It’s telling that Sisters with Transistors, a new film about the female pioneers of electronic music, is noteworthy at all. The very existence of such a film reveals what a boys’ club recording engineering and audio geekery can be. It’s common knowledge among musicians, and a running joke among those few, proud women producers and engineers around town, like Dawn Hopkins or Alyssa Moore. But casual listeners may not think about those behind-the-scenes magic-makers at all, much less their gender.
Watching this film, this week’s feature at Crosstown Arthouse Film Series, will change all that. As it turns out, many of the key innovators over the past century of electronic and avant garde music have been women. Even electronic music nerds (my people!) have largely ignored this. The classic CD set, OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music (1948-1980), spans decades with 42 tracks over three discs, yet only four of those tracks feature women composers or performers.
Lisa Rovner’s documentary, released this past April in select cinemas, and now only rarely available for streaming via Metrograph.com, helps to correct such bias. Focusing on a far from exhaustive list of 10 or so innovators, Sisters with Transistors, narrated by Laurie Anderson, reveals just how critical women have been to the field.
For starters, there’s Clara Rockmore, one of the first virtuosos of the Theremin, the hundred-year-old tone generator that defined an era of science fiction soundtracks and more. There are two geniuses of the B.B.C., Delia Derbyshire (probably best known for co-creating the Doctor Who theme) and Daphne Oram. There are Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros (who may just have invented sampling from an LP in 1965), Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani (master of the Buchla synthesizer who created many iconic sound effects for commercials) and Laurie Spiegel.
Indie Memphis fans who saw A Life in Waves may know Suzanne Ciani’s work, and Doctor Who fans may know Delia Derbyshire’s name, but beyond that, these are pioneers whose work deserves recognition on par with that afforded the men who’ve been recognized for decades. As one of Rovner’s subjects notes, “I just want to be introduced as a composer, and to start to point out how hard it was for women to be taken seriously as creators of music.”
Sisters with Transistors screens on Thursday, September 2, at Crosstown Theater, 7:30-9:30 p.m. $5.