Helvetiarockt’s podcast series “Musicians in Conversation” profiles female, intersex, transgender and non-binary musicians*, artists and DJs living in Switzerland. In the third season, musicians* such as Evita Koné are joined by actors from the Swiss music industry who work backstage. For example, live sound engineer Lena Brechbühl and Nadia Mitic, booking agent and co-founder of the Glad We Met Collective, as well as Fabienne Schmuki, co-managing director, head of promotion and label manager at the Irascible label. The talks will be led by Natalia Anderson, musician, DJ and journalist from London, based in Geneva.
Women, inter, trans and non-binary people are still severely underrepresented in the Swiss music industry. On stage, only about 11% women* are represented and in music production even only about 2% women* (according to a preliminary study by the Center for Gender Studies, University of Basel, and Social Insight GmbH on behalf of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and the Swiss Center for Social Research). On the one hand, the podcast series is intended to serve as a mouthpiece for this group of people and, on the other hand, to allow listeners* to take a peek behind the scenes: The conversations with the podcast guests show the variety of professional jobs in the music industry and the different paths that can lead to a profession such as musician*, booking agent* or tour manager*.
Podcast is supported by SUISA
The first season of “Musicians in Conversation” was published in 2020 with the aim of introducing the coaches of the Helvetiarockt Music Lab workshops and thus lowering the inhibition threshold for people interested in workshops. It quickly became apparent that the podcast in general makes an important contribution to networking and visibility of women, inter, trans and non-binary people in the Swiss music industry. The second season then followed at the beginning of 2022. Both the second and third seasons were made possible in part by SUISA’s sponsorship. All episodes were recorded in English in order not to favour any of the national languages and to make the podcast accessible to as many people as possible, including at international level.
All episodes are available on the following platforms:
www.helvetiarockt.ch/podcasts; Spotify; Apple Podcasts; Google Podcasts; Soundcloud; Youtube
* In this text, the notion of the “gender asterisk” (a method to provide a gender-neutral version in the written form of the German language) has been applied, just as it is used by Helvetiarockt.
