High Heels  final event of Women's History Month

Multi-media mix of women composers at Cat

Finishing off the Women's History Month celebration, over a dozen talented musicians will collaborate for a final hurrah tonight at the Cat. The event in question is High Heels: Celebrating Women Composers, which goes on at 9 p.m.

"I would call it eclectic," said assistant dean of Multicultural Resources Shilpa Davé. The program includes everything from classical suites to video clips and sonic meditation. While all of tonight's pieces are composed by women, the performers include a wide variety of Obies and more.

Aside from High Heels, the past week has housed two additional events - "Finding Your Own Voice," a workshop with Nobuko Miyamoto and the performer's showing of "A Grain of Sand" - the rest of the month has only produced a short film tying in with the Women's History Month theme. "Frankly," said Davé, "there hasn't been a lot of promotion of Women's History Month." She said that the reason for the lack of publicity has mainly been due to bad timing and preoccupation with other events.

Even so, Davé noted that there has been a great deal of enthusiasm for Womens History Month on the whole. In addition, she pointed out how the events will tie in with uniting the Oberlin community. "Our goal," she said, "is to bring the Conservatory and College together in a setting that is relaxed and that people can learn from." With tonight's concert at the Cat especially, Davé hopes to achieve this goal.

According to Davé, the primary aim behind the whole concept of Women's History Month is to inform students of the many accomplishments of women. "It's a shame that it has to be one month instead of every day," she said. With High Heels, Davé takes this awareness a step further in uniting members of the Oberlin community to recognize women's musical feats. "Basically," she said, "it's a way to celebrate the continuing accomplishments of women and recognizing them in our daily lives.

Additionally, Davé said that she hopes to unite students and faculty in both the college and the community to come together for a single event, which she feels doesn't happen enough. "People don't know enough about women composers, especially some members of the college, and this is a good way to introduce aspects of music we may not be as familiar with."

Hopefully, Dave; said, tonight's concert will draw a large crowd. Though Women's History Months of past years may have had more activities, Davé feels that High Heels  should be a truly very unique and inspiring performance. "If it gets one person interested in an aspect of women's history that they didn't know about before, then that makes it worth it."