Harriet Ware’s “Boat Song”
“Boat Song” was Harriet Ware’s best-selling song. In particular it became a standard for two unexpectedly allied groups of singers: professional men and amateur women.
Music, Voice, Message
People who identify as women
WSF is an online forum devoted to women’s voices in song, to the many songs by women, and to the many female musicians working in and with song, who have yet to be given the attention they deserve. The Women’s Song Forum provides an opportunity to expand and enhance knowledge and understanding of this rich and significant area of musical practice and scholarship, and – as the name “forum” suggests – aims to encourage discussion and debate across different interest groups. The forum aims to highlight compositions and performances of music that deserve more recognition.
At the heart of the forum is our commitment to diverse approaches and subjects and access by a wide-ranging audience. We normally publish 2-3 posts each month by members of our team and guest bloggers.
“Boat Song” was Harriet Ware’s best-selling song. In particular it became a standard for two unexpectedly allied groups of singers: professional men and amateur women.
A playlist of 12 songs (and 13 stellar performances) of songs Florence Price wrote to poems by Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and three Black women poets.
There are at least two ways to read this striking image of Vivien Lambelet: one personal, the other professional. One reading doesn’t exclude the other.
In this post we turn to “Dog Teeth” by Nicole Dollanganger and to “Gatekeeper” by Jessie Reyez. Content Warning: Discussion of rape and disturbing lyrics.
A Tori Amos song shows how vocal timbre conveys symptoms of trauma in a way that lyrics cannot. Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault, rape, and child abuse.
From accounts of individual women or performances to historical essays, from interviews with songwriters and performers to discussions of gender, race and culture in and through song.
Tracy Chapman
Black singers and churchgoers have a long and deep tie to Carrie Jacobs Bond’s “I’ve Done My Work” (1920). Why this song?
Doris Akers was one of Black gospel’s most prolific composers. This is a cross-racial account of her most famous song, “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.”
Music manuscripts from Italian convents preserve some of the oldest music composed by women. Musica Secreta are making a new recording of these precious works.
John Michael Cooper interprets Florence Price’s songs, “To My Little Son” and “Brown Arms (To Mother),” as responses to the painful losses of her son and her mother.
In her second post, Heather Platt tracks Villa Whitney White’s lecture-recitals of German lieder from 1895–98. Unusually, White sang complete song-cycles and songs written for men.
Heather Platt discusses an unusual lecture-recital held in Denver in 1898 that brought together songs of Native Americans, Blacks, Creoles and whites. Women’s clubs and Villa Whitney White made it happen.
Qianwen Yu explores the musicality of traditional weaving through a combination of historical research and contemporary technology, interpreting the woven fabric as a map, as a score.
One of our aims is to recover and honor voices that have been overlooked or forgotten.
Sara Teasdale
Mahalia Jackson’s career unfolded through easy-to-overlook intersections with women who were models and mentors, peers and progeny.
To commemorate the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor turned to an unexpected source, Christina Rossetti, setting six of her poems for his Six Sorrow Songs.
As European art music began to be challenged by jazz, musically influential women devised ways to cultivate “a taste for ‘good’ music in children.”