Gender and Performance Capital among Local Musicians

Differently organized learning spaces are not the only process contributing to the different proportions of women folk and metal musicians. Other factors certainly matter as well—for example, the demographic composition of the fan base from which musicians are drawn, and the gendered symbolism associated with each genre. Still, these factors cannot fully explain women’s extreme underrepresentation as metal musicians when women make up a far greater proportion of performers in related genres like punk, which also has male-dominated audiences and masculine symbolism (Leblanc 1999). Neither can they explain women’s near-equal presence as folk musicians when women are still outnumbered as performers in genres such as independent and alternative music, with comparable gendered symbolism and near-gender-balanced audiences (Bayton 1998; Leonard 2007). My analysis of learning spaces supplements rather than replaces our knowledge about these other gendered processes.

Although this is not the focus of this article, a music career also requires other forms of cultural capital such as instruments, equipment, and appropriate stage apparel, which are objectified cultural capital (Scarborough 2012).

I obtained count data in the folk field through published lists of attendees at two major folk industry conferences, which are central to the fields’ ongoing activity and provide a reasonable approximation of the population of folk musicians who are actively seeking work. I obtained count data in the metal field through an online, user-generated encyclopedia of metal bands: www.​metal-archives.​com. This encyclopedia is extensive, actively updated, and heavily moderated to ensure accuracy, similar to Wikipedia. In this count data, I determined people’s gender from public information about them, using information provided by the performers themselves whenever possible (e.g. the pronouns used in the “biography” section on the artist’s official website or other promotional material). It is generally problematic to guess at people’s gender identities based on their self-presentation. However, local musicians routinely engage in self-promotion and actively seek to make themselves accessible and understandable to audiences. In these cases, being easily understandable to audiences generally involved clearly conforming to either a masculine or feminine gender identity; in practice, there were no unclear cases, i.e. there was always enough publicly available information to classify the folk and metal musicians in this sample as men or women.

See Miller (2016a) for a detailed discussion of the “folkie habitus” and “metalhead habitus.”

Rimmer (2012) has developed the concept of “musical habitus,” which refers to the ways that individuals classify music, use musical tastes to create social distinctions, and engage in varied listening practices. Musicians (including folk and metal musicians) certainly have a musical habitus, in Rimmer’s sense of taste and listening habits. But, it bears mention that Rimmer’s musical habitus describes how individuals consume music, while performance capital describes a set of skills necessary for music production. A folk or metal musician’s habitus includes both a musical habitus in Rimmer’s sense, and an orientation toward developing and deploying performance capital; however, I view performance capital and Rimmer’s musical habitus as distinct from each other.

See Miller (2014) for a fuller discussion of masculine and feminine capital in the folk and metal scenes.

Guitar “tabs” or tablature refers to a form of musical notation, common in fretted and stringed instruments such as the guitar, which indicates fingering patterns rather than pitch.

See Miller (2016b) for a further discussion of the social implications of rehearsed vs. improvisational modes of playing in folk and metal.