The History of Gender in Electronic Music

Pippa Kelmenson
October 16th, 2016
Professor Sonevytsky
Musical Protest in the United States

“‘I wonder why we want so much to see one man as the hero of the
occasion.’” (Daphne Oram in Pink Noises, Tara Rodgers, 2015, 15)

In 2014, the Women’s Bureau of the United States Department of Labor estimated that

the “male-dominated” fields of “broadcast and sound engineering… and radio” operation—

categorized as “nontraditional” occupations for women—employed 108,000 total workers, 13%

of which were female. (US Department of Labor, 2014) This report is one of many that survey

the consistent multi-genre gender divide throughout the music industry. Women have been

pivotal to the development and presentation of electronically produced music since its post-war

inception: from telephone operators and radio broadcasters using analogue technology in

musique concrète to the first generation of female sound technicians refining RCA and Moog

synthesizers. (Richter, 2013) Yet if the overt isolation of female electronic musicians and sound

engineers is not for lack of trying, why is there an inherent gender imbalance? Do “gender

categories ultimately pose restrictions on professional survival?” (Rodgers, 2015, 479) Not only

are women “‘marginalized in fields where creative work in sound and music meet technology,’”

but they are also excluded from the male-dominated historiography of electronic music and its

masculine equipment and discourse. (Rodgers, 2015, 7) The inequity of gender in electronic

media results in “the work of women [being] much less widely recognized than that of men,

leading to isolation and relative cultural nonentity.” (McCartney, 2006, 31) Although female

artists have yet to be adequately represented in electroacoustic cultures, the technological

development, musical innovation, and sheer “presence and diversity of expressions by women

working with sound as a creative medium over the last century” contest the historically gendered

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genre (Rodgers, 2010).

The patrilineal historiography of the field of electronic music and its technologies

reinforces concepts of masculinity, thereby omitting women from its historical narratives and

technical discourses. Histories of electronic music are often chronicled by the male-dominated

Futurism of the early twentieth century—from Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto and Pierre

Schaeffer’s concept of musique concrète to the spatialization of sound in Karlheinz

Stockhausen’s compositions and the use of post-war electronic noise instruments in John Cage’s

works. Academic texts often advance through the genre with Robert Moog’s development of

modular synthesizers to Miller Puckette’s launch of computer applications Max and Pure Data,

including composers such as Alvin Lucier and La Monte Young somewhere in between, finally

concluding with the current computer culture of sampling and hacking in DJ’ing and production,

in which “fewer than one in ten DJs is female” (Rodgers, 2010, 479). The forefathers of

electroacoustics represent an omnipresent masculinity in these media histories that determines

“who and what counts in… invention, production, and making noise.” (Pink Noises) The

resulting lack of female contribution to and representation in the history of the genre not only

discourages and denies women’s participation, but completely disregards them “as subjects and

agents of history and culture.” (Rodgers, 2015, 7) This absence of the circulation of women

composers in electronic music is overt due to the insubstantial coverage of women in magazines

and historical texts. (Pink Noises)

The inception of Futurism in the post-World War II era further isolated women from the

field of avant-garde electronic music with the perpetuation of masculine themes of militarism

and machinery. The technology of the early twentieth century invoked an evolution of acoustic

noise that celebrated “the sounds of machines, modern industry and war” in compositions and

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Futurist writings. (Rodgers, 2010, 6) Thus, the electronic sounds in the inaugural works of the

electronic music genre, written by male composers such as Edgard Varese and Iannis Xenakis,

were evocative of the militarism of the period. The technologies of electronic noise furthered

“the development of new methods for controlling sound” in electroacoustic music as well as in

“wartime expenditures or [funding] for their potential military applications.” (Rodgers, 2010, 6)

The evolution of audio technologies such as broadcast radio and “subsequent amplification and

recording,” for example, were used “to safeguard effective communication in combat” in World

War II. (Rodgers, 2010, 6) As demonstrated by Tara Rodgers in Pink Noises: Women on

Electronic Music and Sound, Futurist themes “flow naturally into the colonialist discourses

articulated to electronic sounds in Cold War popular culture… and the militaristic language that

inflects contemporary music-production terminology.” (Rodgers, 2010, 6) The association of

militaristic weapons of death in the field of electronic music remains pervasive in the metaphors,

technologies, and practices of modern electronic music—such as DJ ‘battles,’ ‘triggering’

samples, and ‘executing’ a programming ‘command.’ (Rodgers, 2010, 8) Recent research

indicates that “high-tech combat, shot through with symbols of violent confrontation and

domination” is present in computerized technology. (Rodgers, 2010, 7) The discipline,

rationality, and technical skill of the software engineer and computer hacker alike result in forms

of mastery “reproduced within the military.” (McCartney, 1995, 58) The terminology affiliated

with militarism and “rationalistic precision and control epitomize [the] notions of male technical

competence and ‘hard’ mastery in electronic music production” that have established and been

originated by the “nontechnical or “soft” knowledge and practices that are coded as female.”

(Rodgers, 2010 7)

The concepts of virtuosity, technical control, and technological sophistication associated

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with the mastery of electroacoustic technology, sound reproduction, and its technical discourse

have developed a masculine domination of electronics that does not include nor encourage

women. According to Tara Rodgers, “the term technology” was used in the 1930s to “designate

‘the useful application of scientific knowledge’” primarily conveyed by “white, middle-class,

male engineers.” (Rodgers, 2015, 15) In this way, the male audio technologist was valued as a

“cultural hero,” able to rise “to a more powerful management position” and thus “assumes a

kindred subject position to that of a creator/God… in audio-technical discourses.” (Rodgers,

2015, 15) Technology is therefore analogous to control, while the omnipotence of engineering as

a professional class in the twentieth century signifies male domination. Gendered metaphors

maintaining the allusion of masculine power and control are also used in electroacoustic

equipment’s connection with male sexuality. For example, Wende Bartley explains how to

connect the ‘male’ and ‘female’ wiring plugs used in recording studios in her interview with

Andra McCartney, while colleagues of the composer “describe unused tape as ‘virgin,’”

(McCartney, 1995, 57) “coded as a receptive matter to be given form and meaning by sound.”

(Rodgers, 2010, 12) These technologies encourage the male-domination of the electronic music

genre by employing “passive (feminized)” tools on which “to reproduce the workings of (male)

culture.” (Rodgers, 2010, 12) Female artists and sound engineers across the music industry are

thereby exposed to “gendered assumptions about creative authority and technical skills” that

question the legitimacy and worth of a woman as “a ‘creator,’ an ‘innovator,’ a ‘composer,’ a

‘producer’ or an ‘experimental musician’” and must perpetually prove their validity contesting

“longstanding mythologies that articulate socially and culturally differentiated bodies and

subjects to particular social roles and expectations.” (Rodgers, 2015, 80)

Although the role of women as technical enthusiasts and producers was omitted from the

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public sphere at the turn of the century, many pioneers of the electronic music genre worked on

improving the performance of music technology, “quietly locked away in sound studios and

labs.” (Richter, 2013) Women were an active and enthusiastic audience for new media who

explored “how the uses of phonographs… records [and wireless radio] were defined in social

contexts” in the early twentieth century (Rodgers, 2012, 481). In the mid-1950s, women across

the United States wrote a series of letters to the Radio Corporation of America, demonstrating

their eagerness for the RCA synthesizer. Inherited from telephone operating—“a profession

thoroughly associated with women as a labor force and in popular culture”—the “technology and

associated techniques of the synthesizer patch” were familiar and thus allowed women to lay the

groundwork for synthesizers. (Rodgers, 2015, 20) A decade before Robert Moog built his

prototypes for some of the first widely available modular synthesizers, women encouraged the

“general acceptance of… analog synthesizers” as instruments. (Rodgers, 2015, 5-6) Female

sound artists were crucial to not only the research and manufacturing of electroacoustic

machinery, but also to its development and presentation.

From the first generation of female electronic musicians including Clara Rockmore, Delia

Derbyshire, and Daphne Oram to second generation examples such as Laurie Spiegel, Pauline

Oliveros, and Laurie Anderson, and the new wave of women in electronic music, female

composers have reshaped and contested the stereotypical masculine constructions of the

technological world of electroacoustic music. Born in 1911, Rockmore was not only the first

classically-trained musician of the theremin with a virtuosic status, but also improved the

instrument’s design with its inventor, Leon Theremin. (Rodgers, 2010, 8) Approximately 20

years later, Delia Derbyshire composed electronic music for BBC radio using prototypes of

synthesizers, spoken word samples, and drones, resulting in the distinctive ‘Doctor Who’ theme.

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In the same vein, composer and inventor Daphne Oram was “one of the earliest British

composers to produce electronic sounds and experiment with music made field-recorded

sounds—‘musique concrète’” at BBC radio as well. (Richter, 2013) Laurie Spiegel designed the

MusicMouse multi-platform software sequencers in the 1980s, working with synths from the

1960s to develop the genre of ambient and new age electronic music. Pauline Oliveros pioneered

the concepts of Deep Listening and Sonic Awareness, blurring the distinctions between

performer and audience by combining music technologies that are “out of time… with each

other.” (Rodgers, 2010, 27) A feminist writer and philosopher, Olivero published articles on the

“lack of opportunities for women, the dismissal of work of women composers,” critiquing

“cultural factors that work against the recognition of ‘great’ women composers.” (Rodgers, 2010,

27) Finally, Laurie Anderson was one of the first female electronic musicians to cross over into

popular culture with her audio-visual music and spoken-word poetry. Although many of these

female artists received little acclaim in their lifetimes, their presence in academic texts has

enriched and impacted the development of a younger generation of electroacoustic composers

and future feminist electronic artists.

While for Nicolas Collins, political agency focuses “on the role of new technologies in

increasing accessibility to music and sound” (Collins, 2015, 1) the activism of women in

electronic music relies on its protest of the male-gendered and male-dominated domains of

composition and technology. (McCartney, 1995, 57) Although some progress has been made on

including women in the field of electronic music and audio engineering in initiatives such as the

Women’s Audio Mission and Female Pressure collective, the interest of women in “audio

technologies, electronics tinkering, and musical production” is still an undeveloped “historical

trajectory.” (Rodgers, 2015, 20) The impact of these organizations document the marginalization

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of women and influence the increased involvement of women in electronic music. The age-old

issues in sound cultures still persist, however, “from the lack of gender and racial diversity in

music and technology classrooms… to concomitant disparities in professional opportunities and

pay.” (Rodgers, 2015, 79) Yet the interest of women in electronic music in the works of Clara

Rockmore, Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveros, and Laurie

Anderson among many notorious as well as undocumented others, has had an impact that

reaches as far as modern musical electronics in 2016. Female electroacoustic composers around

the world have revitalized the spirit of their ancestors in electronic music to enable the potency

of electronic musical instruments, “trying them out by performing them live on a stage.”

(Richter, 2013)

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