Harriet Ware’s “Boat Song”
“Boat Song” was Harriet Ware’s best-selling song. In particular it became a standard for two unexpectedly allied groups of singers: professional men and amateur women.
Music, Voice, Message
People who identify as women
WSF is an online forum devoted to women’s voices in song, to the many songs by women, and to the many female musicians working in and with song, who have yet to be given the attention they deserve. The Women’s Song Forum provides an opportunity to expand and enhance knowledge and understanding of this rich and significant area of musical practice and scholarship, and – as the name “forum” suggests – aims to encourage discussion and debate across different interest groups. The forum aims to highlight compositions and performances of music that deserve more recognition.
At the heart of the forum is our commitment to diverse approaches and subjects and access by a wide-ranging audience. We normally publish 2-3 posts each month by members of our team and guest bloggers.
“Boat Song” was Harriet Ware’s best-selling song. In particular it became a standard for two unexpectedly allied groups of singers: professional men and amateur women.
A playlist of 12 songs (and 13 stellar performances) of songs Florence Price wrote to poems by Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and three Black women poets.
There are at least two ways to read this striking image of Vivien Lambelet: one personal, the other professional. One reading doesn’t exclude the other.
In this post we turn to “Dog Teeth” by Nicole Dollanganger and to “Gatekeeper” by Jessie Reyez. Content Warning: Discussion of rape and disturbing lyrics.
A Tori Amos song shows how vocal timbre conveys symptoms of trauma in a way that lyrics cannot. Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault, rape, and child abuse.
From accounts of individual women or performances to historical essays, from interviews with songwriters and performers to discussions of gender, race and culture in and through song.
Tracy Chapman
Troves of German Lieder composed by women await their first performances. Here is one composer whose songs have recently been recorded for the first time.
The dramatic monologue “The Enchantress” was one of several works by Ljubica Marić celebrated in art and music at an event curated by pianist Jasmina Raković.
A century ago the new Yugoslav ‘national’ music needed women; two influential women, Maja Strozzi-Pečić and Ivanka Milojević, seized the moment to gain a public voice.
In her second post, Heather Platt tracks Villa Whitney White’s lecture-recitals of German lieder from 1895–98. Unusually, White sang complete song-cycles and songs written for men.
Heather Platt discusses an unusual lecture-recital held in Denver in 1898 that brought together songs of Native Americans, Blacks, Creoles and whites. Women’s clubs and Villa Whitney White made it happen.
Qianwen Yu explores the musicality of traditional weaving through a combination of historical research and contemporary technology, interpreting the woven fabric as a map, as a score.
Riché Richardson talks about what Whitney Houston meant to her as a Black teenager growing up in Montgomery, Alabama.
One of our aims is to recover and honor voices that have been overlooked or forgotten.
Sara Teasdale
This post, the first episode in my new podcast, discusses Maya Angelou’s poem “Phenomenal Woman” and a powerful setting of it by Farayi Malek.
During WWI, no song was more beloved of Allied troops, no song was more ingrained in the popular cultures of the U.S. and U.K.
Marian Anderson was a pioneering interpreter of Jean Sibelius’s songs. “Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings mote,” was one of the first she recorded.