“A Musician Is Defined by Their Music and Not Their Anatomy” — What the FOLK is Up?
Vane sits atop a vinyl green chair surrounded by sand. She cradles her guitar carefully as she fixes the stray hairs whipping in the salt air’s wind.
Cristina Vane wants to set one thing straight: her womanhood does not define her art.
Born in Italy to a Sicilian-American father and Guatemalan mother, Vane spent her childhood in different parts of Europe and became fluent in four languages before coming to America for college. Vane is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee.
Feeling as though her multifaceted identity kept her from fully connecting to a specific culture and community, Vane created space to discover herself within her music. Her music fostered a sense of belonging that she had not originally felt. Her discography “has been a parallel journey of my identity with myself and in my own life.” And while her self-discovery is an ongoing process, music will always be a sounding board for her.
Much of Vane’s musical style is informed by the delta blues and old time folk music. And while contemporary folk developed the habit of producing music that is solely reminiscent of previous styles and artists, Vane’s music innovates upon those foundations, making something new that both old and new audiences of folk can recognize as their own.
“As much as there are some songs that are an homage to that, [...] I’m not gonna make it entirely my identity because it doesn’t feel authentic”
Vane does not want her music to be a carbon-copy of the past. “As much as there are some songs that are an homage to that, [...] I'm not gonna make it entirely my identity because it doesn't feel authentic,” she affirms. Her original music is a direct reflection of her: innovatively intertwined with styles from the past. “I like drums, I like electric guitar and rocking out, I like banjo and Stringband stuff,” Vane explains. “There's a little bit of everything on my records and I want to keep it that way, because ideally, you'll get that this is inspired by these awesome things and is its own thing.”
Folk music is a reflection of what is going on at a certain point in time. It “is really just a mirror; it shows the good, bad and the ugly” of any given time period and culture. To Vane, technically any genre can be pocketed under folk, “whether it's the blues, whether it's rap, you're putting somebody briefly into your culture”— all it takes is two or three minutes of listening for one to understand what the artist has experienced. Vane attests to how powerful storytelling can be, “A lot of the time it's about the people. That is really humanizing. It makes you feel like you're part of it, even if it's far away.”
Much of the opposition Vane faces when it comes to being a musician breeds internally. Men fronted many of the bands she listened to growing up. She admits, “I did feel limited in some ways by the mentality that I had absorbed around me, which was that women don't play guitar, or at least they don't solo.” There was a subconscious thought that fueled her self doubt: “women sing and women play classical music, but they're not really very good at guitar.” Vane grimaces as she recounts this: “it's totally not true and very ignorant of so many women that historically have been and currently are smashing it on the guitar.”
Because of these doubts, it took Vane quite a while to get over her fear of making mistakes and “being bad.” She subconsciously felt as though women had to prove that they were talented, whereas many men could make mistakes and fool around and still be considered serious artists. While Vane recognizes her talent and knows her strengths and capabilities as a musician, that mental block is still one she finds herself chipping away at.
This problem largely finds its roots in women’s representation, both in folk and the music industry as a whole. The folk scene has always been incredibly diverse. After all, it was pioneered by women of color. “You don't get the sense of that as an outside consumer,” Vane says, “You have to be pretty into all this stuff and really start to look at [...] who all these people are doing all these awesome things. Once you're in it, oh man, there's men and women of every color, every dimension. It's really beautiful.”
While more diverse than ever, the genre still fails to reflect its own diverse reality. When it comes down to it, “it's distilled down into this very singular, one dimensional: ‘here are the same 10 people that you always hear about,’” who are more often than not, White. Perhaps more women and women of color would proudly assert themselves as musicians if the poster child of the genre actually looked like them. “When I look around my circle of musicians, it is not really dominated badly” Vane exclaims, “Especially in the real folk world — real folk being traditional, old time, bluegrass, Americana and string — there are a lot of prominent people of color, people with marginalized identities.”
The sun shines on the side of Vane’s face as she peacefully practices her guitar chords.
Vane wants to be a musician without being labeled as a female musician. While she is proud to be a woman, that doesn’t mean it is the only thing that defines her and her music. “There's always gonna be some asshole somewhere, but there seems to be a lot more when you're a girl with a guitar,” she says.
A musician is defined by their music and not their anatomy. Vane describes the dichotomy, “where if we keep making it about male or female dominated stuff, that stays the focus — but we also have to [make it about that], because there really is an imbalance.” Shedding light on this side of her experience in the industry can be a double-edged sword, “You want to acknowledge the real difference in the experience of being a woman in music, but don't really want to focus on it. It's not what my music is about. It's not what my whole life is about. I'm just a person when I'm playing guitar in my head, I don't think about my boobs or my legs or all these things.” If Vane isn’t thinking about those things, then frankly, no one should be.
And thus, Cristina Vane does not want to be anyone’s favorite female musician, but favorite musician? That’s more like it.
One can support Vane by following her on Instagram, streaming her music on Spotify or buying her music and merch on Bandcamp.