Women in Jazz: Behind the scenes

Women are a familiar enough sight in Finnish jazz at the organisational level, while female composers and musicians are rare

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By Harri Uusitorppa
     
      Women have composed, played, and sung jazz over its entire history of a hundred years and more, and yet the gender of a musician may still make the headlines in Finland in 2010.
      If the musician is a woman, that is.
      This was the case last week for a concert of the UMO Jazz Orchestra, with the theme ”Female Composers” - probably for the first time in the entire history of UMO (the letters stand for Uuden Musiikin Orkesteri, or ”New Music Orchestra”) since it was founded back in 1975.
     
Last Thursday’s concert, under the name Women in Jazz: Music from Female Composers, featured for example works by Finnish composer-pianist Iro Haarla and the Grammy-winning American composer-bandleader Maria Schneider, and the first airing of a new composition commissioned by UMO from Outi Tarkiainen, with Aili Ikonen taking the vocals.
      The lyrics to Tarkiainen's piece were based on the texts of Finnish poets Eeva-Liisa Manner and Sirkka Turkka, both of them women.
     
”The number of women who compose and play jazz is still small, but it might be a bit risky to go pushing the 'womanhood' card. I do not believe that gender as such makes jazz special, or any other music, for that matter", says Markéta ”Maati” Rehor, the Managing Director of the Finnish Jazz Federation.
      ”Besides", she goes on, "Laying stress on the gender does not sit well with the basic principles of equality. However, this concert idea is probably just a good effort to package a quality product in such a way that it would stand out from the crowd”, Rehor notes.
     
In one sector of jazz it is easy to distinguish women from the crowd: they are the éminence grise characters working away behind the scenes.
      The Managing Director of the Finnish Jazz Federation is a woman.
      The Managing Director of the largest jazz festival in Finland [Pori Jazz] is female.
      The Executive Director and one of the two producers of the best jazz festival in Finland [Tampere Jazz Happening] are both women.
      And the General Manager and two producers of Finland’s only full-time jazz orchestra are all females.
     
The list goes on. In addition, women lead local jazz associations and produce events in various parts of Finland, at least in Helsinki, Kolari, Mikkeli, Oulu, Raahe, Savonlinna, Taalintehdas (Kemiönsaari), Tornio, and Ylistaro.
      ”Yes, there are also a lot of active women in many other jazz associations, but I can't give you a watertight reason why. Maybe the men think that they have already done their bit. Or maybe there is no need to explain it, in the same way as men don't have to. Maybe we just like jazz”, says Maati Rehor, whose two predecessors at the FJF were also women.
     
One cannot in all honesty speak about any ”matriarchal dominance” that might ”threaten” the male hegemony in jazz.
      However, the ingredients are out there - at least if one thinks of the proportion of influential females working away behind the scenes relative to the number of women playing and composing jazz.
      ”When it comes to Nordic countries, this is an exceptional situation, let alone in the other European countries”, says Annamaija Saarela, who has managed both the Tampere Jazz Happening and UMO.
      She is now in her second year as the Artistic Director of Raahen Rantajatsit - the Jazz on the Beach Festival, held in late July in the west coast town of Raahe.
      ”I started work as the Executive Director of the Tampere Jazz Happening in 1999 after Aila Sauramo, and at that point I was probably one of the two women active in international jazz circles. Today the ratio is more or less the same: I am on the board of the large Europe Jazz Network and I'm the only woman there out of nine board members”, Saarela reports.
     
”I have no idea why we are forerunners in this very field, if that is how people want to see it. Maybe it is the education, or perhaps the situation reflects the role of women in the cultural administration. Or maybe it's just a coincidence after all. I would rather think of myself as a professional in the field who is not defined by gender one way or another”, notes Saarela.
      As a festival manager, Saarela knows very well that the gender of an artist may still have some impact on the audience, even though jazz as such is rather gender-neutral music.
      ”I do not believe, for instance, that anyone could say blindfold whether a piano solo is being played by a man or by a woman. But in a concert situation, womanhood seems to colour the interpretation even though the whole gender thing is not either/or. All of us may have features that can be described as masculine or feminine”, Saarela argues.
     
Last year, the profile of women was raised at the Pori Jazz Festival by introducing a ”varied serving of female jazz”, as performed by 18 musicians from 10 countries.
      Welsh chanteuse Duffy and "Queen of Neo-Soul" Erykah Badu were among last year's headlining acts.
      However, the project launched by Danish saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Pernille Bévort did not come off quite as planned, as someone had gone and named her all-female 8-piece band (put together specially for the festival) the "Copenhagen Jazzy Ladies". Ouch.
      ”It sounds like we would be pets - fluffy sweet puppies messing around innocently and senselessly”, commented Bévort acidly when she heard the strange name given to her orchestra.
      Furthermore, she did not buy the idea that the name ”Jazzy Ladies” could have been part of a crafty reverse ploy to gain positive publicity through a negative and demeaning image.
      Katja Leppäkoski, the Managing Director of the Pori Jazz Festival, says that she takes a ”rather ambivalent” stand on gender-themed events: yes, something should be done, but maybe in another way.
      ”I have an aversion to expressions like 'female jazz' just as I have to 'female networking'. Then again, I would rather be a member in networks with both women and men”, notes Leppäkoski, who returned from a quarterly meeting of jazz festival organisers in London just over a week ago.
      Leppäkoski, 38, who has a degree in musicology and a master’s degree in business administration, has been working as the Managing Director of Pori Jazz for six years.
      As it happens, she feels that her previous job as the big annual festival's production manager was a much tougher school.
      Convincing people that she was in charge of production matters as a 26-year-old woman was a constant challenge.
     
Girls do not turn their noses up at music institutes and conservatories in Finland, but one has to ask where are those women who play, compose, or arrange jazz or other rhythm music - though this is not meant as any disrespect to the singers out there.
      ”I have long been wondering about exactly the same question”, says drummer and pianist Jukkis Uotila, a professor in the Department of Jazz Music at Sibelius Academy, the only dedicated music university in Finland.
      ”Girls attend summer camps and music institutes, but at some stage they just drop out of colleges”, Uotila notes.
     
Uotila does not believe that the Sibelius Academy, the highest educator of jazz musicians, would represent an obstacle to the progress of women.
      ”A major part of the female applicants we get wish to become singers, even though only those who have already mastered a musical instrument are admitted. As far as I can remember, only three female instrumentalists have qualified at the Academy over the past twenty or so years. All of them were pianists. It would be fine to have some others, but there are not many applicants around”, Uotila says with some regret.
     
After touring the Nordic countries a lot, Professor Uotila says that the difference in Finland from the situation on the ground in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is ”unmistakable".
      ”The number of female instrumentalists in those countries is distinctly higher as well as more diverse: from saxophonists to trombonists, and it appears that trained female musicians also continue their careers more frequently than they do in Finland", Uotila notes.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.3.2010


See also:
  Grammy-winner Duffy to perform at Pori Jazz (19.2.2009)

Links:
  Finnish Jazz Federation
  Europe Jazz Network
  UMO Jazz Orchestra

HARRI UUSITORPPA / Helsingin Sanomat