Author: Dr. Joan R Cartwright

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Success!

jc-tv2I am happy to announce that I passed my Doctoral Comprehensive Exam satisfactorily and will now move on to the creation of my Doctoral Dissertation in Business Administration/Marketing. My projected completion date is January 26, 2016.

Thanks to each and every one of you for your support during this time of my life. I appreciate your words of encouragement and trust that you will continue to support me as I move toward the completion of my Doctoral studies.

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Conscious Inclusion of Women Musicians

This is an important issue but too many women are totally unaware of the problem. What do you know about women musicians and the inequity of income they earn compared to what male musicians earn?

Published at Versita: Conscious Inclusion of Women Musicians

Dr. Joan R Cartwright's avatarDr. Diva JC - Scholar . Teacher . Author

[THIS PAPER IS PUBLISHED at Versita]

The paper was presented at the British and American Studies Conference, in 2012, and is posted on the website of Fondazione Adkins-Chiti: Donne in Musica

Conscious Inclusion of Women Musicians
By Joan Cartwright, M.A.

Music, the sound of the spheres, begins in the womb! ~ Diva JC

Abstract
This paper discusses the vast divide between performance opportunities and income earned by male and female musicians. Although female singers are quite visible on the world’s stages, few female instrumentalists are employed on a regular basis and even fewer women composers have their music commissioned for programs or films funded by private and public monies. Several proficient female jazz musicians are identified, and how and why women are omitted from performance is discussed. The need for everyone – producers, promoters, funders, and bandleaders – to consciously choose to include women musicians in programming…

View original post 3,323 more words

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Leaning In re Women in Arts

ImageMy life has been inundated with music performance, since I was four years old. By 27, I had borne and raised two children and was on my second divorce. I had the opportunity to finish my Bachelor’s Degree in Music and Communications, in Philadelphia, where I also embarked on my professional career as a vocalist and composer. That was in 1977. By 1990, I owned a small business that placed legal secretaries in law firms. I was doing well but an opportunity arose for me to go to Europe. My children were engrossed in their own families and I was free to go on the road. I began touring in Europe, where I moved in 1994, after completing my Master’s Degree in Communications, in Florida. For eight years, I lived a charmed life touring from country to country, singing Jazz and Blues. In 1996, I moved back to Florida, where I knew I would be challenged to earn the living I earned in Europe. I developed a program to teach K-12 students about women in Jazz. Through grants, I was able to deliver 10 to 20 presentations a year with piano accompaniment. The presentation evolved into a book entitled Amazing Musicwomen.
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In 2007, I realized that since 1977, I had worked predominantly with male musicians. I was the bandleader and had only worked with a handful of female musicians in the U.S. and only two women in Europe. I decided to lean in and focus on identifying women musicians whom I could hire. There were few in Florida. I incorporated a non-profit organization Women in Jazz South Florida, Inc. as a 501(c)(3) that supports women musicians, globally. In seven years, the membership grew to 271 with 144 musicians and 51 men. I wrote several grant proposals and many of them were awarded to WIJSF for musical presentations. Many friends suggested that I should concentrate on my own career rather than spend time promoting other women in music. I disagreed. It was my passion to connect as many women instrumentalists and composers as I could.
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In July 2014, my members and friends donated $3,645 for me to travel to Fiuggi, Italy for the WIMUST Conference, Women in Music Using Strategies for Talent, presented by Fondazione Adkins-Chiti: Donne in Musica. I was the ONLY composer from the U.S.A. and the only woman of color to participate in this conference of 40 women composers from the European Union. Since 2010, we have produced four compilation CDs of the original music of 34 women composers and the last one just won the first award for Best Compilation CD produced by a Black Woman. I have been vigilant about making people aware of the importance of consciously including women musicians in their programming.
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The statistics are eye-opening, since women pay 53% of the taxes on the planet but benefit from less than 10% of public funding for the arts. Paintings of nude women by men hang on the walls of noted art museums but only 5% of the artwork on the walls is by women. Women writers, architects, painters, and musicians are terribly marginalized in the billion-dollar art world and few people even realize this disparity, particularly women. My goal is to continue to speak out about the marginalization of women in the arts primarily because a nation is only as strong as its cultural producers and the messages in women’s art is paramount to the enlightenment of all people.
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I have called for a Symposium on Women in Arts at The White House in July 2015, and started a petition on Change.org, which 269 people have signed since April. The purpose of the Symposium is to bring together women from all artistic disciplines to strategize about increasing the profile and earning capacity of women in the arts. I will continue to lean in on this platform until people awaken to the importance of valuing the messages in women’s art to society-at-large. The messages people receive are predominately male – aggression, competition, violence, fear, and dominance will preponderate, until people awaken to the messages in women’s art. Likewise, the earning power of women in music, art, literature, architecture, filmmaking, and other arts must increase for the betterment of society. Women hold up more than half of the sky but down here on the ground women continue to be devalued as second class citizens specifically because the messages in their artistic production are not getting through to adults and children. This paradigm must shift.
Please LIKE this page: Symposium for Women in Arts on Facebook
Please Sign and Share this Petition
Join WIJSF, today!
Thanks,
Joan Cartwright, M.A.
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2014 Update

Near the end of my 11th Doctoral course for Business Marketing, I am closer to graduation than ever before. As I look back over the past two years, much progress has been made.  I’m not situated in Atlanta, GA, where I live with my daughter, Mimi Johnson, CEO of www.mjtvnetwork.info, which has several shows in production. On May 21, I will co-host one of three shows in a series entitled Amazing Musicwomen with vocal musician Sandi Blair.

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Meanwhile, we are calling for a Symposium on Women in Arts.  Please LIKE this page at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/symposiumonwomeninarts) and sign and share this petition: http://tinyurl.com/ks5byvs

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On May 2, at the Ferst Center in Atlanta, GA, I will be named the first

Lady Jazz Master by Black Women in Jazz & Fine Arts Awards among other astute women in music.

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Finally, we encourage everyone to nominate a woman musician/composer for the prestigious NEA Jazz Master Award for 2015. You can do this at http://arts.gov/honors/jazz

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Visit my website at www.joancartwright.com 

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Blues Women: First Civil Rights Workers

Blues Women: First Civil Rights Workers
©2014 Joan Cartwright, M.A.

amazing_musicwomen_hardcoverThe African voice inspired instrumentalists. Vocalese was a dialogue between vocalists and instrumentalists. Each person had an individual sound and instrumentalists imitated the voice’s cries, growls, moans, slurs, whispers, shouts and wails. Blues was the element of American subculture created by enslaved Africans, singing European music. Considered crude by classical listeners, Blues liberated singers from precise pitch and calculated rhythms of European music. Black singers emerged from Spirituals and Blues to develop Jazz. Their free-spirited songs delivered messages of liberation, signaling to Africans in America that they could be free. Blues women were the first civil rights workers because their songs symbolized liberty in its rawest form by tapping into the human spirit. Angela Davis recounted Marx and Engles’ observation that art as “a form of social consciousness [awakens] . . . those affected by it to . . . transform their oppressive environments” (Davis, 1999). Blues were popularized by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (Columbus, GA, September, 1882 – December 22, 1939), The Mother of the Blues (Cartwright, 2008, p. 9). A spokesperson for black people, she was a hero to them. She recorded hundreds of songs on Paramount, putting that recording company on the map. The most popular Blues singers established a rapport and rhetoric with the crowd. Ma Rainey took Bessie Smith under her wing and Blues tradition developed as one followed another.
a history of AA jazz bluesReferences
Cartwright, J. (2009). A history of African American jazz and blues.  FYI Communications, Inc.
Cartwright, J. (2008). Amazing Musicwomen. FYI Communications, Inc.
Davis, A.Y. (1999). Blues legacies and black feminism. New York: Random House.
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Books by Diva JC

4pursuit hardcoverSince 2005, Diva JC has published 10 books at Lulu.com

Joan’s books include poetry, photography, music, memoirs, and lots of information about this interesting and well-versed woman, who has toured 16 countries on five continents.

Visit her book store and purchase her books