gigs and things

have just done what i feel is the first proper gig of my life, well the first two. Got to work with some trully wonderful people, includig my wonderful, musial soulmate Verity Standen, she is trully a gem. we have been working on a project called a Contextual enquiery project in which i fully scutinised our long time collaboration. looking into how it works, why it works, why it doesnt allways work and why it seems to be majorly women that seem able to have the kind of collaborative relationship we have.

there are some fantastic books written on the phenomenon of womens collaboration, have just started one called womens ways of knowing, written by no less than four women all working together collaboratiely on a project to discover womens coping mechanisms, learning mechanisms and collaborative abilities. The majority of studies done in the field of ways of learning and knowing have been, up to the writing of this book undertaken by men, using male subjects and therefore useless to the learning of women.

The whole education system is based on this type of study, so you can imagine that this omiting of women means that the education system has greatly failed women in tailoring teaching techniques to the minds of men, which however equal i think they should be, are not the same. I wonder how different the education system would be if women had been the subjects of these studies!

anyway, the performance went swimmingly, we now have a set list of mostly our own material, including arrangements of a joanna newsom song umongst others. so onward to my dissertation, the female voice; Duende, the concept; the changing face of a capella music (there realy is some fantastic stuff out there); feminist collaboration in music; sexuality in the 'biz'; the possibilities are endless, shame i still have no clue!!