You may or may not be aware that the Yorkshire Youth and Music office is run by women. We're revisiting the following article, with some new additions, for Women's History Month 2024:

For most of musical history, women have been largely on the sidelines, but things are slowly changing.

Classic FM have a handy guide here to women composers through the ages: www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/great-women-composers/

Emma Jane Thackeray was brought up in Yorkshire, in the brass band tradition; she’s now one of the UK’s most exciting young composers, running her own label and making everything from beats to free jazz. Check out Rain Dance / Wisdom and you’ll see what we mean:

A little further back we have Ethel Smyth, whose ‘March of the Women’ became the anthem of the suffragette movement:

There are great British women composers working in film and TV, including Debbie Wiseman, Rachel Portman and Anne Dudley, who wrote this snappy little theme to ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ in the 1980s (see below). When the series came out, our Director, Gail Dudson, remembers that this was the first time she had seen a woman credited as the composer of the theme tune!

The brilliance that was Victoria Wood is encapsulated in this gorgeous track, sung by the artist herself:

Since this article was written (back in 2020), we've had the pleasure of experiencing the new Barbie film and associated soundtrack... and we couldn't not feature it here (because it is FULL of amazing female artists). Here is Dance the Night Away' by Dua Lipa (as she will also be headlining Glastonbury later this year):

Finally, we know that women who have achieved recognition or fame in music have tended to be the singer, so if we had to choose one, who would it be? Why, Annie of course … a song she co-wrote too (as a little bonus track)! And with Aretha for good measure. You see, sometimes even women in music are so famous that you only need the one name to know who it is...