Every week, Medium will post a story or review from the vault, #tbt style. This week: a column from former Diversions editor Alison Hussey about Hopscotch Music Festival, which starts tonight.This blog was originally published on the Diversions blog on Sept. 11, 2013.
It’s funny, the big thoughts that come from little conversations. Toward the end of last weekend’s Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, my friend and I started counting the acts we’d seen up to that point.
Then she started ticking off a different number: the number of bands she’d seen with women in them. I was pleasantly surprised to hear her number grow higher and higher. We both realized that neither of us had exactly set out to see a particularly high number of bands with women — but somehow both of us managed to do so.
By my own count, about 11 of the 30-something bands I saw over the weekend had a woman performing with them. Roughly a third. That’s huge.
Consider that Coachella, an absolutely massive festival that's been running for more than a decade, has never cleared having 25 percent of its bookings be women, according to a piece published on Buzzfeed in April (though it’s noteworthy that Buzzfeed’s distinction is female-fronted; as opposed to just including a woman).
So yeah, Hopscotch gets a few extra brownie points in my book. But why does having diverse bookings matter? In a field generally dominated by white men, visibility and representation are crucial — not just for women, but for persons of color and for those who identify as queer.
None of this is to demonize straight, white, male musicians; it's to encourage inclusion of varying voices. Most festivals by their very nature mean big crowds, and excluding minority groups from lineups robs these acts of the audiences they might deserve.
Fans, too, get robbed when they're presented with a false idea of who's successful. And on several levels, it can be discouraging to feel like there isn't a place for you in a scene, be it as a musician or a fan.
The more diversity represented in an arts community, the more its members and supporters all win. Artists can find more opportunities for musical collaboration and cross-pollination, while audiences get to enjoy the fruits of this labor. And the thing is, there can be room for everyone — it's not like a bar that can have only so many people in it before it becomes unsafe.
Dismissing or trivializing members of arts communities based on race, gender or sexuality does nothing but make that scene wither away. And on the more selfish side, making musical choices based on assumptions means missing out on some amazing artists.
For example, if you write off Angel Olsen because you assume she's a cute fairy-voiced singer-songwriter, you give up the opportunity to be blown away by her commanding vocal presence. And if you're put off by the band name Creedence Queerwater Revival, you lose out on some badass women doing a bang-up job at covering Creedence Clearwater Revival.
So what can you do to make it better? Take it from Funkadelic: Free your mind...and your ass will follow. And hey, maybe you'll get to shake it a little more, too.
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