Don't Just Sing

not on sale at ArkivJazz

For not the first time, I received an email promoting ArkivJazz' celebration of Women's History Month which only promotes recordings by singers. Yes, these are some of the finest ever singers, and representatives of the art form (Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Billie Holliday, Nina Simone)¹, but this singular focus overlooks the other roles women have played in jazz over the years. It's like having a women's career day and only featuring nurses and secretaries. And in 2020, this is totally inexcusable.

[Having now clicked through to the larger offer after writing what follows, I see that there are some non-singers included in the promotion, but only slightly less than one out of three, including a few of those listed below, but my main argument still stands.] 

The first two obvious choices are Mary Lou Williams and Carla Bley (who even has an excellent new release out.) Pianist Kris Davis, guitarist Mary Halvorsen, and clarinetist Anat Cohen are all widely considered current top players on their respective instruments, and fine composers as well. Other women non-singers I've featured on the webcast are Alice Coltrane, Allison Miller, Geri Allen, Co Streiff, Irène Schweizer, Dorothy Ashby, Eve Risser, Ingrid Laubrock, Jane Ira Bloom, Marilyn Crispell, Myra Melford, Linda May Han Oh, Tomeka Reed. and Sharon Freeman. Others who don't just sing are Annette Peacock, Karin Krog, and, of course, Nina Simone. While my tastes skew away from the conventional, other more mainstream artists include the pianist Helen Sung, saxophonists Grace Kelley and Mindy Abair, and the composer-bandleader Maria Schneider. I'm leaving out many deserving others. (For more on this, on Mixcloud, Magda Brand has an excellent nine part series featuring female jazz composers. (Start here, for example)


Please believe me, I'm not claiming total wokeness here. That list above is mostly complete from almost six years of weekly programs. I do what I can. I feature what happens to strike me as interesting, regardless of [fill in the blank.] I'd like to think my biases merely reflect the biases of my sources. Am I attracted to Thelonious Monk's or Bill Frisell's music because we're all men? Who can say? Not me, for sure.

On WFMU the other day, DJ Trouble remarked on the disproportionately low percentage women make up of the music business (of course I've forgotten the actual number, I want to say 10%, but it was well below 50.) Jazz has notoriously been a man's man's world for its entire history, it will take decades more for it to catch up.

I've worked in music retail myself, and I know there are likely valid business reasons for why some artists and labels are promoted rather than others, but still, people and institutions (and that includes online jazz record stores) who have the means to do so should step up, especially when trying to capitalize on an idea such as Women's History Month

¹however, I don't consider Norah Jones to be a jazz singer at all, but that's an argument for another day