Two Strikes and the Double Negative: The Intersections of Gender and Race in the Cases of Female Jazz Saxophonists

On January 1, 2012, I was invited to a party at my friend’s house in Brook-lyn, New York, where about ten jazz musicians gathered and celebrated the New Year over food and drinks. They knew me both as a jazz saxophonist who worked from the late 1990s to the early 2000s and as a researcher who conducted fieldwork in the late 2000s in New York City. Some of them helped me to connect with female jazz saxophonists to interview for my dissertation research. After talking about my research and several female saxophonists ’ remarkable success in recent years, a white male (and friend) mentioned, “You know, white guys are the least favored in the scene. ” “Yes, that’s very true, ” another white male immediately responded. According to those two men, black musicians are more appreciated and female musi-cians attract more attention. In a similar way, one of my musician friends in Pittsburgh told me recently, “You’re a hot commodity because you’re a woman sax player. I’m a white guy, nobody cares. ” These white male musicians ’ comments suggest that two different systems of preference ar