Veel vrouwen zijn terughoudend om over seksisme of feminisme te praten, hoe terecht het ook is. Daarom heeft Björk ook jarenlang haar mond gehouden, en knarsetandend toegekeken hoe mannelijke muzikanten om haar heen credits kregen voor werk dat zij had gedaan. In een uitgebreid interview in Pitchfork trekt ze eindelijk haar mond open en geeft een goed inkijkje in het onopvallende seksisme in de muziekindustrie.
Wat citaten op een rij:
Yeah, I didn’t want to talk about that kind of thing for 10 years, but then I thought, “You’re a coward if you don’t stand up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.”
With the last album he [Kanye West] did, he got all the best beatmakers on the planet at the time to make beats for him. A lot of the time, he wasn’t even there. Yet no one would question his authorship for a second.
I did 80% of the beats on Vespertine and it took me three years to work on that album, because it was all microbeats—it was like doing a huge embroidery piece. Matmos came in the last two weeks and added percussion on top of the songs, but they didn’t do any of the main parts, and they are credited everywhere as having done the whole album.
I want to support young girls who are in their 20s now and tell them: You’re not just imagining things. It’s tough. Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times.
After being the only girl in bands for 10 years, I learned—the hard way—that if I was going to get my ideas through, I was going to have to pretend that they—men—had the ideas.
I hope it doesn’t come across as too defensive, but it is the truth. I definitely can feel the third or fourth feminist wave in the air, so maybe this is a good time to open that Pandora’s box a little bit and air it out.
