Posted March 20th 2019
International Women’s History Month
And here we are again, in this time of the year when it’s too cold to enjoy the spring and too late to enjoy the winter. But how does March present in music and events scene? Let Melting Vinyl tell you how it looks from our point of view!
From of all late Happy International Women’s Day everyone and not so late Happy International Women’s History month! We at Melting Vinyl have “women’s day” most of the days in the year, having our office and shows constantly filled up with amazing ladies. For this occasion, we prepared a Spotify playlist including some of the female artists we’ve booked in the past, and those from upcoming shows as well. Please enjoy the playlist below.
This time of the year is also good to bring up some news and facts about females in the music industry. Remember how in 2017 we had 45 UK festivals pledge to achieve 50-50 gender balance by 2020? A BBC News (2018) analysis of 756 acts advertised on the posters of nine biggest UK festivals found 77% were all male. Just 13% of acts advertised on posters online were all female – that’s 97 bands, singers and DJs – and another six bands were majority female. Overall, less than a quarter of festivals’ biggest acts featured any women at all. We are proud to say that in the past three years of Lewes Psych Fest organized by Melting Vinyl, over 48% of the artists featured women in their line-up, that including headlining acts as well.
Last but not least, a kindly reminder to all us listeners, but music promoters as well – “Female Fronted in NOT a Genre!”. Female-fronted: a term used to lump together disparate bands based on the presence of a female vocalist or front person. Male-fronted: a term rarely – if ever – used, because male musicians are seen as the default. The use of the term “female-fronted” has become just as controversial in music as other more overtly sexist outlooks and behaviours, such as believing women don’t have a place on stage with the guys or the isolation of those who are not white straight cisgender men. The majority of female musicians constantly deal with sexism in the scene, including being tokenised, excluded, and seen as not good enough to play alongside their male counterparts (New Noise, 2018). We are lucky enough to live in a town full of female safe spaces and female shows, but let’s all remember most important – to support artists because they are great musicians, not because of their gender. After all, I think we can all agree that separation only leads to separation, not equality.
Last, but not least, let me invite you to some of our upcoming shows, with a cheeky Spotify playlist 😉