Women are noticeably scarce in the world of experimental music, both in the audience and on the stage, a generic foible that the majority of males interested in this diverse form of music have probably observed at some time. Despite the relative freedom of the world of the avant garde which would enable a woman musician to freely express herself in the manner of her choosing, it is a genre which consistently fails to 'recruit' women performers or listeners. This situation does not transpose to the world of the modern visual art form or experimental theatre, both of which benefit from extensive female participation. It would appear that there is something intrinsically off-putting about experimental music for women, which results in the largely masculine composition of audiences for experimental music artists.

In this article, I am not necessarily attempting to produce a specific or comprehensive answer to the question, since it is an highly permeable cultural phenomenon to tackle, with an extremely broad range of contributing factors compounding the extent of feminine disinterest in avant garde music. Instead of providing specific answers, I will look at certain key factors and explore the general issues surrounding this topic, while focusing on the ultimately failed efforts of the 1960s / 70s avant garde musician, Captain Beefheart, to attract women into his audience.

The expression ‘avant garde’ originated from the French term for the advance part of an army which clears the land making it safe for later troops to proceed unhindered. This corresponds greatly to the modern day meaning of avant garde which tends to refer to the art world. Avant garde art-forms will be of an unusual or original kind and the reader will often need to have some background knowledge relating to the art form in order to appreciate its intent and subsequent level of success. While avant garde art forms are often ignored or disliked by the mainstream, the mainstream inevitably adapts and adopts avant garde characteristics over time, once these ideas have become understood and tolerated or accepted.

Occasionally, artists will manage to coexist in both the mainstream and the avant garde underground, though this is extremely rare. An example of this is the singer Bjork, who appears equally at home discussing pop in the 'teenybop' magazine, Smash Hits, or Stockhausen in the experimental music magazine The Wire. The Aphex Twin has also managed to retain his ‘avant garde credibility' despite having his music featured in television advertisements for mobile phones, and recently as the theme tune for a cookery programme - possibly the ultimate in mainstream commercial acceptance outside of chart success.

‘Avant garde’ as a concept of ‘experimental freshness’ has not always referred to the arts, but originally encompassed underground politics, though this meaning is seldom encountered today:

(Huyssen, 1988, 5)

Traditionally, experimental forms of art have been a male dominated arena, and tend to have remained as such. Huyssen briefly considered modernism’s male roots while discussing Flaubert’s book, Madame Bovary, which he considers to be a ‘founding text of modernism’ (Huyssen, 1988, 44).

(Huyssen, 1988, 44)

Huyssen wonders aloud whether the character Emma Bovary and real women of the time had read the novels in the same mockingly ironic way that Flaubert had done. We can only conclude that they probably had not.

(Huyssen, 1988, 44)

Thus, modernism, the avant garde and experimental art can be argued to have been founded upon the conscious disowning or disavowal of the art that women tended to consume, making no concession to populist needs, tastes or choices.

However, we need to consider why the avant garde has retained its predominantly male population in terms of both production and consumption. Almost every Western artistic genre, industry or social institution throughout history has had a predominantly male population and / or patriarchal structure when it first emerged - even Mary Ann Evans had to change her name to George Elliot (thus changing her sex with it) to get published and find an audience. Other genres and institutions have managed to open up to women innovators and audiences over time, yet the avant garde still remains as male dominated as it ever was. To illustrate this, we can consider the experimental music monthly magazine The Wire, which published its Invisible Jukebox book of interviews with experimental musicians in 1998. Of the thirty-seven artists featured in the book, only five are women. In the November 1999 edition of The Wire, of the forty-eight writers named, not one is a female name.

Proceed To Part 2