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I have just come back from a wonderful experience singing with
trombonist Gail Brand & a Belgian pianist Marjolaine Charbin that Gail
& I had never met before. We did two gigs - the first one was sheer magic,
a multiplicity of twists & turns. There was a free flow of different &
sometimes simultaneously different dynamics a kind of musical multi
orgasmic multi- tasking. A singer called Martha in the audience said
listening to us as women was different to listening to men, not better,
different.
The second gig was harder because of a grim venue literally divided
in two by a concrete wall. The music was still strong but constructed
more of struggle rather than trust & it was great to be able to share our
feelings about the challenging personal processes we'd just gone
through; less analytical than some discussions I've had or read about the
music but no less insightful & certainly less divisive.
There is a deliriously divine combination of sensitivity & anarchic
wildness I experience with women when we let ourselves be fearless & let
go of needing to prove ourselves in a still predominantly male music
scene. Is it a socialised ability to surrender to flow & wander & meander
that is harder for men who are maybe more socialised to stay in control?
I cannot generalise too much about gender & music though
because there are men who can be possessed by the music & women
who put up barriers, but in my experience those multidimensional
moods that I love so much in free improvisation are something I
associate most with all the wonderful women I work with. Even in bands
where we play tunes, there is a particular dynamic in rehearsals that
makes me feel easier in my skin when I work with women or at least with
men that love & respect women's presence & musicianship.
There was one group of male musicians however where I found a
similar openness & freshness; the improvisers I met in the former DDR
(East Germany). They hadn't been overdosed with the Western stimuli
that had made many of our male artists jaded & cynical & striving to
come up with ever cleverer concepts. Although due to different
circumstances, the East German musicians, like women, had not been a
major part of the Western music scene, so shared a similar sense of
adventure & exploring new territory that can come from being excluded.
When I heard guitarist Joe Sachse & trombonist Hanes Bauer for the
first time I felt like I was enjoying a thriller. I was on the edge of my seat.
It was not stylistic, it could go anywhere.
I've noticed that certain male musicians & some of the female
musicians who associate with them often identify themselves with one