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Like the industry, the AFM is also changing and evolving, and its policies and programs will move in new directions dictated by its members. As a member, you will determine these directions through your interest and involvement. Your membership card will be your key to participation in governing your union, keeping it responsive to your needs and enabling it to serve you better. To become a member now, visit www.afm.org/join.

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Home » Recent News » Critic Works to Advance the Voice of Female Musicians


Critic Works to Advance the Voice of Female Musicians

July 7, 2017

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When New York-based writer and activist Rebecca Lentjes published her January article “Top 10 Living Women Composers,” she expected to hear from disgruntled women who felt they deserved to be on the list. But, she explains in a blog, every single negative comment was from a man. “These men like to claim that they aren’t sexist—that sexism, in fact, does not exist, but that women are inherently ‘inferior’ composers,” says Lentjes. “The idea that sexism isn’t real is perpetuated by men who don’t want women to have the things they have; the idea that women are incapable of writing music is sexism.”

A music critic since graduating from college in 2012, Lentjes grew weary of attending concerts featuring exclusively white men. “About a year ago I made the decision only to review concerts with at least one woman (or trans or nonbinary) composer on the program. To pave the way for a female language, female voices, and female space, we must continue straining to hear each other through the noise of misogyny—and, more importantly, amplifying what we hear,” she says.

 






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