tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10680113.post3342680234298179708..comments2024-03-23T11:40:13.092-05:00Comments on Musical Assumptions: The limits of my language mean the limits of my worldElaine Finehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14248422399226824168noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10680113.post-55354013111034398612007-12-09T23:16:00.000-06:002007-12-09T23:16:00.000-06:00Maybe one of the reasons that instrumentalists in ...Maybe one of the reasons that instrumentalists in jazz were (and sometimes still are) kind of invisible is because it is impossible to tell the gender of a person by hearing and not seeing a person play. A lot of the jazz that we hear is given to us by way of audio recordings.<BR/><BR/>This <A HREF="http://nfo.net/usa/females.html" REL="nofollow">article </A>mentions a lot of women who worked as both performing musicians and as arrangers in jazz bands throughout the 20th century. Why we don't know so many of their names is very likely due to women having been marginalized by people who have written about and talked about jazz. It is kind of like the marginalization of the role of women in "classical" music in the 20th century.Elaine Finehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14248422399226824168noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10680113.post-16516507025655601262007-12-09T01:05:00.000-06:002007-12-09T01:05:00.000-06:00Great, great post! Thought-provoking, especially ...Great, great post! Thought-provoking, especially to a medical person. When I show up to my patients' bedsides with a male nurse there are still undercurrents of confusion and sometimes discomfort. <BR/><BR/>I think "doctor" should be considered a gender-neutral word, too, but it's still anything but that, inside and outside of medicine. Especially in French et al. - "le medecin." <BR/><BR/>I think Wittgenstein's statement should have been, "the limits of my language mean the limits of my MIND." The way we think about the world shapes the world. Just a little thought from a beginning oboist(e).T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/09208990104460795917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10680113.post-63598052883723163492007-12-06T14:21:00.000-06:002007-12-06T14:21:00.000-06:00It was always curious to me, how few and far betwe...It was always curious to me, how few and far between, truly respected and influential female jazz musicians there were, except for as vocalists. Why that role distinction?<BR/><BR/>Maybe as each of our gender characteristics exist on a wide scale, there are some people who are more sensitive to the gender markers (like chicken sexxers, or whatever they are called) that might exist in the work of some. So more research would be called for, and one must assume that the success or failure to communicate gender markers through music (if they exist), must be a function of both the sender and receiver. <BR/><BR/>I remember my surprise, back as a student (the first time) when I became conscious enough of the aural identities of the various jazz players (after much listening) that I was pretty darn good on the "blind-fold test".Peter (the other)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13566863953900423495noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10680113.post-76263010079209761502007-12-04T22:08:00.000-06:002007-12-04T22:08:00.000-06:00Excellent post--thanks. I do think, though, that m...Excellent post--thanks. I do think, though, that most linguists would reject the Wittgenstein statement, whose equvalent in linguistics is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I'm not a linguist myself, but my understanding is that every human language has the inherent capacity to deal with things that are novel in its speakers' experience; when we English speakers needed "airplane" or "tone row" or "sexism" to name new features of our world or our understanding, we invented them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com