Gender and Music Production

This talk critically examines the pervasive narrative that technology development acts as an inherently disruptive and democratizing force in the creative industries. Drawing on our current ReFrameVP project findings we reflect on the history of technology development in music production and screen media, challenging the common assertion that new tools automatically lead to greater diversity and inclusion in who gets to be creative.  The promise that new technology will democratize creativity, and widen access to creative authority, often falls flat – traditional power structures persist, and a figurative drawbridge is pulled up, that controls entry to the exclusive, majority white, male, creative core.

We’ll explore why, even when technological tools become more affordable, the potential to diversify the workforce is frequently unmet. We’ll ask how we might intentionally harness the opportunities that arise from emerging creative technologies to actively lower or remove barriers to inclusion, advocating for genuine, lasting change in the creative industries.

Jude Brereton is Professor of Audio and Music Technologies in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies at the University of York, UK. Her audio research interest center on the analysis and perception of musical performance in real, virtual and augmented environments and the role of immersive sound in audience engagement. For over 20 years she has been active in seeking to improve inclusion and diversity in audio engineering and creative technologies education. Her work on inclusive audio education and research includes investigating who ‘does’ and who ‘participates’ in audio research, alongside working to formalize the praxis of the Female Ear with colleagues Amandine Pras and Katie Ambrose. Recently she served as Co-Director of the Screen Industries Growth Network (SIGN) and is currently Co-Lead for ReFrameVP, working to co-produce interventions that transform how equality, diversity and inclusion are practiced in the UK’s evolving film and television industry.

Building on the ‘Female Ear’—a feminist praxis for analysing the ‘Male Ear’ hegemony—I expand on this work by challenging a core bias in production: the dominance of visual-centric knowledge over embodied auditory experience. I will argue that visually-biased language, which promotes a singular ‘correct’ worldview, is analogous to audio’s dominant standards becoming the ‘one way’ to produce. The aim will be to contrast this paradigm with an embodied one, drawing on Henriques’ ‘sonic logos’ and Bendix’s ‘ear pleasures’ to recover the visceral, individualised experience of listening. In the process, we will reframe dominant standards as gendered ‘sonic microaggressions,’ invalidating non-normative listening. Ultimately, we’ll operationalise the ‘Female Ear’ through this lens, proposing a conceptual framework for a more inclusive pedagogy rooted in actively centring marginalised ‘ear pleasures’ for a more equitable sonic practice.

References:

Ambrose, Katie. 2024. “Technology and choral music: A mediated approach.” AES 156th Convention Express Paper, Madrid, Spain, June 15-17, 2024.

Ambrose, Katie. Forthcoming 2025. “Choral Music-making in Gendered Settings: a technologically mediated approach.”

Bendix, Regina. 2000. “The Pleasures of the Ear: Toward an Ethnography of Listening.” Cultural Analysis 1: 3–39.

Björck, Cecilia. 2009. “Volume, voice, volition: Claiming gendered space in popular music soundscapes.” Finnish Journal of Music Education 12 (2): 8–21.

Henriques, Julian. 2011. Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. New York: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional.

Pras, Amandine, Jude Brereton, and Katie Ambrose. 2023. “Unveiling the Female Ear.” AES International Conference on Audio Education, Hasselt, Belgium, September 6-8, 2CHcago.

Sue, Derald Wing, Christina M. Capodilupo, Gina C. Torino, Jennifer M. Bucceri, Aisha M. B. Holder, Kevin L. Nadal, and Marta Esquilin. 2007. “Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice.” American Psychologist 62 (4): 271–86.

Katie Ambrose (she/her) is a researcher and Associate Lecturer at the School of ACT at the University of York, in the process of writing up her thesis on the intersection between choral music performance, technology, and gender, with the aim of creating a toolkit that can be used to help performers, producers and sound recordists alike. Katie is specifically interested in how a technologically mediated society may have accelerated gender diversity in ‘traditional’ choral environments. In 2023, Katie worked with Dr Amandine Pras and Professor Jude Brereton introducing the concept of the ‘Female Ear’, mirroring the Female Gaze from film in audio settings. Alongside her research, Katie is the Executive Director of the baroque ensemble the Oxford Bach Soloists, and does work for the Temple Music Foundation in London. She is a freelance mezzo-soprano and regular deputises with groups and churches in London, and in the UK more broadly.