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Friday, October 26, 2018
ASCAP hosts all-female songwriting camp to improve diversity
New Pittsburgh Courier: In a spacious recording studio in Nashville, two singer-songwriters, Priscilla Renea and Jillian Jacqueline, were working through a song idea, trading suggestions for lyrics and melody on the theme of resurrection.
I think that the fact that ASCAP, now run by a woman, would do the work to bring together women within the songwriting and recording industry in order to improve the gross under-representation within the industry, is phenomenal. It absolutely encourages women already in the industry to collaborate with one another and build a network of support for each other's work. However, I do wonder if this is doing little to seek out new talent and encourage women to consider careers within the songwriting and recording industry. This has been a topic of discussion within our Stage Management Seminar class for awhile now, and it seems that a large part of the problem is that young people don't see themselves represented in certain industries, and so don't even know that it is something for them to consider. While this is a great start to supporting the work and collaboration of female songwriters, producers, and recording artists, an even better way of cultivating new, female, talent would be to open this workshop up to women across the disciplines, and see what outside perspective could do for the song and for the people themselves. Otherwise, this could almost sound like just a way for one artist to have others do her creative work for her.
I think what drew me in the most about this article was the association between a diversity initiative and a rights organization. I think by this point most of the music industry is aware of the lack of diversity and gender equality. Even in the less visible positions, like songwriting. But I would have expected that a lot of those diversity initiatives would come from producing organizations, or artist’s personal estates. It was surprising to me that ASCAP got involved, although I’m happy they did. I think it was also really good that they were able to bring in successful mentors for this workshop. Hearing from other women who’ve made it in the music business is not only educational, but encouraging. The more parts of the process that can encourage women and other diverse populations to become a part of the industry, the better. It’s great that in what some would consider a music capital of the country, these resources are available. I hope that in the future there are more events similar to this one.
This is interesting to me, because for some reason I’ve always thought that there were more female artists out there than male. It seems like the big female pop stars are so much bigger than everyone else, so it skews the view and makes it look like music is female dominated. It was interesting to read these statistics and hear about these women, because it certainly sheds new light on the situation in the industry. Similar to the film industry, what’s visible isn’t even a fraction of everything that goes into it, and we need to try to give those people the credit they deserve and bring awareness to the lack of diversity. I think that this songwriting camp is really good for that, given the high profile of a lot of the women involved, and the amazing space it’s providing to get these women heard and give them connections to start becoming successful in the industry. I hope that in the future these events can expand to include workshops for people from the LGBT and POC communities to really champion diversity and bring it into the community.
3 comments:
I think that the fact that ASCAP, now run by a woman, would do the work to bring together women within the songwriting and recording industry in order to improve the gross under-representation within the industry, is phenomenal. It absolutely encourages women already in the industry to collaborate with one another and build a network of support for each other's work. However, I do wonder if this is doing little to seek out new talent and encourage women to consider careers within the songwriting and recording industry. This has been a topic of discussion within our Stage Management Seminar class for awhile now, and it seems that a large part of the problem is that young people don't see themselves represented in certain industries, and so don't even know that it is something for them to consider. While this is a great start to supporting the work and collaboration of female songwriters, producers, and recording artists, an even better way of cultivating new, female, talent would be to open this workshop up to women across the disciplines, and see what outside perspective could do for the song and for the people themselves. Otherwise, this could almost sound like just a way for one artist to have others do her creative work for her.
I think what drew me in the most about this article was the association between a diversity initiative and a rights organization. I think by this point most of the music industry is aware of the lack of diversity and gender equality. Even in the less visible positions, like songwriting. But I would have expected that a lot of those diversity initiatives would come from producing organizations, or artist’s personal estates. It was surprising to me that ASCAP got involved, although I’m happy they did. I think it was also really good that they were able to bring in successful mentors for this workshop. Hearing from other women who’ve made it in the music business is not only educational, but encouraging. The more parts of the process that can encourage women and other diverse populations to become a part of the industry, the better. It’s great that in what some would consider a music capital of the country, these resources are available. I hope that in the future there are more events similar to this one.
This is interesting to me, because for some reason I’ve always thought that there were more female artists out there than male. It seems like the big female pop stars are so much bigger than everyone else, so it skews the view and makes it look like music is female dominated. It was interesting to read these statistics and hear about these women, because it certainly sheds new light on the situation in the industry. Similar to the film industry, what’s visible isn’t even a fraction of everything that goes into it, and we need to try to give those people the credit they deserve and bring awareness to the lack of diversity. I think that this songwriting camp is really good for that, given the high profile of a lot of the women involved, and the amazing space it’s providing to get these women heard and give them connections to start becoming successful in the industry. I hope that in the future these events can expand to include workshops for people from the LGBT and POC communities to really champion diversity and bring it into the community.
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