Music writing has come a long way since the days of the inkies – the papers that would leave marks on their readers’ fingers – when a handful of male gatekeepers dictated the tastes of Britain’s music-loving teens. While female writers were occasionally admitted to this hallowed club, they were the exception rather than the rule. Since then, the music press has been at once democratised and straitened by the advent of free content. Previously marginalised voices are now being heard, even if the rates of pay are largely paltry.
This Woman’s Work, an anthology of 16 essays by female writers compiled and edited by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and the critic Sinéad Gleeson, is a piquant reminder of the talent, musical and literary, that has always been under editors’ noses, if only they cared to look. Billed as a “challenge [to] the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men”, the contributions cross genres, decades and continents, and are less about casting judgment on artists and their work than the process of discovery and the ways music can influence and enrich lives.
