Musical Gender in Performance

• Published in: Women & music (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 1999-01, Vol.3, p.1-1
• Main Author: MOISALA, PIRKKO
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Concept formation; Ethnomusicology; Finnish language; Gender differences; Human relations; Interpersonal communication; Men; Music; Music and race; Musical performance; Personal relationships; Sex role; Sex roles; Sexuality; Singing; Sleep; Social aspects; Student teacher relationship; Women; Women musicians
• ISSN: 1090-7505; 1553-0612

The bodily nature of music intertwines deeply with human sexuality. In light of the above example, gender does not determine sexuality. However, music seems to be a site where we not only free ourselves from gender limitations but also from the limitations of conventional sexuality. This argues against Catherine Mackinnon's definition of sexuality as "a dimension along which gender occurs and through which gender is socially constituted."(29) Her deterministic approach to the interrelatedness of sexuality and gender has been criticized by Judith Butler, because "it leaves no room for relations of sexuality to be theorized apart from the rigid framework of gender difference" and "it ought to be possible to assert a set of non-causal and non-reductive relations between gender and sexuality."(30) I believe that music and its performance could serve as a fruitful site for investigating the complex relations between gender and sexuality. Among the Gurungs, where women can become shamans, religious authorities, members of the so-called thulo mancheharu ("big men" who decide important village matters), and where, nowadays, a woman can be elected the head of the village council, married women still cannot sing or play music in public without fear of losing respect in the eyes of the community. Marriage is the watershed that crucially divides Gurung musical activities along gender lines. Men make public music, but the participation of adult women is restricted by esthetic evaluations and social norms. Their musicality can find expression only within the household, in privacy. The Gurung conceptualization of music limits women's roles as music-makers even further. To Gurung villagers, musical sounds made alone without an audience are not considered music (baja, or git gaune bajaune; literally, "to sing a song"). Music is rather collective and public in nature. Singing, melodic shouting, and humming, as long as they occur in the fields or at home, are common activities of Gurung women. Men perform these less frequently. Singing to accompany work is regarded as part of work: singing lullabies is not music but "putting baby to sleep," and singing while cutting rice is simply "cutting rice." "Feminine boy" and "masculine girl" were terms often used in the collected musical life-stories. Some students claimed and some others reported that their teachers had said that it was good for a boy dealing with music to be somewhat feminine: his manliness would give him strength a