Tara Rodgers: Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound

A review of the academic discourses on gender and music on the one hand, and on electronic music composition on the other, might elicit the impression that the two fields carry mutually repellent charges.1 Despite the diversity of backgrounds and compositional interests among women electronic composers, their relative obscurity has made theorizing gender difference as a factor in electronic expression a somewhat intimidating task, especially considering the scarcity of analytic models that translate electronic sound across the technical/cultural divide in the first place. e negative polarities by which both women and electronics are routinely marked as artificial, charged as frauds in relation to claims to authentic musicality, have not helped matters. As a consequence, both women musicians and electronic noise-makers are still regularly sidelined by critics, educators and historians away from the major players, thwarted by the spin put on historical narratives by masculinist ideals of monumentality, originality, and naturalness.2