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Play Like A Girl

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6.5

Yukie Nishimura

I love feminine piano pieces when the inner beauty of a woman is revealed. Their delicate and graceful nature goes a long way to ease my unrest. The one composer in the mainstream whom I hold high in this regard is Yukie Nishimura. She's often pegged as easy listening and while its lightness of touch is apparent, it can branch off into more rougher textures.

Her music is not meant to engage with the intellect but if there's a beast that needs calming inside of you, I recommend giving her records a spin.

Mary Halvorson

A protege of the experimental jazz musician Anthony Braxton. In her own words, participation in his classes influenced her to drop her biology major to pursuit her true calling. She's not unfamiliar with the world of music having played the violin at a young age but his concepts gave her the confidence to see herself as an innovator in the field.

Those minds and ears who are steeped in the rules of conventional melody and harmony will be thrown off. As she takes standard chord progressions and flips them on their head. Much of her pieces can be characterised as atonal discordance at times but then she surprises with moments of clarity and order. Her guitar play can feel prickly, consisting of tremelos, delays and a liberal helping of distortion, with the strumming coming in short bursts.

I hope something more can come out of her experiments as a lot of musicians created something novel but ultimately their ideas are not picked up on. Genres like heavy metal weren't formed out of a vacuum, its roots lied in blues but then came into its own eventually.

Eleni Karaindrou

Over the years, Eleni Karaindrou has wrote some seriously heartwrenching material for Greek cinema. I first got to know her through the films of legendary director Theo Angelopoulos but little did I know I had already listened to her music many years before. You know when you hear a piece of music that you've never been able to find the name of and it becomes stuck in your head like some unfinished business. But only to get a massive relief when you stumble upon it after years of searching. The Refugee's Theme from The Suspended Step of the Stork is that kind of song. It's pretty well-known too, enough to make an appearance in Mad Max: Fury Road.

The father theme for Landscape in the Mist though is even more clingy and nagging to the degree of pain itself that's beautifully embodied in the gnawing string section underpinning the track.

Lisa Lynne

I just wanna be serenaded to sleep whenever Lisa works her magic on that harp. In her musical world, pain doesn't exist and all that's left is nothing but peace just as her album title implies. I've heard a fair amount of new age but this brand of meditative music really does hit the sweet spot. Her Love & Peace is an extraordinary work of great beauty. Sometimes when I listen to Invocation, I feel like I've drifted and melted away into the arms of the most beautiful woman ever.

9.4

Yoko Shimomura

It's funny how the most famous female video game composers are from supposedly rampant 'patriarchial' societies. Yoko thrived in that environment and created some of the most memorable themes in vgm history. None more so than her now legendary SFII score. Just as you get memes tributing Warren Spector along the lines of "He made Deus Ex (I couldn't believe it)!" The same bewilderment applies to Yoko for the music in Street Fighter.

Not content for being just that lady who wrote Guile's theme, she's also made a name for herself as a bankable JRPG composer, working for both Nintendo and Square! This is where we get to see the full range of her capabilities as she explores a multitude of genres. Outside of Street Fighter, she's fondly remembered for her Kingdom Hearts music. But I believe that Parasite Eve is her more braver attempt. The style is a departure from her usual sweet-sounding tones and into more ambient soundscapes. It's an unusual concoction of electronica, piano and opera that just stays with you.

Michiru Yamane

Michiru Yamane is probably more synonymous with Castlevania than its producer Koji Igarashi. Such was the success of Symphony of the Night, she went on to become the series lead composer. None of her later works have come anywhere close to capturing the majesty of her claim to fame. But there were still sparks of that old brilliance in titles like Lament of Innocence and Portrait of Ruin.

Wang Changyuan

The composer of one of the greatest guzheng pieces "The Fight with the Typhoon." This piece greatly opened up a whole new realm of possibilities of the zheng in terms of writing and technique. I first heard it from a wuxia television series and it was the supplement to a fight scene between two formidable martial artists. The main melody is a flurry of plucks and gyrating strokes that sucks you in like a whirlwind whilst gradually building speed with every passage. At that time I just thought "who composed this work of art?" It took me years to find her and I must've scoured through hundreds upon hundreds of guzheng pieces. But through sheer determinaton and willpower I finally found it and another one of my demons was exorcised.

She's no one-hit wonder either. In addition to her most famous work, she also created more than 10 compositions such as the vocal music "Minhang" and the zither song "Dongting New Song". While still studying, Wang assisted her father to revise the two zither songs "Forest Night Run" and "Blue Sea Swan" with new picking methods involving the double zither.

Wu Man

Widely recognised as the leading exponent of the pipa. I thought I would never enjoy someone playing a pipa as much as other Chinese instruments. At first glance, it doesn't seem like there would be many avenues of expression to it. But with a great brain behind it, the levels of profundity were unprecedented.

She also believed that the pipa shouldn't be restricted within the Chinese repertoire but has a place in other artforms. Such as concertos, opera, chamber, electronic, and jazz music as well as theater productions. Through her work, the pipa has attained a new life in both traditional and contemporary music.

8.4

Alice Coltrane

Losing the love of your life must've been devastating for Alice when also taking into account that her musical soulmate and husband was John Coltrane. This initiated a transformation inside of her to turn towards the spiritual as her coping method. From there she aligned herself with the cosmic by incorporating the timbres of Eastern music into her pieces.

I think if she didn't shy away from major labels she may have got more recognition. At her core, she's a consummate pianist. Her piano ballads remain as sumptuous as ever no matter the metamorphosis she went through.

Suzanne Ciani

Few men can hold the distinction of being the first in a given category of music let alone a woman. But Suzanne managed that and then some. She has been dubbed "diva of the diode” and “‘America’s first female synth hero, pioneered new age, was the first solo female composer to soundtrack a Hollywood film and invented Coca-Cola’s infamous “pop and pour” sound effect.

7.6

Candy Dulfer

Smooth jazz no doubt has gotten a lot of bad rap over the years. From a respectable pared down alternative of jazz fusion to elevator music for the low attention spanned. And in the hands of Kenny G, its reputation was tarnished forever. Look beyond the jazz for numpties approach Kenny G took and you have a wealth of good artists. Take Candy and Grove Washington Jr for example. It's not jazz at the highest level and isn't exactly an excavation of the soul but it's a lighter alternative. Failing that, it makes for great lovemaking music. Quite simply, sounds from the saxophone is associated with sensuality more than any other instrument I know of. And Candy's albums are just soaked in her special brand of juicy love.

Smooth jazz happened to be my first introduction into the genre as a kid and I have people like Candy to thank for that. My young brain was just not ready for people like Coltrane. All this talk about gender parity. I'm quite disappointed actually that there aren't more female sax players. What sane man would deny the opportunity for a woman to make her living out of blowing things. ;)

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We know there are capabable female singers and songwriters out there. But it's shoved down our throats about the dearth of respectability towards female participation. In fact, they're just as revered as the men, far more in the case of vocalists. The real elephant in the room is the lack of acknowledgement and attention given towards those with the ability to compose and play music when it's a different story with men.

Female singers and songwriters have an important place in the realm of music but often their celebrity diminishes the roles of the female composers/musicians whom I believe are the upholders of the medium in the purest sense.

Making this list made me think of the 12 year old Japanese girl playing the drums at her local mall. Even forgetting her age, you don't often see girls perform with this much maturity and confidence in their play. Just as we can marvel at Mariah Carey's use of the whistle register, we should also be allowed to admire Tina S's shredding Through the Fire and Flames.

Personally though I would like to see more feminine energy injected into the instrumental category as opposed to further adherence towards masculine imposed systems on the women's part.