Why are there so few women producers?

Cazz Blase salutes Helen Reddington’s book She’s at the Controls, a forensic examination of the gendered power play in the music sound engineering and production industry

“In her newest book, She’s at the Controls, Helen Reddington reflects on her own experience as a young musician, surprised to hear of Elton John’s marriage to his sound engineer, Renate Blauel, in 1984. Not because (as was widely known at the time) John was gay, but because his sound engineer was a woman and, despite being five or six years into her own music career at the time, Reddington had never previously heard of a woman sound engineer.

Flash forward 35 years to 2019 and Reddington is interviewing a woman who refers to herself as “The only female sound engineer in Britain”. This anecdote highlights in two ways just how little the situation has changed since 1984. For a start, Reddington knows that her interviewee’s description is not an accurate one, because she has already spoken to another British woman sound engineer – Felix Mackintosh – who also appears in She’s at the Controls. Secondly, her interviewee’s self-description reflects a continuing lack of awareness of women sound engineers within the music industry itself.

It was this 2019 interview, along with Reddington’s growing frustration about the high dropout rate of women students from studio training on the various university courses she teaches on, which provided the stimulus for She’s at the Controls. …” continue reading here

She’s At the Controls: Sound Engineering, Production and Gender Ventriloquism in the 21st Century by Helen Reddington

Cazz Blase on The F-Word website (Books), 28 August 2021: thefword.org.uk

Two Chefs tracks (out of five) from their first BBC Radio 1 John Peel Session.

Plus, a McCookerybook and Rotifer track, ‘No Man’s Land’, from their ‘Equal Parts’ EP (released December 2020).

Gideon Coe BBC Radio 6: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y6lz

‘Female Pioneers’
[2Tone: Lives and Legacies – Women Pioneers, Sat 24 Jul 2021, Coventry Cathedral]

“… Nearly a year later, I also told readers about a screening of the Stories From The She Punks film in Leamington: a documentary on pioneer female musicians from the punk era produced by Helen McCookerybook of the Chefs/Helen & the Horns and Gina Birch of the Raincoats.

Tonight, Helen Wheatley (whom I’m delighted to report is now Professor of Film and Television Studies since my last report) put together an evening at Coventry Cathedral as part of the Resonate Festival (of which she is Director) which included another chance to see this great film.

The focus was on pioneering women in music, with especial reference to the punk & 2 Tone movements and as such featured an initial discussion and Q & A with Pauline Black of The Selecter, Rhoda Dakar of The Bodysnatchers/Specials and Helen McCookerybook which Helen Wheatley led herself as the planned chair Jennifer Otter-Bickerdike had unfortunately had to isolate. Sign of the times …” continue reading here

Andy Holdcroft on the Hot Music Live website (Review), 27 July 2021 hotmusiclive.co.uk

2Tone: Lives and Legacies – Women Pioneers
Sat 24 Jul 2021, Coventry Cathedral
UK City of Culture 2021

“The first in a series of collaborations between the University of Warwick’s Department of Film and Television Studies, the Centre for Television Histories and the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, 2Tone: Lives and Legacies – Women Pioneers brings the pioneering women of punk and 2Tone to Coventry Cathedral for an evening of lively discussion and film screenings.

Our Q&A will be chaired by Jennifer Otter-Bickerdike and will feature Pauline Black (The Selecter), Rhoda Dakar (The Bodysnatchers/Specials/Special AKA), and Helen McCookerybook (The Chefs/Helen and the Horns). We’ll also be showing Stories from the She Punks (2018, 45 mins), a documentary that features the stories of women musicians from the punk-inspired bands of the 70s and Sisters with Transistors (Lisa Rovner, 2020, 90 mins), the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today.”

Addendum: Helen Wheatley chaired as Jennifer Otter-Bickerdike had to isolate.

Link: coventry2021.co.uk/what-s-on/2tone-lives-and-legacies-women-pioneers/