From reading, Rosetta Tharpe and Feminist “Un-Forgetting” by Gayle Wald and Death to Racism and Punk Rock Revisionism by Michelle Habell-Pallen, it has reminded me of the consistent exclusion women of color have faced throughout history. Both Rosetta Tharpe and Alice Bag have been left out from being the trailblazers of musical eras. Typically, most people do not even know of these female artists and they are the last to be recognized for their findings if recognized by the general public. In Wald’s article, I found it compelling the way she describes that re-writing Tharpe’s biography has had difficulties to change the ways most people have seen the history of rock. She goes on to write, “Could a biography get readers to imagine a middle-aged African American woman as an embodiment of virtuosity on the electric guitar, an instrument so deeply masculinized in the late twentieth century that playing it well had been associated, on more than one occasion, with male masturbation?” (Wald, 159). It always seems, even in today’s world, that most people within our nation refuse to accept that people of color have paved the way for famous artists they know and love. As if it degrades their favorite artists and they would rather believe that the ones they appreciate, were the same artists that created the sounds. This same discredit against women of color is seen in the punk scene from Habell-Pallen’s article. Alice Bag, cofounder of The Bags, helped create Hollywood’s early Punk Scene and her emotion narrated the way punk is today. This would not be without the credit from her early days listening to the canción ranchera genre. Habell-Pallen describes the genre as, “the Mexican musical repertoire is that it permits women vocalists to perform in bold, brash, unapologetic, and aggressive ways…” (Habell-Pallen, 255). The meaning behind punk, just how Tharpe was forgotten, once again falls behind earlier music done by women of color that is not credited. Bag remembers listening to the women in the canción ranchera growing up that influenced her sound in the Hollywood punk scene. The nation fails to recognize the pioneers of music and remain colorblind thinking people of color are solely just playing the “race card”, which makes those ignorant people racist themselves.
As my chosen songs to follow up on women of color being left out of history, I choose a song by Beyonce and Kali Uchis. Although both Beyonce and Kali Uchis have their own influences, within the era today, I know as a female myself that men tend to be scared of women of color and being an Indigenous woman, I have had arguments with men that undermine the power of women. Beyonce’s song, Run the World (Girls), shows the power females have and Kali Uchis song, Nuestra Planeta, is sung in Spanish where she has faced backlash for speaking her native language. But Uchis stays relentless and she has announced her next album will be in all Spanish even if her fans disagree with her judgement.
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