This Is A Movement
By Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Caroline Davis and Aja Burrell Wood
What’s it like to be a woman in jazz?
This age-old question is often asked of musicians who happen to be female. But is it the right question? What about other questions that point to non-dominant groups of musicians experiencing unequal representation and opportunity in this industry? What about others who are marginalized as a result of race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and/or age?
The inequities that exist in this music are broad-ranging and we believe can be remedied by zooming out and considering the culture of the music as a whole. More helpful questions therefore might be:
Who has been left out of or behind in the dominant narrative of this music and why?
What does a transformation of culture that includes everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, class, race, etc., look like?
Melba Liston once said in an interview, “First you are a jazz musician, then you are black, then you are a female. I mean, it goes down the line like that. We’re like the bottom of the heap.” Melba’s words represent the common sentiments of many women in her generation and still ring true today. From sexism on the bandstand to being shuffled to the side of bookings and networking opportunities, women, non-binary, gender-nonconforming and other marginalized musicians in this industry face similar mistreatments, placing them also at the bottom of the heap.
To confront this reality, we have come together to present This Is A Movement: Towards Liberation, a Jazz & Gender convening.
This Is A Movement did not appear out of thin air. It arose from a feeling of necessity to offer space for listening, learning and exploration via panel discussions, questions, research presentations and smaller group exchanges and deep dives. Those of us responsible for initiating this gathering do not claim to own any initiatives or ideas, nor do we mean for it to be hierarchical in nature. Rather, this initiative has grown out of the work of numerous individuals’ ideas and labor, intellectual and otherwise.
We believe it is important to recognize that this is just as much about acknowledging the tireless work that has been done, as it is about continuing to challenge ourselves to live up to the legacy and labor of those who came before us. We’re standing on the shoulders of Black feminist thought leaders such as Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith and bell hooks; intersectional scholars such as Anna Julia Cooper and Kimberlé Crenshaw; activists and community organizers such as Sojourner Truth, Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer; and a great many under-celebrated and under-represented musicians.
Our initiative aims to create a space in which individuals, institutions and organizations interested in doing equity work can come together and start to build a more effective model for what this industry can be. Within our ever-expanding network the goal is to come together to exchange, imagine and create. Conversation and dialogue are both essential to making This Is A Movement long-lasting and impactful.
However, musicians cannot be solely responsible for this effort. The industry and current power structures include many more than the musicians. Curators, writers, editors, educational institutions, venues, festivals and others desiring equity have a stake in this endeavor as well. Our This Is A Movement gathering will therefore include and invite all of these individuals into one conversation space in an effort to level the playing field and have meaningful discussion.
We encourage our collective community to join us in co-creating what has the potential to be a fully realized, equitable present and future in service of this rich art form; a future in which the music can thrive and progress more than we ever thought was possible for generations to come.