Making a Choice
Last week, I was presented with an opportunity that I immediately struck down out of anxiety. Then I thought about how it could help my future, and maybe even someone else’s.
The way I see it, discussing the double-edged sword of “women in jazz” doesn’t dull either half of the blade. On one side, some find the distinct categorization of us as harmful at worst and at best, unproductive. Per my friend the other day, “I wish Artemis was seen as a great band, not a great all-female band.”
On the other side, you have women who claim the message behind the “label” to be their own, demanding to disregard regarding it as anything out of the ordinary, and instead to utilize it as a conversation starter about some inspiring, usually underrecognized musicians.
Though I completely validate a disliking for the term, I lean mostly towards the latter side of the argument, as I tend to find an extra layer of appreciation when I see a player whose music gets my limbs moving up and down, who is also a woman, because I can’t imagine she has gotten to where she is without dealing with certain unpleasant setbacks that still seem to remain depressingly inevitable. I had learned this the hard way myself.
In the October 1989 edition of the U.K. magazine Jazz Journal, Mary Lou Williams described a time when the other “boys” she was touring with “did a lot of awful things.” She said, “Normally, I try and be around like one of them, but we have some pretty mean people in the music now,” and continues with the best way to end the discussion: “If they were playing their instruments properly, they wouldn’t have time to be like that.”
Her use of the word “boys” is what came to mind last week when I was offered an opportunity that would bring me to play my bass more often. This word came to mind not because the opportunity is shared only among men, but because it’s also shared with one boy, per Mary Lou’s definition of the word.
Although this repulsed me at first and immediately struck my hopes of playing more music, I thought about my own heroes who have dealt with the thick of trying to remain poised in the face of uncomfortable scenarios: Billie Holiday, Lesley Gore, Mother Mary, and my best friends. I’m beyond blessed to have people in my corner, both men and women, who understand me and my circumstance. But if I’d like to be looked up to in the same way by a woman like me one day, I won’t have much to say if I don’t have stories to share, will I?
So here is one part of this one story: the boy once said to me, verbatim, “guys in this program aren’t going to date you because you aren’t good.”
While I see the harm in categorizing the music that we make as “women in jazz” music, when it comes to this topic in terms of socializing, I thank God I’ve never been alone. I don’t mind talking about it one bit.
