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.
One of Jacobs-Bond’s earliest hits, “Alone,” was also possibly her first self-published song. But then it disappeared. In this post, which marks WSF’s sixth anniversary, I ask why.
In their songs about motherhood, Alicia Needham and Liza Lehmann went far beyond nostalgic lullabies and innocuous children’s songs. Their musical portrayal of motherhood reveals an existential survival strategy.
Lily Strickland’s “Mah Lindy Lou,” a setting of her own Black dialect poem, became internationally popular and was often performed and recorded by Black and white singers
Behind the gentle rhythms and pastoral lyrics British women composed to celebrate Mother’s Days a century and more ago lie several calculated strategies. This is Part 1 of 2.
Songs about life after the death of a mother in childbirth were once extremely popular. Now long forgotten, the tales they tell are worth hearing.
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
Doris Akers was one of Black gospel’s most prolific composers. This is a cross-racial account of her most famous song, “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.”
By 1913 the “indecency” of modern popular songs could no longer be ignored. Members of the National Federation of Music Clubs tried to fight back.
In this video I outline two strategies that Clara Schumann uses to compose songs with music that goes “against the grain” of the poetry.
Ralph P. Locke reviews an astonishing set of 8 CDs that offer dozens of compositions by women performed by major singers, pianists, and ensembles.
Eva Maria Doroszkowska marks the most recent anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with this reflection about the remarkable, but largely unknown, composer Stefania Turkewich.
Lisa Colton recounts the thrill of discovering the autograph manuscript of Edith Smyth’s ‘Mass in D.’
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.
One of our aims is to recover and honor voices that have been overlooked or forgotten.
Sara Teasdale
In founding the American Song Composers’ Festival, Grace Porterfield Polk intended, single-handedly, to spur the development of American song.
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.
Although banned for much of her career from major opera houses, Marian Anderson had an intriguing and lifelong devotion to Donizetti’s aria “O mio Fernando.”
