Feminist Library Music Programme for Women’s History Month

Music Programme for Women’s History Month, March 2021
Press Release- Feminist Library – Music Program WHM 2021

This March, the Feminist Library will spend Women’s History Month celebrating women in music. We have an exciting range of events planned, covering experimental composition, unknown female composers, digital musicians, Italian feminist activist music and sound system culture. Tune in to live radio show, events, discussions and live performances on Zoom, on-demand film screenings, and a musical social media takeover! Research on the Library’s archive materials and other elements from women creating music will also be shared on the Library’s website.

6th March, 7pm
Podcast Launch – Joanna Ward and Lola de la Mata discuss Open Scores, Text Scores and Verbal Scores
Free, listen again on the Feminist Library Mixcloud
Often regarded as lesser than Western Classical Notation, we will illustrate how such scores reshaped the landscape for amateurs – women, queer and other minority groups who utilised them within their artistic practices as a means of collaborating more freely, making space for the individuality of the musician, performer and/or audience.
https://www.joannamward.com/
https://www.loladelamata.com/

8th March, All day
International Women’s Day  – Bishi’s Instagram Takeover + live discussion with guest at 6pm.
BISHI is a singer, electronic rock-sitarist, composer, producer, and performer born in London of Bengali heritage. As a multi-instrumentalist, she has been trained in both Hindustani and Western Classical styles and studied the sitar under Gaurav Mazumdar, a senior disciple of Ravi Shankar.

BISHI has written, performed and released two albums and five EP’s on her own label Gryphon Records to critical acclaim. Her most recent single ‘Don’t Shoot The Messenger,’ was produced by Tony Visconti.

BISHI is the founder of WITCiH: The Women in Technology Creative Industries Hub, a platform elevating Womxn in Tech. She launched the podcast ‘Creative Women in Tech,’ in May 2020.

BiISHI’s collaborations and commissions for the stage include; The London Symphony Orchestra, The Kronos Quartet, Yoko Ono’s ‘Meltdown’, The Science Gallery, Joanna McGregor, Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio’, a film collaboration with fashion designer Manish Arora, and recorded collaborations with Sean Ono Lennon, Tony Visconti, Jarvis Cocker, Daphne Guinness & City of London Sinfonia as a Tanpura soloist on Jonny Greenwood’s Water.’ BISHI produced LANDR’s first-ever Sitar Sample pack.
http://bishi.co.uk/
https://www.witcih.com/podcasts

8^th March 2021, 8pm
High Fidelity Overtones
Free, listen again on the Feminist Library Mixcloud
MarioRi will broadcast a live radio show from home and share Reggae stories, tunes and a recorded chat with Thali Lotus (CAYA) about her experiences with sound systems over time.

Thali Lotus is the founder of CAYA, a 21st century Soundsystem, Enterprise and Audio company. Mining a rich cultural seam which counts the legendary Sound systems among its forebears. Through events, community outreach, workshops and soon to be audio products, she’s breathing new life into the scene and beyond. Helping to spark a resurgence across the UK and Innovation globally.

8th – 14th March – Digital Music Documentary Screenings – on Demand

Betty – They Say I’m Different (2017)
Tickets £4 – £7, available until 14th March
Original Funk Queen Betty Davis took on 1970’s establishment America and changed the course of women in music forever. Then she vanished. Forty years later, Betty, in a creative and constructed narrative, finally shares her extraordinary story.
Trailer: 

A songwriter from a small steel town outside of Pittsburgh, Betty arrived on the 70’s scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She befriended Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers and the Commodores, and married Miles Davis – startlingly turning him from jazz to jazz fusion on the album she named “Bitches Brew”. She then, despite being banned and boycotted, went on to become the first black woman to perform, write and manage herself. Then suddenly – she vanished. Creatively blending documentary and animation this movie traces the path of Betty’s life, how she grew from humble upbringings to become a fully self-realized black female pioneer and innovator the world failed to understand or appreciate. After years of trying, the elusive Betty, forever the free-spirited Black Power Goddess, finally allowed filmmakers to creatively tell her story based on their conversations.

Raw Chicks.Berlin (2017)
Tickets £4 – £7, available until 14th March
The documentary RAW CHICKS.BERLIN shows eleven multifaceted portraits of international Berlin-based female music producers with a focus on live acts; women who come on stage with their equipment and present their own songs and compositions.
Trailer: 

The musical spectrum ranges from experimental via noise-based electronic to electro-acoustic music.Split between studio and live performance shots, the film follows the live and work of: ANNA BOLENA ELECTR°CUTE / SINGING KITCHEN ERCKLENTZ NEUMANN KRITZKOM KSEN. / TOMISLAV KYOKA HITHERTOO MIMICOF / MIDORI HIRANO RONA GEFFEN SILNAYE ZIÚR.

19th March – Chisara Agor – Live stream performance – 7pm, Instagram live

Chisara Agor will give a short introduction to her practice in conversation with April Edgar, followed by a live performance where she will share music from her last EP ‘In-Between’, and new works from her upcoming EP ‘Shadows and Searchlights’.

Chisara Agor is an inter-disciplinary artist from Peckham, London. Her works span the music, theatre and art world grounded in her philosophical practice and desire to create work that speaks and engages with the wider community and human condition.  As a singer-songwriter she has performed in the UK and abroad and has appeared on stages such as the Southbank Centre, Jazz Café and most recently opened for Anais Mitchel at The Roundhouse London. Her most recent EP ‘In-Between’ sheds the light on feeling both powerful and powerless in our current political climate and showcases her eclectic soundscape of folk and jazz. www.chisaraagor.com

22nd -31st March – RCM Virtual Exhibition – Women Composers
MA Students from the Women In Music course at The Royal College of Music have put together an exhibition of 14 women composers and their music. It will be displayed throughout the last week of Women’s History Month as an online archive on the Feminist Library website Exhibition Page.
https://www.rcm.ac.uk/

25th March, 7pm
Listening Beyond: A soundwalk of women in contemporary electroacoustic music
Live talk with Diana Salazar: London based Electroacoustic Composer and Director of Programmes at the Royal College of Music
Free/£5 donation.

This talk will explore my own practice as a woman composer and educator working with technology. Through this lens, I will discuss how my practice has been shaped by a range of women composers and sound artists who are exploring new sonic terrain in contemporary electroacoustic music. Finally, I’ll look at the ways in which this community of practitioners can pave the way for the next generation of woman composers.

Diana Salazar is a Scottish born and London-based composer and sound artist. Her compositions explore cinematic sound spaces using layered sonic gestures, textures, and movement. She also creates work for instruments and electronics, music and interactive dance, and laptop improvisation. Her compositions are performed regularly both nationally and internationally, and many have been recognised in international competitions. Her work has been published on the Elektramusic, Studio PANaroma, SCRIME, Discparc, MisoMusic and Drift Station labels. She has been a composer-in-residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), Sweden; the Destellos Institute, Argentina; Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI), Texas; and Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida. A passionate music educator, she is Director of Programmes at the Royal College of Music where she leads on programme delivery, curriculum development and digital learning.

26^th March, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Rediscovering Donnacirco, the first Italian Feminist Album – Live performances and talk
Zoom. Tickets £0, £5, £10
In 1974 the song writer Paola Pallottino and the singer Gianfranca Montedoro recorded the first Italian feminist album. Through the metaphor of the circus, they tell us about the women’s existence in the Seventies. Sadly, Donna Circo has never been released or distributed. 45 years later, a group of musicians fall in love with the album again and decide to reinterpret the twelve original tracks. Thanks to this project, we can finally all listen to Donna Circo and its strong political and social content.

Join us for the presentation of the brand new version of the Donna Circo album! There will be a discussion with some of the artists that collaborated in the project, live performances on Zoom and a Q&A. View a short preview of the album here: Facebook NicoNote’s interpretation of the first track of the album.

Live performances of:

Marzia Stano, aka Una
Marzia Stano, aka UNA, has been writing songs since the age of 16. She founded the queer punk band Jolaurlo with which she delivers on stage messages against homophobia, racism and sexism (from the smallest provincial venue to Arezzo Wave, 1 Maggio in Rome, Heineken Jammin Festival etc). She opened gigs for Daniele Silvestri, Max Gazzè, Ermal Meta, Cristina Donà, Nada, Skunk Anansie, Iggy Pop and many others. In 2013 she won the AFI award for “best recording project” at the Premio Fabrizio De Andrè and in 2016 Sanremo Giovani’s selections taking part in the final live broadcast by Rai from the Ariston Theatre in Sanremo.

Marcella Riccardi. Recording and touring musician, songwriter, singer.
Favourite instrument: electric and classical guitar. Been on tour in US, Europe and Italy many times with my current project, Bemydelay, and with bands from the past: Massimo Volume, Franklin Delano and Blake/e/e/e. Collaborated with Rhys Chatham, Tom Carter, Califone, Stefano Pilia, Father Murphy, Starfuckers and many more. My records are usually released by brave, awesome label Boring Machines. In my compositions I’ve always struggled and worked hard to reach a simplicity that is meaningful and profound. The outcome is usually a lysergic kind of folk, achieved with a mixture of traditional songwriting and free-form openings that depend on the emotional weather of the moment.

NicoNote (It/A) is an artistic project created in 1996 by Nicoletta Magalotti (1962) transversal artist known for her vocality, she acts in fields of music, theater, clubbing, installations, performances, with artistic productions and curatorial projects. From the band Violet Eves to Romeo Castellucci’ s theater passing through Morphine club inside Cocoricò, discography since 1985 and tours in Europe, Canada, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, up to Chaos Variation V with Obsolete Capitalism Sound System ed.Rizosfera / Rough Trade 2019, a project among philosophy and electronics.

Some of the profit of this event will be donated to Donna Circo.