Elisa wrote a post on her social networks recalling when at the beginning of her career a male-dominated producer, as she calls it, she told her to focus on singing and not writing, because she was pretty. He was 15 and had to deal with the machismo that pervades an important part of our society. Harsh words, which made her feel bad and which often risk nip in the bud the desire of those who are still young – and especially women – want to make their way into the world of music, a world in which sexist dynamics are still replicated that we also see in rest of the company. Suffice it to see the discussions of recent years on female songwriters, songwriters and the term itself.
The sexism of the macho producer
Elisa, who fortunately did not give up, becoming one of our best known and most loved songwriters – rare case, among other things, of a singer-songwriter able to achieve success singing in English and the Sanremo Festival on her first attempt in Italian – wrote in the post: “You’re cute, think about singing. Leave the writing alone. I was fifteen and those words gave me a gastritis that lasted for months. I should have also left the production, the arrangements, the curiosity for so many instruments, because it was all too much. It would have been enough to smile, ‘look pretty’, sing well and ‘keep me in mind’. These were the words of a male-dominated producer that I stumbled upon even before my beginnings. For me they were just more petrol, bitter yes, but still good to push the accelerator even further down.
The words of Tina Turner
The photo accompanying the post shows her holding a bass guitar while she is in a recording studio working on “Teach Me Again” song that saw her collaborate with Tina Turner, the American star who years later that producer said important words to her: “A twenty-seven years I was in Zurich in the studio with Tina Turner to record her voice, because I was the producer of the piece I had written for our duet and I took care of the arrangements and also all the technical aspects of the recording. proud of you, women like you are changing the world. When I was young, what you are doing today here with me would have been unthinkable ‘. Let’s not let anyone tell us this is not our place. “