For me it's less about gender (or biological sex, etc.) and more about bio-cultural generational trends. In these videos, each player plays like someone who learned from YouTube videos and online forums. As players, not as women, their demeanor is shallow: methodical, dutiful, tentative... soulless. That is a generalization, of course. I found Anna Sentina to have the best groove by far, and Pamela Caravias the best sound; both hinted at soulfulness as yet untapped. I found Marta Altesa's playing to be irrelevant.
I am old. More specifically, I am an old nerd and intellectual. But I have soul like a mother*****r. For me, in any form that I can detect (which is limited by my aptitude, not others' works, I know), soulfulness is the main measure of a musician. Friedrich Gulda was ferocious. Singular, iconoclastic, musically reverent, he had a piano he named The Lion. (I won't cite James Brown because it's too obvious.) Nina Simone, incendiary, enraged, practically burst from her body when she performed. Her audiences exploded in adoration of the divinity she let them glimpse.
Maybe it's because I don't get out much, but the Western culture at large of musicians and music I see and hear in the internet age to date is characterized by its soullessness. Why look to female musicians for better or other? Even Esperanza Spalding, a fantastic player and excellent and thinking musician, is not immune to the timidity of her times. Where is the fire?
Me'Shell NdegéOcello has it and she is huge. Huge! But she is older, deriving from a bygone time. Rhonda Smith, a musician's musician and the consummate professional, is beyond technique and almost beyond groove, she is so fierce.
Defying my model is Tal Wilkenfeld. Bless her. It isn't her theory or technique, but her joy and how much she cares. It's how much her soul compels her to care. May she live long and continue to grace her generation and all the world with her gift.
