Women in Music Blog

Here's a happy Friday goodie from NPR-- their list of the top 150 albums created by women popular music artists: http://www.npr.org/2017/07/24/ 538387823/turning-the-tables- 150-greatest-albums-made-by- women As their site says, " This list, of the greatest albums made by women between 1964 and the present, is an intervention, a remedy, a correction of the historical record and hopefully  the start of a new conversation .   Compiled by nearly 50 women from across NPR and the public radio system and produced in partnership with Lincoln Center, it rethinks popular music to put women at the center" Atta girl.   --  Pamela Bristah

Today a good deal of political talk has been focusing around transgenderism and whether or not society should embrace or shun individuals who are transgendered. While this blog is not a place for political commentary, when I saw this article I immediately thought it appropriate to post.  This is an article about a woman musician, so I thought I'd include it here for our perusal, since her contributions to music have been significant and that very definitely fits with our mission to highlight noteworthy women in music.   http://www.wfmt.com/2016/11/17/transgender-composer-wendy-carlos-changed-music-forever/

Today it is time to introduce the Women in Music Interest Group followers to ArtsJournal.com, in case you are unaware of it.  It is an extremely entertaining facebook comunity journal that focuses, as it's name suggests, on the arts. For those of us who are involved in librarianship for art, dance, and theater as well as music, knowing about this journal can really be enlightening for all our fields of interest.  Every day something wonderful comes into my facebook feed from this journal.   A very interesting women-in-music related article today called " Why Is It So Hard For New Women Musicians To Hit It Big?  "  made an impression on me, so I thought I would highlight it here on the blog as well as identifying where I found the article initially.  What do you think, IS there a glass ceiling?  Please enjoy!   https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/21/pops-glass-ceiling-why-new-female-stars-cant-break-through

This is a reposting of a url from the American Musicological Society, but I thought it would be something really relevant to our discussion topics here in the Women in Music Interest Group of the Music Library Association.  Why?  It addresses ways that people gather information for course creation, a place where we librarians with an interest in promoting the idea that there WERE and ARE very important women in the vast and varied history of music and that truly knowing about the history of music means discovering the little known as well as absorbing information about the cannonical composers of musical history.   I thought some of these ideas were superb and it seemed we might be able to start a conversation about even more variations of ways to make information about women in music more available. http://musicologynow.ams-net.org/2017/07/six-easy-ways-to-immediately-address.html