By Alejandro Prieto |
Montevideo (EFE).- Achieving gender equality both on stage and backstage is the goal of women dedicated to music in Uruguay, where their groups promote a quota bill that also seeks to eliminate economic gaps and contribute to “democratize the melodies”.
The moment of reviewing the list that announces who will appear at the music festival to which they want to dance and sing, or simply see their favorite band, has become increasingly frustrating for those who increasingly discover that only the same as always or, specifically, “the same men as always”.
The seed of change
It was this and other situations linked to historical discrimination against women in the field that in 2017, as the member of the Más Músicas Leticia Ramos group told EFE, motivated some Uruguayan musicians to begin to investigate the issue in depth and plant a first “seed” of change.
“In this sharing, questions began to arise about why there are few women, why we always occupy the same roles, why within the groups we always organize or produce roles that are linked to maternity, to caring,” she says.
That first step was the one that, according to the organization’s spokesperson, Camila Tornatore, also detailed, revealed that there was little information about the situation of women and “almost zero” in the case of dissidents or divergent groups (non-public people). binary or LGBTIQ+ spectrum) and gave rise to the first collective meeting in 2019.
There they discussed various barriers that, Tornatore emphasizes, are still in force, such as the lower remuneration compared to men or the little presence on stage.
“It is not equitable, it was not then, it is not now. We are in the process of at least making it visible, showing it and saying here are the data, the numbers. How do we change it?” asks the activist, drummer and cultural manager.
In search of sound equity
A pandemic that, Ramos notes, led to a change in the focus of the exchange and only virtual workshops and talks were held, did not stop the momentum of the groups More Music and Women and Dissidents of Uruguayan Music (Mydmus), which supported by a fund published their research titled “Sound Equity”.
Among its main conclusions, the document, which includes previous data that only 26.5% of those who have their main occupation in music are women, shows that the majority of women and dissidences or divergences in the field have less than 40 years old, are from the capital, white and of medium-high economic level.
For Ramos, singer of the duo Las Hijas de Mandela, taking into account this “cut” of more pronounced inequities for Afro, older and interior women is key, because inclusion aims precisely to “democratize” music.
“The final objective is to democratize, so that more and more music that we listen to on the radio, on television or in any shared space, have the greatest diversity of sensibilities, stories, discourses, emotions”, he emphasizes.
the quota law
Along with a series of cycles that, as Más Músicas does with a directory of artists on its website, seek to make the work of women and dissidents visible, Mydmus promotes a quota bill that, as its spokesperson Pamela Román details, entered to the Uruguayan Parliament at the end of 2021.
The proposal, which has a close example in the quota law approved in Argentina in 2019, seeks that in shows with a minimum of two artists or bands there is a 50% participation of women and dissidents.
“It will promote a different quality of employment (…) because it is comprehensive, it represents the entry to the grid (programming) but also the income in money and in the distribution of schedules,” says Román, a benchmark in the women’s DJ sector.
Ramos, who believes that it will be “a milestone” for culture, and rapper Viki Style, from the band Se Armó Kokoa, who sees it as a way of concretizing something that usually remains in the discourse, express themselves in coupling.
“It would be like a framework, a step forward, a footprint, one more step towards that goal to which we aspire,” he remarks.
Kick doors, rethink and open paths
To which Viki Style says that in a “strongly masculinized” culture like hip-hop, her band, made up only of women and dissidents, did not have to hit but rather “kick doors”, the references of Más Músicas reflect about the importance of understanding their struggle as part of a “cultural change”.
“You have to start rethinking. Women, men, dissidents of all generations, what is the music I listen to? Why do I listen to what I listen to?” Ramos stresses, to which Tornatore remarks that it is not about “removing spaces” from men but about “expanding” and “sharing”.
“There needs to be more women doing, demonstrating, so that others from different places begin to take over (interest) and are perhaps encouraged to do something that they have dreamed of and could never achieve because they said ‘no, that’s for men. ‘”, Roman rounds off.