Section:GDN 1N PaGe:17 Edition Date:190821 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 20/8/2019 15:59 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Wednesday 21 Au g u st 2019 The Guardian •National^17
Sarah MarshI
n 2015 the music blog Crack in
the Road tweeted a doctored
image of the poster for the
Reading and Leeds festival,
erasing all acts that didn’t
include a female performer.
Only 10 groups remained.
It started a conversation about
gender inequality at music festivals,
an issue that persist s in 2019, despite
the outcry. This weekend’s edition
of Reading and Leeds features only
one female performer, Billie Eilish ,
among the festival’s 11 top-billed
acts. Scotland’s TRNSMT festival
and the metal festival Download
each had only one act featuring
women across their nine lead acts,
while there are no female headliners
at the indie festivals Green Man and
End of the Road.
At this year’s Glastonbury, despite
the presence of Janet Jackson , Kylie
Minogue , Lauryn Hill and Miley
Cyrus down the bill, the Pyramid
stage headliners were all male. “The
pool isn’t big enough,” says the
co-organiser Emily Eavis. “It’s time
to nurture female talent. Everyone
wants it, everyone’s hungry for
women, but they’re just not there.”
This year a number of festival‘It’s an act
of defi ance’
The rise of
all-female
lineups at
festivals
organisers are attempting to redress
the issue by having only women on
stage. Those with all-female lineups
include Native festival in Kent,
Loud Women Fest in north London,
and Boudica festival in Coventry.
KT Tunstall has launched a festival
called HearHer, which will feature a
programme comprising female solo
artists or women-fronted bands ;
and women will run the behind-
the-scenes production. On thewest coast of the US are California
Women’s Music and Women Sound
Off. And Brandi Carlile , who won
three Grammys this year, will bring
back her Girls Just Wanna Weekend
in Mexico in January.
Angela Martin – co-founder of
Cro Cro Land , a female-organised
festival in south London, where the
line up and crew have a 50/50 gender
balance – puts the boom in such
festivals down to “unrest among
women in music”.
She cites the PRS Foundation’s
Keychange initiative as a catalyst
in raising awareness about gender
inequality at festivals. The campaign
encourages festivals to have a 50/
gender split among performers
by 2022. More than 150 events
worldwide have pledged to hit this
target, among them the Proms,
Bluedot and Standon Calling.
Vanessa Reed , the mastermind
behind Keychange, says : “People
are feeling frustrated by festival
lineups being male-dominated. UntilKeychange there was no big debate
about this, or positive action. Some
places, as an act of defi ance, are
saying: we are going to book loads of
female talent in our city.”
Others put the rise down to
politics, including the #MeToo
movement. Reed mentions
Statement festival in Sweden, which
had an all-female lineup and an all-
female audience. (It was successfully
sued for discrimination.) “That
was set up for a diff erent reason,
specifi cally in response to incidents
of sexual harassment,” says Reed.
Victoria Boyington founded
California Women’s Music festival
in 2014 because promoters were
not booking enough women. She
believes it is a sign of change when
bigger corporations jump on the
bandwagon and points to the US
radio conglomerate iHeartRadio
and its all-female Women Who Rock
concert for International Women’s
Day, which featured artists including
St Vincent and Karen O. “The futurewon’t necessarily be all-female
lineups, but more inclusive festival
lineups for major festivals.”
Reed says the next step is to
establish gender equality more
deeply through the industry. “There
are still so many male promoters and
bookers and established networks
that have traditionally booked
more men than women. All those
things mean it’s harder to instigate
change. But I have been inspired by
the fact that lots of younger men in
the music industry are as keen as
women are for programmes to be
more balanced. ”
Change is certainly happening.
Barcelona’s Primavera Sound
festival off ered a 50/50 gender split
in its 2019 lineup. “With loads of
great music made by women , the
paradigm of what we understood as
‘headliners’ until now is changing,”
its organiser, Marta Pallarès, wrote
in Loud and Quiet magazine. “Music
shouldn’t be the ‘pale, male and
stale’ playground any more.”KT Tunstall has launched
a festival called HearHer▼ Barcelona’s 2019 Primavera Sound
festival had a 50/50 gender split and
‘loads of great music made by women’
PHOTOGRAPH: NADELA LOCONTE/REX▲ Billie Eilish will be the only female
performer among the lead acts at this
weekend’s Reading and Leeds festival‘ It’s time to nurture
female talent.
Everyone wants it’Emily Eavis
Glastonbury co-organiserRELEASED BY "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws