For this week’s song share I decided to write about this video of an all female steel pan band, playing an arrangement of a piece entitled “Unknown Band”. I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to use as an example this week, mostly because for many of our class examples, it was very hard to find videos that showed off female musicians. I eventually decided to find something related to the steel band example we listened to in class, but as I came to learn it is quite difficult to find examples of it with female performers. I ended up finding a short documentary on YouTube about women in the world of steel pan music which was actually quite interesting. I learned in the documentary that just about everything in steel pan music is dominated by men, from the playing of it to the construction of the instruments themselves. While watching this documentary, I discovered the group that I ended up using for my song share example.
The group that I found go by the name Platinum Steel Orchestra, and they are the first ever all female group to play at the Panorama steel band competition in Trinidad. I thought that it was so interesting that there had never been an all female group before these women, and how unfair that has to be to these musicians who are obviously very passionate about their music. While watching this video and seeing the women perform, I could not help but notice how energetic and joyful the performers were as they played. They seem to be having such a good time showing off their talents to others.
As for the music itself, I thought that the execution of the song was just as impressive as the group. One of my favorite things that the musicians did as they played was the dramatic dynamic contrasts they incorporated into the music. Particularly at 3:30 in the video, all the players drop out, they then all come back in starting extremely soft and then crescendoing back to their original dynamic. All the women in this video obviously have a great talent for what they do and I found it extremely enjoyable to watch.
As I have with all the previous song shares, I think it is important to find videos and examples of strong female musicians for all of my assignments. I have found doing these assignments that many examples of world music are done by male musicians and have scarce female representation, which saddens me. As a female musician myself I feel that it is so important that all women around the world are given the chance to express themselves through music and have the opportunity to participate in all the musical activities that their men counterparts do.
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