Documentary sheds light on female jazz musicians
Director and producer Judy Chaikin got the idea for “The Girls in the Band” from one of her friends, the daughter of a jazz musician.
Chaikin, director and a producer of the award-winning documentary, said her friend had met an older woman who claimed to be a professional drummer during the jazz age after the great depression.
Courtesy | The Girls in the Band Official poster of “The Girls in the Band.” The film is about female jazz musicians throughout history.
She didn’t believe it, but after researching the woman, they found she was telling the truth.
“The woman had played in an all-girl band,” Chaikin said. “They had been quite popular, had toured the country … We were so fascinated by that, that I decided to look further to see if there were any more women like that.”
The documentary, “The Girls in the Band,” will show multiple times during University of Idaho’s annual Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival.
Screenings of the film will be held 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Borah Theater of the Bruce Pitman Center, formerly the Student Union Building, 12:30 p.m. Friday in the Teaching and Learning Center room 030 and 12:30 p.m. Saturday in the Agricultural Science Building room 106.
Chaikin said when she looked further she discovered an entire generation of women who were “left out of the history books.”
She said these female musicians were equally as popular as most of the men in the jazz age and faced just as many hardships — if not more. When the era was over, however, people forgot about the women, she said. This inspired Chaikin to produce the documentary.
Chaikin also has a personal connection to the film as well. She said she grew up in a musical family and played trumpet as a child until she began in junior high and faced similar obstacles to the women featured in the documentary.
“I could see very quickly that was no place for a girl,” she said. “There was no future for me in that, and the guys in the band were kind of mean to me. So I just quit, and now I see that that was what happened to a lot of women.”
Chaikin said the documentary is eye opening and provides Jazz Fest with an opportunity to showcase another fraction of musical history.
“It’s a very enlightening piece for people because it’s history that has never been told,” Chaikin said.
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected]