Music and Gender

As we have experienced music, we have surely come across the fact that men and women play different role in music. Even though it is not a big factor in some countries, it does play a major role in a country like India. In this blog I am going to be sharing my personal experience with music in relation to gender roles especially in music before 2000. 

The memory of music for me dates back when I was a three-year old kid. My mom would feed me food everyday by distracting me to watch my favorite song play on the television. This song was called “Vaseegara.” If that song was not being played when I was eating, my mom would sing that to me. Every time I heard that song I would be so delighted and motivated to eat any food that my mom would give me, including all vegetables that ever existed! I really loved the way the music was so melodious. I was sung by a young women who had the most beautiful song. The song itself is high pitched with super soft and slow beats. As I kid, I always wondered how it sounds so good and even now it is one of my favorite songs. It also had me thinking about who had created it, how did they know to make it sound so beautiful. I have always thought that this is one of the best songs ever created.

Most of the songs we listen to are movie songs. In India, we have about 13 different film industries based on the number official languages spoken: Bollywood, Kollywood, etc. Born South Indian in Tamil Nadu, I learnt to speak Tamil which is the language of the films made in Kollywood. Until the 2000s', people always listened to slow and melodious songs. The songs during that time and the genre of Kollywood was almost dominated by a male music composer named Ilayaraja. He was also a film composer, singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, orchestrator and lyricist. He was a very intelligent and multi-talented person who was the most desired person in the film industry. He was called as the “Isaignani,” meaning “The musical genius” and also was awarded as one of the greatest film composers in the history of cinema. 

He was one of the greatest examples and a role model for the future composers in the film industry. A large number of them began following his works. He also provided a broad platform with the use of Western classical music harmonies for the Indian film industry to build upon. A lot of the present- day composers still use his music to analyze and help create modern music. Setting as a great motivation, today, all of the film music composers in India are only men. Women play a very limited role in this category.

       

      Ilayaraja with another amazing composer AR Rahman

Receiving the Padma Vibhushan award

         

Although a lot of men play roles in music creations and compositions, majority of the women in the music field are singers. They are best in covering the high pitch notes where men can’t. 

A lot of them are also instrumentalist who played instruments that men don’t usually play. Some traditional instrument in India are strictly categorized through stereotypes or by basic logic to fit their role in creating a unique piece of music. Men usually played percussion instruments and very few string instruments while women almost only played the string instruments. Some example of Indian percussion instruments include Mridangam, Ghatam, Dholak, Tabla, etc. and the string instruments include Sitar, Veena, etc. 

Mridangam

Tabla

We can see that none of the above instruments are played by women.

Sitar

Veena

This a very tradition music concert in Chicago by Ilayaraja. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNA9LWv0ic. This video clearly shows the role of gender in different aspect of music in India as a whole.