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.
Before and after 1900 many women songwriters published their songs with male pseudonyms. Three of the most successful share an unexpected biographical trait.
Two-and-a-half years ago I launched a website devoted to marginalized song composers. In this post, I reflect on where it all began.
A century ago, Christina Georgina Rossetti was the woman poet that women composers set most frequently. Her popularity endures, spanning the globe, as this international playlist demonstrates.
Soprano and poet Janani Sridhar discusses the song cycle ‘SingBites’ that she and composer Nicholas Ho wrote as a set of four love songs to Singapore.
While the phenomenon of women publishing as men is well known, a century ago there were also men who published as women. Here are four of them.
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
“Praying,” Kesha’s first ballad, was written about her recovery from traumatic abuse by her former producer, Dr. Luke. Her voice depicts this journey.
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.
Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita finds that Lomax’s 1952-53 recordings help us to understand the political situation under Franco, life in impoverished Spain, and the moral constrictions faced by women.
John Michael Cooper interprets Florence Price’s songs, “To My Little Son” and “Brown Arms (To Mother),” as responses to the painful losses of her son and her mother.
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.
One of our aims is to recover and honor voices that have been overlooked or forgotten.
Sara Teasdale
Dawson founded the National Negro Opera Company, and brought this all-Black company to perform at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, even before Marian Anderson sang there.
Announcing “Beyond the Music: Marian Anderson—Her Complete RCA Victor Recordings”
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.
