Katia Isakoff is a composer, producer, mix engineer, studio owner, academic and prime mover in the Women Produce Music organisation around which, along with the wider issues facing women in the music business, this guest lecture was centred.
She described WPM’s role as one of promotion and collaboration of female music producers, and Katia used several examples of the way in which even very big name female record artist’s (Bjork is an example) work on their own records is often marginalised in favour of the male collaborators in the eyes of the wider industry and the public.
WPM also exists to help eliminate the difficulties in sourcing female producers and academics for academic purposes. Katia explained that the academic aspects of music production mirror the commercial industry with very little female involvement as students or tutors. The industry itself has made some moves to present a changing picture but is currently projecting fairly obvious tokenism to hide ‘business as usual’, and that it lacks any meaningful institutional change – “The old doors are considered closed,”.
Her position is that the key to addressing the imbalance is not to focus on highlighting it or blaming people for it, but to concentrate on finding solutions and engendering real change.
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