New York, NY (May 7, 2019)—The recording industry has long had a dearth of women behind the scenes in production roles, and while efforts such as the Recording Academy’s Producer & Engineer Inclusion Initiative, intended to create more opportunities for female music producers and engineers, are now rolling out, an upcoming academic book, Women in the Studio: Creativity, Control and Gender in Popular Music Sound Production, examines how the industry got to this point and discusses what can be done to change the situation.
Paula Wolfe’s book aims to explore the cultural and historical frameworks that underpin the sustained inequalities of gender, class and race in the music industry and pays particular attention to their consequences for female producers and female self-producing artists.
As both a working artist-producer and a scholar, Wolfe provides both personal and researched perspective, drawing from numerous interviews and first-hand observation. According to publisher Routledge Press, “Wolfe demonstrates the imperative of creative control in the face of the governing constructs forming the fabric of the music industry that continue to present challenges for women’s work.”
A longtime researcher in the fields of music production, indie music and gender, Paula Wolfe is a scholar but also a practitioner who has been self-producing and self-releasing her music on her own label, Sib Records, since the early 2000s. Her third album, White Dots, which got four stars from Mojo, will be released alongside her book.
Routledge Press • www.routledge.com
Paula Wolfe • www.paulawolfe.co.uk
