FEATURE:
The F-List
IN THIS PHOTO: Charli XCX/PHOTO CREDIT: Griffin Lotz
Making Music Festivals Gender-Balanced in 2021
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I have talked a lot about…
IN THIS PHOTO: Redwood
the gender discrepancy at festivals and how, even last year, there was a huge imbalance regarding male and female artists. This year, before the pandemic struck, I was going to sort of say how we had turned a corner, as Glastonbury announced a line-up with more women than men for the first time; other festivals were at least moving closer to fifty-fifty. Look through the best and most popular albums of the past five years and you can see female artists scoring huge. Many of the brightest new artists around are women and, when you look at the best of what is around now and the most engaging artists coming through, there is more than enough talent to ensure that the majority of music festivals can be gender-equal. There is a document, the F-list, that has collated a directory of musicians that, fortunately, makes it impossible for festival organisers to avoid! This BBC article explains more:
“When festivals finally resume in 2021, the line-ups could be more gender balanced than ever before, thanks to a new database of female artists.
The F-list provides details of more than 4,500 musicians in all genres of music, and is free to use.
It was compiled by equality campaigner Vick Bain, who first uploaded it as a sprawling online spreadsheet.
The directory proved so popular that she has re-launched it as a fully-searchable, not-for-profit website.
IN THIS PHOTO: Annabel Grace Steele
It aims to improve representation of women at all levels of the industry - from session musicians and arrangers, to producers and festival headliners.
"The problem for women in the UK music industry is they are still in the minority when it comes to professional work," Bain told BBC Radio 4's Today.
"Only 20% of musicians signed to record labels are women and about 15% of festival headliners are women. So they don't have much presence, professionally, even though they consist of nearly half of all music degree students."
The launch of the F-list website aims to correct that problem, while a concurrent community interest company will champion equality and diversity in the industry.
"We are going to raise awareness, we're going to create initiatives to help facilitate training and development, we are going to increase knowledge about gender inequality," said Bain. "We want to be a major authority for promoting women in music."
Sitar player Anoushka Shankar will be the inaugural president of the enterprise, having become aware of how gender imbalance impacted her own career.
"As a musician with 25 years in the industry, I have seen how women just aren't booked the same way as men," she told Mishal Husain.
"[And] I noticed that, even as a female artist and a self-proclaimed feminist, I was hiring way more male musicians than female and it was something I had to try and actively correct”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Rina Sawayama/PHOTO CREDIT: Jess Farran for DIY
I have talked a lot about how it is inexcusable that we are still striving for equality at festivals given the incredible women in music. Just this year, stunning albums from Laura Marling, Nadine Shah, Dua Lipa, Fiona Apple, Waxahatchee, Charli XCX, Taylor Swift, Grimes, Rina Sawayama, Lady Gaga, Jessie Ware, Chloe x Halle, Hayley Williams, Megan Thee Stallion, and Kylie Minogue have dazzled critics. There are headliners in there and, at the very least, a huge range of sounds covered. There is argument from organisers and fans of some Rock festivals that there are not many women who can provide as hard a sound as male bands. That is patently not true and, from female-led bands like Amyl and The Sniffers, and Rews through to solo female artists, there is more than enough choice! The great newcomers of the past couple of years also provide plenty of food for thought – Arlo Parks is one of my standout artists from this year. It is not hard to balance festivals without compromising and losing quality. Back in February, Glastonbury’s Emily Eavis talked about her desire to create a fifty-fifty gender split - and it was not long after that the line-up or this year’s (proposed) Glastonbury went online with more women than men – a rare female headliner in the form of Taylor Swift too!
“Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis says the festival has to achieve a gender balanced line-up as soon as it can.
"Our future has to be 50/50," she tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
"It's a challenge. Everyone's finding it hard - but the acts are there," she says, adding that past Glastonbury line-ups have "always been male-heavy".
IN THIS PHOTO: Emily Eavis/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Benett
Her comments come after criticism that many festivals don't have enough female or female-fronted acts on their line-ups.
Emily was named godlike genius at the NME Awards in London, where Glastonbury was named best festival in the world.
"When I look back at past Glastonbury line-ups, I realised it's always been male heavy.
"Unless you consciously change and really address it, then it will stay the same because we're always going to be flooded with male acts".
There are no excuses now that the F-list is out and there is this catalogue of great women! That will only build and update as more and more great artists come through, so I think festivals that are especially lax when it comes to gender equality – Reading and Leeds must be near the top of the pile! – need to resolve to change their ways and push progression. Not only is the over-reliance on male artists boring and formulaic – the same acts booked time and time again -, but there are so many women and female-fronted acts that are being denied a platform! I am not sure what the state of play will be regarding festivals next year and whether there will be announcements soon, but I think Glastonbury are hoping to go ahead in June – whether it is with the same line-up as this year I am not sure. Festival organisers have plenty of time to plan and use the F-list as an invaluable glossary of names that they can borrow from when formulating a more gender-balanced, diverse and exciting line-up. This year has been awful, but next year has the potential to be a lot brighter; not just in music but in society in general. When it comes to music and festival line-ups, let’s hope that organisers reference the F-list hard so that, in 2021, we can see…
IN THIS PHOTO: Amyl and The Sniffers
SOME real progress!