[NewMusic] Mills article

[Phillip Greenlief]

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Sarah - 21 Grand
Subject: [NewMusic] Mills article

I'd like to avoid the issue of attendance at improv shows, and who I see
regularly in the audience versus who I only see at shows they are
playing,
though I'll have to give a pass to Mr. Greenlief, as he seems to be
playing
somewhere almost every night.

PG:
Goodness, am I being profiled as one of the male musicians that keep
women sublimated by playing somewhere every night?  I certainly hope
not! 

I don't know. In the bay area, I see women and men in the audiences.
Just down the road in Sacramento, it's a noticeably different
environment. The majority of the listeners out there are male. I've been
playing out there a lot over the past 6 months and I keep noticing that.

First off, I play music because I love to play music. I'm not playing
because I want to be famous: that isn't going to happen, and being
famous would suck as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't go to Top Dog late
at night without being hassled by fans!

I'm not playing because I want to make a lot of money. I doubt that I
have to explain that one.
 
I play because I like the communion that happens with the people I play
with. I love making sounds, I love struggling with the possibilities
that music has to offer. I'm always interested to see "how it's going to
turn out". 

So it really doesn't matter to me who is on the other end of that
experiment. I don't' care if it's a man or a woman. It could be a coyote
for all I care, if I could get a coyote to play the saxophone, I'd be
interested to hear what s/he had to say...

I've tried to get past all my possible prejudices around what urges me
to call someone to play. Many years ago I pushed aside the idea that I
should only be playing with people who are better than I am, just so I
could get better.

Some people could view that (from the outside) as star fucking. I also
know that learning goes both ways, and I wanted to play with a more
diverse group of musicians. I now realize (ah, the fragments of wisdom
that arrive sometime too late in life!) that I learn from everyone I
play with, regardless of their ability (and certainly regardless of
their gender!).

Sarah's right, we have talked about this in the past year. I can't help
but think it's a matter of interest (on the part of women - are women
interested in improvised music? - apparently not on a large-scale level,
but more and more great women musicians seem to be popping up - so
hopefully that is changing - I've said this before and so have others on
this list - life is so much more rich when there is real diversity in
the construct). 

I play with men and women. I probably play with more men, because there
are more men to call to play then there are women. I'm glad that Mills
College is around, because it attracts a lot of great women musicians to
the bay area. Hopefully they stick around after they graduate, but if
not, then that's good too - they go back to where they came from or go
somewhere else and the world has more great women musicians.

Finally, I don't know, kidz - this is kind of an absurd conversation. Of
all places, I think the SF Bay Area is more "healthier" in this regard
than some of the other cities. I think the environment is MUCH better
than it was when I first moved here in the late 70's. Then it really was
dominated by men. As society at large changes, so doth the music
communities. The climate in America in general is less sexist than it
was 30 years ago. I'm not as familiar with the scene in LA, for example,
as I used to be, but it seems to me that men outnumber women on the
creative music scene down there much more than here or San Diego or
Seattle or Portland...if there are other meccas for new music on the
west coast, I'm not aware of the population breakdown.