Axe to Grind: A Cultural History of Black Women Musicians on the Acoustic and Electric Guitar in the United States Open Access

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Axe to Grind:

A Cultural History of Black Women Musicians on the Acoustic and Electric Guitar

in the United States

By Mashadi Ione Matabane

Though readily recognized as vocalists in American popular culture, black women are generally overlooked as instrumentalists on the acoustic guitar and its more iconic counterpart--the electric guitar. Cultural scholars and writers routinely ignore black women electric guitarists' creative and innovative contributions to the blues, gospel, jazz, and rock of which the instrument is an essential element. This research study documents and explores black women's experiences playing the guitar as creative enterprise and as a means to redefining their roles in life and self-identity beyond racial and gender limitations imposed by the broader society. Black women have a long record as professional and amateur guitarists from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. They have used acoustic and electric guitars to shape and transform their lives for social mobility, entertainment, artistry, recreation, and evangelizing. This study analyzed oral history narratives of contemporary black women musicians discussing how they use the electric guitar in the construction, negotiation, and representation of their identity, self expression, and musicality. Racism and sexism render black women musician's identities as hypervisible and invisible. Still, they employ the electric guitar as a source of distinction, personal achievement, employment, spiritual- and self-expression, and physical and emotional self-defense. As musicians they challenge dominant social meanings and fantasies about the electric guitar as a culturally white and masculine enterprise; demonstrate creative possibilities valuable to the politics of location specific to black women in the United States; and critique popular (often narrow, pathologized) representations of the black female body.

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: Introduction................................................................................................ 1

CHAPTER 2: Race, Gender, Genre, and the Guitar...................................................... 20

CHAPTER 3: Black Women Playing the Guitar in the United States......................... 51

CHAPTER 4: Beverly "Guitar" Watkins...................................................................... 132

CHAPTER 5: BB Queen, Jennifer Bliss, Suzanne Thomas & Cheryl Cooley............ 158

CONCLUSION................................................................................................................ 188

BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 205

REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 219

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	History, Black Women's Studies American Studies
Keyword	jazz gospel acoustic guitar pop rock African American women electric guitar popular music blues
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jackson, Regine , Agnes Scott College
Committee Members	Wallace-Sanders, Kimberly, Emory University Tullos, Allen, Emory University

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