This morning as I was catching up on overnight tweets I came across a discussion between a well known Australian promoter and some of his followers regarding a festival that is planned for
later in the year. The discussion centred around the yet to be announced line up i.e. when will the line up be announced? Will x band be playing? Etc
One particular reply from the promoter caught my eye:
"We don't pick bands based on sex"
This of course peaked my curiosity so I had a look at the thread. It turned out that the question that was asked was "will there be any female fronted bands?"
Let's put aside gender equality for a minute and ignore the fact that women are still largely relegated to the business side of the music industry, and that they are either expected to be sexual objects in order to be successful or held to higher standards than men because it is assumed that they are less capable/worthy and therefore have to be twice as good to be taken half as seriously.
All that aside, seriously, the promoter is saying that booking of bands is based on factors like demand, availability, costs, suitability etc, and all of these are valid and in fact vital to the success of the event.
Yep, totally agree.
What it got me wondering however was, has anyone even looked at the possibility that there may be demand here that isn't being exploited? We sometimes tend to assume that because something doesn't exist that no one must want it but is this true? Either part?
Following the death of Chrissy Amphlett, The Age published a piece essentially asking "where are the new generation of Aussie women in rock?" I felt like frustratingly jumping up and down in front of them waving my arms yelling "we're right here!"
I guess what I'm suggesting is that if one person is asking for more female fronted bands on big rock festivals, that maybe they aren't the only one wondering. You could even argue that aside from demand, seeking out bands that create some diversity is pretty much what a festival is all about.
But maybe I'm wrong about there being a demand for more female fronted rock acts in the market. I mean it's not like Paramore's latest album debuted at number 1 on the ARIA charts... Oh wait...
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