Examining 2020’s Intersectional Reckonings Through the Experiences of Women in Music
This is the second conversation in an ongoing series in partnership with NYC Nightlife United highlighting the status of the music industry. We’re inviting artists and professionals from our local NYC music community to pick a collaborator to speak on an issue they're most passionate about. In this edition, co-workers turned friends Yasmine Panah, Project Manager at FADER label, and Kïa Tavernier, Content Strategy at Ilegal Mezcal & Creative Director for City of the Sun, dissect how through their experiences as women of color working in music, the industry, while diverse in its artistry, is still struggling to reflect that behind the scenes in the workplace. Through the lens of the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and another #MeToo reckoning, Kïa and Yasmine offer ways for the community to move forward.
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Illustration by Steph Lau
Kïa: All right. I'm excited to be here.
Yasmine: I feel like we're on a really good radio show right now. Today we're supposed to talk about something that's really important to us, which I feel like we talk about—
Kïa: All the time.
Yasmine: Literally all the time since I've met you. And even though there's different things going on in the industry right now where it feels like there's a spotlight, we've always had these conversations, but it's cool to have an official chat about it for once. But for us, we're in this unique position right now, and just in general, being women of color in the music industry. And you specifically as a black woman.
Kïa: I feel like for both of us, it's an important time for us to speak out on these things, the issues that we deal with, that we've been dealing with over the years, working closely with music labels and working closely with all sorts of musicians and bands as women of color.
Yasmine: God bless.
Kïa: I myself am Haitian American and lightly melanated.
Yasmine: I guess maybe a good place to start, something that comes up a lot in our industry is, how did we get here? And a lot of it is so much about how the systems are set up to not allow people like me and you to be in the space. Even now, we don't see very many women in executive positions, let alone women of color.
Kïa: I think it's interesting, how we have different paths to get to where we are.
Yasmine: Yeah, I had more of a traditional situation of, I watched Almost Famous too much when I was 16 and then decided I wanted to get into music. So I went to NYU and did the traditional, “got an unpaid internship for a year till I showed up enough times that they hired me to work at an indie label.” And then working through all of college, I ended up getting my start pretty young. But there's this level of privilege of being able to do an unpaid internship at all. And personally, for me, my parents were like, you want to work in music? I'm not giving you any money to do that.
But I think that's sort of a more traditional way that people get in, that isn't necessarily readily available to a lot of different kinds of people. I think there's a lot of barriers that get in the way of young women getting into the industry, or people of color in general. So I think it's important for us to kind of chat through how as women of color, we're in this position and how it feels like the industry isn't necessarily there for us all the time.
Kïa: Absolutely. But you know what? You actually reminded me of how difficult it was to kind of get approval from your family for pursuing this career.
“I think that’s sort of a more traditional way that people get in, that isn’t necessarily readily available to a lot of different kinds of people. I think there’s a lot of barriers that get in the way of young women getting into the industry, or people of color in general.”
Yasmine: They still don't get it. Oh, for background, I'm Iranian American. So I'm the child of immigrants, but I was born in the US. But definitely still a very confusing concept to even say that I work at a record label. They're supportive, but I don't think they really understand what's going on.
Kïa: I can imagine during that internship, it was—
Yasmine: Very confusing. And all my white friends were like, "I don't get it. Why aren't your parents helping? Do they not support you?" It wasn't that they didn't support me, they just were like, “this is such a foreign concept of what anyone is supposed to be doing.” I don't know a ton of Middle Eastern people in the industry. There are some Middle Eastern artists, obviously, but it's very insulated among white dudes, everywhere. But how did you get into it? Because your story was a little bit different.
Kïa: I like to call myself a college dropout, very proudly. I wear my badge with pride. I started with music through a friendship with this musician. And being broke in New York, we were working in retail and we couldn't hire any designers, we couldn't hire anybody to do marketing for his music. So I said, let's figure out how to make fliers to put up on the Upper East Side for little gigs.
Yasmine: Shows at Pianos?!
Kïa: Haha that was a couple years later. It was like little pubs where two or three old folks would just watch.
Yasmine: I love that. Pure.
Kïa: So everything that I learned in design is self-taught. And eventually I made connections through that band over time. And I just worked those connections and made it happen. I feel like both of us is similar in the fact that we're very independent because we had to forge our way and figure it the fuck out.
Yasmine: I didn't know anybody in music. I didn't know a single industry person to get me in. My intro was a cold email to the general info account, of Cult Records, the indie label I first worked. I literally e-mailed info at Cult Records and was like, "Hi, I'm a big fan, I write for NYU's newspaper, can I intern?"
Kïa: Oh my god, so cute.
Yasmine: That was how it started. You just kind of roll into it.
Kïa: Finagle your way... I mean, I tried so many different things.
Yasmine: But I think that's the coolest thing of how you got into it, because now you wear all these hats. You do social media, you do creative direction, you have literally directed music videos. That is something that I feel is very unique. And a lot of people stick to one lane when they get into the industry and they haven't really done a lot.
Kïa: I appreciate that. I feel like it did cause me some issues in certain jobs where I was able to do a lot of jobs within one job, but I wasn't compensated for that, I wasn't respected necessarily for that. And sometimes it was almost frowned upon that I would overstep just because I knew better because of my previous experience. So I had to hold that back a lot for a certain amount of time, which was super frustrating.
Yasmine: That's something that we have talked about a lot, and as women of color in this industry specifically, and I'm sure in lots of industries, but definitely in this one, it's this thing of constantly getting in trouble. When we worked together officially at one company, constantly trying to make things better, nothing was being listened to at all. And we'd both constantly get into trouble, but you specifically, in these weird situations that to our white coworkers was so confusing, they didn't understand why you specifically, and I, kept getting in trouble for things that didn't feel like that big of a deal.
Kïa: It was an interesting situation. At first I thought that something needed to change in process of working or dynamics between colleagues or just small things that would benefit everyone. But it was always like I was stepping out of line or I had an attitude, and I thought I was crazy until I realized that other people would say the same things that I said and it would be taken more seriously. Or people had an easier time getting raises and promotions than I did. And those people happened to be white.
Yasmine: Caucasian.
Kïa: Caucasian, male. You know, it was very disappointing and it ended up being a situation where I just couldn't thrive. So I left it. But it's unfortunate that it's not a unique experience. It's just how it is kind of across the board.
Yasmine: It's so ingrained in how people act. I don't think anyone was actively being racist necessarily in an obvious way or a sexist [way]. It's just the way that people tend to react. I think you're right about it being absolutely across the industry. But how many people have the ability to leave that job or who don't feel like they can say anything in the first place?
Kïa: I have privilege that I could quit a job without having another job lined up. I'm pretty grateful for that. And I know a lot of people struggle and they have to stick it out, but breaking free of that was super liberating. And now I'm really lucky to work with people that respect me more. But, at the same time, being the only black person in the room, even if everyone has really good intentions, is still difficult. And I'm sure you feel that too, because at labels now during the movement that's happening with BLM, people are trying to make changes, but it's still difficult because you're not necessarily really listening.
Yasmine: Yeah, it feels like the industry is supposedly having a reckoning, again. This industry was built off the backs of Black people. All the music comes from Black people, it's all been appropriated in some way. And even now, hip hop is so popular, and makes everyone so much money. But when those artists walk into their A&R meeting, how many Black people do they see in that room? If they're female artists, how many women do they see in that room? If this industry is supposed to be for artists who are people of color, or Black or women, are they being represented on the back end by their companies? We keep talking about how it's supposed to be a moment right now with the industry specifically, in light of everything with George Floyd and the protests, which are kind of a beautiful reckoning in some ways. I'm so sorry that anyone was ever mistreated, but it does feel like this moment where everyone is like, "fuck this!"
Kïa: Nationally, everything came to a boil.
Yasmine: We're having these conversations. And it's kind of stupid to me because we as women, or as people of color, and you specifically as a Black woman, we noticed this shit every day, all the time. I feel like I have white coworkers who have literally never noticed before what is going on. And that feels insane to me because I think that we as a people know and notice all the time.
Kïa: One of the most frustrating things these days is to see, and have to deal with, and have to educate white folks that are just waking up, which I'm so happy that they are. But I think some people are so overwhelmed with this new information for them, because they've been in a bubble, they're leaning on me for information or confirmation or approval on what they're doing, and I think we just each have to do our own transformations. Even you and I have a lot to learn, it's a personal journey. And I think you just have to do the research, like read a book. I think a lot of people aren't doing that. And they're kind of trying to patch up the issues with little bandaids rather than getting to the root of the issue—
Yasmine: Or not thinking that they're part of the problem, which I think that we are all inherently part of the problem. The conversations I was having with people across the board was a lot of… I didn't want to seem preachy and be like, “You should read this and I have a resource for this.” I'm reading them, too. I have a lot to learn. There's a lot of shit I don't know about. And you and I have had so many conversations with our other friends, between each other about stuff we had never really been aware of, or things that we did know, but we didn't know how bad it was. We all have to be doing that work.
“Or not thinking that they’re part of the problem, which I think that we are all inherently part of the problem”
Kïa: Even what you just said, not to be "too preachy." That's something that we shouldn't think. You're not being preachy, you're just being real.
Yasmine: It comes down to our education as kids. You and I grew up the children of revolutionaries from our own countries. Our parents are activists. The way that we were always aware of people like Malcolm X and other people... There is some level of not really being aware of mistreatment and awful things that are happening in other countries because we don't have to see them everyday. Fewer people have this understanding of horrible things that happened in America, that are done by the American government and other countries. Some of this stuff is not a surprise to us because we've seen it happen to our own families and other places.
Kïa: Exactly. And it's a discomfort. Once your eyes are open to the stuff, you're literally uncomfortable at least once a day, like on a good day. It's constant work now. And I think a lot of people are not used to that. It's not comfortable, but it's like, “Welcome to our world!” I was never comfortable in the room.
Yasmine: And when you're the only woman in the room, it's one thing, then when you're the only person of color in the room also... being both in one is like you're supposed to be the diversity catch-all.
Kïa: And you're dealing with that now.
Yasmine: It's just how I spend most of my career in music, I haven’t really been in that many diverse spaces. Bottom line, I am sometimes the only girl or the only person of color. And that's something that I obviously notice all the time. And I'm not sure that everyone else notices. But I do feel like sometimes questions come up where they look at me and they're like, “Okay, can you answer this thing?” And I'm like, well, I don't speak for all people who are not white. I'm not gay or queer, I'm not part of the LGBTQ community. But do I get every question about that? I don't know why. I think it's because I'm a girl.
Kïa: You're like, I don't want to be the token. I think you should hire more people!
Yasmine: We've had conversations about adding diversity to teams since I've known you across different companies. It's just a thing that on top of it being a moral issue, also it's a smart fucking business move!
Kïa: Thank you!
Yasmine: There are Black creatives everywhere. There are Black A&Rs, there are Black publicists. There are people everywhere. And for us to just not include them in the conversation, it just feels so stupid to me.
Kïa: Right. I think a lot of it is just lack of effort or there's a strange thing that some people I feel think that seeking a specific type of person to make a well rounded team... you have to look for different people. Those people might not find you, but you have to go find them and some people are like, "Well, we're taking all applications." Ok, but who are you asking, where are you looking? And you're right, this is fucking New York City. There isn't a lack of any anything.
Yasmine: But also it's this thing of what we get comfortable doing. I think probably in entertainment, but definitely in music, when you're hiring someone you just ask your friends. So of course, when you have a lot of white people in the industry, and there's a job opening, they just ask around and just by chance, they just happen to know a lot of other white dudes. So then they end up in these positions. And I don't know that a lot of the time it's a conscious choice. I don't think they realize that they're doing that. But it is definitely a problem.
We're having more conversations now in music about how we need to do different internship programs. We need to make it a paid internship so that not just people of privilege who come from privileged backgrounds can do them. But it's also like, ok, you can find interns who are Black or POC, but what about when you hire them? How do you treat your Black or POC or female employees? What about afterwards? There's a lot of work in that.
Kïa: Right. And actually we both have done this ourselves. We had our own interns and I feel like I get super excited to have an intern that has potential, especially somebody who is a rare kid that is a person of color or is LGBTQ. I think it's super special. So I give them that extra push. I give them that extra effort because there's not enough of us. I consciously do that. Everything that I do has intention. And I think part of it is just not being passive.
Yasmine: I feel like when I was finding interns at different companies, it was never a conscious choice. I just kept picking who I thought was best, [they] just happened to sometimes be brown girls or LGBTQ. But I feel like you and I feel this responsibility. I do because I guess my intern days are not that long ago, they feel like yesterday, somebody gave me a shot. I don't want someone who wants to work in music to get frustrated. I hate that. I want to be as supportive as possible. I love to support young women, which I think is another thing that feels relevant as fuck right now.
“I give them that extra effort because there’s not enough of us. I consciously do that. Everything that I do has intention. And I think part of it is just not being passive.”
Kïa: Oh yes.
Yasmine: There's been a lot, obviously, with the #MeToo movement, which has changed a lot of the game. But there are a lot of people who still do grimy shit. I've experienced some things that have been uncomfortable in the workplace, but also with bands and this community of artists. It just feels like the constant mistreatment of women, whether they are fans coming to a show or whether they work in your office. And that is something that has always pissed me off. For example, with the Burger Record stuff that's been happening recently. I felt really, really tied to that because you have this community of mostly male artists mistreating or abusing or assaulting young women who did nothing, are just fans. They just want to go to the show, have a great time, they are a lot of times teenagers, especially the Burger crowd. And they're just being taken advantage of.
Kïa: And this is a culture that's been going on for so, so long, since bands started.
Yasmine: Yeah, I mean, it's not new. We're in this moment of finally calling them out for this shit.
Kïa: Accountability!
Yasmine: There's no reason for a grown man to be with a fifteen year old who just showed up to the show. Obviously that girl is excited she's there, but she's there because she's a fan, she's just enjoying the music. And for some reason, these grimy men decide that they have all this power, that they can do whatever they want. And I really feel like all of this ties in, every movement that's happening at once is all so intersectional.
Kïa: It's just the toxic masculinity and white male supremacy that has embedded itself into everything. So when we're talking about it now, it's like, wait a second. Every little thing is affected. And like you said, it's a reckoning, which is good in a sense. But it's tough. Especially if you're reliving trauma or I don't know, I feel like some people are friends of these bands. It gets complicated, right?
Yasmine: Yeah, I think that also when these things all happen at once, it just feels so traumatizing... Like you were saying the same thing. You have random white people hitting you up being like, "Are you OK? What can I do for you?" And it's like, "Nothing! Don't text me, I don't want to talk to you right now!" I'm going through some shit. I can't imagine that moment of, you're already seeing something horrible on TV that was showing George Floyd every day... It's not new to you just because it's new to some people.
Kïa: I don't think I've been this exhausted emotionally my entire life. I mean I've had some moments, you know, but it's just the culmination of everything. Everything's stacked, seeing all the violence on social media, my friends reposting the violence and not giving warnings. Just so you know, anybody who is listening, if you have Black followers, they might not react well. They might be triggered by violence coming up on their feed, just something to keep in mind, because it's a whole deep thing.
Yasmine: Yeah, of course.
Kïa: But there's trauma, intergenerational. There's trauma seeing somebody that looks like your dad. It's seeing somebody that looks like your cousin, it's really hurtful sometimes. Then COVID, people are in the streets getting beat up and people are getting kidnapped. And then on top of that, trying to educate people who need a little help here and there, and I have a bleeding heart so I try to help people out. That's exhausting. And then, work on top of that. And being in this industry, even though it did slow down quite a bit, there's still releases. There's still all this shit that has to be done.
Yasmine: It just felt like we kept having these moments, especially at the beginning of the protests, where everyone was like, "Oh, my God, what do we do? Do we release this album? Should we push it back?" And it's like, there are just bigger things going on right now. Nobody is trying to listen to your baby band right now anyways. I don't care, you know what I mean? People were sending me demos throughout the entire thing and I was like, "Hi, I had to run away from cops twelve hours ago, but like, sure, yeah, let me listen to your demos!" I don't understand where people's priorities are at.
Kïa: It's just the capitalism ingrained in us. We have to keep producing, keep grinding. And now the releases are becoming more regular.
Yasmine: The point isn't that we're supposed to stop doing everything right now for three months or however long we think, "this is going to last." You know what I mean? People would be like, "well, when this quiets down..." And it just felt like such a fucking slap in the face because the point is that this stuff is not supposed to be temporary.
Kïa: That's the point!
Yasmine: Our conversations and the focus being put on the oppression of Black people, the way that we treat Black people on a daily basis, and how the government treats white people. All of this should be something that we are always permanently talking about and focusing on. This is not something that goes away in three months. This is supposed to be long term. Work it into what you're doing, be mindful of what you're putting out and how you're putting it out.
Kïa: Especially as an artist, this is the time to have your voice really heard and talk about issues that are important to you, or reach out to a community or make your art meaningful rather than just putting out content just because. And there's that notion of, "when things get back to normal." That hurtful. It's like normal?
“Our conversations and the focus being put on the oppression of Black people, the way that we treat Black people on a daily basis, and how the government treats white people. All of this should be something that we are always permanently talking about and focusing on. ”
Yasmine: Normal for who?
Kïa: Normal is violent. Like, normal?
Yasmine: Even in the workplace... I had to have really regular ass conversations while we were constantly protesting, while there was horrible things going on with police brutality. In that moment, right after George Floyd, people were trying to have very regular conversations with me as if nothing happened. And I was like, are we living the same moment right now?
Kïa: I mean, it's frustrating for anybody who's paying attention and who is actually conscious of the reality of things. People are walking around without their masks on, partying, AH!
Yasmine: All of this really put a spotlight on how I see men that I have worked with in the past... I do feel supported by the men that I work with for sure. But I do feel like it just shows a lot about how people react to things. I've seen especially, like back to Burger, every time somebody gets “#MeToo" or gets “canceled", the way that I see some men react, really fucking pisses me off. They'll be like, "Damn, you're going to wipe out half the industry if we keep doing this... I can't go near anybody." It's all about the dudes and it's like, "I'm sorry, what about the trauma that these women now have to endure and they're going to have to go to therapy over…" I don't think that this was a little thing that happened one time. The way that these abuses happened, are long lasting, unfortunately.
Kïa: Sorry that you have to start acting like a good human being and treating people well. Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable… I'm really so happy for the two of us though. We're in better positions now to affect change. You're in a good position where you can tell people what's right or wrong and they're more likely to listen to you in this industry. And you're affecting bands, you're working with legitimate bands first hand. And I'm sure they're influenced by the things you say.
Yasmine: This is the thing of the sisterhood of it all, because even when we talk to our white friends, they are empathizing and they recognize that they can't totally relate, even though they obviously go through shit in their own workplaces as women. But this thing of sticking together this whole time, we've had really hard conversations. You've put me in my place several times, which I deserve.
Kïa: It's holding each other accountable. It's backing each other up if we're in this situation together. You've backed me up on several occasions and I don't know what I would have done. You're right, there's that sisterhood and it's super, super important. And I hope that I can provide that sort of empowerment to younger folks.
Yasmine: I think that's something that's really important to us in general. How do we make change that actually matters for people who look like us? Who are women, or Black women specifically. How do we get to a spot where we see more people who look like us across the board in our industry because, we're fucking good at our job! The best people I know in the industry are women. So why aren't there more of us? And that feels like something that we have to keep working on.
Kïa: That's the eternal fight. And honestly, talking about it in that light, it makes everything feel, not worthwhile because it's still pretty shitty what's going on, but it makes me more motivated to fight against the tide. And having people that are kind of on the same level is super helpful because otherwise you just feel like you're floating alone and you're just lost.
Yasmine: It can be really isolating.
Kïa: Absolutely. It's interesting, the fight that I have now is, "I don't care if you think that I sound like a bitch because I'm voicing my opinion or because I said that you are wrong." I think my voice being heard is kind of what I'm trying to do within the teams that I work with. People do step on my toes a lot. I've been undermined many times on projects. And sometimes I'll take a step back just to save my energy. You have to pick your battles. But it's something that I'm working through.
Yasmine: I see a lot of 22 year old white dudes who get away with everything. I don't get it. I'm not trying to generalize. It literally is that.
Kïa: I's just the stereotypes and implicit bias.
Yasmine: I just think it's going to be important for us to stay together. As women in general, as people of color in general, we just have to be in the spot where we're not letting each other fall behind or not letting each other fall into traps. Sometimes we do work for people who are women or think that they're liberal and think that they're allies, but they're not doing anything or they're doing the oppressing without realizing really what they're doing. And that's where it gets complicated because that person would not say that they're mistreating anyone or they didn't have any racist intent or they didn't have any sexist intent. But you did! You didn't mean to, but you did. And that's a hard pill to swallow for me, at least when it happens to me, because I'm like, you're supposed to be on my side, what the fuck?
Kïa: Yeah, of course. And that's the hard part where you automatically get defensive because there is an ego there. It happens to everyone. You don't want somebody to call you out on some shit, because it's embarrassing. But if you just sit down with that and think about it before just squashing it, I feel like it can be really valuable. I always want people to be honest around me. I've said this already on this talk a million times, we have to do the work ourselves, on ourselves. We're all learning every fucking day.
Yasmine: I think that we constantly have to be doing better. There are moments where we're going to slip up. That is just natural, that is going to happen. And the best thing we can do is just be accountable and be like, "Okay, I understand why this thing was wrong and I know I can do better and I will do better. I'll be a better ally." We can't fully just expect everyone to be perfect overnight. We have to be in this moment of working to be better because I think anyone could fuck up at anytime.
“You don’t want somebody to call you out on some shit, because it’s embarrassing. But if you just sit down with that and think about it before just squashing it, I feel like it can be really valuable.”
Kïa: Right. And also allowing people to fuck up. Instead of just, being like, "you're canceled." All the old heads have been complaining about cancel culture for a while, but there is something to the fact that just shutting somebody down for something they did 10 years ago isn't necessarily productive.
Yasmine: It is long term what happens to these people. It could fucking happen to me tomorrow, it could happen to anyone tomorrow. I think that the way that we've all come up in our society and in our industries, we haven't been held accountable in the same way. We came up in these environments that were not really conducive to appropriate behavior. I just feel like there are probably a lot of not P.C. things that have happened around us, to us. We need to get out of that environment in our heads and that mindset in the first place. We just have to do the work to improve and be like, "Okay, I fucked up. I'm so sorry. Here is why I understand that I fucked up. I'm going to do better now. And here are the steps." That just feels like the most productive thing to me.
Kïa: Yes, it is pretty straightforward, I think. I don't think it has to be a whole emotional roller coaster to better yourself. Obviously, sometimes it will be a little bit tough to go through your self examination or journey within yourself. It could get emotional, but basic stuff, "I made a mistake, I said this to you. Was it a microaggression? I didn't know. But you're telling me that it is. So I'm sorry. I'm going to think about it and I'll get back to and we can talk about it." I feel like that's pretty straightforward. It doesn't have to be a whole thing.
Yasmine: We're trying to undo years of shitty behavior from different people and our society being fucked from the beginning. There's a lot of things to undo. People can't be scared of trying to change it. We're trying to undo years of horrible things and mistreatment and it's not going to be an overnight process, ever. It's going to be long. That's the point. And the whole thing is putting the effort into improving it and doing it better.
Kïa: And I think with what's happening now, we want the change to happen faster. Some people are like, well there's been progress here. We had a Black president and you know, Lizzo got all these awards and she's on the cover of blah blah blah. These are very small, small things. And I think it's time that we have more of a revolution rather than little tiny changes over decades. We don't have to wait that long. I wish everybody could just care a little bit, just have empathy.
Yasmine: I think we're slowly making those changes, though. I think us being present in rooms is one thing. And finally being in a spot where I can have very, very candid conversations with people I work for. And not everyone has that privilege. Not everyone in the history of music has had that privilege. It feels like this very unique time, even the stuff that we're able to talk about now is going to make a difference. Even our presence in a room is going to make a difference in some way. So we're on the right track.
Kïa: We're definitely on the right track.
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