Gender, Networks, and Artistic Success: A Computational Analysis of Jazz History

The project “Gender, Networks, and Artistic Success” focuses on conducting a comprehensive analysis of jazz history to explore the interplay between gender, collaboration networks, and artistic success. Its primary goal is to investigate gender-specific inequalities in jazz music and analyse historical trends in gender representation over a period of more than 160 years. 

About the Project 

At the core of the project is the use of the Discogs database, which contains information on over 250,000 jazz musicians and their collaborations. By employing modern digital methods such as network analysis and machine learning, the dataset is enriched and analyzed to understand the role of gender and network positions in artistic success.

The key steps of the project include:

• Automatic Gender Classification: Musicians are automatically classified by gender based on their names. To ensure the accuracy of this method, a portion of the data is manually annotated by project staff.

• Reconstruction of Collaboration Networks: Networks are created based on publication data to analyze the positions and influence of musicians within these networks.

• Statistical Modeling: Using methods from network science, the project investigates how gender representation and the success opportunities of female musicians in jazz have evolved over time.

• Pilot Study: A hand-curated genealogy of jazz trumpeters is examined using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) and audio analyses. This contributes to understanding influence relationships in jazz while also assessing the data quality of digital archival records. Additionally, the pilot study provides a feasibility assessment for similar analyses based on the full dataset.

The project aims to make its findings accessible not only to the academic community but also to the general public. To this end, an interactive website will be developed to present aggregated results, network visualizations, and gender-specific analyses. This platform is intended to be of interest to researchers, journalists, citizens, and policymakers alike.

The initiative contributes to the advancement of the Digital Humanities by employing innovative methods for analyzing cultural data and providing new insights into gender representation in jazz music. Furthermore, it supports the mission of CLARIAH-AT, CLARIN-ERIC, and DARIAH-EU by enriching digital archives and making their content accessible for research and public engagement.