Women Guitar Players

As a female guitarist since age ten, and a current music educator, I feel it is prudent to examine and expose the female influences of popular guitar playing to aspiring female players. Guitar playing in pop music culture, especially electric guitar playing, has been largely a male dominated arena. 

This blog series will attempt to look at some of the significant female influences of guitar playing that also helped shape the popular music of today. Many areas once dominated by males, are much more accepting of females in their industries. However, the women I focus on, especially in the beginning, were up against many conservative stereotypes of how woman should conduct themselves. 

While there are many female guitar players, more now than ever, the ones I chose for the purpose of this series, through research such as Rolling Stone’s magazine’s Top 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time (Rolling Stone, 2015), are the ones I felt had a sizeable impact on the paradigm shift of female guitar playing. 

The beginning of the series will start with the early “innovators” in blues, rock, folk and country that paved the way for the rest of the current female trailblazers. Be sure to click on the  links so that a deeper perspective is obtained.

SOME PERSONAL HISTORY (You know I had to)

I remember the horror on my father’s face when I announced I was a devoted Kiss fan. I then proceeded, at 10 years old, to show him the album Kiss Alive. The year was 1975, and my father quickly re-directed me to Heart’s first album, released that same year, Dreamboat Annie. “Look honey, they’re girls.” I never looked back and became an instant fan, becoming heavily influenced by Nancy Wilson which  led me to classical guitar playing. 

I never paid much attention to the comment either, but in retrospect, I can now see why he felt it was necessary. Heart was one of the first female-fronted hard rock bands and my first exposure to a female guitar player (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2013). I was not aware of many female rock electric guitar players in the seventies therefore, my only influences were male. 

For the purposes of this series, some attention should be given to the overall perception of women guitarists and popular women musicians in general. It is interesting that even today, while there are more female guitar players of all genres than ever before, the perception of women guitarists is still a bit ‘odd’ when comparing them to their male counterparts. 

There is evidence of performing women guitar players as far back as the 19th century. In 1880, large guitar and mandolin amateur ensembles became a very popular means of music-making. This gave aristocratic women a creative outlet that would “circumvent the restrictive domestic and maternal roles” put upon them by society, giving way to all-female groups (Sparks, 2013, p.621). 

By 1890, there were many all-female guitar and mandolin groups that only played for charities. It was a music teacher named Miss Clara Ross, that decided to further her teaching, performing and composing career, by forming an all-female professional ensemble called The Ladies Guitar Band. 

She achieved extreme notoriety and was asked to play all the coveted events in Kensington (Sparks, 2013, p.626). Granted, this was European classical music, however, women were still interested in cultivating guitar skills. 

In popular music, many female entertainers, especially guitarists, were not given the equal recognition as their male counterparts even though, as I will discuss, there were many women guitarists that had a major impact on popular music today. 

One issue is how women in popular music are depicted in media, the songs themselves, and other marketing avenues (Groce & Cooper, 1990). For example, Susan Fast, a Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Canada, and author of  several popular music books, states that if women showed interest in certain groups or artists, it was assumed they are some type of ‘groupie’ with no interest in, or intellect for, understanding or appreciating the music (Fast, 1999; Levande, 2008). 

Still today, many audience members, when seeing a female in a band, especially a rock band, assume she is the singer (Groce & Cooper, 1990, p.224). The farther away from the instrument stereotype, the more amazed they are. For example, piano and strumming an acoustic guitar does not warrant much of a reaction. 

Playing a screaming lead through a Marshall stack, a thundering bass line on a bass almost as big as the women or cracking a drum set like lightening, for some reason, warrants shock and amazement. Some even have a hard time understanding how women are capable of this kind of playing and think it is new. 

Hopefully this series, while certainly not exhaustive, will highlight many past and present women guitarists who are just as proficient and influential as their male counterparts and inspire young females everywhere. Until next time.

Fast, S. (1999). Rethinking Issues of Gender and Sexuality in Led Zeppelin: 	A Woman's View of Pleasure and Power in      Hard Rock. American 	Music, 17(3), 245-299. doi:10.2307/3052664 

Groce, S., & Cooper, M. (1990). Just Me and the Boys? Women in Local-Level Rock and Roll. Gender and Society, 4(2), 220-229. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/189613 

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2013). The first female-fronted hard rock   band, Heart proved woman can rock with the best of them. 	Retrieved from https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/heart 

Sparks, P. (2013). Clara Ross, Mabel Downing and ladies' guitar and mandolin bands in late Victorian Britain. Early Music, 41(4), 621-632. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43307023