Music and Gender

I don't come from a particularly musical family, especially when it comes to women. The only familial musical influence that I had was my uncles that taught me the basic functions of playing guitar. I never really minded this as a kid; I was just excited to be taught and that ideology stuck with me for long afterward. Every time I have had any type of guitar lesson, it is always instructed by a man, except for when I was in my junior year of high school. We had a guest instructor in my group guitar class, Marina Alexandra, who was the first female guitarist that has ever taught me and though she was very strict, she was such an inspiration for me. I have never had any problems with only having male music teachers, yet there is something that is just incredibly inspiring to see such a talented guitarist that you can relate to, who pushes you, and who is very supportive of your musical growth as a woman. I wanted to share this video so that all of you can be able to hear her.

Coming to Converse was a wonderful experience because I have never been surrounded by so many insanely talented musical women in both the staff and the students. This is not to say that I have not ever been around female musicians; it's just that there are so many women around me that just help to create this calm atmosphere where we all have a chance to have a voice in class.

The majority of the choirs that I have been in had, like many other choirs in the world, primarily been made up of girls with only a few boys. In my senior year, we probably had the most mixed choir regarding men and women, which may have been because the choir was small. We only had about fifteen or sixteen people in the class and about nine of us were girls. This was definitely a good thing for us since we needed a nice full blend of voices and our only issue was really being able to hear some of the second sopranos. The guys in my class were, for the most part, able to carry their weight vocally, however, the girls in that second soprano section were just really quiet. I am very thankful that we did not have any problems in that class regarding gender; we all just felt like a family to each other.