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Rating: "God decides that man must have a helper, but does not create her immediately; first, he places man before creation and has him assign a name to everything. However, God did not find among all the animals he had created a suitable companion for man. So he put the man to sleep and, taking a rib, created the woman." from the book of Bereshit (or Genesis)
And it's just the beginning. Or maybe the continuation? I don't know. What I am certain of is that considering the woman as a mere accessory to complete the man has been a fact that has prevented humanity from evolving optimally. Sure, we cannot only consider the limits of our Judeo-Christian culture, there are also biological factors. The fact that a woman can conceive and nurse should have led her to a central role in society or at least equal to that of a man. We could have thus created a more spiritual society, because a woman, precisely because she fulfills herself in being a mother, manages to absorb the essence of love, and imagining a matriarchal society means imagining a society based on love. Unfortunately, that has not been the case; male values have been and still are dominant, based on strength, competition, and domination.
Saying that a woman cannot be capable of satisfactorily performing any role because she has to take care of the children and the house is absurd, and the consequences of this idea can be very well noticed in every field of human activity.
And so let's try to ask ourselves what is the role of women in the field of musical art. What are the female figures that have had or have an important role? Naturally, we immediately think of some good singer, but let's try to exclude them. Exclude them because female singers have been important as the female voice is different from the male one, which does not reach certain heights and has a different timbre, at least since there are no more eunuchs. Oh yes, because in ancient times, not even women were made to sing; they preferred to castrate some poor soul.
All this to highlight even more the virtues of a great musician and composer, a very important figure in the field of rock avant-garde, in the Canterbury scene, who managed to give a characteristic imprint to the sounds of the most important RIO group, Henry Cow, constantly managing to gain more space until the final "Industry" where she composed half of the music.
For those who still don't know who I'm talking about, know that her name is Lindsay Cooper, she plays the bassoon and the oboe enchantingly, composes and knows how to navigate even in the jazz field.
The News from Babel is probably her most personal musical project, a studio group, three-quarters female, with Dagmar Krause on vocals, a young Zeena Parkins on harps (amplified and modified) and accordion, and Chris Cutler on drums.
This is the lineup for "Sirens and Silences/Work Resumed on the Tower", while the following "Letters Home" will have an expanded lineup with Robert Wyatt, Phil Minton, Bill Gilonis, and Sally Potter, the director of "Orlando", who sings very well and was, with Cooper, a co-founder of the "Feminist Improvising Group".
In this first work released in '84, there is an air of drama, tension and bewilderment.
I put on the headphones and let myself be carried into the dream...
...I can see myself walking, cautiously but without bleeding, on a carpet of crystals shattered by the harps. The magic of the winds envelops me, disorients and enchants me, whispering joys and laments in forgotten languages, but the male side reveals itself and awakens me with the pounding of time on ancient skins, weighing me down in all its physicality, my body condenses, struggles, but the senses do not fall for the illusion of gravity, and I feel them freeing themselves in the sensuality of a voice that tells me I am human and I can feel the whole of existence, beyond what I see and touch.
I am not man, I am not woman, but spirit in the flesh that travels through sexes across existences.
One day I would like to meet you and tell you that I dreamed, but I didn't know if it was me or if it was you.
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