When I was sixteen a man stood in front of me and told me that I wouldn’t make it to music college. His job was to assess my progress at junior music college, and that’s what he chose to tell me. He didn’t ask if I even wanted to go to music college, or what my aspirations were. He didn’t ask if I wanted his advice or his support to make decisions about my future.
At junior music college, you choose a first instrument to study, and then if you like, a second and perhaps a third. My first study was the piano – for no other reason that I loved it deeply and felt endless joy when I played. I knew I wasn’t the best, I struggled to get my tiny hands round the larger chords, and when I got nervous my fingers got sweaty and slid over the keys. I had been first study recorder, which I was much better at, but I gave it up at fourteen because it didn’t match my trying hard to be cool image. I was second study percussion, second as I had only started that aged eleven, which is late in the classical world, so I had some catching up to do.
At the fragile, impressionable age of sixteen, I was still deciding what I wanted to do with my life, and it was only gradually dawning on me that music was the single constant that I had committed to every day of my life since I was a toddler. I had never questioned why I had given up every single Saturday since I was nine, to make the 2-hour journey on the train from Oxford to London, to spend an entire day studying music, while my friends had a social life that I perpetually missed out on.
So then here I was, playing the piano to the Head of the College, for him to cast his judgement, in the fifteen minutes that he had contact with me, on if I was good enough. And he decided I wasn’t. I told him that actually I was going to go to music college on percussion. He said that he hadn’t heard me play percussion – as if warning me not to be too hasty to make plans when he hadn’t cast his judgement on those ones too.I went straight to my percussion teacher (a woman, as it happens) and told her the news of my brand new plan that I had just decided in that moment – with the clarity that comes from sometime trying to snatch away a dream you didn’t know you had.
In the space of a couple of hours, a powerful man tried to crush my future, and a powerful woman helped me rise to it.
Six years later I graduated in the top 5% from one of the best music colleges in the world, as a percussionist. And so, I began my journey into the male-dominated realm of classical music, in the even more male-dominated sub-division of the percussion section.
The students were 70% male, the staff were 100% male, and the gender discrimination was WILD. (To properly illustrate this, I’d have to get into the intricate mechanics of the classical music college world of auditions and orchestral placements, the politics of the relative prestige of your teacher, and how this could affect not only your technical achievements but the progression of your career. . . If you aren’t in this world I would bore you to tears, and if you are in it then you know already. . )
Why didn’t we fight? (The three of us. . ) Because we were young, eager, and finding out how to jump through the hoops to get to where we wanted to be. Because we thought no one would listen. Because it was so normalised. Because we didn’t see any options available to us.
Fast forward a few.. . (ok a lot of) years. . .
I found my way. I built an organisation led by women, I forged my own path and I became a leader. I became a mother, and I learned what is worth fighting for.
I’ve now found my happy place in electronic music production. And once again I find myself in a man’s world. Maybe this says something about me! But this time I’m having a different experience. I have found networks of incredible women lifting each other up, across the whole world. I haven’t faced any discrimination from men in the industry, only excitement and interest in what I’m doing, and offers of help and support. (The only discriminatory comment I received was when the electrician looked at my studio and said, "Oh does your partner make music then?" To be fair he was deeply embarrassed and apologetic when I said it was me. .)
I am not anti-man. My two daughters have a wonderful father. I also have a father, and two brothers who I love dearly and respect deeply. (One who passed away many years ago, but that’s a story for another day).
I have no intention to put down men, just to recognise that there are still many barriers out there for women operating in male-dominated worlds. There are also barriers for men in these worlds. And there are barriers put up by women against other women in these worlds too. I just want to celebrate women who are smashing it, women who are on their way up, women who tried and walked away, women who don’t even want to go there but whose voices are still beautiful and important.
This is why I have pledged to collaborate only with women in my work as a solo artist.
Follow my journey and join my campaign at #womenmakeit