Girls Write Nashville, a nonprofit mentorship in the Music City, is teaming up with young girls to teach them about music and the industry. NBC’s Morgan Radford has this week’s Sunday Closer.
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Meet The Young Women In Nashville Tackling Life Through Music | Sunday TODAY
It's been a great season for the nonprofit songwriting mentorship program Girls Write Nashville. On July 6, the organization wrapped up its third season of programming with a release party at Drkmttr for the album recorded by the young women who participated (along with a topflight band of Nashville pro musicians). A few weeks earlier, the group received a $50,000 grant from newspaper publisher Gannett. (The grant is part of the same program through which Launch Pad recently received $100,000, and one major use of that money will be helping to expand Girls Write's after-school programming.) And if you happened to be watching the Sunday edition of Today, you also saw Girls Write getting some much-deserved airtime.
In the clip, reporter Morgan Radford stops by the studio while the girls are working on the album. After she speaks with one of the students about the genesis of her song, Radford sits down with program founders Jen Starsinic and Georgia English to talk about the importance of the program. Starsinic homes in on the need to make space for yourself, as she says: "My experience in the music industry is, if I’m not willing to go in and really fight for my space and fight for my voice, then it will get shouted over."
If you've worked around the music business at all, you'll probably have plenty of similar anecdotal evidence. And there's data to back it up. The clip cites the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which published a report on women working in the recording industry earlier this year. Among the findings: Of all the professionals the AII counted, women only make up 21.7 percent of artists, 12.3 percent of songwriters and 2.1 percent of producers. That last number is significantly lower than a rough estimate of 5 percent (of audio engineers and producers combined) that sparked Steve Haruch's 2010 Scene cover story.
Above, check out the conversation. Below, stream the finished album from Girls Write Nashville's third season. Click through to check out other seasons' recordings and buy a copy to support the organization, and visit Girls Write's website to learn about other ways you can help.
