Today, we have Jasmine Kok from She Knows Tech and we’re going to talk about women in the industry, the tech side, the production side, and in general, how women can get more involved in the industry. She has some great statistics to discuss with us and they have an upcoming event as well.How It Started
Jasmine is one of the founders of She Knows Tech. When Jasmine was at Berklee in Valencia pursuing her Masters Degree in Music Production Technology and Innovation Program. The first thing she noticed is that there was zero female faculty that year. She kept having meetings with her program director to find out why there was a lack of women in the department and he advised that there were very few women applying. Then she immediately understood that it was a marketing problem because she knows a lot of women who were interested in doing demos but they did not feel they were welcome in that space.
They started as a collective on campus offering peer to peer kind of support, running workshops and masterclasses where they would invite guests from Madrid or Barcelona. One workshop that impacted her is when Liz Teutch, one of their engineer professors, gave a recording one-on-one session and told her that the students asked a lot of questions and were very comfortable in joining the discussion when they normally don’t in the normal classes they were in with her.
We thought about how we can provide a comfortable space for female students on campus to learn about tech. A year later, she was offered a Postmaster Research Program to continue in Berklee Valencia then she looked into coming up with data about her tech students. She came up with a tech training program where she collaborated with 5 female master students of that year and they each trained 4 undergrad students of that year in 5 different subjects (Music Production, Tech Ensemble, Recording Engineering among others) and by the end of the program, half of the mentees went back to Berklee Boston Campus and declared major in Music Production and Engineering or Electronic Production and Sound Designing. The other half either graduated or even minored in tech. They of course sent it to They knew the program was going to be successful but they didn’t expect it to be this extent. They sent it to different departments to see if they can do more of the program. Then COVID happened, then they challenged themselves and opened their classes virtually and that’s when they started expanding exponentially. After she left Berklee, she registered as a separate entity so they can make it easier to get funding too. In August they hosted 40 women and paired them with a mentor. In October, they did a challenge where they had 40 producers connect and do a track. Just from doing the events, they knew that this is the kind of space the female musicians are craving.
Then they thought about doing everything on a weekend on International Women’s Day, so they are now creating that Summit.
About the USC Annenberg Inclusion Report
USC Annenberg Institute collaborates with every year with the Grammys and the percentage of women in the Grammys. For example, in 2020, for every female artist, there are 3.6 male artists. And for every female producer, there are 37 male producers. We’ve come a long way but this data goes to show that there’s still such a long way to go. For example, until today, no woman has won Producer of the Year in the Non-Classical Genre.
Female producers or audio engineers do not get the same kind of celebration for their success. That is something we are determined to change by highlighting women in the industry. Women need to be more involved in commercial projects and albums so they can get the more spotlight. The music industry network being more dominated by males, it is so important that all of us work together to include all of these female artists too. If female musicians can also advocate including other female artists, that would be great.
One of She Knows Tech’s collaborators, She is the Music, founded by Alicia Keys, has this yearly songwriting camp where they have a roomful of women songwriters, producers or engineers and instrumentalists just to see how many songs they can crank up in two days. It’s a highly refreshing environment for female creatives.
Upcoming SKT Summit
Most of the members of She Knows Tech are graduates of Berklee Valencia and most of them are from the Music Production Technology and Innovation Program. They initially thought of a 2-day summit but it eventually became a 4-day event.
- Kick-start with a speed production challenge where we put 50 women together in a Zoom room for 2 hours to get a track.
- 2 day back-to-back workshops and masterclasses led by women musicians — singers, songwriters, instrumentalists and producers
- Last day ending with Elektronica concert to celebrate International Women’s Day
You can get the tickets of your choice:
- $55 – 8 masterclasses and 2 discussion panels
- $95 – 8 masterclasses and 2 discussion panels plus 1 workshop and 1 networking event
- $120 – 8 masterclasses and 2 discussion panels plus 2 workshops and all networking events
All tickets will include a digital sway bag.
Links mentioned in this episode:
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