The Woman behind the music

We had a chat with Georgia Taglietti, head of communication at Sónar festival. She told us about her experience working for the most avant-garde electronic music festival in Europe, whose next edition will be held from the 18th till the 20th of July 2019 in Barcelona. Since 2017 Georgia is also managing director of shesaid.so, which is an international dedicated network of female working across all sectors of the music industry. Its vision is to create an environment that supports collaboration, creativity and positive values.

How did you end up in Barcelona and how did you start working for the Sónar?

Brescia was a cultural cage for me, so after graduation, I decided to move to Barcelona. At university I graduated in Advertising and Public Relations, I first joined Sónar in 1995 as a volunteer, then they noticed I was very confident with the computer, they asked me to help laying out the catalogue of the festival, I was one of the first confident Mac users since the early nineties. I spoke a lot of languages and I listened to a lot of music, I was given the role of press officer while I also dealt with the artists' booking; at the time there were only four of us, now we are twenty. I've been working there for 25 years.

What was your parents' reaction when you started working at Sónar?

My father initially was a bit in shock "What's that techno stuff?" He did not understand how music could become a full-time job, he did not understand the economic system of an electronic festival, I laughed and lied and said "but our business model is very straight-forward! "

Sónar’s model was to consider the DJ as a real artist. Before then, there was the misconception of the DJ where you felt free the right to ask for the song you wanted, but professional DJs have their own sound, they do not play what you want, they play FOR YOU, but it’s their sound, and that's exactly what we do at Sónar, we choose the line-up based on what we like, not just because it's a big name.

Our business model does not really come from Southern Europe, it comes from England, like "the novel", everything comes from England (laughs), in the UK it is treated as a serious economic sector: it brings employment, it has an impact on tourism. At the time the music was explained only with how many records an artist sold. Then we also became a label, to have the structure that everyone expected from us.

Now being a promoter has become the best of the business model aspiration in music, it has changed with the advent of streaming, the problem is now managing the pressures of the labels, the festival play now a crucial role for artists’ promotion, so labels depend on us.

You’ve been working for Sonar for over 25 years, have you ever wanted a project of your own?

For some years now I had an unexpressed desire to teach, so I asked for some free time to teach Digital Communication and Marketing at the University of Barcelona, among others.

A couple of years ago I got in touch with Andreea Madgalina, who asked me to be of help to amplify the reach of her creature, shesaid.so, and I decided to join and help implementing her platform. Created in 2014, shesaid.so is an international network of women working at all levels and in all fields of industry: from labels to pr, to management, to press offices, to the production of concerts, artists themselves and much more.

The headquarters of the network are in London and Los Angeles, but local networks also include New York, Paris, Berlin, Mumbai, Barcelona, Milan and other major cities around the world, for a total of 13 local groups and more than 10000 members.

The values we promote are very clear, they do not have a public strategy. We do not send press releases. People know who we are, we have no contamination. You must register on the site which is a platform. Having joined shesaid.so made me take a new awareness of myself - now they no longer consider me 'the Sonar' girl, it is true that I consider Sonar as a child, but thanks to shesaid.so I satisfied my desire to devote myself to a parallel project, where I can also learn new things that interest me.

What does shesaid.so mean to you? What drove you towards the collective?

Thanks to shesaid.so I get in touch with women who deal with other fields of music. For example, lately I wanted to find out more about copyright and other shesaid.so members helped me to learn more stuff about synchronization. I really think the future of music is in publishing - I want to understand it as much as possible.

When I realized that working in music as a woman is like working in any other field, I found massive support in sharing with other women the difficulties I’ve encountered in my years in the creative industry, we don’t complain but we constructively find solutions. We organize conferences, workshops, and meetings that encourage networking.

shegrows, is a new project born from shesaid.so, it is a mentorship program for ambitious girls who would like to develop professional skills in music, the program lasts for a year and we match them with professionals supporting them in their career growth aiming to mature relevant experience in music.

Hot names of talented girls that come to mind?

Robyn has been in the electro-pop scene for over 10 years, she has always done so much, her new album is a true banger, it surely will be a success. My muse is Mary Anne Hobbs of BBC Radio 6, who brought dubstep on BBC 1 in 2006 and in 2007 she organized the first stage dedicated to Dubstep at Sonar with Skream, Kode9, bringing the sound of the underground clubs in front of over 8500 people.

I am a huge fan of Catnapp who I saw performing a few weeks ago at ADE in Amsterdam, she looks like a little Yolandi and has been signed under Monkeytown Records, a true force of nature. In the trap scene, I can think of many, all very young: Bad Gyal, Rosa Pistola... I grew up loving the Techno scene listening to Laurent Garnier coming from the progressive jazz sound of John Coltrane, there have not been so many female artists in techno history so far, but I’m pretty sure that in the future there will be more and more female techno producers, the new generations are very promising indeed.

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