Music1. Introduction The historian of popular music Dave Russell has observed that "in some senses, the sexual divide was greater than the class divide in Victorian and Edwardian popular music." Women's role in the brass band movement was "almost totally a subservient (if vital) one". It extended little beyond making cakes and teas for fetes, cleaning uniforms and preparing meals in good time for rehearsals. Even before 1914 women appear to have been in a minority in music-hall audiences and working-class women seem to have attended concerts less frequently than their male counterparts. However as Russell concludes: "a greater range of opportunities provided for women by music than by most other leisure forms."
Copyright 2004, John Hargreaves |
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