Naismuusikot rajojen ylittäjinä ja tulevaisuuden rakentajina
For the past week, Hiroko Ara has been in our thoughts.
Hiroko Ara was supposed to be in Finland this March for our Women-Music-Futures symposium to share her music (with Haruhiko Saga, as Rauma duo) and her career as a kantele professional in Japan. Last week, we received heartbreaking news from Japan. She passed away on May 5th.
Continue reading “Hiroko Ara in memoriam”
The Women–Music–Futures symposium brought together a wide range of presentations based on both artistic and research projects. While the presented projects offered varied insights on women’s musical activities around the world, several common themes emerged. For example, a number of projects emphasized music as a space of comfort, respite, and pleasure for women musicians and their audiences. At the same time music making can provide a sphere where women can build solidarity and networks of mutual support. Sometimes music provides a medium for voicing one’s opinion to the outside world.
– Nina Öhman
It was liberating and empowering to see same issues relating to women musicians repeat in different contexts around the world, and to see that I am not to only one who has paid attention to the minority position of women musicians and wants to change things! Women face similar challenges, although the circumstances may be very different, and it was great to see all the different ways in which people are addressing these issues.
– Jenni Hanikka Continue reading “Thoughts after the symposium”
Project leader, ethnomusicologist Elina Seye talks about the background and themes of the World Wide Women project.
Elina Seye and Marjo Smolander from the WWW team were working on their own projects in Dakar, Senegal in the spring of 2021 as they went to meet representatives of local organizations for female musicians.
It is not until recently that female musicians in Senegal have started networking to support each other and strengthen their professional skills in the male-dominated music industry. Most female musicians in Senegal work as backup singers – many do dream of a solo career, but it is hard to find musicians, a producer and other professionals that they would need to promote their solo career.
Continue reading “Female musicians in Senegal are coming together”