For much of jazz history, women instrumentalists have existed in plain sight while remaining largely absent from the official story. They toured, recorded, arranged, composed, led bands, and shaped the sound of the music — yet their presence was often treated as peripheral, exceptional, or temporary.
The Girls in the Band, a documentary directed by Judy Chaiken, set out to address that imbalance by documenting the lives and careers of women instrumentalists in jazz from the 1920s to the present.
Rather than positioning women as a separate or parallel tradition, the film places them directly inside the existing narrative of jazz history. Its premise is simple but far-reaching: women were always there, working at a professional level, and their contributions deserve to be seen, heard, and remembered.
The documentary traces several generations of musicians, beginning with the early big band era and continuing through swing, bebop, post-bop, and contemporary jazz. It focuses on instrumentalists rather than vocalists — a deliberate choice, given that singers have historically been more visible and more readily accepted within the jazz industry.
By shifting attention to horn players, pianists, arrangers, composers, and bandleaders, the film addresses a part of jazz history that has often been overlooked.
Among the musicians featured are Melba Liston, a trombonist and arranger whose work with Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and Randy Weston was foundational; Mary Lou Williams, a pianist, composer, and mentor whose career spanned multiple eras of jazz; Marian McPartland, a pianist best known to many through her long-running radio programme Piano Jazz; and Peggy Gilbert, a saxophonist and bandleader active from the 1920s onward.
The film – as you can see below – also includes more contemporary figures, drawing lines of continuity rather than treating each generation in isolation.
One of the central themes of The Girls in the Band is access — who was allowed to play, where they were allowed to play, and under what conditions.
The film documents the practical barriers faced by women musicians: segregated touring conditions, restrictions imposed by unions and venues, expectations around appearance and behaviour, and the difficulty of being taken seriously as instrumentalists rather than novelties. These obstacles were not abstract; they shaped careers directly, influencing which musicians were recorded, which were promoted, and which were written into history.
The Second World War emerges as a particularly important period in the film. With many male musicians drafted, all-female bands flourished, most notably the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, one of the first racially integrated touring big bands in the United States.
The documentary treats this moment not as an anomaly, but as evidence of what women musicians were capable of when given access to the same professional opportunities as their male counterparts. When the war ended and men returned, many of these bands were dissolved, and the musicians involved were pushed back to the margins.
A key strength of The Girls in the Band is its use of archival footage. Visual documentation of jazz musicians from the early and mid-20th century is limited in general, and especially scarce for women instrumentalists. Even brief clips — a solo, a rehearsal, a television appearance — carry significant weight. Seeing these musicians play does more than confirm their technical ability; it restores agency and presence to figures who are often discussed only in retrospect.
The film also relies heavily on first-person testimony. Interviews with musicians provide context that cannot be recovered from recordings alone: how gigs were secured, how musicians navigated male-dominated bandstands, how they balanced professional ambition with economic reality, and how they understood their place within the jazz tradition.
These accounts are not presented as uniform or representative; instead, they reflect a wide range of experiences shaped by era, geography, race, and genre.
Importantly, The Girls in the Band does not argue that women musicians were excluded entirely from jazz history. Rather, it shows how recognition was uneven, conditional, and often delayed. Many of the musicians featured were respected by their peers while remaining absent from textbooks, documentaries, and canonical lists. The film’s contribution lies in making that discrepancy visible.
The documentary has screened at major festivals and received multiple awards, reflecting its impact beyond specialist jazz audiences. While it does not claim to be exhaustive — the scope of its subject makes that impossible — it functions as a vital entry point, particularly for viewers encountering this history for the first time. By assembling musicians from across decades into a single narrative, the film invites further listening, reading, and research.
The Girls in the Band is not a revisionist history in the sense of overturning established narratives. Instead, it broadens them. It asks what jazz history looks like when women instrumentalists are treated not as exceptions, but as participants whose work shaped the music alongside their male contemporaries.
For viewers today, the film serves multiple purposes. It documents musicians whose careers were under-recorded. It contextualises structural barriers that shaped the jazz industry. And it challenges the idea that jazz history is already complete, fully told, or fixed in place.
The trailer embedded above offers a glimpse into this larger project — a history that is still being uncovered, heard, and understood.
I remember Marian’s response to what advice she would give young artists starting out. @Be on time to your gig.”