Wednesday, July 21, 2010
National Skyline Hey Ladies: NPR Gets Serious About Women in the Music Industry, Features Nashville Artists
Posted by Sean Maloney on Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:15 AM
Since the project just kicked off — with an audio piece about the relevance of this year's floundering Lilith Fair, natch — it's hard to suss out an overall theme or really find anything to argue with. (That is, besides the people claiming that Lilith Fair is still relevant. It's not — ticket sales point that out pretty clearly.) Several hundred opinions, unedited and uncensored, is a lot of info to sift through, and it seems like they run the gamut. My personal experience — lacking in lady parts as I am — is skewed, because the most successful of all my musician friends happen to be ladies (and Those Darlins' Linwood, who can be quite ladylike sometimes ... but that's another story), and I've spent years volunteering with Southern Girls Rock N Roll Camp. So the notion of a lady-rocker that takes guff from, well, anyone is kind of a hard sell. I suppose I'm just lucky in that regard.
Nashville is well represented in the survey — folkie Sandra McCracken, my buddy Nikki Darlin from Those Darlins, Poni Silver from The Ettes and even former Bucket City-dweller, current Brooklynite and all-around awesome person Sharon Van Etton all make appearances. But I think the best quote that I read in the entire thing belongs to Madi Diaz:
The biggest difference might be that i can't naturally pee into a bottle while we're all in a tour van.
Which, fingers crossed, will hopefully be the only difference for the next generation of women musicians. Anyway, it's a great project and totally worth spending ... God, so far it's been about two hours and I've barely scratched the surface. Good stuff.
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