As Hip(p) as Auer?

Abstract

The vibraphonist Vera Auer (1919–1996) and the pianist Jutta Hipp (1925–2003) are known as the ‘first female European jazz musicians’. Both were born in German speaking countries and came in contact with jazz in the 1940s. These instrumentalists had the courage to try out new approaches and develop their own musical ideas early in their careers in jazz scenes shaped by androcentric dynamics. Forms of subversion of gendered assignments are to be seen and heard in Auer’s and Hipp’s performances and influenced a new generation of jazz musicians in recent years. This article discusses the biographies and works of Vera Auer and Jutta Hipp by exploring how these women known as ‘female exception[s]’ built their careers, with a critical eye on power and gender dynamics in German and Austrian jazz scenes. I argue that by subverting various gendered stereotypes such as the trope of the competitive individual jazz soloist, the supportive, caring, egalitarian aesthetic of both Hipp and Auer was coded feminine and therefore ignored in jazz history as a result of patriarchal structures in jazz.