In regards to the articles about Willie Mae Thorton and Memphis Minnie, I was primarily struck by the power possessed by these two trail-blazing, revolutionary Black women artists. I was intrigued by their bravery and originality, who as Black women, were fighting uphill battles on multiple fronts. They had to fight for access into the music community, they had to fight for their rights to perform, and they had to fight to stay relevant and acknowledged within that community. Despite all of this, they emerged as two incredibly unique and fundamentally resistive figures in popular music and greater society for their times. Mahon marvels at Thorton’s outward appearance as a masculine-presenting female, and the fact that she seemed “comfortable projecting this image…” (5) For Mahon, Thorton’s unapologetic display reflected a “liberated form of black femininity” (5). Memphis Minnie was similarly transgressive in her own way, projecting a “hard and strong” voice for a smaller woman, and a guitar-playing style assisted by new technologies that is “harder than the coins that roll across the counter” (Hughes).
As emphasized by many of the artists and activists interviewed in the Women Who Rock intro, in particular Sheila J. Hardy, Black women’s presence within Rock music has influence beyond the music community and industry:
“The energy of black women being bold enough to do rock, to be out there, to be unladylike, is all cloaked in all of the themes of the women’s movement. People still don’t know what to do with women in rock, and I want to show them.” Sheila J. Hardy
I love her final sentence here, acknowledging that people are confused by Black women’s involvement in rock, when in reality, they were primary forces in the inception of rock as a musical genre.
Musicians like Thorton and Minnie have certainly paved the way for equally powerful and talented Black female rock artists today, Two favorites of mine are Madame Gandhi, former drummer for M.I.A., and Black Mama, an extremely powerful singer who visited UW last year.
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