Females in the music industry
...iewed as a man’s instrument and here I stood, a delicate looking young woman, playing one. Our drummer’s father never questioned our singer because female singers have become an everyday sight. If there are female guitarists in any popular bands, they are not given much exposure by the media, as if the music industry is ashamed of them. This just shows that female guitarists are viewed differently than female vocalists by the media, male guitarists, and musicians in general. When we compare the number of female guitarists to the number of female vocalists we find a massive discrepancy. This is probably the result of the media discouraging females from taking on any position in a band except vocals. The media has concocted the following fairy-tale : Female singers are talented. A good singing voice has come naturally to them and so they have never had to practice. They are popular because they are generally good-looking. Female guitarists are untalented. They don’t have the rugged strength and endurance to learn guitar method. They are unpopular because they are tomboys and tough-girls. One example of this is that of Bonnie Raitt, a very well respected slide guitarist within the guitarist community, but outside the community she is portrayed by the media only as a country singer if not ignored most of the time. Male guitarists take much the same view of female vocalists as the media does. Female guitarists are thought of as talented because they come by it naturally. They are viewed as though “in the right job”. Female guitarists are much more of a threat to men’s positions as “the guitarists”. It is as though females are invading their territory and taking away what is rightly theirs. Their reaction to this is denial. So they bury the females deep in the dark depths of the music industry where they won’t be seen. Males write Guitar World magazine. In it’s December 1999 issue, there were roughly thirty articles, all of which were about male guitarists and one of which mentioned a female guitarist in passing! This demonstrates the efforts of the guitarist community’s men to hide the women of the community. On the contrary, musicians in general – with the exception of male guita...