The World of Wearable Arts might be a “champion for the female spirit and female creativity” but that doesn’t seem to extend to the music.
Beginning in 2018, New Zealand composers have been invited to create a musical landscape for the live WoW performances.
Six kiwi composers were commissioned this year. Classical composers Gareth Farr and John Psathas are among them. But no female composers have been included.
The Lady Warrior, by Rinaldy Yunardi of Indonesia, is modelled in the Avant-garde Section during the World of WearableArt Photo: 2019 Getty Images
In 2018, the event’s 30th anniversary, and the first year of NZ compositions for WoW, only one female composer – Claire Cowan – was involved.
WoW musical director Paul McLaney is “consciously aware of the imbalance” and he says he tried his best to find female composers.
But he says the lack of female composers reflects the wider issues facing the music industry. “This current situation highlights…there is an imbalance,” he says. “And just trying to understand why it’s there in the first place. I really don’t know why it exists.”
According to APRA, of its 13,500 composer and songwriter members, only 24 percent are female.
Composer and APRA’s Director of NZ Member Services Victoria Kelly says the music industry is a problematic environment and the more she thinks about the issue the bigger it gets. She says it’s hard to know where to begin when approaching a solution but suggests it needs to come from the top down.
“It has to come from decision makers and those who control resources,” she says. “I think we need to address the imbalance genuinely… and have it acknowledged by people in power; not through lip service but through action.”
For WoW Paul McLaney was given a brief to find composers who worked in a “commercial”- film and television - space. He says not many female composers work in that area.
Paul McLaney Photo: Supplied
He went through the Screen Composers’ Guild website to find composers who would fit the bill for WoW. Out of the 24 composers the site suggested, only four were women. He says he offered up a range of different composers to the board of WoW and they selected the six for this year’s show.
He says examples of their work are needed to present to the board for them to make a decision. Many composers don’t have recordings of their work available.
“The heavy hitters… Eve de Castro Robinson and Gillian Whitehead… work primarily in that strictly classical world,” he says. “Without having examples… to illustrate their facility to work in different…emotional spaces that suit the WoW aesthetic… it generally falls to those composers who have a body of work in film and television that is easily presentable.”
Victoria Kelly, who is on McLaney’s radar for future WoW events, says the industry has several “extraordinary” women who are “punching far above their weight”. She references the likes of Lorde, Tiny Ruins, Nadia Reid and Aldous Harding, who won the 2019 Silver Scroll for song writing. “You would not think the statistics were stacked against them,” she says. “It’s a credit to our women that they excel anyway.”
New Zealand composer Victoria Kelly Photo: Supplied
Kelly says women do not become what they cannot see but says the conversation needs to be about how to solve the problem rather than “blame” and “victimise”. “We are talking about this beautiful and tangible thing… art should represent the entire community and at the moment the art is not representing the entire community,” she says. “There’s so many amazing female composers in the country but it doesn’t make any sense not to commission them. [It] seems almost deliberate to do that.”
Paul McLaney says Wow is the “champion of the female spirit and female creativity” and the music should express the same sentiment. Victoria Kelly agrees. “I think you’ll find more women [composers] in the WoW line up next year,” she says. “The whole organisation is aware, and I’m sure they are the kind of organisation who will take that on board and make that change.
“I’d be really surprised if they didn’t.”
