Music & Gender

                I honestly hadn’t thought about gender expectations in music before. I don’t know if I see expectations in gender in music, but I do see gender norms. Maybe those are the same things, I’m not completely certain. Like I don’t see many females in rock music. And I don’t really see a lot of males in pop music, at least now a days.

                I think in dealing with sound equipment, it is mostly males. But I’ve never seen sound equipment or even the instruments being set up before so I really couldn’t say one way or the other. I couldn’t say one way or the other in regard to conducting because I don’t go to the orchestra of any kind. Teaching in general seems to be a more female dominated area while managing seems to be more male dominated. I don’t think that most men have the patience to teach.

                I don’t know of any girls that play the drums. Never paid attention to the gender of the drummer in any of the bands that I listen to. Mainly because I don’t care about the gender of the drummer, if they are good at what they do.               

                I kind of think that genders are supposed to listen to their own gender. At least that is what I think society tells us by one gender being more in one genre of music than the others. I don’t think that that has stopped anyone from listening to what they want to listen to.

                I would say that I primarily listen to two types of music: rock and pop. I don’t think that the media treats the genders differently. But then again, I don’t actively read or listen to any type of news media. Though now that I think about it, female rockstars don’t really get their music pushed into the rock community. Case in point would be Renee Phoenix of Fit for Rivals. If not for iTunes suggesting that I might like the band, I probably never would have even heard of them. I’ve been listening to them since Fit for Rivals CD came out, but I’ve never been able to go to a concert of theirs. Which is a real shame because I really like that band.

I know that there are several males in pop music, mostly male groups, but I only listen to about two of them. The first males in pop music that I ever heard was ‘NSYNC. They were my favorite band at the time, and I was so excited to get the CD Celebrity on the day it came out. It saddened me when they stopped making music together. I think they were the first band I ever saw perform in concert at the BI-LO Center. It will always be the BI-LO Center to me because it didn’t get bought out by Bon Secours until much later in my life. The only other male in pop music that I listen to is Adam Lambert. I didn’t see him on the music competition show that he was on, but I found him after his first CD came out.