International Women’s Day 2018

The theme for International Women’s Day in 2018 is #PressforProgress. Here at Making Waves, we think 13+ hours of music by mostly unpublished Australian composers who happen to be women is relatively progressive. We hope you enjoy this collection, whether you stream intensively or bookmark it to savour in stages.

However, this is ongoing work: the more composers whose music we get to know, the wider our networks reach and the more new faces we discover. We see you out there who haven’t gotten around to sending us a track or two! Today we especially encourage women and gender diverse composers to get in touch and submit your recordings to the Making Waves curation pool. We have tried to make the criteria as open as possible with no restrictions on gender or age, and as wide a definition of “Australian” as possible, plus occasional special editions from off-shore locations (hint: there’s another international playlist coming soon!!).

What are some ways composers and musicians “pressing for progress” in terms of gender?

The Women in Sound Women on Sound reading list is a great starting point for wider reading on and by women working in sound with some useful data-driven search tools. We are excited to watch how this evolves as more sources are added.

Music Theory Examples By Women is an excellent resource for music educators looking to diversify their notated teaching materials. The website also links to some sizeable playlists on Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Throwback to GRID (Gender Research in Darmstart), Feminist Activism during the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, 2016, and especially Ashley Fure’s reflections.

If you want to crunch the numbers closer to home on Australian content programmed by the Major Performing Arts Organisations, including attention to gender representation, catch Ian Whitney’s Australian Content in 2018, now an annual blogging tradition.

YOUTUBE

The ‘playlist’ button will bring up a track listing which you can use to skip back and forth between the works. If you want to check out the playlist and works in more detail, there is a button at the bottom right of the picture taking you directly through to YouTube. Please be mindful that this is over an hour worth of video, and it will chew the data! If you were going to tune in on a mobile device without a large data allowance, please consider listening in over wi-fi instead.

BANDCAMP

Click the play button to stream audio, or the album title, ‘buy’ and/or ‘share’ links to proceed through to the Bandcamp page listing full album and recording details.

VIMEO

Click on the videos above to view, share and like each video over at the Vimeo platform, and follow composers and channels. You can also hear these videos together as a Vimeo Album.

Spotify

Click through to discover the album that tracks are from, or find more recordings from the composers and performers. Please note: Spotify requires and account to listen in – there is a free tier and a premium tier but you might need to create a login and password, or use your Facebook details.