M Magazine International Womens Day Edition

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• CoverM CHOOSE TO CHALLENGE
• ContentsOnes to Watch Lavida Loca
• Page 326
• Ones to watchPRS for Music Outreach Manager, Claire Rose, gives us the skinny on some of the artists she's had her eyes on through the Outreach Talent Identification programme (TIP). TIP seeks to identify and engage with emerging artists. PRS for Music members identified under TIP have gone on to be featured in the BBC Music Sound Of lists, nominated for BRITs Critics' Choice Awards and have won at the Grammys, the AIM Awards and the Mercurys.
• Page 5Griff Following an outstanding 2020, Griff is pop music's new rising star. Not only is she a brilliant songwriter, but her own producer, stylist and video director. She even makes her own clothes. A formidable songwriter, Griff explores loss, heartbreak, betrayal and dealing with being a hormonal teenager and found herself fifth in the BBC Sound of 2021 list.
• Ones to watchSunflower Thieves Sunflower Thieves create harmonies to transport you to warmer climes. The duo provide intimate, atmospheric, synth-folk which is full of emotion, yet are expert in summoning a sense of calm. Their latest single, Hide and Seek, is a triumph and proves that Sunflower Thieves are an unstoppable team who have complete creative control in every aspect of their music.
• JGrreyIf you haven't listened to JGrrey, then we implore you to do so. Her silky tones, honest and relatable lyrics and her sophisticated style are awe-inspiring. JGrrey has been making waves for a little while but always stays true to herself, ensuring she is making music for her own benefit and only releasing it when she is ready. JGrrey has made fans of Annie Mac and Billie Eilish since the release of her debut EP, Grrey Daze, and has certainly found fans in us too. Nuha Ruby Ra
• Lavida LocaBorn in Malawi, raised in Nottingham and now based in south London, Lavida Loca is carving out her own lane in UK rap on her own terms. Below the surface of Lavida Loca's razor-sharp lyrics is a brutal tale of surviving inner city poverty, crime and a drive to spotlight the pitfalls that many women fall into-whose stories are so rarely heard.
• Page 9'Music has definitely kept me grounded; it's giving me something to like to live for in a weird, cliche sense. But yeah, it's giving me something to do, something that's mine. I didn't have anything.' I'd heard of in the UK and then they influenced me to start writing. That's the moment I first picked up a pen and I wrote to the Game Over instrumental and I haven't looked back since.
• Photo: Ernest SimonsI think it's important to listen to others, but I think it's also important to have a clear vision, and to have a strong voice History Makers:
• Page 11PRS for Music chief executive Andrea Czapary Martin and Member Council President Michelle Escoffery discuss career pathways, how women in senior management and leadership roles can help to forge a gender-equal music industry and share insight into obstacles faced. Andrea: What job did you dream of doing when you were young? Michelle: I wanted to study graphic design. I did it at school, and I wanted to be either an interior designer or a fashion designer, and none of that happened. I didn't study art at school, but I got accepted into Birkbeck Art School to do fine art for a year, but my dad wouldn't let me do it (laughter). Dad said no, no arts for you. So, I went onto do A-Levels, I did English, sociology, maths and computer science, but I was recording an album at the same time. I was going to college in the day, going to the studio at night, and so something had to give. I came out with my English and my sociology. Nothing art-based at all.
• Page 12the industry? Andrea: The theme of this year's International Women's Day is #ChooseToChallenge, what are the challenges you've faced in Michelle: Not being taken seriously as a contender, and not being heard in a space. People assuming you can't do something because you're a woman. I think that's been the greatest challenge, challenging those stereotypes. Also being pigeonholed into a certain genre. So, it's, 'Oh you're Black, so you write R&B. It's like, 'well no, actually I write pop, I write dance, I write rock-influenced music. One of the things that I kind of adopted quite early in my career was 'try it! Try it at least once and see if you're good at it, see if you like it, see if you're capable, and if you are, keep going. People see you and have a perception of who you are and what you're capable of. We have to always challenge that.
• Page 13Andrea: How important do you think it is to encourage more female writers to join PRS? Michelle: I think it's hugely important because there is so much talent out there. I see it all the time in university. Young women want to learn production but aren't necessarily getting let into those rooms and again, we express ourselves differently, we think differently and we just need to level the playing field. PRS' membership is only 18 percent female. It's about education and creating spaces so that women can upskill in a safe environment, maybe possibly with other females, female-led camps or female-led courses, where they can really get into production and not feel like they are the outsider.
• Women in UK hip-hopIsatta Sheriff takes us on a journey through different eras in UK rap music via the experiences of women MCs, exploring whether attitudes towards women have evolved and whether there has been a reduction in misogyny. Women have been part of hip-hop's fabric since its inception. The first hip-hop group to ever appear on national television in 1981 included rap's first Lady, Sha Roc. A 14-year-old Roxanne Shanté also started the world's first rap beef in 1984 with Roxanne's Revenge, when she fired back at UTFO's sexist rhymes on Roxanne Roxanne. The Cookie Crew appeared on mainstream TV in 1987 and the Battersea-raised Monie Love joined Queen Latifa in 1989 to highlight misogyny and sexism on Ladies First. During this period, an international hip-hop community was developing and according to Professors Janell Hobson and Dianne Bartlow, marginalised Black girls were using rap as a device to talk about their experiences.
• TION PENM Magazine 15 Photo: Jack Bridgland
• Page 16MA Lady Leshurr
• Monie Love'the women that do come through are only able to because of co-signs from men, not because of the co-signs from other women.' Itch FM. Pariz 1 adds, 'everybody who had a voice was able to come through and say something. We were about the music, rather than the fame of it'
• Photo: Jennifer McCord2009-2014 - YouTube Platforms Assemble Black music in Britain was in a rocky place at this point and artists were trying new things in order to navigate an industry that didn't want to hear their voices. SBTV, GRM Daily and LinkUpTV were established as the new leading media platform for Black youth in Britain, with grime being the dominant sound. Women continued to make headway during this time. Little Simz was making a name for herself via Soundcloud while Damae aka Bubblerap was dropping Fugee style verses in her trio Hawk House. The tradition of 'genre hopping' continued to grow, and it became an everyday occurrence for grime MCs like Lioness, Roxanne, Amplify Dot, Lady Leshurr and Shystie to jump on tracks at a slower hip-hop tempo.
• Photo: Will BeachDeyah We are speaking up, coming together and speaking our truth which cannot be ignored.
• Kate NashKate Nash is part of the cultural fabric of British music. A name embedded in our collective vocabulary from a time when it was Tom from MySpace, not Mark Zuckerberg, for a lot of then-teenagers, now late-twenty-somethings Nash represents a well-loved, much-missed era.
• Page 21Fast forward to 2021 and the award-winning singer songwriter has widened her professional net. Having starred in eccentric wrestling drama GLOW, Kate now appears in headlines as 'actor, as much as she does 'musician. But, as documented in the 2019 BBC Three documentary Underestimate the Girl, a lot happened in between her Made of Bricks debut and appearing alongside Marc Maron in an acclaimed Netflix show. The subject of many a Daily Mail showbiz section headline, a 19-year-old Nash was targeted by the media for being, as she recalled, too ugly, too fat, an idiot, and was soon after dropped by her label having decided to veer off in a commercially unpalatable musical direction. But speaking to Kate, who is now LA-based, her resilience, charisma and intelligence is palpable. Nash, it seems, is a fighter both on screen and off.
• Page 22I realised not too long ago that I have had my back up because of how the media treated me after Made in Bricks. I used to meet people and think, before I even meet them, I'll be like, 'I bet they don't like me. I bet they think I'm an idiot. I only put it together recently because I noticed it in another musician my age. And I was like, They act like that. Why do they act like that?' I saw it in myself. Maya: At the time, I don't think I realised how closely you were compared to other female artists, especially Lily Allen. It's sad and unsurprising that Lily too has suffered with mental health issues, in part as a result of the hounding she got in the press.
• Page 23We need to clean house and we need women in positions of power 'Oh, it was the seventies. Okay but it was also the eighties, it was also the nineties. It's noughties and it's now.
• FeaturesGirls in the band Sports Team drummer Al Greenwood speaks to PVA guitarist Ella Harris about the challenges they have both faced in the music industry, the need to out-perform men for validation within the same space and the complexity of these issues.
• Page 25Our sound-technician and manager are women, and I think having them on the team does make a real difference. 'When our first single came out, I was really happy and it was all very exciting when we were starting to get press. I noticed, being a talk/ singy style of vocalist, [like many contemporary acts] I had the word 'sexy' thrown about a lot in reviews and people messaging me. It made me feel uncomfortable because I don't want to be sexualised. I didn't give my consent for people to message me out of the blue or portray me in that way!
• Róisín MachineA diamond in the lockdown darkness Róisín Murphy and her critically acclaimed 2020 album Róisín Machine did more than teach us how to pronounce her first name. It brought memories of dancefloors much missed, forging communities together desperate for reunions with the hope that whatever this new reality is, it will always have a sleazy Murphy bassline as its soundtrack. Kate Wildblood caught up with Róisín to talk about the collaborative process behind her work, the art of the remix, the realities of virtual performances, the future of nightlife culture and how Ms Jones giving good Grace inspired a lifetime of creativity. Kate: The album is a collaboration with Richard Barratt aka Parrot aka Crooked Man, the infamous Sheffield producer. How did that come to be?
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• Page 28kicked us into place with releasing Róisín Machine was being signed by Damian Harris at Skint. Going back to when we finally released incapable on Bitter End in 2018 everyone went mad for it and Damian was just lovely, wanted to make an album and saw that there was some kind of market for it. Kate: The sublimely subversive singer-songwriter Amy Douglas wrote Something More for you but just how did this connection to the most fabulous of native New Yorkers come to be?
• Page 29I've always had this certain reaction to things and it frightens people a little bit but it's not confidence, it's just drive, it's just destiny. Kate: Female beacons - who lit the way for you? Róisín: I saw Laurie Anderson on telly when I was a kid and I never forgot it. My mother has got fantastic taste even if it's weird shit, she was always into mad music, knew what a good tune was. Grace Jones, always Grace Jones. When I was a kid back in little town Ireland our family friends had put the Island Life album on the fireplace in their front room so everybody who came in saw it. She's there with like the one leg with the microphone in her hand and everyone would say like 'what the fuck?' Honestly, we didn't know if it was a man, a woman, an alien. Because it was extended, beyond human, that really left an impression on me and then when I heard Pull Up To The Bumper on Top Of The Pops and she was there with the fucking suit on!
• FeaturesGirls make beats too Annique Simpson meets the female producers shaking up the UK music industry, analysing gender imbalance in the sector and celebrating those taking strides.
• Anna MeredithPhoto: Gem Harris
• GnarlyTAYE Similarly, Anna wants to see more female producers boldly tap into their inner innovators. 'Don't be put off by the technology or paralysed by fear. Just get stuck in and find what works best for you!
• Page 33with her college studies - has only told a few close friends about her involvement. 'I want to be a normal teenager and be able to live my life freely. No one at my college knew I worked on the song. Most of them don't know I'm a producer. Ceebeaats is equally protective of her identity on social media, although she proudly promotes her gender. She's built a supportive community with other female producers, many of whom are young and ambitious but are struggling to get their big break. 'Some of them feel they won't be accepted in certain genres, like drill, or they don't have the right contacts or opportunities like men do. I want to help change this by running boot camps, doing producer projects and talking about the industry! However, she agrees with Aubrey, Anna and Gnarly that industry execs need to do more to help women succeed. 'Labels need to go on social media, check out #femaleproducer and see what's out there. It doesn't even need to be big actions - small steps like this can make all the difference.
• Page 34Bishi 'We've now gone past the point of no return,' says multi-hyphenate Bishi as she stresses that denying issues about representation and equality in music is no longer an option.
• Page 35Of Bengali heritage and born in London, a large part of Bishi's dynamic career has been dedicated to advocating for inclusivity in the music industry and the gender equality of women in tech. Speaking about where issues in inclusivity stand at the moment, she says, 'Because of movements like Black Lives Matter, I think a really huge message has gone out to the world that you cannot afford to not be inclusive anymore. You have to be inclusive. You have to think about your line-ups. You have to think about inclusivity and visibility.
• PLE XXX GIRLSIsobel Waller-Bridge
• Changing the SoundtrackSophie Rashbrook speaks to award-winning British film and TV composers, Nainita Desai, Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, Donna McKevitt and Isobel Waller-Bridge, about visibility, genre-stereotyping and their hopes for the next generation of women composers In 2020, of the 250 top-grossing films, only 5 percent had scores that were written by women - a decrease on the previous year's figure of 6 percent - while in 2020, Hildur Guðnadóttir became the first woman composer to win at the Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs for her soundtrack to The Joker. Although the award winners for 2021 won't be known until next month, one thing is certain: change is coming to the film and TV industry. But how soon?
• Page 38'It stems from the writers. If you have writers who are creating diverse stories, and the executives at the channels and broadcasters are commissioning them, then that filters down to female composers being employed.' Nainita has composed scores across a wide range of media, from film and TV, to documentaries and video games. Yet despite the broad scope of her work, she recalls one instance of so- called 'genre-stereotyping' - whereby women are deemed less capable of writing in a particular style on account of their gender: 'I remember, I was up for a project and a producer asked me, 'Can you write action music?' And I just thought, 'What?!! Music doesn't have a gender, and yet, when it comes to film, people think, 'Oh, women can't write masculine, or what's traditionally called 'testosterone-filled' film music." For Nainita, the goal is to normalise the idea of women composers, both at a grassroots level, ('We have to ensure that we have an inclusive and diverse syllabus for students to learn from,) to within the industry itself; a cause she promotes through her diversity and inclusion work for the Ivors Academy and BAFTA.
• Photo: Mark ArrigoAlexandra Hamilton-Ayres into groups; it's about bringing the less represented composers into the mainstream. And the more we can steer the conversation away from the 'issues', and towards the amazing things that people are doing, the better. In that spirit, it's worth mentioning Alexandra's forthcoming release with the UK's first womxn string orchestra, the newly-formed Her Ensemble: 'They are platforming womxn composers, and I'm releasing an arrangement of Coma, from my debut album, for International Women's Day! With the #Choosetochallenge theme of this year's IWD in mind, what advice can our composers offer to the next generation of women entering the industry?
• Page 40Top left to bottom right - Catherine Manners, Laura May, Sarah Liversedge, Shauni Cabellero Independent Women in Music Publishing
• Page 41Similarly, Shauni Cabellero, who set up the Go 2 Agency, was inspired by the success of Paulette Long OBE, director at Westbury Music and one of the few senior black women in publishing: 'They say you can't become what you can't see. And when I discovered Paulette Long, when I saw what she was doing, teaching people to make money out of their music, I copied the exact same thing. I was like, That's exactly what I want to do. Sarah Liversedge wears multiple hats, as the managing director of BDi Music, A&R director at Bucks Music Group and co-director at The Movement London. She struck out on her own with BDI 17 years ago after spending over a decade at the BBC. 'And I haven't looked back; she says. 'In hindsight, I wish I had done it a little bit earlier - it's not a regret, but I could have done it a bit earlier if I'd had the confidence!
• Peggy SeegerInnocence and Experience 'I began to realise that the earth will only survive if women run it.' Kate Hutchinson speaks to feminist activist songmaker Peggy Seeger as she approaches the release of what is said to be her final album following a 60-year career.
• Page 43VEGA Photo: Vicki Sharp Photography
• Photo: Vicki Sharp PhotographySeeger was born in 1935, New York, into a folk dynasty - her father, Charles, was a musicologist, while half-brother Pete was a star of the nascent American folk scene. With MacColl, Seeger set off on her own path. The story goes that they met when she was 21 in the mid-50s, after the song collector Alan Lomax had invited her to play with them on a TV show in London. MacColl was 20 years her senior and married, but it was the beginning of a love affair that helped to put folk music back on the map, as they travelled the UK collecting old songs and sharing them with the world. MacColl was already an established folk singer but Seeger, a multi-instrumentalist, made his music sing. 'He was good, but I don't think he would have made it on his own, says Seeger. 'I added the accompaniment, the feminine principle. She wrote songs herself, too, and sang the ones he'd written for her. The most famous of those was The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - much to their surprise, it was turned into a Grammy-winning hit by Roberta Flack in 1972. I never would have thought First Time Ever would have gone pop. It has been covered by 400 singers and some of it is
• No man ever becomes as invisible as an 85-year-old woman'way off the wall,' says Seeger. At first, her and MacColl thought Flack's version was 'horrendous' (though she appreciates it now), which goes some way to explain the purism that the pair were notorious for. 'It's as if you are to make a heavy metal version of Amazing Grace. A song in its inception carries a style with it. The songwriter has a style in mind, right?' Intention and context is everything, in Seeger's mind - sentiments that chime with conversations around appropriation today. But back when Seeger was saying it, it caused shockwaves among folk connoisseurs. At their London venue The Singers Club, they enforced a 'policy' where performers could only sing 'songs that were in a language that you spoke, from a culture that you knew, she explains. It started because of 'some of the English singers singing Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.'
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• Moderate Rebels'If we can encourage girls and women to have that realisation, the same time that men do at five years old when they're given a guitar, I feel that's going to help change things.' It's in the roots of London collective Moderate Rebels to push the boundaries as much as possible. This was the case at their first gig in 2016 when they played one song, the single God Sent Us, for 30 drawn out minutes, pulling apart the mantra-esque track at its seams and smashing it back together again.
• Page 48Steph: How do you usually write songs as a collective? Mo: It's mostly Kevin and I as a starting point working on lyrics together. We start with the loose beginnings of a song. We'll have boxes and boxes of snapshots of lyrics scrunched up in balls, as everybody does who writes music. It really comes to life when we bring everyone else in and we start their own elements.
• Page 49over and over again. That was certainly true when we did that first gig. The only and lyrics in that song [God Sent Us] are 'we're here to wreck your house and ruin your life, God sent us! That's a quote from Romper Stomper [The 1992 film about a neo nazi group in Australia), and that was the entire song. Steph: Songs like Forever Tomorrow Today and These Are The Good Times feel like two sides of the same coin in that they're both about a bleak political reality we're all living through. Do you often feel like you're caught between feeling hopeful and feeling depressed about the world?
• (Freyja Lawson)'It's a very white male-dominated industry, all from a certain age group. So as a younger woman coming into it, you can be met with some resistance.' The past decade has seen more women taking on technical roles in the live music industry, but Black women are still so scarce that they're almost invisible. Native Management artists Nao and Mura Masa wanted to hire more diverse technicians for their crews, so for two years, looked for ways to recruit and train Black women as lighting engineers, stage techs, audio engineers and playback technicians. Having approached music technology schools and struggling to put together a course in the way they wanted, the artists almost gave up. But last summer, the Black Lives Matter movement was the catalyst that set the 3T (Tour Tech Training) course in motion.
• Bringing Black women into the live music industryKaeshelle Rianne speaks to the women empowered by the Native Management backed Technical Tour Training course (3T). Supported by Nao and Mura Masa, 3T is a first of its kind in training Black women to bring music performances to life from behind the scenes. While the live music industry isn't all roses, over her eight years in the industry, Freyja Lawson's experience has been largely positive. However, she says, 'I have never worked with a Black woman who was in a technical role before, only in performing roles, which is just not right'
• Page 52'Since I started touring as Nao seven years ago, I've wanted a more diverse crew. I've loved everyone I've worked with but if you're away with a group of people for weeks on end it's nice to have a mix, it makes things more balanced. But no matter how hard we looked we couldn't find many women, hardly any women of colour and no Black women at all. Not one.' (Nao)
• Page 53Helena: Yeah, playback tech and become an RF engineer. There aren't many people doing it, let alone Black people and it'd be the closest thing to my degree. Perusi: I'm more into tour and production management. But I do like playback too, it's something I could get my teeth into.
• FeaturesHow the pandemic has affected women in the music industry Pre-pandemic, women in the music industry faced huge challenges that impacted their mental health, from being taken less seriously to juggling their careers with childcare. Here, Lydia Smith explores how the sudden shift created by COVID-19 has both magnified and exacerbated these pressures.
• Page 55With a two-year-old daughter and a separate role as the co- developer of Mamas In Music, a group supporting mothers in the music industry, her life was busy but fulfilling. 'There's no getting away from it, the pandemic has turned our world upside down and the daily struggles are very real,' she says. 'My income stream depends on the artist performing the songs I have written, live performances, tours, and DJs playing my songs in clubs, along with writing for film and TV. Every source of music income for me has been put on hold.
• Leadership and GenderMaxie Gedge, M Magazine's International Women's Day Guest Editor, is best known for her work as a PRS Foundation and Keychange Project Manager, a drummer and founder of Gravy Records. Here, Maxie explores what it means to be a leader, the link between power and accountability and how Keychange is working to challenge stereotypes.
• Page 57FRS HOW T
• shesaid.soFemale-led helping smash glass ceilings for women When Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin and Eurythmics pop-rock goddess Annie Lennox joined forces for their 1985 feminist anthem, Sisters are Doin It For Themselves, they had big dreams of a female-friendly future.
• Girls of GrimeThe F-List CIC Enter The F-List.
• Page 60PRS for MUSIC prsformusic.com/m-magazine