Female players

[janefromlondonuk]

Apr 16, 2009 16:01:16 GMT andys said:

There are loads of great women rock, blues, soul, jazz and country musicians as well as classicla ones. In another recent thread there is a good mention of Tal who plays with Jeff Beck.

The trouble I see is on many fronts. I am a contributor to the TDPRI, and there are often threads about women Tele players. So it starts off serious,and people like Chrissy Hynde, Susan Tedeschi, Joanne Shaw Taylor, among many others. Then someone mentions Sheryl Crowe, a good player and songwriter. Then someone else suggests Avril Lavigne, who not only is a songwriter with a style of her own, but also has a signature Fender Squier guitar. Then someone else chips in that they think Lavigne cant play, then someone else posts a suggestive pic of Sheryl Crowe, and it all goes downhill from there.

Then theres other guitar forums, where threads like "Bad Girls with Guitars" get hundreds of posts and 1000s of views.

And those same forums extend that condescending, patronising attitude to any women musicians who post or reply.

I think that this forum is years away from all that, and that we come from diverse background whatever gender, race etc we are, and that the common theme with us is that we appreciate slide/blues/reso guitar playing.

Shifting a discussion over from 'Hello - new here', at Dave's suggestion, and taking the liberty of starting it with davys comment, here's a thought:

Mulling over what has been said (in the other thread) it occurred to me that it's the electric guitar that's more generally (culturally) seen as a male thing. Watching some rubbish on TV the other day, I noticed an electric guitar in the shot of the teenage boy characters's bedroom, which seemed to sum it up. Acoustics don't seem to be gendered in the same way, it seems to me.

That said, it wasn't cool to play any kind of guitar (for a girl) when I was a youngster. I started on a cheap old nylon string, but if I'd wanted an electric at that point, people would have thought I was very weird (or weirder than they already thought/knew I was .

[melp]

Hi All,
For what its worth, my 10c worth! Isn't it sad that we are even having this discussion?Its the 21st century!!!!!
My problem is that I just don't get it, I have never got it. Who cares who is doing the playing, or at least what's the point of catagorising them by gender, colour or any other non relevant factor.
I could not care less if the music is played by little green persons from the planet zog.

Reading the other comments I remembered what was, for me, one of the highlights of blues week last year. Listening to Lucy Zirins play Death Letter at the students performance night.

It was novel, Lucy and Son House don't have a whole lot in common, except, they both nailed a great song!

nough said

Mel

P.S. Jane, had a bit of a problem last night, was bashing away on the Busker Cannon and forgot the time, one of my of the other people in the building reminded me around 10:30. The building is Edwardian and has walls about 18" thick, better watch your windows when you get it!

[janefromlondonuk]

Apr 17, 2009 10:16:48 GMT melp said:

Hi All,
I could not care less if the music is played by little green persons from the planet zog.

P.S. Jane, had a bit of a problem last night, was bashing away on the Busker Cannon and forgot the time, one of my of the other people in the building reminded me around 10:30. The building is Edwardian and has walls about 18" thick, better watch your windows when you get it!

I love those zog players -- they're just my height!

Thanks for the warning on the Cannon, Mel - I'm anticipating having to schmooze the neighbours, and maybe restrict the hours I play the reso. I play my electric with headphones at anti-social hours, but -- like you -- have a tendency to lose track of time.

[ianz]

Thanks to Mel for the kind words - Lucy is supporting Michael and Louisiana Red tonight at Southport. Anyone going?

[bod]

Apr 17, 2009 10:16:48 GMT melp said:

Hi All,
For what its worth, my 10c worth! Isn't it sad that we are even having this discussion?Its the 21st century!!!!!
My problem is that I just don't get it, I have never got it. Who cares who is doing the playing, or at least what's the point of catagorising them by gender, colour or any other non relevant factor.
I could not care less if the music is played by little green persons from the planet zog.

Reading the other comments I remembered what was, for me, one of the highlights of blues week last year. Listening to Lucy Zirins play Death Letter at the students performance night.

It was novel, Lucy and Son House don't have a whole lot in common, except, they both nailed a great song!

nough said

A hearty 'Amen!' to almost all of that. But (and please do excuse me, Mel, I used to "pick nits" for a living and it can be a hard, as well as socially embarrassing, habit to break) I would want to say that it is sad that there is any need for such a discussion in the 21st century, but given our present sad state I'm glad that there are reasonable people of good will who are up for discussing it.

One of the reasons I suggested a new thread for this is that I wanted to see and join in such a discussion, but felt a little conflicted (as they say) about launching into such matters as a way of saying 'Hi' to a new forum member. Very briefly, here are a couple of the things that seem to me to make all this worth talking about in today's world:

First, there are and long have been important (as well as good) guitar players who happen to have been women - Memphis Minnie and Maybelle Carter to name but two in passing - who have contributed to the development of roots (and other) music as we have it today, but although this will get recognition in specialist circles (such as this one) where people really care about the music, these women seem to be close to invisible in, so to speak, our culture's collective imagination. As such, talking about them and these misperceptions looks good to me. What else might be done - well it's seemed to me for some time now that it'd be good to develop a website featuring these great female guitarists, not with any great fuss or rant, just info about them and their lives and their contributions to music as we have it today... and this discussion has kind of spurred me on a bit - so if anyone would like to suggest names and/or sources of info, I'll see if I can get my act together (you never know!)

Second, and I've not studied on this so I can't be sure of the claims, but I have heard/read in a couple of places that prior to the 20th Century the guitar was pretty much seen as being mainly a women's instrument (e.g., www.folkblues.com/guitars/00C-16DB.htm and, perhaps, on the BBC's Imagine:The Story of the Guitar ). If this is right, it makes it interesting and puzzling, as well as sad, that at the start of the 21st Century we find ourselves in such a predicament. How and why has this come to pass?

Apr 17, 2009 11:22:30 GMT ianz said:

Thanks to Mel for the kind words - Lucy is supporting Michael and Louisiana Red tonight at Southport. Anyone going?

Yes, me and Julie and a couple of our friends are heading down there, I'm greatly looking forward to it, too. Been enjoying some of Michael's CDs for a while, but never caught him live before (nor Louisiana Red, for that matter. Only became aware of Lucy's work very recently, but twice in quick succession - once via this forum and once via the local grapevine when a friend informed me that my old chum Max Haymes was going to do an interview with her for Diversity radio.. Listened to some of Lucy's work on MySpace and was subsequently very pleased to hear that she would be playing at tonight's gig.

Speaking of which, I'd better get tea on the go or we'll never be ready in time for our lift!

[wolvoboy]

Hi add Bonnie Rait to the list of women guitarist also check out lisa Mills great blues singer and guitarist
Wolvoboy

[Stevie]

Joni Mitchell? (according to her tech, played in something like 80 different tunings I think. She'd just tune around on the night and see what came out!) Joan Armatrading? (sweet guitar work indeed) Both had angel voices. Not blues players I know, but this thread is about the merits of non male players.

[sonofsonsims]

Lydia Mendoza-a great 12 string player-another to add.
but for me Memphis Minnie was the greatest-such tough vocals too!.she was wonderful.

[Deleted]

Apr 17, 2009 15:49:57 GMT bod said:

Second, and I've not studied on this so I can't be sure of the claims, but I have heard/read in a couple of places that prior to the 20th Century the guitar was pretty much seen as being mainly a women's instrument (e.g., www.folkblues.com/guitars/00C-16DB.htm and, perhaps, on the BBC's Imagine:The Story of the Guitar ). If this is right, it makes it interesting and puzzling, as well as sad, that at the start of the 21st Century we find ourselves in such a predicament. How and why has this come to pass?

As I understand it this was the case, but mostly because the guitar was considered a 'simple' and 'domestic' instrument. The ladies in question were those of the upper and upper-middle classes who used music for entertainment purposes at home (much in the way many of us on this forum do!). The small bodied guitars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were eminently suited to this.

The guitar had almost died out as a classical instrument after experiencing a golden age at the start of the nineteenth century. Folk musicians were likely to favour the great volume of the banjo. The great popular instrument was the piano. So it might perhaps be more accurate to say that the guitar was broadly unpopular at the start of the twentieth century, but some were successfully marketed to ladies of leisure

[frank64f]

Del Rey has a pretty good handle on her reso's, some good clips of her on you tube.
Although Joan Baez is not really my cup of tea, you would have to think she was pretty influential in the sixties.
Frank

[Gerry C]

I'd agree with Frank - Joan Baez was a big influence on me in my early playing days. Those b&w BBC concerts she did often showed her deft fingerpicking up close and, although today it might be considered fairly basic, at the time it was a revelation: much better than Dylan strumming away with a flat-pick...

As for others to add to the list, I've already mentioned two of the best in passing (Rory Block and Julie Ellison) but Mary Flowers and Kristina Olsen would also deserve a mention, as would Ani DiFranco. I would also distinguish between women guitarists (ie those who have obviously devoted the same kind of time and effort that us lads are supposed to put in to our obsessions!) and those who use the guitar primarily as an accompaniment ot their singing, of whom there are legions of varying levels of skill: Kate Rusby, Sheryl Crow, Amy McDonald, my all-time pin-up Emmylou Harris (and I just know I'm going to get into trouble for that one!) and, er, Katie Melua...

And let's not forget that Memphis Minnie once reportedly won a 'head-cut' against Big Bill Broonzy! Even if the story's apocryphal, as some say, it's still a good one. As the Italians say: "Si non e vero, e ben trovato!"

Cheerily,

Gerry C

[Stevie]

Of course our perception of the player's skill is tempered by what the player deems it appropriate for us to hear, both live and recorded. Some of those that we might describe as having varying levels of skill are almost certainly capable of a lot more. Either there's a producer reigning them in or they simply play what pays the bills.There is a skill in playing only that which is appropriate which I will probably never acquire! This of course is irrespective of gender.

Is it not likely that, not being driven by a testosterone fueled drive to impress, female players are simply more restrained? That doesn't reflect upon their potential. Certainly, up to now, female players appear to have been under-represented in terms of perceived numbers. I reckon that the lack of recognition is (in part) due to the relative paucity of female pickers, but that's changing fast.

[Deleted]

check out Vicki

www.vickigenfan.com/index.html

she may not be a conehead but she makes some wonderful music

David

[andys]

Starting my musical and gigging life in the back end of punk and new wave, that was an era where women musicians were not only pretty common, but also were musicians first and foremost, because their playing was equal if not better than the blokes. One of the first gigging bands I was in had a women bass player. We chose her not only because she could play well, because she was the only bass player we knew of who didnt slavishly want to be Jean Jaques Burnel!!!

There was a time when many bands had women bass players and drummers as well as them fronting bands.
Eg, Tina Weymouth in the Talking Heads, Gaye Advert, Delta 5, later Gang of Four. Later on, Kim Deal in the Pixies and the Breeders.

[Stevie]

As I noted earlier, the times they are a changing. Where I live, I continually see young girls walking along the road with a gig bag on their backs. It appears to me to be just as common as it is amongst males. In my day, guitars were frowned upon at my school.
One of my colleagues at work has a very keen guitar playing daughter and we have had a string of three (agency) young girls in my department with a view to perm-ing the right one and two of them (including the latest one) have been / are guitarists. I think that it's fantastic, I just wish my partner would take up with it as well. Imagine what I could get away with spending then!!!