”Kukapa uskoisi, että tässä pienessä ja hauraassa naisessa on niin paljon voimaa”

– Muusikkonaisten kehot vuoden 1938 musiikkilehdistön katseen alla

Abstrakti

In this article, I examine how gendered and racialized bodies are ­represented in the music press of the Helsinki metropolitan area in 1938. The research material consists of digitized press writings from Helsingin Sanomat, Uusi Suomi, and Hufvudstadsbladet. The selected twenty newspaper articles and concert reviews focus primarily on women musicians. These writings are characterized by a strong emphasis on gendered and racialized representations and descriptions of bodies. I approach the material through the phenomenon of staring (Garland-Thomson 2009), exploring the dynamics of curiosity and the gaze that produces strangeness in situations where the body appears as deviant or difficult to comprehend. Additionally, I analyse the listening experience as part of the meaning-making process in which the meanings attributed to sound emerge at the intersections of social norms and power relations (Eidsheim 2011; 2019; Thurman 2021).

The aim of the article is to investigate how gendered and racialized representations constructed in press writings influence the perception of classical music history, in other words, what kinds of bodies and agencies are depicted as part of the musical continuum. I demonstrate how staring and white normativity shape the ways in which the bodies of women musicians are encountered and made meaningful. Sociocultural norms not only guide the representation of bodies but are also closely connected to the affective reactions, such as excitement, pleasure, and confusion, evoked by performances or performers. Depending on sociocultural norms and affective responses, the actions of women musicians were positioned in various ways in relation to the historical narrative of music.