Sisters with Transistors (2020) – Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines

Maryanne Amacher photographed by Peggy Weil

Award-winning Sisters with Transistors from filmmaker Lisa Rovner is really, really, really good and gives some long overdue credit to some of electronic music’s most pivotal innovators.

“Technology is a tremendous liberator. It blows up power stuctures.” — Laurie Spiegel

Loaded with archival footage of and interviews with electronic music’s pioneering women, it dives into the technology, the musicians, and how they used that technology to work around the exclusionary power structures in music created by men for men.

“We women were especially drawn to electronic music when the possibility of a woman composing was in itself controversial. Electronics let us make music that could be heard by others without having to be taken seriously by the male dominated Establishment.” — Laurie Spiegel

So many greats appear: Suzanne Ciani, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Laurie Spiegel, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Wendy Carlos, and loads of others.

This film is a great watch if you recognize any of these names or none of them. (Maybe even more if you’re in the latter group.)

• Film website