issue; I kind of feel like I need to be a face that people can see. And they can go, ‘Oh, I can do that’. That’s what you want to be, for other people to be able to basically follow their dreams, regardless of where they come from – everybody should have that opportunity.’

Want to strike out on your own?

Here’s what you’ll need to do: Similarly, Shauni Cabellero, who set up the Go 2 Agency, was inspired by the success of Paulette Long OBE, director at Westbury Music and one of the few senior black women in publishing: ‘They say you can’t become what you can’t see. And when I discovered Paulette Long, when I saw what she was doing, teaching people to make money out of their music, I copied the exact same thing. I was like, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do.’

Sarah Liversedge wears multiple hats, as the managing director of BDi Music, A&R director at Bucks Music Group and co-director at The Movement London. She struck out on her own with BDi 17 years ago after spending over a decade at the BBC. ‘And I haven’t looked back,’ she says. ‘In hindsight, I wish I had done it a little bit earlier – it’s not a regret, but I could have done it a bit earlier if I’d had the confidence.’

By now, we’re all familiar with virtual meetings and Sarah has noticed an interesting pattern. ‘It’s harder to watch dynamics in meetings now because of Zoom. But at the same time, it helps you identify who’s quiet in a meeting. I find women don’t speak out, even though they know their shit, they know their business and they’re knowledgeable. Not all women, of course, but I do notice it quite a lot. And men will talk over women, because they have that ingrained confidence.’

She praises the MPA for being supportive of both women and the younger community, while noting the low numbers of female publishers and says: ‘I think all companies are trying to champion women in music, aren’t they? They’re all trying to make an effort.

And that’s going to help in the long term. But I do think more can still be done.’

Laura adds: ‘I think it’s important that everybody keeps banging that drum really, but also doing it in a useful way.’

Like Sarah, Shauni lacked the confidence to go all-in on what she wanted to do – but early success with drill artists proved she knew what she was doing. She explains: ‘I was consulting, but I did want to be a publisher. If I’m being totally honest, I didn’t think I could do it. But then I would have so many people that would say, ‘We want to support what you’re doing, we’ll happily let you take 10 percent as an admin’, so I set up a publisher account with PRS. One of the first clients I worked with on the admin side was Bouncer and DigDat, the Play Dirty guys, and his song went Top 20, and that’s when I thought, ‘Okay, I’m in this really unique space, we’re getting everybody early, and it’s working out really well for me.’’

I think all companies are trying to champion women in music, aren’t they? … but I do think more can still be done.’

Catherine: Be your own person. Make your own decisions. Go where you want to go.

Laura: It’s hard work. But it’s just so rewarding. And if you have a dream, follow it. Also find people that can help you. There will be there will be other women and there will be other men out there. I’ve had a really good set of mentors.

Sarah: Believe in yourself and believe in your ability. Know your business inside out. And listen and learn. I notice it with some of our younger staff, they think they know it all. And when you’re older, you realise you don’t know it all. And finally, be nice to people.

Shauni: Don’t wait for anybody to give you a job. If this is the route you want to take in your career, just get up and do it, if it’s what you really want to do. Learn as much as you can about publishing, learn how to protect yourself, learn how to really monetise it, and make sure whenever you step into a session, that you’re really adding value.

Manners McDade, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, was set up by Catherine Manners initially as an artist management agency for ‘classical composers who also did something else’. The publishing arm followed in 2006. Now known for its neoclassical roster, there’s no better story about the power of owning your own company can have than how Manners McDade signed Nils Frahm, after Catherine’s husband – the McDade in the company name – shared his music with her.

After initially being turned down, Catherine travelled to Dublin to see Nils Frahm play live on her birthday. Talking to him afterwards, she mentioned that she’d recently moved house: ‘I said I moved my family to a smaller house so that I’ve got some more cash ready in case I need it for an advance. He just looked at me, and I just left it there. The next week his manager phoned and said, ‘Are you still interested?’. And of course, we were, and we had the money because I had sold the house, that was true.’’

She adds: ‘I’m really lucky in that my husband will just go along with any crazy scheme I come up with. He didn’t even see the house I bought, I just said I’ve sold our house and bought a new one. I gave him the address the day we moved in.

‘There have to be advantages of running your own business. And boy, there are not that many. But the greatest one is that you can do what you want. And if I make a bad decision, I make a bad decision.

But it’s my decision, you know?’

M Magazine | 41

Peggy Seeger Innocence and Experience ‘I began to realise that the earth will only survive if women run it.’

Kate Hutchinson speaks to feminist activist songmaker Peggy Seeger as she approaches the release of what is said to be her final album following a 60-year career.

Peggy Seeger is considering her inhibited years as a young American musician finding her way in the 1950s and ‘60s.

There was her infamous affair with Ewan MacColl, with whom she started the English folk revival. The time she married a friend so she could stay in the country because MacColl already had a wife. When she travelled to Cuba to entertain Fidel Castro. Did uppers to stay awake for shows.

Or when she went down a mine to make a groundbreaking audio documentary for the BBC. ‘I was a loose cannon. Still am,’ she says, her remarkably blue eyes gleaming.

And then there is, of course, her vast vault of songs, ones that are anti-war, pro-choice, about apartheid, domestic violence, nuclear pollution, housework, hormones, many of which Seeger was told were too political for the day. They never made her as famous as the singers that she helped paved the way for like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, whose protest songs are infamous, but she’s an active activist, nonetheless. ‘I’ve marched and been thrown against a fence and lost a tooth,’ and been confronted ‘by a police horse when I was pregnant,’ says Seeger. ‘We objected on our own levels.’

Seeger is on a video call from her home in the Oxfordshire countryside and her sprightly energy is enviable. She still practises her banjo every day and has been busying herself during the successive lockdowns with regular streamed performances, ‘Peggy at 5 on Sunday’. It’s here that she

relays her vast knowledge of traditional music – she doesn’t much like the term but we commonly call them ‘folk’ songs – that otherwise might be lost to time.

Before the pandemic hit, however, Seeger had been feeling less seen. She is about to release a new album, First Farewell, recorded with her two sons, Neill and Calum, and daughter-in-law Kate St John. The album’s piano arrangements are in part a tribute to her mother Ruth Crawford Seeger, a modernist composer who was the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship and who died when Seeger was 18. One of the album’s most striking tracks is called The Invisible Woman.

The song came about when Neill visited her one day, lay down on her sofa, ‘and said, ‘Mum, I’m 61 and I feel invisible’.

So I said, try being a woman!’ she says. ‘No man ever becomes as invisible as an 85-year-old woman. The way people just look past you... Young people pay little or no attention.’ If she’s at a social gathering, they ‘generally don’t want to talk to me.’

This truth is heart breaking because Seeger has plenty to say. She rails against the patriarchy, expresses deep concern about the climate crisis and is currently plotting a new song to help campaign against her nearby fields being ruined by developers. And her life is fascinating.

M Magazine | 43

Photo: Vicki Sharp Photography

Photo: Vicki Sharp Photography

Seeger was born in 1935, New York, into a folk dynasty – her father, Charles, was a musicologist, while half-brother Pete was a star of the nascent American folk scene. With MacColl, Seeger set off on her own path. The story goes that they met when she was 21 in the mid-50s, after the song collector Alan Lomax had invited her to play with them on a TV show in London. MacColl was 20 years her senior and married, but it was the beginning of a love affair that helped to put folk music back on the map, as they travelled the UK collecting old songs and sharing them with the world.

MacColl was already an established folk singer but Seeger, a multi-instrumentalist, made his music sing. ‘He was good, but I don’t think he would have made it on his own,’ says Seeger. ‘I added the accompaniment, the feminine principle.’ She wrote songs herself, too, and sang the ones he’d written for her. The most famous of those was The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face – much to their surprise, it was turned into a Grammy-winning hit by Roberta Flack in 1972.

I never would have thought First Time Ever would have gone pop. It has been covered by 400 singers and some of it is

No man ever becomes as invisible as an 85-year-old woman ‘way off the wall,’ says Seeger. At first, her and MacColl thought Flack’s version was ‘horrendous’ (though she appreciates it now), which goes some way to explain the purism that the pair were notorious for. ‘It’s as if you are to make a heavy metal version of Amazing Grace. A song in its inception carries a style with it. The songwriter has a style in mind, right?’

Intention and context is everything, in Seeger’s mind – sentiments that chime with conversations around appropriation today. But back when Seeger was saying it, it caused shockwaves among folk connoisseurs. At their London venue The Singers Club, they enforced a ‘policy’ where performers could only sing ‘songs that were in a language that you spoke, from a culture that you knew,’ she explains. It started because of ‘some of the English singers singing Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.’

Seeger had grown up with the legendary American bluesman and folk troubadour visiting her family house.

‘We were brought up with their singing, with the modesty and tragedy of it, and the way it meshed in with their lives,’ she says. ‘And then all of a sudden, here’s a little Cockney stepping up to sing [Lead Belly’s signature song] Goodnight, Irene.’ That is a scenario that sounds rather familiar, even in 2021. ‘Well,’ she begins. ‘They used to say that a proper artist is 50 years before their time and that’s what we were.’

She’s not saying that white people shouldn’t sing Black songs or vice versa, just that in her mind ‘it doesn’t feel truthful.’

‘In a way, it’s expanding on that business of whether men can be feminists. If they haven’t been brought up at the receiving end of a patriarchy, they don’t know what it’s like.’

Seeger found her feminist awakening after she’d written the the 1970 song I’m Gonna Be An Engineer, which was embraced by the women’s movement. MacColl had asked her to write a song for a theatrical group to celebrate ‘the year of the woman’ but it resonated so much that she was invited to sing it at feminist groups. They wanted more songs, and something clicked, so she began writing albums of them. Today, she is a steadfast eco-feminist.

Seeger and MacColl, along with Charles Parker, made the seminal Radio Ballads for BBC about the mining industry.

But now she sings songs like new one Lubrication – the sexual image is to draw you in, but it’s really about her fears of fossil fuels. ‘When you really get involved with ecology, you realise that we live in a patriarchy,’ says Seeger. ‘I began to realise that the earth will only survive if women run it.’

In her 2017 memoir, Seeger makes several references to experiences she had ‘before’ she was a feminist and describes a few moments where MacColl’s behaviour doesn’t seem fair. Does she look back on it any differently?

‘Even though Ewan was very macho, he was proud of what I did,’ says Seeger, ‘and we were equal on the stage.’ But, she adds, ‘one of the things that really hit me after he died was the fact that whenever anybody came to interview us, they always held the microphone up to him first. I realise how many ways he took over stuff and took credit for it.’

Seeger and her current partner, Irene Pyper-Scott, realised they were in love just before MacColl died in 1989 and the two married in a civil ceremony in 2010. Incredibly, however, Pyper-Scott has lived in New Zealand for the past 13 years and they haven’t seen each other physically for two of those.

‘I used to go over there for three months of our winter, she’s come here for three months of her winter. But two years ago, we decided that, ecologically, that was just stupid.’

Always innovating and ahead of the curve, Seeger must be one of the only octogenarians in a long-distance relationship with their spouse, though it must be incredibly hard. ‘I don’t know when we’ll see each other again because neither of us wants to fly,’ she says. What are they going to do? ‘Very good question,’ she says with a tone that suggests she doesn’t quite know. ‘She sees me on YouTube and things. But she’s not letting me see her.

She says, ‘I’ve aged so much’. But we’re managing. We talk every morning, every evening.’

And with that, Peggy Seeger has to go. Her friend, who is her bubble, is coming over for a game of Scrabble. She is always moving on, always pushing forward. Even as she prepares to wind down her 65-year-career, the clue to her unyielding work ethic is even present in her new album’s title: she might be saying goodbye, but this is only her first farewell. It likely and most hopefully won’t be her last.

This piece was guest edited by Maxie Gedge.

M Magazine | 45

Moderate Rebels ‘If we can encourage girls and women to have that realisation, the same time that men do at five years old when they’re given a guitar, I feel that’s going to help change things.’

By Stephanie Phillips

It’s in the roots of London collective Moderate Rebels to push the boundaries as much as possible. This was the case at their first gig in 2016 when they played one song, the single God Sent Us, for 30 drawn out minutes, pulling apart the mantra-esque track at its seams and smashing it back together again.

The positive response to their ambitious performance gave the group a reason to keep going. ‘It broke our own rules and took us out of anything that we thought we felt comfortable with and we liked that,’ says keyboardist and vocalist Mo Bruce. ‘We liked the idea that it felt provocative to ourselves as well as the audience.’

Following in the footsteps of music collectives like the anarchist punk group Crass, Moderate Rebels has no definitive line-up, but the current live line-up includes Kate Worthington, vocals; Emma Faulkner, vocals; Anna Jones, bass; Kevin Retoryka, guitar and vocals; Susan Milanovich, drums; Mo Bruce, keys and vocals.

For their third release the collective decided to keep up the momentum by releasing not just one album, but a 30 track, three-part album. The first of the trilogy If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right, released on 30 April, is a smorgasbord of ‘60s pop melodies, transcendental ‘80s synth pop and deadpan vocals musing on everything from secret intelligence services to the words of lying politicians.

Stephanie Phillips spoke to Mo and Susan about writing mantras, being provocative, and just what exactly a moderate rebel is?

Steph: You’ve described Moderate Rebels as being provocative and challenging in the past. Do you relate to other antiestablishment music collectives like Crass for example?

Mo: Absolutely. We draw influences from all over all over the place. We love, for example, the Guerrilla Girls. It’s sort of that expectation of provocation or saying something really important, but doing so in a very clever, but also fun way.

Steph: Is there a meaning behind the band name Moderate Rebels and is it connected to your politics?

Mo: At the time when we wanted to kick off the project it was a phrase that was being used a lot across the media. It was the time of the bombing in Syria and everything else. When you actually listen to media there’s a lot of phrases that are used that feel very strange and loaded. When you hear things like moderate rebel, you’re like, that’s supposed to be coming from a so-called unbiased news outlet but that in itself, of course, is brimming with bias. You can’t call it rebel and then expect to be neutral. We thought by calling ourselves that, it would sort of carry on that idea of this strange, confusing and yet completely ubiquitous language that was out there, and get people to question it. When people ask us, what is a moderate rebel?, we’re like, ‘I have no idea, what do you think it is’. It’s absolutely fundamental to a lot of what we’ve done ever since.

M Magazine | 47

I didn’t realise I could be in a band until I was about 21 years old, before then it was just, that’s something that men do.

Steph: How do you usually write songs as a collective?

Mo: It’s mostly Kevin and I as a starting point working on lyrics together. We start with the loose beginnings of a song. We’ll have boxes and boxes of snapshots of lyrics scrunched up in balls, as everybody does who writes music. It really comes to life when we bring everyone else in and we start their own elements.

Steph: If You See Something That Doesn’t Look Right is the first release of a three-part album run with 30 tracks in total.

When did you know this was going to be a big project?

Mo: We like the fact that it just felt quite flamboyant. We just didn’t seem to be able to stop coming up with ideas. And all of a sudden, we felt like, ‘well, why not? why shouldn’t we have this opus of music’. We’d spoken to the label [Moshi Moshi] a little bit previously, but we sent them the three albums as triple, because our original intention was to release it all at once, but they were really into it and shared our sentiment that it stood out because it was of its ridiculousness.

Steph: The album has a lot of ‘80s synth pop and ‘60s influences. Were there any specific artists you were drawing inspiration from?

Mo: Someone said to Kevin and I that [the band] sounded like a mixture between Spiritualized and the Shangri Las, which totally made our day. We love like early Pet Shop Boys, that’s quite prevalent, but we equally love Krautrock and I think that’s really where we started. I mean, that was God Sent Us, an epic krautrock-esque moment but since then it has definitely evolved.

Especially now that we’ve got Kate and Emma singing vocals it does have that lovely girl band feel, but like the Shangri Las because they’ve got a toughness.

Susan: As a drummer, it’s definitely krautrock. I love getting into a steady backbeat and just letting everyone else sort of go for it and experiment. When I first heard the band, I kept thinking of Brian Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets. I’ve had people say to me, like someone I work with, so probably not someone who’s completely musical, say The Smashing Pumpkins and the Pixies.

Mo: Prior to getting involved with Moshi Moshi we’ve never talked about any of this stuff. We’ve always really enjoyed hearing anything that people hear [in our music]. We all love Moody Man, we all love Flying Lizards, we all love like Yoko Ono. It’s hard not to look at the full world of stuff that we listen to, and not go actually, there’s a bit of that as well. We’re definitely not closed to any genre. We’re massively into gospel as well. There’s just stuff that we will be drawing on all the time from everywhere.

Susan: And I think that comes with having a rotating or flexible group. The traditional band structure you all like something so you start a band and copy that until you get your own vibe, but when it’s just people coming in and out or you’re brought together. I was brought into the group because we knew someone that worked together, it wasn’t you know, that traditional kind of setting up a band.

Steph: On the record you’re often singing in unison. How did that style develop?

Mo: Emma is a classically trained singer and has just an incredible voice. She brings that real beauty too, which we never had before. We wanted that beauty and strength, but then something that felt juxtaposed at the same time, which is where Kate comes in. She started in that spoken word approach.

Kevin always loved the idea of having sort of a really cut-glass English accent over music. The juxtaposition between Emma and Kate’s voice makes it sound quite unusual. Kevin is singing in the background, and I’m adding vocals as well, so it is this chorus almost of different types of singing at once.

Steph: A lot of the lyrics are short phrases that are chanted and repeated to the point where they sound like mantras. Is there a new age, spiritual outlook in the songwriting?

Mo: There is a sort of mantra feeling, because that’s when you can feel like it can take you somewhere. The simplicity of less words, less chords, less of everything really is something that has been part of what we’ve done since the beginning. There’s that magic that comes when you’ve been sort of chanting something

over and over again. That was certainly true when we did that first gig. The only and lyrics in that song [God Sent Us] are ‘we’re here to wreck your house and ruin your life, God sent us’. That’s a quote from Romper Stomper [The 1992 film about a neo nazi group in Australia], and that was the entire song.

Steph: Songs like Forever Tomorrow Today and These Are The Good Times feel like two sides of the same coin in that they’re both about a bleak political reality we’re all living through. Do you often feel like you’re caught between feeling hopeful and feeling depressed about the world?

Mo: It’s reflective of the sort of powerlessness that it’s easy to feel at the moment. We’re often told that these are the best of times. Maybe not at the moment, but that has been the message, that we should feel lucky to have what we have and democracy is working and all these things, but actually it isn’t really working. The gap between the haves and the have nots has never been bigger. We can’t help but point out the hypocrisy and contradiction of it.

Steph: In These Are The Good Times, there’s the lyric, ‘If you love putting hands in the air before you speak, for untested 5G radiation, for untested smart meters, these are the good times’. Is this about the conspiracy theory?

Mo: We’re not there to have an opinion, we’re just pointing out the different opinions that are out there. We don’t really believe in conspiracy theories as such. At the moment there’s a silencing of different opinions I would say and that’s possibly what we’ve always tried to be about. Just because someone has a different opinion from you doesn’t mean that it’s a conspiracy. In that song we’re not suggesting that we know the answers or that we agree with everything we’re saying, but it’s a case of, again, presenting things that people do believe in. It is widening the conversation and what is acceptable in the mass media.

Steph: Is there a limit to what’s acceptable?

Mo: That’s a good question and big question. I don’t know that any one individual can say that. I don’t think that we are saying anything that is unacceptable. Obviously, we don’t tolerate any discrimination or misrepresentation. We don’t tolerate anything like that, but questioning what authority is doing is the one unifying factor of what we do.

Steph: The theme for International Women’s Day this year is #ChooseToChallenge, looking at how we call out gender bias and inequality. Do you feel like you try and challenge inequality through your songwriting or outside the band?

Susan: It’s definitely something I do outside of the band because we need to especially in the music industry. I didn’t realise I could be in a band until I was about 21 years old, before then it was just, that’s something that men do. If we can encourage girls and women to have that realisation, the same time that men do at five years old when they’re given a guitar, I feel that’s going to help change things. At almost every show, I will have someone, usually a man, come up to me and shout, ‘chick drummer’. When that stops happening, I think we’ve got progress. But equally, sometimes I get women coming up and being like, ‘Where did you learn to drum, how do I do that?’, and that helps balance it out.

Steph: I’m sorry about those guys, they sound awful.

Susan: My partner’s a drummer too. He came to one of our one of our last shows, and he’s like, ‘does that always happened’. I’m like, ‘yeah, does it not happen to you?’ No, obviously not.

Steph: In previous interviews you’ve talked about wanting to keep yourself private and not wanting to discuss any personal beliefs. Is there a worry about being too exposed?

Mo: From the beginning we wanted to avoid adding to the noise of opinion, to provoke and investigate things that you take for granted. So with all of that in mind, we’ve sort of avoided becoming, for want of a better word, personalities as part of that, and being quite, not hidden, but anonymous. That’s evolved now certainly, since we’ve been working with Moshi Moshi, but not just for the reasons that they’re interested in us doing publicity. We’ve just matured a little bit in our confidence in what we’re doing. The music in itself is enough of a statement that me having a good conversation with yourself, is not going to get in the way of that.

Susan: There is a bit of fun keeping it vague too, because when you listen to the tracks, you’re like, ‘what’s on this? How many musicians are here?’. I like keeping it open to interpretation.

Steph: Finally, what’s in the future for Moderate Rebels beyond the three-album run?

Mo: We’ve already got the bare bones recorded of the next album. That’ll be coming out hopefully next year. In so far as the collective, I hope that this is it for a while. Not that I don’t love the people coming in and moving on, but I think what we have is a powerful group of people, and I think we can do amazing things, especially together.

M Magazine | 49

‘It’s a very white male-dominated industry, all from a certain age group. So as a younger woman coming into it, you can be met with some resistance.’

(Freyja Lawson)

The past decade has seen more women taking on technical roles in the live music industry, but Black women are still so scarce that they’re almost invisible. Native Management artists Nao and Mura Masa wanted to hire more diverse technicians for their crews, so for two years, looked for ways to recruit and train Black women as lighting engineers, stage techs, audio engineers and playback technicians. Having approached music technology schools and struggling to put together a course in the way they wanted, the artists almost gave up. But last summer, the Black Lives Matter movement was the catalyst that set the 3T (Tour Tech Training) course in motion.

‘When the initial wave of Black Lives Matter protests kicked off, we thought we just had to do it, that was the moment. We couldn’t just post empty black squares. So myself, Mura Masa and my manager all put up some money, called some senior crew people to find out how the course could be structured and just went for it. We posted about it before we’d really worked out

what we were going to do but that’s what was great about BLM, as against diversity drives of the past, it was a call to arms to act on issues, not just talk about them,’ says Nao. With the objective of delivering ‘a real-world education’ on live music, production manager AJ Sutherland and live sound engineer Freyja Lawson carefully crafted the course. Over 12 weekends, the first of its kind programme placed Black women front and centre, enlisting industry experts to share knowledge gained from years on the road.

From reskinning drum kits without instructions to loading, looming and audio patching, they threw trainees into the deep end, culminating in a full-blown live show with stellar performances by Nao and Mura Masa crewed by the new recruits. But with only 10 spaces and 550 applicants, the huge chasm between demand and opportunity becomes all the more obvious.

Bringing Black women into the live music industry Kaeshelle Rianne speaks to the women empowered by the Native Management backed Technical Tour Training course (3T). Supported by Nao and Mura Masa, 3T is a first of its kind in training Black women to bring music performances to life from behind the scenes.

While the live music industry isn’t all roses, over her eight years in the industry, Freyja Lawson’s experience has been largely positive. However, she says, ‘I have never worked with a Black woman who was in a technical role before, only in performing roles, which is just not right.’

3T participants, Michelle Shaiyen, Perusi Kakaire and Helena Scotland, show that it’s not a question of interest, it’s about how willing the industry is to open doors wide enough for Black women to flourish.

Kaeshelle: What was the application process like? It seemed quite unorthodox.

Perusi: I saw Mura Masa’s post on Instagram about 3T, but with stuff like that you think so many people will apply and wonder ‘Will I even get through?’ The first step was just putting in an email address. If it was anything more, a lot of us probably wouldn’t have applied. We then had to submit a three-minute video and a CV. They stressed that we needed to get back ASAP in the email because being quick off the mark is important when it comes to touring.

Michelle: For the video, they asked, ‘Why do you think it’s important for Black women to be in this industry?’, which is literally our experience, so it was easy to talk about.

Helena: I feel like I’ll never get a job via a standard application, which is why this industry appeals to me. It was reassuring that if I didn’t get it, another Black woman would—not another Tom, Dick or Harry.

Kaeshelle: What were the most enjoyable moments on the course?

Perusi: It was great to learn playback and get on the sound desk. A guy called Herman came in and we got to put the rack together from Stormzy’s Glastonbury set and Dave’s show at The Brits. It was wicked to do it with the equipment and see the notes. The big weekend is my standout moment, though. From getting there first thing in the morning to mapping out the stage and having our gear on, we saw everything we learned over the 12 weekends coming to life.

It was phenomenal.

M Magazine | 51

‘Since I started touring as Nao seven years ago, I’ve wanted a more diverse crew.

I’ve loved everyone I’ve worked with but if you’re away with a group of people for weeks on end it’s nice to have a mix, it makes things more balanced. But no matter how hard we looked we couldn’t find many women, hardly any women of colour and no Black women at all. Not one.’

(Nao)

Helena: It was the most adrenaline I’ve ever felt in my life. I did the visuals, which was way left field. AJ asked if I wanted to do it the day before, so I learned the software 24 hours before the show.

Kaeshelle: What did you learn about yourselves during the course?

Helena: I’m actually clever! For four years at university, I felt stupid, but those 12 weekends rebuilt my confidence. I can be in the music industry and use the logical side of my brain. It’s not just for full-on creatives, you can be a bit of a nerd too.

Michelle: I was very set in what I wanted to do, but it taught me that I’m capable of doing other things. If I was already in the industry and someone asked me to do lighting, I would have turned it down quickly. I’m so glad that they didn’t let us pick what we wanted.

Perusi: I just wanted to be tour managing or on a sound desk. Now, when the industry comes back, I’d go for anything, including backline and lighting.

Kaeshelle: What have you been getting up to since doing the course?

Michelle: I’ve been going over everything we did because it was very intense. I obviously can’t travel into London. When I’m back, I won’t be running around, saying ‘What is this cable?’, I’ll just be ready to go.

Perusi: I was fortunate enough to tour manage Nao’s show at Metropolis. I thought I’d just be shadowing, but Sam from Native said, ‘Here’s this folder... You need to speak to this person… Ask Nao’. I just needed to keep that confidence.

Helena: In January, I was an Ableton tech for a band, helping them move their live show from MainStage to Ableton at the studio. It was a lot of pressure but so worth it.

Kaeshelle: What roles do you hope to go into in the future?

Michelle: I’d love to get into playback with all the software and making sure everything’s cool. I’m really interested in audio, so maybe start off assisting an engineer, then get into mixing.

Helena: Yeah, playback tech and become an RF engineer.

There aren’t many people doing it, let alone Black people and it’d be the closest thing to my degree.

Perusi: I’m more into tour and production management. But I do like playback too, it’s something I could get my teeth into.

Kaeshelle: We should really be asking this question to the industry, but why aren’t Black women working as touring technicians?

Perusi: It’s quite cyclical in the industry as you go off someone’s recommendation for these roles. I just saw it as a boy’s club. There’s this image of a backline tech, it’s the same white guy, in his black jeans, black t-shirt, maybe he’s got a cigarette and a cap on. Sometimes if you don’t see yourself somewhere, you feel like you can’t get there.

You ask yourself, ‘How would I fit in with that crew?’. What I found really surprising was that Black female techs are completely booked up.

Michelle: Like Perusi, I hadn’t seen anyone who looked like us working in tech jobs. Even when I was more interested in behind-the-scenes stuff, it was always boys, there were never any girls. If you keep filtering it down to Black women, there’s nobody. But hearing people say they want more Black women in these roles gives me hope that it might change for people after us.

Pictured (l-r) Helena Scotland, Perusi Kakaire, Michelle Shaiyen

Kaeshelle: What are you excited about for the future?

Perusi: I think we’re all hungry for the industry to start again so we can get to work and keep the momentum going.

Michelle: It’s good that 10 of us got in, but we’re also concerned about those who didn’t. We’ve got no interest in hogging the jobs, we want the people behind us there too.

I’m not sure how it’s going to play out once outside opens again. It sounded like a lot of talk before, but this time it feels like people are willing to make changes.

Helena: I’m excited about passing it on, not only bringing people in but also sharing these skills. They definitely tried to get people of colour to teach us, but they were mainly white men. It’d be cool for me, Perusi and Michelle to go back on the course, teaching people and showing that this actually works.

Building diverse crews isn’t about ticking boxes.

Challenging the status quo is necessary for the live music industry to evolve and be able to tackle future challenges.

Nao explains: ‘It’s traditionally been almost impossible to ensure a crew is diverse as the industry is small and there’s very little formal training. It was mostly people bringing their friends through behind them and if it’s only one type of human doing the job that just becomes a cycle of the same types of people doing all the roles.

‘But now that we have 10 women of colour trained to a very high degree, I hope artists embrace them, employ them regularly across a wide range of tours (not just tours with Black artists) and that begins a process of other young people—especially women—seeing themselves in those roles and believing they could do it.

‘I also think maybe artists should be looking to follow our lead and offering their own training programs where they feel there is a lack of representation. On a large tour, you often see crews of 20-30 people, so to add one apprentice to that shouldn’t necessarily be an issue.’

3T Crew: Michelle Shaiyen, Perusi Kakaire, Helena Scotland, Iman Muhammad, Genny Turay, Kariss Townsend, Yasmine St.Croix, Mercy Sotire, Emily Odamtten, Grace Esia Stay up to date with 3T on Instagram and Native Management’s website.

M Magazine | 53

Features

How the pandemic has affected women in the music industry Pre-pandemic, women in the music industry faced huge challenges that impacted their mental health, from being taken less seriously to juggling their careers with childcare. Here, Lydia Smith explores how the sudden shift created

by COVID-19 has both magnified and exacerbated these pressures.

Three days before sound engineer Hannah Brodrick was due to go on tour, she was told it had been cancelled because of the COVID-19 outbreak. It was 9 March 2020, two weeks before the UK would enter its first full lockdown.

‘I was absolutely devastated because it was my first solid chunk of work since November 2019 and I was low on cash and morale,’ she says. At that time, Brodrick, who runs the organisation Women in Live Music, had no idea the rest of the year would be wiped out by the pandemic too.

‘In some ways I’m glad because I don’t know what I would have done,’ she says. ‘I have been luckier than most however to actually have had bits and pieces of streaming and socially-distant gigs.

Only a handful, but it has kept me somewhat together.’

Hannah Brodrick

Nonetheless, the crisis has taken its toll on Brodrick and her wellbeing. ‘It sounds odd, but I don’t recognise myself from a year ago,’ she says. ‘I feel very disassociated and am having a bit of an identity crisis. I am constantly questioning everything and wondering what to do with my future, whereas before I felt very secure.’

Almost overnight, the live music industry shut down. Gigs were cancelled, tours and festivals called off and pubs, clubs and venues forced to close. Not only did it affect artists, but the thousands of people working alongside them, from sound engineers and road crew to venue workers and tour managers.

A year on, the UK is in its third lockdown and those in the music industry are still facing employment uncertainty, financial hardship and a lack of government support. In September, a survey by the Musicians’ Union revealed that one third of musicians in the UK have considered abandoning the industry entirely. Unsurprisingly, the crisis has taken a dramatic toll on the mental health of those working in the music industry, particularly women.

Research has shown women are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the economic fallout, with women’s jobs 1.8 times more vulnerable to the crisis than men’s jobs. Huge numbers of women

Mary Leay in music have found themselves taking on the burden of unpaid care, while trying to keep their heads above water financially and grappling with the loss of their independence and careers.

Prior to the pandemic, Mary Leay’s work as a published songwriter signed to Reservoir Media consisted of going to writing and recording sessions, meeting artists and producers and more.

With a two-year-old daughter and a separate role as the codeveloper of Mamas In Music, a group supporting mothers in the music industry, her life was busy but fulfilling.

‘There’s no getting away from it, the pandemic has turned our world upside down and the daily struggles are very real,’ she says.

‘My income stream depends on the artist performing the songs I have written, live performances, tours, and DJs playing my songs in clubs, along with writing for film and TV. Every source of music income for me has been put on hold.’

Research has shown women are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the economic fallout, with women’s jobs 1.8 times more vulnerable.

Her daughter was due to start nursery last year, but when childcare facilities closed, all parenting duties fell on her. ‘We couldn’t share the ‘daytime’ duties because my husband works long hours and was on back-to-back meetings most of the day,’ Leay says.

‘I love my daughter more than anything and it goes without saying this is a full-time job in itself and one parents should be proud of,” she adds. “The key thing is that I was doing both beforehand and although that juggle was hard, losing the job that had been part of me for most of my life and which had given me my identity felt so much harder than the challenge of juggling.’

Prior to COVID-19, the motherhood penalty meant women in the arts were already more likely to be in part-time or freelance work, earning lower wages or facing job insecurity. Now, the pressure of school and nursery closures combined with lack of job opportunities is having an enormous impact on their wellbeing.

One in four women in the arts are doing 90 percent or more of the childcare and are struggling to work, or look for employment, according to Parents and Carers in Performing Arts (PIPA). More than a third of women with caring responsibilities are experiencing a mental health crisis, with many reporting feeling lonely, stressed and anxious.

For Leay, the impact on her mental health has been significant.

‘I had already had a year of feeling quite isolated at times being a new mum. I had just started to find my feet again and it all changed pretty much overnight. I’ve suffered with anxiety and stress,’ she says. ‘I had to find my creative time as though it was a part-time hobby, working when my daughter slept.’

For many music professionals, work isn’t just about making ends meet financially. It’s a part of their identity and sense of self, and a way of expressing themselves.

‘When you’re a creative person, you don’t realise your job is your creative outlet,’ says Dom Frazer, who runs The Boileroom in Guildford. The venue, a hub for the local alternative music scene, closed last year but has made ends meet since with a combination of arts funding, crowdfunding and live streaming gigs and interviews.

‘We shut The Boileroom on 17 March 2020. From that point we could sense there was something bad on the horizon. It felt very apocalyptic,’ she says. ‘Suddenly you’re like, what else can we do?

The live-streaming is great for that, and for connecting with other people in the same position as us. I don’t think we would have ever done that because we were so busy working and putting on shows.’

Dom Frazer Although Frazer and her all-women management team have adapted to the difficult circumstances, it hasn’t been easy. ‘It’s a positive thing, but it’s brutal, and there have been days where I can’t get out of bed. It’s really challenging and I know I’m not alone in that.’

Frazer also acknowledges that The Boileroom has been lucky to receive support, as for many, the lack of government funding has been the final straw. Unsurprisingly, musicians have accused the government of failing to recognise the sector’s cultural, social and economic worth, particularly with the distinctly unsympathetic advice to ‘retrain’ and find a new job.

Tight eligibility for the SEISS grants mean thousands of selfemployed musicians and music workers have fallen through the gap. For many women, taking a period of maternity leave or working reduced working hours due to care responsibilities has meant missing out on financial support entirely.

With fewer women already working in music jobs, there are fears the pandemic will have a lasting impact on gender equality across the industry. As a mentor for women sound engineers, Brodrick has already noticed a change in the number of women looking for advice. ‘Nobody is reaching out anymore or asking to shadow.

Everyone is being advised to go into other professions,’ she says.

‘It makes me incredibly worried about the future generation of women in the industry, as often they do need a bit of extra encouragement and guidance. If a pandemic had happened when I had just graduated, I probably wouldn’t have stuck around trying to get a job in music.’

M Magazine | 55

Leadership and Gender Entering the pandemic, the Keychange team were feeling increasingly worried about the impact this virus might have on our participants from Europe and Canada (as I’m sure everyone who works with underrepresented groups were). Back in March 2020, we knew that: • • •

75 percent of unpaid work, including childcare, is done by women (McKinsey Global Institute) There is a 31.4 percent pay gap (World Economic Forum) 70 percent of health and social service providers are women (World Health Organisation)

Keychange focuses on gender, but we work with individuals from all over the world who inform our work; the nuanced intersections of identities mean that all protected characteristics and socioeconomic factors and politics have had a huge impact on the barriers that people have faced over the last year.

Maxie Gedge, M Magazine’s International Women’s Day Guest Editor, is best known for her work as a PRS Foundation and Keychange Project Manager, a drummer and founder of Gravy Records.

Here, Maxie explores what it means to be a leader, the link between power and accountability and how Keychange is working to challenge stereotypes.

When articles started coming out in April 2020 about the women leaders who were ‘bossing’ COVID, it made me both ecstatic and depressed. Yes, representation is important. And if women and gender minorities are considered meaningfully in important decision-making processes then some of the data gaps that Caroline Criado Perez explores in Invisible Women might start to shift towards more accurate representation. If women and gender minority leaders are on our TVs then more girls and gender nonconforming young people will know that they too can lead countries and corporations, includingCMOs,record labels and publishers.

But as more articles came out and eventually criticism (The Times ‘Female leaders found to be no better in Covid crisis’), it got me thinking – is it harmful or helpful to talk about women leaders as inherently different from the men in charge? Isn’t that othering them even more? Isn’t that grossly ignoring nuance and experience? And why now, when COVID happens, do we suddenly notice the women leaders in the world? We should champion them, but we should champion all of their work in all arenas; finance, culture, foreign policy and beyond.

Writing in Forbes, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox said: ‘These leaders are gifting us an attractive alternative way of wielding power.’

Providing a perfectly gendered way to recognise women in power as ‘attractive’ rather than, say ‘forceful’, ‘dynamic’ or even competent why is the adjective here about appearance?

So, I decided to turn to my network to explore and celebrate the awesome leaders in the music industry and what it is that makes them so rad. How do they ‘wield power’ and is it any differently from the *uhum* Bojos of the world?

Challenging assumptions and stereotypes associated with gender and making sure that women and gender minorities in music have the opportunity to forge career paths that suit them is an important ambition of my work at Keychange. This is often difficult. Daily, we challenge the sometimes-crushing pressures that dictate what people should sound like, look like, be like in the music industry.

Although our work at Keychange is focused on women and gender minorities, who are vastly underrepresented in the music industry (check out www.keychange.eu if you’re still one of those people who think it’s not a problem), it’s important for us all to realise that gendered roles and/or stereotypes are harmful to everyone.

Increased diversity impacts everyone positively, so it benefits us all to challenge norms and ask questions about how things are done and why.

This may sound ‘disruptive’. And in my opinion, being a ‘disruptor’ is one of those horrifying millennial ideas. But I’m interested in how individuals can really challenge and disrupt expectations within the music industry in 2021. There are many people I look up to as leaders who do this so well, who prioritise diversity and inclusion, who disrupt, and who are therefore changing what contemporary leadership looks like; Vanessa Reed and Joe Frankland are of course beacons for me; Kanya King, Helen Sildna, Yvette Griffith, Laura Lewis-Paul, Carla Marie Williams, Charlie Wall-Andrews, Lorna Clarke, Alexandra Archetti Stølen, Ragnar Berthling, Nitin Sawhney, Janine Irons, Crispin Hunt, Lucie Caswell, Ben Wynter, Bengi Unsal, Becky Ayres, Hannah Kendall and so many more.

What traits are typically associated with leadership?

Based on some brilliant insight from some Irish Keychange participants, in music, the same things that make someone good at their job for one gender, can be used against another gender.

Being ‘assertive’ or ‘in control’ might be manipulated to ‘bossy’ or ‘intimidating’. But in 2021, especially with the social-justice oriented organisations I work with, it has struck me that there is a new, more collaborative leader at the top. In conversations with some (mixed gender) leaders in the Keychange network a few of the words that kept coming up were ‘engaged’, ‘empathy’, ‘integrity’, ‘commitment’, ‘accountability’. These struck me as

less charged with gender than the traditional ‘hard-working’, ‘confident’, ‘strength’, ‘ambitious’.

Markers of success also seem to be based less on individual achievement and more on ‘spreading the love’. Yvette Griffiths, cochief executive and executive director of Jazz re:freshed is inspired by ‘those around me really following their passion, people who effect significant change for underserved communities’. Trudeau Scholar and executive director of SOCAN Foundation Charlie-Wall Andrews said, ‘Feeling empowered is an indescribable feeling, but it most certainly can be a catalyst to achieving one’s purpose in life.

There is also something incredible about empowering others: this makes feeling empowered tenfold.’

So when power and accountability are so inextricably linked, solidarity is not enough. Chief executive of PRS Foundation Joe Frankland explains, ‘In the context of PRS Foundation’s work, we talk a lot about ‘powering up’ or empowering underrepresented talent – those who are very deserving of opportunities but are being held back by inequity. So, our work combines questioning and changing power dynamics at a macro level, while empowering individuals to be in a position to progress and to do things on their own terms.’

The wonderful idea, that the key to socially just power is to give it away, is not a new one but I think the disrupting element here is the focus on accountability. Not just having values but acting on them – or as Charlie Wall-Andrews says, ‘I believe the relationship between accountability and leadership is about reconciling actions and values.’

Vanessa Reed, chief executive of New Music USA spoke of responsibility; ‘In a just society, everyone should take responsibility for their actions. Leaders create the culture in which that can happen.’

In the often murky world of power and privilege within the music industry, I have been lucky to witness a new collaborative, kind, inclusive type of leadership start to take flight. For those in positions of power and influence, acknowledging your own privilege and making space should be the new normal – as Yvette says, ‘the white patriarchy has hindered all manner of progressions over the decades’. It is time for leaders to listen.

M Magazine | 57

Female-led initiatives helping smash glass ceilings for women The past five years have seen a rise in female-led initiatives aimed at tackling gender inequality in the UK music industry. Annique Simpsons explores how these organisations are helping female-identifying people in the industry thrive by building communities and offering unique services.

When Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin and Eurythmics pop-rock goddess Annie Lennox joined forces for their 1985 feminist anthem, Sisters are Doin It For Themselves, they had big dreams of a female-friendly future.

Women are also more likely to report experiencing sexual harassment, less likely to be heard on radio stations or at festivals in the UK and are underrepresented in key industry areas like songwriting, publishing and music technology.

Fast forward 36 years and, while some progress has been made, gender inequality is still a reality for many women globally.

Not content with the status quo, women are forming more powerful collectives than ever before to support, celebrate and empower each other.

For women working in the UK music industry, the picture is particularly bleak.

Despite making up almost half of the workforce, female music workers occupy over 60 percent of apprentice and entry-level positions, according to the UK Music 2020 Diversity Report.

Here are four female-led initiatives leading the charge against gender inequality in UK music.

shesaid.so It’s hard to believe that one of the largest independent communities for women and gender minorities in global music started as a Google group.

Frustrated at feeling voiceless ‘middle-aged white men in suits’, founder Andreea Magdalina established the group in 2014 and attracted 50 attendees to the first shesaid.so event.

The initiative now boasts over 12,000 members in over 100 locations including Austria, South Africa and India as well as headquarters in Los Angeles and London.

Despite their size, shesaid.so has kept community at its core. From their 18 locally managed chapters and radio shows to their central parenthood and intersectionality groups, the organisations ensures that it lives up to its bold diversity and inclusion ambitions.

And they most certainly do. Since launching, shesaid.so has helped over 250 women find work and helped a handful of members raise over £1.4m ($2m) for their businesses. They also regularly highlight the contributions made by women and other minority workers in the industry through their annual Alternative Power 100 Music List.

In 2019, shesaid.so released the world’s first library music album with UMG’s Universal Production Music but, despite the colossal year, the community is now fighting to stay alive after losing 60 percent of its income to the pandemic.

Still, Magdalina remains optimistic: ‘I’m hopeful that we’re able to apply what we’ve learned in isolation to come together stronger as a community - equipped with solutions and new business practices that are truly intersectional and go beyond performative action.’

Determined to make the genre less male-biased, super-fan Shakira Walters launched Girls of Grime in 2017 to amplify the voices of grime’s female artists, DJs and creatives.

In 2018, Girls of Grime launched their first all-female showcase, THE FEMALE TAKEOVER, which featured emerging and established UK artists like Lioness, Lost Souljah and The Grime Violinist. To promote the event, Shakira secured all-female DJ sets on Rinse FM, DejaVu FM and Reprezent.

A slot at Wireless Festival 2018 quickly followed, with Girls of Grime joining grime veterans Lady Leshurr and Paigey Cakey on an allfemale line-up as part of Smirnoff’s Equalising in Music initiative.

Undeterred by the series of national lockdown last year, Girls of Grime launched their LOCKED+LIVE series, supported by

the PRS Foundation. The show sees talented female MCs performing alongside an all-female live band before chilling backstage with DJ Shaxx.

The collective has even bigger plans for 2021, including the release of several self-produced tracks and the second season of LOCKED+LIVE.

Photo: DM_O_P

Girls of Grime

‘We’ve always focused less on gender disparity and more on the action needed to create change,’ says Walters.

‘This year we’re continuing to connect and collaborate with other creatives across the industry on the same page as us, including other female-led platforms and some of the mandem that love and respect what it is we do.’

The F-List CIC

Although launched as a not-for-profit last November, The F-List started out as a research project by music veteran Vick Bain.

Her Counting Music Industry report revealed that just 14 percent of writers and 20 percent of artists signed to 300 UK record labels and publishing company rosters were women. Frustrated with her findings, Bain created a list of female musicians and bands for live event organisers and promoters wanting to diversify their line ups.

Enter The F-List.

Thanks to the directory’s popularity, The F-List is now a Community Interest Company (CIC) which aims to help make it easier for women in music to thrive and to encourage 50:50 gender split on UK festival line-ups.

Industry research remains a key activity for Bain and The F-List’s other directors, including composer Anoushka Shankar (also the inaugural president), R&B singer Estée Blu and songwriting executive Sophie Daniels.

The team also plan to continue developing the directory and to provide womxn with professional development opportunities through partnerships with Skiddle and Independent Venue Week.

‘We want to help female and gender minority musicians start and sustain successful careers for as long as they wish. Whether through our directory, training or advocacy, we’re committed to driving meaningful, long-lasting change for British female talent across all music genres,’ says Bain.

When Alexandra Ampofo, Raven Twigg, Bre Antonia, Becky Stainton and Sian Pescow set up Women Connect in 2019. Their goal was simple: create safer, inclusive spaces, good fortune and equal opportunities for women and gender minority people in the creative industry.

The quintet take a holistic approach to their work. Creatives are encouraged to take care of their health and elevate their careers through events and initiatives run in partnership with charities and brands like Mind, Virgin EMI and Rimmel London.

donations and an industry-wide conversation through a live music event. They’ve also facilitated a much-needed discussion about the psychological impact of life as a creative, with the help of Sony Music UK and Help Musicians UK. With plans to develop a mentoring scheme and spotlight the next wave of talent this year, Women Connect shows no signs of stopping.

‘Gender inequality in music is still abundant, so in 2021 I hope to see an industry in which everyone, regardless of gender identity, is afforded opportunities from an unbiased standpoint,’ says Ampofo.

Not one to shy away from taboo topics, Women Connect teamed up with the UK’s leading period poverty charities to generate

M Magazine | 59

Photo: Joe Magowan

Women Connect

prsformusic.com/m-magazine