Credit where credit's due

Back in March, I posted a rant about how Arkiv Jazz, in its weekly marketing email, was promoting Women's History Month with a promotion almost exclusively featuring singers, at the expense of the ever-growing number of talented women instrumentalists and composers. 

In this week's email, they are promoting and album by the all female all-star group Artemis, centered around the veteran pianist Renee Rosnes and also featuring Unpopular Music favorites Anat Cohen on clarinet and drummer Allison Miller. The newsletter also features some of the band members' various solo albums and other projects. The musicians' gender is not referenced anywhere. 

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)