Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.12.2011, Side 19

mesmerized. Around our friendship I
started playing more shows. We have
this connection through what it is that
we do. It’s maybe corny but, yeah, no-
body gets me like she actually does. We
tried to make music together for some
time but then we just both realised that
we are our own acts.”
Ólöf, in turn, brings it all back to
Björk: “The most helpful woman to my
career has been Björk. She’s been very
supportive of my work and I’m signed
on her record label. And also artisti-
cally, her sort of bringing her cultural
weight into supporting my music has
been very beneficial.”
Sóley likewise admits Björk as an
inf luence: “Though I don’t listen to
her music everyday,” she says, “I really
appreciate what she is doing. And you
can look at her and say: ‘ok, I can also
do this’. I’m not talking about like the
same music or anything, but she’s so
creative and so powerful and that’s re-
ally positive to know.”
AND YET, NO
SCENE!
This mutual admiration and support,
however, has not translated into a more
concrete allegiance between these
singer-songwriters.
“I would find it interesting to know
the female inf luences within Iceland”
says Adda, “because I would think that
there might be a hesitation for women
to identify too strongly with each other.
I know, for example, that I have felt hes-
itant in naming Björk as an inf luence,
but she’s one of my biggest inf luences.”
Adda points out that frequently
when a woman engages in or becomes
prominent in a particular field, she is
seen as being the spokesperson for all
women—a litmus test for the entire
gender to be gauged by. This pressure
in turn affects how women perceive
each other and their own abilities and
fuels a possible hesitancy to align with
other women.
“I don’t think I would want to align
myself [with any scene],” says Elín. “I
feel like I’m not ready to set myself in
some kind of category of music yet. It’s
nice to have support. It’s different than
playing with just men. In some way
women are more like your equals. But
the Icelandic music scene is corrupted
in some ways. I just feel like people
sometimes lose their heads in competi-
tion. I feel like everyone should have a
shot at what they want to do.”
NO MAN’S LAND
Adda and Lovísa have targeted the is-
sue of competitiveness through direct
action by putting together a series of
concert nights at Barbara showcas-
ing queer women performers—in the
broadest sense of those terms. Adda
attributes her motivation for creating
these nights to a sense of insecurity
she felt when she began playing mu-
sic in 1998, completely surrounded by
boys.
“At that point I was really shy,”
Adda says. “No, shy is not the right
word—I had a massive inferiority com-
plex. Huge. I was especially insecure
towards boys. Onstage I was free, but
off-stage I was like, 2 percent of my-
self. I wasn’t a feminist back then so
I didn’t recognise this pattern at all. I
just thought that the disempowering
feeling was because I was such a loser.”
Adda moved away to study sonology—
once again surrounded exclusively by
men—and upon her return made the
conscious decision to work mainly
within the context of friendships with
women, she says, such as with Lovísa.
It was in this context that Adda
and Lovísa decided to create a women-
dominated platform called ‘Skyndilega
greip mig óstjórnleg löngun’ (“Sud-
denly I’m Seized by an Uncontrollable
Urge”) with the intention of building a
safe-space in which to explore different
sides of their musical selves, while also
targeting their cultural environment.
“As a group of friends, we would go
to places [like Trúnó, and Barbara] and
feel that it was a bit disco-dominant,
a bit gay-male dominant,” Adda says.
“We wanted to diversify the scene, fem-
inise it and also queerify it. We wanted
to break out of the bounds of straight
and gay, but also to create a space where
people could play with gender and their
sexual orientation in a musical, artis-
tic sense.” These nights frequently
featured musician Björg Sveinbjörns-
dóttir, comedian and historian Íris El-
lenberger and performance artists Eva
Rún Snorradóttir and Eva Björk Kaa-
ber.
Indeed, the gay community seems
to be one of the more receptive spaces
for female performers. Both Lovísa
and Elín identify as queer women and
agree that the gay community has
been supportive of their careers. Myrra
also finds a sense of comfort within
the walls of gay-friendly bars. “I like
the people who run the clubs and the
people who go to the clubs,” she says.
“It’s different to be in a gay bar than in
a straight bar. There’s a different kind
of vibe you get.”
Despite drawing a good turn out
and a regular audience to their nights,
Adda and Lovísa point out that there
was very little attendance from non-
queer people—especially men. That
is, until they did a woman-featured hip
hop show titled ‘Mellur Strike Back,
Elskið’a’ (“Sluts Strike Back, Take
That”), a play on words of a misogy-
nistic song title by local rapper Blaz-
roca, which Adda says drew the larg-
est and most diverse crowd the group
had seen at their nights. This was due
in no small part to a rare performance
by Ragna, AKA Cell7, from legendary
‘90s hip-hop group Subterranean: “I
think it was also the fact that the girls
were gonna do the ‘boys’ stuff now,”
Adda says.
The question remains if these so-
called safe-spaces for some may be
alienating to others. “I think there are
a lot of people who don’t even go here
[Trúnó], not because they are preju-
diced but because they just don’t feel
like it’s their home,” Adda says. “For
me, it’s much more important to cre-
ate this platform and forge connections
between women and queer-women
musicians rather than to [focus on] in-
clusion. I was just thinking ‘Hey, peo-
ple are missing out! This is cool stuff!
Where are they?’”
THE BOYS JUST
DON’T UNDER-
STAND
A general sentiment amongst the wom-
en we spoke to is that, on some level,
the guys just don’t get it; that, at the
very least in the professional field of
music, men do not have quite the same
experiences as women, either in their
interactions with other musicians or
with members of the press.
While touring with and opening
for Sin Fang, Sóley noted inconsisten-
cies between the ways in which she
was spoken to as opposed to the guys,
being the only female in the bunch. “I
was always pointing out things I saw as
wrong and they would agree, but not in
the way another girl would,” she says.
“I love the guys, they are really nice,
but it’s so hard to talk to people when
they have not experienced that feeling.
Like once, this guy asked me why I was
drinking red wine before a gig. But he
didn’t ask the guys. Only me. We were
all standing there.”
“It’s a male scene,” Ólöf agrees. “But
I feel like all those girls that are mak-
ing music of my generation are really
supportive of each other and will sort of
seek advice from each other about busi-
ness related things. It’s a complicated
business. I feel that if someone is in a
tough spot or is in some kind of trouble
that, yeah… the girls call each other.”
“There should be some kind of sup-
port,” Sóley continues, “because we’re
all thinking the same things and we
are probably all experiencing the same
things when we tour or when we play.”
‘MANSPLAINING’
Beyond having one’s motivations for
enjoying a nice glass of red questioned,
the phenomenon of being singled out
for being female often crosses into
the territory of being condescended to
about musical abilities.
“When I was first starting out, peo-
ple were amazed,” Lovísa says. “They
couldn’t believe I was so good at play-
ing guitar—for a girl!”
“Sometimes I get comments from
guys that are like ‘It’s so crazy that
you’re a girl and you play guitar so
well,’” Ólöf says. “Is that a compli-
ment?”
Many of Sóley’s frustrations simi-
larly lie with presumptions regarding
her basic technical knowledge, like
whether or not she knows how to plug
in her own keyboard. “So many times,”
she says, “I get told ‘You’re doing it
wrong!’ I mean, goddamn it! I’ve done
it a thousand times! They are probably
just trying to be nice, but they wouldn’t
do it to Robbi, the guitarist in Sin Fang.
They wouldn’t tell our drummer how
to put a cymbal on.”
In their events at Barbara, Adda
and Lovísa stress the importance for
them of every role being filled by a
woman. “I find it very important that
when you are organising a concert with
just women on the bill, that the sound
engineer is a woman,” Adda explains.
“Our soundwoman is Úlfhildur Eyste-
insdóttir and if she’s not available we
only call other girls. And if they can’t
come, we do it ourselves. When I am
around other women, I feel more com-
fortable making mistakes, not being
great or perfect. That might be some-
thing personal with me or whatever,
but I feel others have talked about it
as well. Not knowing what to do with
a cable and being able to figure it out
yourself without some guy coming and
mansplaining it to you.”
In feminist vernacular, ‘mansplain-
ing’ is a phenomenon in which men
attempt to explain things to women as
though the former were the assumed
authority. This is often an absent-
minded or well-intentioned error, yet it
does impact the environment in which
some women work.
“I have this new policy now com-
pared to when I was making music
before, to only rely on other women,”
Adda says. “There used to only be guys
to call if you needed to borrow some
equipment. This time I’ve been really,
really careful and I only call girls.”
MIXING IT UP
Nonetheless, it’s a shallow pond. For
example female sound engineers in
Iceland are few and far between, to the
point that even women musicians are
pleasantly surprised whenever they see
one. “We were in Sweden on tour and
there were two girls and one guy doing
sound,” Sóley recollects. “It was so fun-
ny, because when we saw them we were
like, ‘Hey, girls!’ Why would I think
like that? But I did. Everyone did.”
This imbalance in the roles that
women fill in the music industry also
applies to the local stage. Sóley points
out that few women play the drums in
Icelandic bands, and that there is for
example only one notable female jazz
pianist in Iceland—Sunna Gunnlaugs.
The women who choose less conven-
tional instruments, Sóley point out,
receive a disproportionate level of scru-
tiny.
“If there is a girl playing the drums
in a band,” she says, “you always have
to focus really hard on her. Kind of
waiting for her to fail or something.
It’s really important to have women
in every type of music. I know that we
have few female drummers, most of
them are young and studying at music
schools but why do they quit? Nor are
there any women playing bass in a jazz
band. Who said to the world that these
things were not for women? There are
some out there, that’s cool, but we need
more.”
Sóley herself is no stranger to being
the target of ridicule for her unconven-
tional musical choices. Having played
in her school’s marching band as a
teenager, she opted for the bass drum
and cymbals, rather than the more
customary choice of f lute. “My school-
mates made fun of me,” she admits. “It
was not very cool. I mean, people think
it’s not very feminine to play a big bass
drum in a parade but only because
someone said so long time ago.”
HOW DOES THE
GROUND FEEL
NOW?
Ultimately, there are very few vis-
ible women who occupy musical roles
other than being singers. Beyond that
tendency, there is also a seeming hesi-
tancy to see those women as artists,
the originators of ideas and the real
creators of their work; to see them as
the women behind as well as in front
of the curtain.
“The media always say I’m a sing-
er,” Sóley says. “I know I’m a singer but
I also play instruments—almost every
instrument on my album. But still peo-
ple say ‘Sóley the singer’. I think peo-
ple will always think that there must
be someone doing all this stuff. ‘You
couldn’t record this all by yourself!’ I’m
waiting for it to be asked. And maybe
people think that I didn’t do it, but I
really want them to know that I did it,
because it’s a lot of work. You want to
get credit for what you do.”
This trend rises all the way to the
top. In August of 2008, Björk issued a
statement on her website in response
to comments by local DJ B-Ruff, pub-
lished in the Grapevine, in which he
attributed the instrumentals on her
album ‘Vespertine’ to Valgeir Sigurðs-
son, despite the fact that Valgeir, ac-
cording to Björk’s statement, only acted
as “a computer programmer for a third
of [the recording process], and a record-
ing engineer for a third.”
What could have contributed to
such a misunderstanding, for a solo
performer who is so clearly in control
of her own artistry, her own work?
“Very often it’s conceived that wom-
en are in less control of their work,”
Ólöf says. “There’s a danger for female
songwriters and artists, that they just
get sort of written out of history.”
Glowing as though illuminated
solely by the candlelight scattered
across tables, the wood-paneled interi-
or of Rósenberg could not have existed
at that moment in a more welcomed
juxtaposition to the frost outside. Be-
fore launching into her last song, Adda
speaks into the microphone: “Am I
speaking too loudly?”
MEdIA GETS CALLEd OUT
björk interview in The Grapevine,
published in issue 14, 2008
“This happened to me with Mark
Bell as well on ‘Homogenic’. People
believe he did everything on that al-
bum, when he only did a few beats.
The beats that define that album, the
beats from ‘Jóga’, ‘Bachelorette’ and
‘Five Years’ for example, the distorted
beats, which I described in the me-
dia as my attempt to make volcanic
beats, Mark Bell did not do those
beats, but he has often been credited
with making them, and producing the
whole album.”
“I know Goldfrapp has had the
same problem. Everyone seems to
think she just does vocals. She re-
cently said that whenever she and
(collaborator) Will Gregory are inter-
viewed together, she is asked about
her dress while questions about their
equipment are directed at Gregory.
Missy Elliott, too, whenever people
write about their music, they always
talk about Timbaland, too. I have
heard the same story from so many
women, the exact same thing. M.I.A.,
Peaches, Missy Elliott, Joanna New-
som, they can’t believe it, but it has
happened to all of them. There is a
reason people don’t talk about this,
as it might be the most boring subject
ever, but I am willing to take it upon
me if it means that in the future, jour-
nalists will do their research."
M.I.A. interview with Pitchfork,
published online August 3, 2007
“Yesterday I read like five magazines
in the airplane [...] and three out of
five magazines said ‘Diplo: the mas-
termind behind M.I.A.'s politics!’ [...]
I just find it a bit upsetting and kind
of insulting that I can't have any ideas
on my own because I'm a female or
that people from undeveloped coun-
tries can't have ideas of their own
unless it's backed up by someone
who's blond-haired and blue-eyed.
After the first time it's cool, the sec-
ond time it's cool, but after like the
third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it's
an issue that we need to talk about,
maybe that's something important,
you know. [...] I mean, for me espe-
cially, I felt like this is the only thing
I have, and if I can stick my neck out
and go for the issues and go through
my life as it is, the least I can have is
my creativity.”
Alison Goldfrapp interviewed by
Rebecca Nicholson for the Lipster
“Like the tradition of “rock star”—
what’s his face, Babyshambles?—
classic, fucked up, takes drugs, he
must be a genius. That really winds
me up because he’s read some books
on poetry, so therefore he must be a
fucking genius? Whereas the girls,
they’re just troubled. There’s a slight-
ly different criteria, somehow. They
certainly don’t get called a genius if
they’ve read some books. It’s just the
old cliche, isn’t it? He’s a genius be-
cause he took some drugs and read
some books.”
ólöf Arnalds interviewed by The
Grapevine
“I’ve been asked by a French journal-
ist whether I make music to seduce
men.”
Lay Low interviewed by The
Grapevine
“I have often felt in interviews that I
am asked questions differently be-
cause I am a girl.”
"I wasn’t a feminist back then so I didn’t
recognise this pattern at all. I just thought
that the disempowering feeling was be-
cause I was such a loser"