gossiping and the importance of community
June 2023, revisited January 2025
Silvia Federici tracks back in her book Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women the origin of the meaning and connotation of the word gossip. In today’s society, this word means “conversation or reports about other people's private lives that might be unkind, disapproving, or not true”. On top of the intrinsic negative connotation to this definition, there is a misogynist charge to it, “the ones who gossip are the women who supposedly have nothing better to do, and have worse access to knowledge and real information”. Under this perspective, the consequence of gossip is then “the circulation of information that is not intended for public ears but is capable of ruining someone's reputation, and is certainly “women's talk”.
This meaning to the word gossip erases the importance of communication between women, devaluing and denigrating the need to communicate among themselves about many different topics. The examples brought by Federici of the topics women in a diversity of cultures and periods would go from gossiping about natural remedies to passing on stories about the community they belonged to, which is a way to preserve history. Indeed, “naming gossip this production of knowledge contributes to the degradation of women[...]. That’s how women have been silenced and excluded from the places where decisions are taken, the possibility to define their own experience was taken away from them [...]”.
In her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Angela Davis puts in advance and claims the relevance and politics behind the themes treated by black female singers in the blues era: advice to other women, alcohol, betrayal or abandonment, broken or failed love affairs, death, departure, dilemma of staying with a man or returning to family, disease and afflictions, erotica, hell, homosexuality, infidelity, injustice, jail and serving time, loss of lover, love, men, mistreatment, murder, other woman, poverty, promiscuity, sadness, sex, suicide, supernatural, trains, traveling, unfaithfulness, vengeance, weariness, depression, disillusionment, weight loss. She does not include children, domestic life, husband and marriage.All these are often considered gossip today. From a contemporary perspective and within the context of the music industry environment, I find it very important to redefine and reappropriate gossiping. When women talk about emotions, about love, about their relationships, they are also talking about the violence that exists within these. When they speak up about their relationships to colleagues, it is not useless information. It is sharing a negative experience about (for example, I won’t be giving names for confidential reasons) how a colleague flirtted with them (or further sexual violence) in an abusive or inappropriate way and realising this has happened not only to them. It is feeling the relief, getting rid of the shame and anger that one feels when some other colleague stopped playing with them because they refused to have sex with him. Not only have I heard these kinds of stories over and over again among my fellow female musicians, but researchers have been looking into it, “when she [Virginia Mayhew] got a gig at the old Birdland in the mid-1990s, she hired him. But right before the gig, he told Mayhew that he would not do the gig unless she sleeps with him. Mayhew unwillingly decided to hire somebody else, and the management of the club was extremely unhappy because they wanted her to play with somebody with a big name. This also shows that the legendary musician used his power and status to manipulate Mayhew’s ambition for success”.
Weaving a community and opening the dialogue prevents further violence from happening to others, warning them about who the dangerous fellow musicians are. It is as well pointing out unfair and discriminatory situations. It is raising awareness and creating community, because many women have experienced this type of violence. It is bringing value back to their own trajectory and experience. It is bringing back their vision as musicians and performers. It is breaking down the imposed vision of them as sexual objects.
When having a conversation with one of the few famous female jazz players of the older generation in the Belgian scene, I asked about her connection to other relevant female players from the international scene. Besides replying to the musical reasons for this strong connection, she insisted that it wasn’t because of their gender. On top of this, she also mentioned something that stuck with me for a while, “we played for 2 hours and then we spoke for 7 hours. You know, women”. Under the feminist view of “women’s talk” I’m claiming the encounter of these two musicians is intrinsically feminist and evidences the importance of sharing our experiences as women in such a male dominated environment. This type of answer shows the lack of awareness on gender issues in older generations and a profound internalized misogyny. To me, this puts in evidence the urgent need to turn around the meaning of gossip in order to open up discussion. It also presents the importance of having more references of women and queers in both the studying and the professional environment, to be able to question together the dominant discourse. The more communities will be built, the more the issues will be spoken about and the more transformation will happen, breaking speeches that keep the jazz environment an unsafe space for gender minorities. Throughout the years in conservatory I felt so lonely. I believe the year and a half of isolation due to the pandemic played a big role in this feeling, but before that I also experienced a big lack of female references. On top of that, I never felt included among my male classmates and colleagues, and because of my own experience and trajectory, I was always very vigilant and scared of them. There wasn’t a queer community, which is now starting to exist, with many more queers in the first years of conservatory. I would like that music schools are a safe and growing space for all, that no one has to experience what I did and what many of my female colleagues did as well. Even if we don't all live the same things, there needs to be space for things to be said out loud, and to think and reflect together.
In an interview to Esperanza Spalding, when talking about the difference she felt when playing with women (Terri Lyne Carrington and Geri Allen):
“There’s no energetic boundary. That is different. It came up peripherally in conversation with Geri, but mostly speaking for myself: We didn’t realize that we always hold this boundary around our bodies, and our language, and the way that we greet our bandmates, and the topics that we’ll delve into — all because on some level we’re conscious of not triggering or feeding a sexual dynamic, a traditional, conditioned relational dynamic. We’d all worked with, grown up with, and studied with men from a generation that saw all women as potential objects for sex, or just generally as subordinates — whether they were conscious of it or not.
Playing with Geri and Terri, there was the distinct feeling of something falling away. Energetically, emotionally, and physically, we would go anywhere with each other. We just felt 1000 percent free, and open, and heard, and received, and I think that expresses itself in the music somehow. I don’t know how — it would be interesting to see a brain scan, if there are any actual differences in our process for communicating [laughs]. I think we all were pleasantly surprised to discover what it feels like to just be completely uninhibited. It was really refreshing.
It actually made me aware of how much, in a lot of contexts, I am sort of…bracing. I got so used to it I didn’t realize I was doing it, until I played with them and went, “Oooooh OK.”
And also, even though all three of us have very different personalities, as women in this music we’d experienced a very similar path. It can be really lonely to be a young woman in the music industry. We all had gone through a lot — Geri more than Terri, and Terri more than me — and when we played, there was this understanding of a common experience that we’d all lived. Never spoken of. But I think you could feel that, and I think that’s something special to Geri, Terri, and me — not necessarily any three women playing together.”
Reading this type of experiences and testimonies creates a feeling of understanding, cohesion and respect. As Spalding says, it is not a common experience to all women playing together, but it is the case for many and it’s important to talk about it, to name it, in order to move further. If we want to stop caring about the gender of the player, then sexism needs to stop existing. Until then, those issues need to be addressed. I believe what everyone wants is to create spaces where all kinds of energies can exist in freedom. In society we call some of those energies feminine and some others masculine, and we associate them to a body type. Masculine energies are given more value than feminine in patriarchal society, but both are equally important and every person should be able to flow among them in freedom. If we want to create a space of equality, we need to care for the community and support each other. Singer Carmen McRae would say:
“whatever higher there is[...] I know he’s gonna look out for me. And he’s not gonna look out for me if I don’t look out for me. So when I look out for me I look out for all the ladies and hopefully that they will also look out for themselves because then they’re looking out for me too”.
