The struggle continues: Firefly Music Festival has had only one female headliner out of 26

If the organizers of Firefly Music Festival were celebrating in January when they released their 2018 lineup topped with future Pulitzer Prize-winner Kendrick Lamar and rap king Eminem, the party didn't last long.

Within a few hours of the roster release, a former Firefly act took to Twitter, blasting the festival for a lack of female representation.

"Damn guys come onnnnnn. Where the women at. This was one of my favorite festivals I’ve ever played and it’s a shame there’s not more females on the bill. With the exception of (the amazing) Sza, the first like 20 acts on the bill are men. It’s 2018, do better!!!" wrote Halsey, the New York-based electropop singer/songwriter who performed in Dover in 2015.

The 23-year-old "Him & I" singer had picked up on a glaringly obvious Firefly trend.

In its first seven years at The Woodlands in Dover, Firefly has had only one female-fronted headliner — Florence and the Machine, in 2016 — out of its 26 main stage anchor acts.

Starting Thursday when the festival kicks off, you'll only find two female acts while scanning the top quarter of the fest's 95-act lineup — neo-soul singer SZA and Philadelphia singer/songwriting duo Marian Hill.

And after SZA announced on Twitter late last month that her voice was "permanently injured," her appearance is questionable. (SZA's representatives did not respond to questions about her Firefly status.)

Talia Schlanger, who took over as host of the syndicated "World Cafe" from David Dye last spring, said the lack of female acts is especially disappointing given the time, but not surprising.

"With everything that has come to light in the #MeToo era and being conscious about all sorts of biases that have been held for a long time across industries, it's just a bad year to mess this up," said Schlanger, a former CBC Radio host whose current show is produced by Philadelphia noncommercial public radio station WXPN 88.5-FM.

"It's not that there should be more female representation because women deserve equality," she adds. "It's because women are making awesome music and a lot of those biases are keeping people from hearing, appreciating and elevating it in many ways, including a headlining spot at a music festival like Firefly.

"It's really not OK, that's the bottom line."

The dearth of headliners that feature core female members is not an issue limited only to Firefly.

Over the same time period, the past seven years, Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival has had one female headliner out of 28 (Björk) and Lollapalooza featured only two of 28 (Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine).

And even though Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was dubbed "Beychella" this year thanks to Beyoncé's blockbuster set, Coachella has hosted only one other female headliner (Lady Gaga) out of 26 dating back to 2012.

Even so, Coachella did make progress. Music blog Pass the Aux reported that out of the 165 artists at this year's festival, 55 acts included women, making it the most inclusive Coachella in its history.

Locally, WXPN's own XPoNential Music Festival has featured six headlining acts with female band members out of 36 over the past seven years.

Firefly representatives declined to comment about the subject.

When upstart concert producer Gayle Dillman co-created her Wilmington Ladybug Music Festival in 2012, it was a direct response to local musicians griping that the new Firefly Music Festival was too expensive and not inclusive to local artists. 

She decided to go all-in and really represent the under-represented, making it an all-female festival, packed with women musicians — 15 years after the start of the Sarah McLachlan-founded Lilith Fair.

Now, the Ladybug Festival is a two-day event in downtown Wilmington and is the largest all-female music festival in the country, drawing 10,000 people with its 260-plus female acts over the years. (It runs July 20-21 this year in downtown Wilmington and features Los Angeles singer/songwriter Lauren Ruth Ward, twin sister act Nalani & Sarina and a "No Bro Comedy Show.")

As it turns out, Ladybug's greatest strength is arguably Firefly's greatest weakness.

"When you start to look at those lineups, you realize that women are really underrepresented in this industry. How can I do a festival with 75 women and Firefly only puts on a dozen or whatever the number is?" asks Dillman. "Once people recognize it, they can challenge it. And then the big festival organizers are going to have to rise up and meet the challenge.

"It hasn't hit them in their pocketbook yet. They haven't had a reason to see the difference. They get complacent. I'm not complacent because I'm not rich — I'm not satisfied with the status quo."

When a fan criticized Firefly alum Halsey for "going off on" Firefly, she replied by describing the festival power structure: "Festivals ASK artists to play. Artists don’t ASK festivals if they can come."

Instead of playing Firefly, standout Wilmington indie rocker Grace Vonderkuhn will be among the main acts at this year's Ladybug Music Festival. The 27-year-old, who was recently signed to an indie label and performed at Austin's South By Southwest this year, has emerged from a local scene where female-fronted acts are commonplace.

You would think a musician in her mid-20s would be all in on a large-scale music festival like Firefly, which has imported a cavalcade of musical superstars that the state has never before seen.

Instead, Firefly elicits a shrug. If you don't see yourself or the music you like represented, it's easy to turn away. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Firefly's attendance took a dip last year.

You're more likely to find Vonderkuhn at a smaller festival or a DIY event that's more inclusive to women than a corporate-controlled music festival that often selects performers from the same pool of talent as all the others.

"I stopped going to huge festivals like that a few years ago," said Vonderkuhn, who has been performing for 15 years and has since seen more women like her infiltrate the local music scene. "Smaller festivals are more likely to keep diversity in mind when they're booking, wanting to represent many groups of people rather than just a few white dudes. I think people are going to catch up to that."

Just last weekend, Andrea McCauley, co-owner of Wilmington rock club Oddity Bar, hosted a night of punk rock with two of the five bands fronted by women — something that's not uncommon in the local Delaware music scene.

Whether it's Oddity Bar or Wilmington's other indie rock club, 1984, the sight of a woman standing in front of a microphone while a band revs up behind her is not unique thanks to acts such as Vonderkuhn, Hoochi Coochi, Heavy Temple, EyeBawl, Nadjah Nicole and Feral Ponies, to name a few.

"In our scene, there are a lot of female-fronted bands. And going back to my roots in the punk rock scene in the '90s, we had the riot grrrl movement, so it seems the local scene represents a little more this many years later," said McCauley, whose bar hosted pop star Kesha last year when she stopped by to film her "Woman" video before performing at Firefly. "On a bigger level, those festivals seem to be a little behind the times."

While music festivals are not a place where fans go to reflect on society at large — it's more of a land of loud tunes, marijuana and hookups — perhaps the disproportion will become so great that fans do begin take note.

Schlanger said she was "bummed" to hear Firefly's organizers would not discuss the issue when contacted by The News Journal.

"I would love for them to get on the phone and say, 'We tried to book Lana Del Rey, Kacey Musgraves, Janet Jackson, Katy Perry and Björk and all of them were too busy, we couldn't pay them enough or it was only the guys who would settle for what we were offering.' Maybe they tried. I don't know," she added.

Schlanger said the lack of female performers at music festivals is particularly conspicuous since the lineups on posters are ranked with the biggest acts on top and the lesser known bands on the bottom. And rankings are very important. Agents, managers and even the artists themselves get involved in the jockeying to get better placement or a bigger font size.

"In radio programming or even the deep caverns of Spotify, nobody is laying it out on a sheet and showing what is getting played and what is being left out," she said. "But when you see these posters with a giant name on top, the names getting progressively smaller and you need a magnifying glass before you see a woman's name, that's where it becomes really conspicuous.

"And that's also where you have to take accountability for what you book."

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

IF YOU GO

What: Firefly Music Festival

When: June 14-17

Where: The Woodlands near Dover International Speedway, Dover

Four-day passes: Single day pass ($129 general admission; $269 VIP) and four-day pass ($329 general admission; $749 VIP) and Super VIP ($2,499).

Information: fireflyfestival.com

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