BECHDEL VOLUME ONE

“Now that she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah, but what is ‘herself’? I mean, what is a woman? …I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.”

- Virginia Woolf, Killing The Angel In The House.

Named for the Bechdel Test*, used to measure the representation of women in fiction, film and literature, Bechdel was a ground-breaking, female-led music and performance night that appeared bi-monthly in Brighton between 2016 and 2018. Open to female-identifying and non-binary performers in experimental music, sound art, noise, spoken word, free jazz, folk and neo-classical genres, Bechdel mainly took place at the much-missed Café Noor, though later events also took place at the Onca Gallery.

This compilation curates 13 live performances recorded at Bechdel and as such acts as an important archival document as well as a collection of great tracks that challenge, provoke, entertain and entrance in equal measure. The album was put together to raise funds for experimental musician and key figure on the Brighton scene Jae Josephine, a trans woman seeking access to facial feminization surgery. www.gofundme.com/f/help-jae-to-access-facial-feminisation-surgery

Bechdel was the creation of sound artist and musician Ingrid Plum, ingridplum.bandcamp.com, born of her frustration at having to navigate gendered spaces in her work, where often she would be the only woman booked to appear at gigs, events and on discussion panels at academic conferences. According to Plum, Bechdel was “a deliberate provocation… inverting that scenario which I had found myself in too many times.”

A night promoted by women, staffed by women and featuring female-identifying performers, plus one token male performer in one act at each event, Bechdel was seen by some as shocking or even comical. Why was that, when the exact inverse is still too often considered the norm? From the start, Bechdel was established as an open space where artists could be free from the usual constraints and expectations surrounding both gender and creativity.

Happily, Plum soon found that the same needs and desires were present within both the experimental music community and the LGBTQ+ community, and it was natural that these should intersect at Bechdel. At the first event, poet and musician Verity Spott launched her ‘Trans Manifesto’ which had been five years in the making, waiting for the right space in which it could be unveiled. Other artists found the confidence to perform for the first time, or to step out of the context of mixed gender bands and supporting roles to experiment with new forms of expression.

BECHDEL VOLUME ONE features ten pieces performed live at Café Noor during 2016, and three live at the Onca Gallery in 2017. Curated by Ingrid Plum, the 13-track album includes everything from wild experimentation to traditional folk, from spoken word to world music, electronica and beyond.

All artists have donated their work for free. All funds raised by sales of this compilation will be donated to Jae Josephine's surgery fund. For more information or to donate directly, visit: www.gofundme.com/f/help-jae-to-access-facial-feminisation-surgery



*The Bechdel Test was first published by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985, and was initially suggested by her friend Liz Wallace, who was in turn inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay A Room Of Her Own. To pass the test, a work of fiction must feature at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than men.