An investigation into the world of women’s music.
This paper attempts to define what is women’s music and examine its history, development and future. It discusses how women’s music is defined by its performers, by its audiences, by its content, by its style, and by its mode of transmission. Unless all of these elements are present, the result is not women’s music. It looks at how in general, women’s music is played by women, bought and listened to by women, addresses issues of concern to women, favors certain musical forms over others , is released by `women’s music labels and is played at women’s music festivals. It also discusses the influence of music on feminist groups who rely on music to help define them as a community and to give them a sense of purpose and on the lesbian movement.
Any investigation into the world of women’s music quickly reveals that there is no single vector along which a definition may be constructed, and this is no doubt one of the reasons that an easy definition tends to elude us. Women’s music is defined by its performers, by its audiences, by its content, by its style, and by its mode of transmission. Unless all of these elements are present, the result is not women’s music. Or it may fall into a category recognized within the women’s music community as not quite women’s music a tacit recognition of its qualification along some but not all essential vectors. These different aspects of women’s music will be discussed in turn. Each of them allows for some ambiguity of classification, but women’s music is only considered to be such if at least some of the categories are unambiguously met.`