Bjork's view of women in the music industry (Bjork vs Kanye)

[Tusk]

Note from Miguel: This thread was split from an Ole-Haley thread.

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Patton Oswalt ,the comedian/actor, I follow retweeted this article which I forwarded to Haley, highlighting the part about Bjork's view of women in the industry and the perception of women in the industry

The Invisible Woman, A conversation with Bjork

Bjork on the media having basically no concept of a female auteur

Vespertine, the album Bjork refers to that took 3 years #microbeats

Yeezus, Kanye West's last album (explicit lyrics)

[Miguel]

I don't think people questioned whether she created the beats. They just assumed the people she brought in who were known for doing beats did the beats.

Billboard, 2001:

According to Bjork, the bulk of "Vespertine" was recorded not in a studio but on her laptop computer -- which explains its strangely homespun, diary-like air. Also, Bjork confirms that most of the album's beats aren't from drum machines but from objects found around the house, "like a deck of playing cards." The set's first single, "Hidden Place," even features what she terms "poker-style card-shuffling."

Wikipedia:

Matmos gained notoriety for their use of samples including "freshly cut hair" and "the amplified neural activity of crayfish" on their first album[3] and "recorded the snips, clicks, snaps, and squelches of various surgical procedures, then nipped and tucked them into seven remarkably accessible, melodic pieces of experimental techno" for their album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure.[4]

[Tusk]

Her point was, Kanye did the same thing, brought in people to 'do the beats' yet he gets the credit whilst spending minimum time for 'their beats', while she spent 3 years on 80% of the album, brought the 'beats' people in at the end, and didn't get the credit

[Miguel]

I got her point. I gave an explanation as to why she might not have received more credit aside from her being female. Another is that Kanye, before he became famous in his own right, appears to have been known for laying beats for others.

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Edit: She offers her own reason at the end of that article:

It’s a lot of what people see. During a show, because there are people onstage doing the other bits, I’m just a singer. For example, I asked Matmos to play all the beats for the Vespertine tour, so maybe that’s kind of understandable that people think they made them. So maybe it’s not all sexist evil. [laughs]

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I'm not sure how much credit Kanye was given for the beats on his last album, as it seems well-known he had help.

Pitchfork:

Kanye West is one of the very few artists out there who can generate headlines with his album's credits. While the liners to Yeezus don't feature quite as many big names as previous Kanye productions, they're still extensive, filled with longtime collaborators and upstart young producers alike.

...Read on for stories about what it means to be summoned by Kanye West, Yeezus' sculpture-like recording process, how the experience very nearly killed one collaborator, "oh shit!" moments in the studio, and how this crew managed to avoid obviousness at every turn.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/9...-sessions/

[buzzenator]

As Swedes we're not paranoid...even though everyone is out to get us.

With a last name of Bjork(lund)...sales people love to ask me if they can call me Dave. I try to educate them with the standard...if you see a "j" in the name it is pronounced like a "y". Then some examples: Bjorn Borg (anyone under 40 probably won't know this famous tennis player from Sweden), Bjork, Bjorn Ulvaeus (ABBA), etc.

So us Swedes take in on the pronunciation chin...even the video SMYM published my name in the credits as Bjorklunk.

It's ok...I've learned that whatever credit we get takes 5 times as much work as the standard English named people get on the first try...not to mention what Swedish women have to endure.

[Tusk]

I think Bjork is from Iceland?

Anyway... Speaking of Swedes and pronunciation of their names

Fun Fact, I own 2 Agnetha Faltskog's (That's "An-yeta", not Ag-ne-tha") Swedish language albums

I will always have a fondness for the ladies of Sweden as they are represented by my first crush from ABBA

My favorite, and one of her more well known solo albums was Elva kvinnor i ett hus

As a best selling hit writer at 18, Agnetha had number 1 hits in Sweden's charts before she joined ABBA. Even with those credentials , after joining ABBA she had song writing credits on just one song, Disillusion, but mostly sang songs written by her male counterparts, Ulvaeus and Andersen, who were prolific songwriters themselves, heavily influenced by Lennon, McCartney and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. It's probably partially because she was the weakest of the 4 w/ the English language that her song writing talent wasn't explored for ABBA (plus her songs were more traditional Swedish, while ABBA wanted a world wide, pop, reach) but I'm sure that being a woman as a song writer didn't put her in a position to do so, especially compared to the hit writing machine of Ulvaeus/Andersen

She did put out solo work during and after ABBA, but nothing for the group itself

[30CamdenSquare]

I think Bjork is from Iceland?

She is from Iceland. I found a graphic about relationships between different European languages that I thought you guys might find interesting. Looks like Swedish & Icelandic are closely related.

[Miguel]

More Portuguese speakers than I would have imagined.

There are about 11 million people in Portugal. Most Portuguese speakers are in Brazil.

Brazilian Portugueseis a set of dialects of the Portuguese language used mostly in Brazil. It is spoken by virtually all of the 200 million inhabitants of Brazil

[mercfan3]

Yea, a lot of people live in Brazil.

I think it's likely Bjork is right in her assessment. Every corner of the music industry (most industries) are sexist..and in more ways than I can count.

Some of it's on the way women are socialized. I've got a big Michelle Chamuel thread, and she's had some interesting things to say on that topic. She's talked about how she had to learn how to communicate with the men in her band (she was in a band with 6 guys at one point, eventually it went down to 5..but...she was essentially working with all men musically.) And she had to learn how to speak up for herself.

But she's also talked about how very few women are involved in other aspects of creating music than just singing and songwriting and to an extent playing instruments. She mentioned that she can count on one hand the amount of female producers she was aware of.

And you just have to analyze why that is. Why don't women work on beats and production and other elements of music? And a lot of that is for the same reason that women aren't involved in STEM fields.

And I think Bjork's right, that women don't get nearly enough credit for what they do musically. Ever see Rolling Stone rank "The greatest singers" or "greatest musicians.." Sure..they love Aretha..and she'll be top 5. But typically, you'll get less than 10 women..out of 100.

Think about what sort of musical genres are considered quality music. Classic/Cock rock...(where Janis Joplin is pretty much the only female representative) tends to be at the top of the critics list...while pop and rap (made up of mostly women and minorities) tend to be at the bottom. To go even further, in more neutral genres (say..R&B) white men tend to get more credibility than women and minorities. (For example, how in the world is Justin Timberlake considered more of an icon than Usher. Both have been around for 20 years. In the R&B genre, Usher has sold more albums. And quite frankly, he's a better singer and dancer. But that's just one example of many..)

Now, there's a lot of crappy pop and rap..but there's a lot of crappy rock too. I'm just saying, I don't think it's a coincidence as to where the credit goes.

[My Alter Ego]

And I think Bjork's right, that women don't get nearly enough credit for what they do musically. ..... Think about what sort of musical genres are considered quality music.

LOL -- Mercfan, you and I have very different ideas of what we consider "quality music", but sexism still exists in the music world in likely subtle and very overt ways, I suspect. I agree that women don't get enough credit for their contributions, but before they can receive credit, there needs to be acceptance. And while I'd say there is more acceptance of women involved with music in the popular/rock vein, do you think that exists in classical or jazz????

Oh yes, women can sing, or play certain instruments such as piano, flute, violin, harp. Those are deemed "feminine" enough, although I suspect that the exceptional women violinists (Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg and Hilary Hahn come to mind) had a major uphill climb to gain acceptance, much less respect.

And, yes, major strides have been made (thank you, Irvin Mayfield for having a woman in your NOJO trombone section, and yes, it's been noticed!), but it's still the exception to see a woman playing a trombone, trumpet, stand up bass, etc. and something we note as different, rather than the norm. It's the 21st century. Why does this still exist?