A Decade Under the Influence.

The year is almost over and it seems like every music blog, website, and magazine I look at is sizing up the last ten years' worth of music. It's to the point where I've been wondering if I should be writing a daily post on the best songs and artists of the decade.

But I'm not inclined to look back, or to look at these best of lists being compiled by the informative and provocative NPR, the obnoxious Pitchfork, and dinosaur bones like Rolling Stone and Spin. There are three main reasons for this.

1. None of the bands I really care about at this particular moment will be mentioned.

2. The journalism itself will be disappointingly masculinist.

3. The lack of attention to women artists will be infuriating.

The second issue is probably the hardest one for me to deal with, and also the one that requires a bit of explanation. The masculine/male-oriented standard for most writing is objectivity. The men who run our society pretend to not have agendas -- i.e., not be 'subjective' -- in order to obscure their privilege and discredit varying view points from marginalized groups.

I feel like I see this constantly in literature on music. So much of music criticism seems focused on comparisons, name-dropping, and the general reification of the rock hierarchy. The goal is to declare whether something is 'good' or bad, rather than to look at what music means or says about our time and place.

Which doesn't make sense to me, because people don't need music critics to tell them what music is 'good' or bad or worth listening to. What we need is well-read and well-listened individuals to help us understand the context of the music we listen to, i.e., how and where it was produced, what earlier work influenced, what the artist hoped to accomplish, and the work's place in culture.

Oddly enough, I've been trying to approach writing about music in this way for about the last ten years. Towards the end of my time in high school, my favorite teacher and conductor, Mr. Mora, asked me if I knew what I wanted to do when I finished college. I told him, "I was thinking about being a music critic. But the thing is, I don't want to have to put musicians down or write about music I don't like, I don't want to be some snob, I just like writing about music. I like describing it, and I like explaining it."

Mr. Mora was my conductor and teacher, but he was also my equivalent of the Helpful Record Store Guy. He loved popular and classical music, and could discuss both with ease and patience. He was never arrogant or condescending. He was a Christian in the true sense of the word; no hatespeech or words of intolerance ever came out of his mouth. He was a former hippie who didn't trust newspapers and wanted to write an orchestral suite for Lee Harvey Oswald, because the man "didn't get a fair shake, or a trial, even!" This probably makes him sound like a nut, but Mr. Mora was kind of perfect.

He's why I try to keep negativity out of my writing, why I'm able to appreciate music, why I'm able to write about it at all. A fellow music writer once wrote to me that maybe there are less women in music journalism because women don't learn to write technically and 'critically' about music. Thanks to Mr. Mora, I learned to think and speak critically -- as in, socially or culturally critically -- in a safe space. I learned my music history, but from a person who genuinely loved music. I didn't learn from jerky, entitled young hipsters who sublimate their insecurities through hostile record and show reviews.

Is the hostility, the insecurity, the mudslinging, and the generally sloppy writing what discourages women from going into music journalism, or the music industry in general? Or is it what keeps women from advancing in the industry? If so, then forget the last ten years; in the next ten years, what I want to see is change. I want us to demand better, more inclusive music journalism.

In the meantime, all I can do with these sexist wanks and berks at places like pitchfork and brooklynvegan is tell them what Mr. Mora said to me a decade ago: no one ever erected a statue of a critic, kid.

Lessons learned after 379 days in.

While I'm not what you'd call a 'quitter', I'm still sort of surprised that this blog is a year old. I've spent the last few days thinking about what a year of blogging has meant for me.

As one might expect, I've learned a lot about writing: I've learned how to be nice without being sappy, how to be critical without being snarky, how to draw comparisons and make references without sounding like a name-dropping douchebag. (I hope.) And all of this is important, because writing about something non-verbal, like the sound and movement in a performance, is actually quite difficult.

But I think what I've learned about women and their standing in music culture(s) is kind of more important:

1. There are tons of women in punk and rock's other less accessible genres. Not so long ago, I found myself telling a close friend, "Sometimes I'm worried that there aren't other girls out there. Who play music and care about good bands, and punk, and playing music. 'Cause if they aren't out there, I might as well just end it now." This concern? Totally unfounded. If you look for it, you will find amazing work being done by female musicians. This might be hard to believe, but trust me: it's an issue of visibility, not presence. Which sort of brings me to my next point...

2. There don't seem to be anywhere near enough feminist or even female-friendly writers out there to cover all these artists. There are probably many reasons for this. I think one reason is that the need is going unrecognized. If women and feminist musicians suffer from such low visibility, why would anyone, male or female, think that columns, blogs, articles, and other literature devoted to such artists are necessary? The same goes for so-called 'women's issues'. If sexism itself and inequality are ignored, why would any one believe that attention to women and 'women's issues', in any area of culture or society is necessary?

3. Despite what you hear, dialogues on music (and art in general) and 'women's issues' are totally necessary. This blog started out as a way for me to cope with not being able to really play music or even talk about it while in grad school. And I was insecure about it in a lot of ways. On top of feeling guilty for not being happy with grad school, I worried that music and feminism weren't as important as I thought they were.

But now there are people who actually read my blog, and they've responded positively to some of my ideas. And so I had to accept the possibility that I might be doing something right, here. I've realized that in speaking openly about music and especially feminism, I say things that some people can't say. I have the opportunity to articulate problems that someone out there might be facing. There's nothing more gratifying than having the power to validate someone else's experience, and having your own validated in return by a reader.

So, thank you, everyone for reading! And thank you for playing, for writing, and for putting yourselves out there. To a year of Rock and the Single Girl, and many more!