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View ProfilesPublished March 8, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
Humanity has long associated the creation of music with female figures, from the muses of Greek mythology to the Yoruba fertility goddess Oshun, who brought song and dance to the people.
Yet in modern times, women are underrepresented in the music business, both as performers and behind the scenes. A recent study funded by Spotify and conducted by the University of Southern California Annenberg's Inclusion Initiative found that, from 2012 through 2022, only 22.3 percent of artists on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Chart were female. Offstage, women accounted for just 12.8 percent of songwriters and 2.8 percent of producers.
Among sound engineers, lighting technicians, booking agents and others who work alongside musicians, the numbers are overwhelmingly tipped toward the male side, as well. The Audio Engineering Society reported that, in 2016, only 7 percent of its members were female.
"When you think about it, men hold so many of those kinds of jobs," said Erin Scaggs, the creative director of the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance and assistant manager of that town's Stone Church, a restored 19th-century church that's now a music venue. "In that sense, so much of the music you hear and see live has been shaped by men."
Scaggs is doing her part to change that, with help from the Vermont Women's Fund and Burlington's Foam Brewers. Throughout March — Women's History Month — the Stone Church is hosting GRRRLS to the Front, a performance and workshop series designed to honor and amplify the presence of women in the music industry. Scaggs has booked a month of predominantly female or female-fronted acts, including Weakened Friends of Portland, Maine; Hudson Valley, N.Y., reggae outfit the Big Takeover; and Burlington's own Kat Wright.
And the spotlight won't be solely on the stage. Each Tuesday in March, Stone Church sound techs will teach women the production side of live music in four free workshops called GRRRLS in the Booth.
"I am absurdly excited for this part," Scaggs enthused. "We've already got 35 women enrolled to attend."
This isn't the first GRRRLS to the Front event at the Stone Church, but in previous years it was a single-day affair, usually with a few local acts and featured speakers. Scaggs and Stone Church owner Robin Johnson envisioned this year's event as a monthlong one that would showcase women performers and raise money for the Women's Freedom Center and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. They knew they were taking on a significant endeavor, Scaggs said, more involved than anything they had tried with the club since it opened in 2016.
"There are times to let things unfold organically," she said. "But I have to admit that it felt super exhilarating to commit to the scale of this project and then just collectively muscle our way through to making it happen."
Finding the right partners was a prerequisite for "making it happen." Scaggs handles the club's social media, and when she saw the Vermont Women's Fund's Instagram posts about creating economic opportunities for women, she knew she had found the right fit.
"I was so excited when Erin reached out," said Meg Smith, director of the Vermont Women's Fund, which was established in 1994 as a component fund of the Vermont Community Foundation. "The real hook for us were the workshops. Our work centers around women's economic opportunity and trying to get women into fields they are historically underrepresented in. So this was really a no-brainer."
Smith recalled the first time she saw a woman onstage playing guitar. She was moved, she said. And then she thought: Who's running the lights? Who's on the soundboard? If a woman could be onstage, could she be in charge of the production, too?
"You never see yourself in that role unless you have the kind of exposure that lets you see women out there doing the work," Smith said. "So we're trying to address that."
Sasha Wiseman can attest to the lack of representation of women in music production. The Brattleboro resident runs communications and handles grant writing for Epsilon Spires, another restored church-turned-arts venue less than a block from the Stone Church. She's also a former sound engineer who worked at AS220 in Providence, R.I.
"I was definitely the only female sound engineer at the venue where I was working," Wiseman recounted in a phone call. "It's a very dude-heavy, gear-orientated field. I mean, even the term 'sound guy' is so common because it's all guys."
Wiseman recalled that bands would often approach her as she stood by the sound mixer and ask her "where the sound guy was." She would just shrug and laugh, often replying, "I'm the sound, uh, guy, I guess."
In her time as a sound engineer, Wiseman found she had to work extra hard to earn the trust of male musicians.
"Bands are already a little mistrusting of sound people, because they have their own preconceived notion of how they should sound," Wiseman said. "So there's a negotiation that has to play [out], a sort of customer-service element to it all that can be a little intimidating if you're a woman dealing with predominantly male bands."
Wiseman plans to attend the GRRRLS to the Front workshops, and she said she's excited about the opportunity for women to learn these skills in a supportive atmosphere. After three weeks of hands-on training at the workshops, participants will have a sort of "final exam" — a chance to run sound at a live show at the Stone Church.
"It's so important to create an environment where learning won't be a stressful experience," Wiseman said.
Another underwriter of the event is Foam Brewers, which will host a satellite GRRRLS to the Front event on March 29. Scaggs contacted Foam Brewers general manager Dani Casey after the latter posted an Instagram story about an internal club at the brewery called Women of Foam, which was brewing a limited-edition beer to raise funds for abortion access. By the end of Scaggs and Casey's conversation, Foam had committed to supporting GRRRLS to the Front financially, as well as to brewing two new beers to be tapped at the Stone Church in March.
Casey and some of her fellow Women of Foam members plan to make it down to Brattleboro for some of the Stone Church shows. She said it was all too easy to see the parallels between her own profession and the music industry because men traditionally have dominated both.
"It's changing now, with so many small breweries, but when I first got into this industry, it was very much a good ol' boys club," she said. "I do think the culture change is happening in brewing, especially [in] the last decade or so. I'd love to see that happen in music, as well."
Foam will participate in a March 23 "business hop," taking attendees to downtown Brattleboro's women-owned establishments. A workshop detailing how women entrepreneurs can apply for micro loans and a networking reception hosted by the Vermont Women's Fund will follow.
"I knew from what I read online that there was ample badassery from the Women of Foam," Scaggs said. "But it's been so gratifying to observe how aligned our vision and values are."
GRRRLS to the Front is a realization of Scaggs' longtime dream of presenting a month of women artists on the stage while offering a path for other women to work behind the scenes.
"Representation matters," she said. "It's as simple as that. It's important for female artists to feel valued and seen. It's important for the audience to see women are a vital part of live music. And if you see a woman onstage, in a sound booth or in an email chain booking bands ... chances are, she's worked really, really hard to get there."
The original print version of this article was headlined "The Future (of Rock) Is Female | Monthlong fest at Brattleboro's Stone Church promotes women in music"
Tags: Music Feature, GRRRLS to the Front, Downtown Brattleboro Alliance, Vermont Women's Fund, Foam Brewers, Stone Church
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