Babystateofheart just posted on the Radom chat thread that March is womens’ history month and I thought that it might be an interesting thread to start around your female musical heroes, best albums, great songs, anecdotes etc. maybe it doesn’t have to only be music. Maybe we just see where it might take us
I feel like women in music tend to get overlooked on the site a bit so let’s try and redress the balance a bit
Female guitarist don’t get a lot of love when lists of the greatest are created but I want to shout out for Samantha Fish
I’ve seen here play live a couple of times in the last year including last night at the empire in Shepherd’s Bush, here in London.
Amazing blues rock guitarist who,would easily get into my top 100 greatest guitarist of all time. Here albums cannot portray what an absolute force of nature she is on stage. She can shred it with the best of all time. Phenomenal
It was her debut album after splitting from Lone Justice (pretty great band in their own right but ultimately a vehicle for Maria to go onto bigger and better things).
First up, I love Maria’s voice. Her voice is so powerful, but crystal clear that is also emotional and a tremendous range. I’ve always liked country rock, and her voice is the epitome of that style.
Throughout her career, she has been praised for her ability to convey deep emotion, with reviewers highlighting her "all-consuming intimacy" and "sensual, soaring" vocal delivery
The album is stunning. Apart from great vocals and musicianship, the songwriting is top draw full of melody and great story telling. Over the years Maria has penned a lot of great songs but this collection is just fantastic. It’s almost like, having left the band she was freed up to totally be herself.
I defy you to hear this and not fall in love with it
One of my heroes, not just female but heroes full stop, is Nina Simone
Musically, she spanned classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop genres and, as well as having an incredible voice, was a great pianist and songwriter.
During her extensive, decades long career, she released more than 40 albums including some absolute classics like Little Girl Blue and I Put A Spell On You.
As if this wasn’t enough, she was an ardent Civil Rights Campaigner.
Her concert debut, a classical recital, was given when she was 12. Simone later said that during this performance, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. She said that she refused to play until her parents were moved back to the front, and that the incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement.
From the mid 1960’s, Simone was becoming more outspoken and in 1964, for the first time she addressed racial inequality in the United States in the song "Mississippi Goddam". This was her response to the June 12, 1963, murder of Medgar Evers and the September 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young black girls and partly blinded a fifth. The song was released as a single, and it was boycotted in some southern states with promotional copies being smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips. After "Mississippi Goddam", a civil rights message was the norm in Simone's recordings such as “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”, “Young, Gifted & Black” & “Why (The King Of Love Is Dead)”.
I cannot agree with her advocating violent revolution, but you cannot ignore what a driving force she was in the Civil Rights Movement.
I could write a lot more on her but wanted to keep this short.
I also want to point out that I have copied pieces from other sources into this text as they put across the point better than I ever could including Wiki
it's hard to exaggerate the outsized role that women had in the earliest days of electronic music. From Clara Rockmore codifying the theremin as a proper serious instrument, to Johanna Beyer, who's "Music of the Spheres" represents possibility the single most dramatic leap forward in terms of understanding what electronics can mean in music (talk to me in a decade and I swear I will finally have made that documentary about her I keep telling my friends I will make one day), to your household names (well, for a particular definition of household anyway) like Laurie Anderson, Pauline Oliveros, and Wendy Carlos. There's a compilation of foundational early electronic music I often recommend that's generally reissued as "New Music For Electronic & Recorded Media. Women In Electronic Music - 1977", but was originally issued as just "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media" without the reference to the gender of the artists contained therein, and I've said it before but I suspect the compilers didn't even initially set out to have an all-woman roster on the record, it just naturally turned out that way based on the sheer plenitude of women innovators in the field
it's hard to exaggerate the outsized role that women had in the earliest days of electronic music. From Clara Rockmore codifying the theremin as a proper serious instrument, to Johanna Beyer, who's "Music of the Spheres" represents possibility the single most dramatic leap forward in terms of understanding what electronics can mean in music (talk to me in a decade and I swear I will finally have made that documentary about her I keep telling my friends I will make one day), to your household names (well, for a particular definition of household anyway) like Laurie Anderson, Pauline Oliveros, and Wendy Carlos. There's a compilation of foundational early electronic music I often recommend that's generally reissued as "New Music For Electronic & Recorded Media. Women In Electronic Music - 1977", but was originally issued as just "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media" without the reference to the gender of the artists contained therein, and I've said it before but I suspect the compilers didn't even initially set out to have an all-woman roster on the record, it just naturally turned out that way based on the sheer plenitude of women innovators in the field
Great idea and post that for some reason I hadn't seen until now.
I know we aren't in March anymore, but nothing wrong with celebrating some great female artists beyond that time frame - if anything, we need more of that. Hip hop is a genre that has been blessed with some truly great talents, be it the early pioneers (e.g. Salt 'n' Pepa - Hot, Cool, Vicious, MC Lyte - Lyte As A Rock, Queen Latifah - All Hail the Queen), the stone-cold 'classics of the '90s (e.g. Queen Latifah - Black Reign, Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Bahamadia - Kollage, Missy Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly) or the newer voices that expanded the genre's horizons (e.g. M.I.A. - Arular / Kala, Noname - Telefone, Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert). And that's just scratching the surface, there are numerous examples if one wants to dig deeper. _________________ Bob Dylan Charles Mingus
Great idea and post that for some reason I hadn't seen until now.
I know we aren't in March anymore, but nothing wrong with celebrating some great female artists beyond that time frame - if anything, we need more of that. Hip hop is a genre that has been blessed with some truly great talents, be it the early pioneers (e.g. Salt 'n' Pepa - Hot, Cool, Vicious, MC Lyte - Lyte As A Rock, Queen Latifah - All Hail the Queen), the stone-cold 'classics of the '90s (e.g. Queen Latifah - Black Reign, Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Bahamadia - Kollage, Missy Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly) or the newer voices that expanded the genre's horizons (e.g. M.I.A. - Arular / Kala, Noname - Telefone, Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert). And that's just scratching the surface, there are numerous examples if one wants to dig deeper.
Agreed. It would be nice to have a place to recognise the contribution of women to popular music. Although I'm not a huge fan of hip-hop it is undeniable that women have played a major / pivotal role in it's history.
I'm part of a number of online listening groups and women are criminally underrepresented in terms of music that gets played. Trying to rectify that this month at the 70's group by playing only music by female artists.
I'm going to set up a forum to help promote music by female artists. I'm not too hopeful about it being a success as this forum attracted very little traffic but let's see.
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