Members and helpers of the South Gaoluo ritual assocation, 1995.

This group photo, taken on the final day of the New Year’s rituals, is deeply nostalgic for me—but it makes a stark reminder of the male dominance of public performing in China.

Women in public performance:
left, Herat, 1970s
right, spirit medium, Houshan 1993.

Gender is one of the main themes in ethnomusicology (as in all Walks of Life…)—see a very basic sample of readings under this post in my flamenco series. I introduced gender issues in expressive culture and ritual in China here, including shawm bands, opera troupes, itinerant bards, and spirit mediums. The old public/domestic division of labour serves as a simple framework.

Two astounding—yet male—performances:
left, Bernstein with the LSO, 1973
right, Kleiber with the Vienna Phil, 1991.

Much has been written on gender in the rarefied echelons of WAM: whereas female soloists have long been common, the male monopoly of conducting has only been broken in recent years. And as to the orchestral musicians…

Maybe we take this for granted in old videos, as I guess we did at the time, but now I’m shocked when I watch the amazing films of Bernstein’s Mahler. When he performed Mahler 2 with the LSO in 1973, the orchestra had only two women (the harpists, of course) among 102 players. By the time they recorded excerpts for Maestro around 2022, despite going to such lengths to achieve historical authenticity, they inexplicably used the players of today’s LSO, 45% of whom are women. The New York Phil admitted its first female section player in 1966; by 1992 it included 29 women.

The Berlin Phil began recruiting the occasional woman in 1982, but by 2003 there were only 14 female members out of 120 positions. The Vienna Phil made a token effort from 1997, but by 2013 still had only 6 women, and 17% by 2024. (For the disturbing Nazi histories of these two orchestras, click here.)

See also under Gender: a roundup.