When I was 9 I interviewed my first jazz musician and ever since, I’ve been obsessed – even making it my livelihood. Through personal experience and standard jazz education I started to notice that I was often the only girl in a band or even in the audience at gigs. I decided to explore why. I have been studying gender issues in jazz for years now and was recently commissioned by Jazz Services to produce a report on the subject. It is an important issue that needs addressing…

The leading discourses of jazz history are full of anecdotes of ‘great jazz men’. It is as if women are almost entirely written out of the jazz annals. Jazz is filled with iconic masculine images and ideologies but nowhere can such memorable depictions of women be found. Women were, of course, always involved in jazz. So where are their accounts? They do exist – but they are hidden.

Jazz has often been thought of as an outsider’s music, a music which has the power to represent the people, articulating a seemingly fleeting freedom for all, embracing the nonconformist. Jazz ideologies often aspire to allow anyone to express themselves freely, but is this ideology just a façade? Does jazz actually have limitations on who it accepts as authentic? Is it easy for women to be accepted? Is it truly a music that represents freedom for all?

It is perceived that jazz lends itself to being a male dominated genre of music. It is often seen as a construction of masculine identity. We need to quash this perception, as today, it simply isn’t so. To me, jazz today appears to hold a juxtaposition – that is the desire to adhere to and hold on to certain traditions of the past, but also to move forward and allow jazz to evolve and be an expression of freedom. Can we let go of the restraints of the past and allow the latter to advance? The gender gap is far smaller now than it was, but can more be done? Should it be?

In launching this section of the girls are I want to explore some of these and other issues through my research. I will bring to the fore the accounts of the ‘great jazz women’ and demythologise that fact that jazz is a man’s music. This statement is defunct and I am on a mission to prove why. But I shall also leave these issues at the door providing a platform free of negative stigma – to celebrate women in jazz. So keep logging on to read news, reviews, retrospectives, features and interviews – a place in the music press where jazz and women are treated with the highest priority – well, it’s about time!

Rosie Hanley

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