Between the 1920s and 1960s, women laid the groundwork for the Women’s Music Movement. Women of color were able to take advantage of stereotypes to push the boundaries of what women could sing about, pursuing more sexual themes and opening the door for future musicians to push further. The playlist below provides a sampling of some of the early music that laid the groundwork for the Golden Age of women’s music.
Laying the Groundwork
The 1920s
The Women’s Music Movement can find its roots in the blues music sung by African American women in the 1920s.1 Blues music gave these women a platform to sing about sex and sexuality, which they had not been able to do before.
Bessie Smith and Gertrude “Ma” Rainey are the most well-known among this group of women. Some of their music incorporated themes of bisexuality and lesbianism, relying on humor and bravado to express their messages and make them more acceptable.2 In Ma Rainey’s “Prove It on Me Blues,” she sings about her desire to follow a woman “everywhere she goes.” While this song is an early example, artists performed many others that went unrecorded, as singers were at the mercy of the recording companies.
The 1940s
While music did not go away during the war, the period in the 1930s and 1940s did not see as much activity. After World War II, women began again to further explore their sexuality through music. In the lesbian magazine, Vice Versa, Edythe Eyde, writing under the name “Lisa Ben” (a pseudonym for lesbian), authored a series of “Lesbian Lyrics” which were later recorded as songs for the Daughters of Bilitis, and early lesbian rights organization.3 The next decade saw the rise of girl groups.
The 1950s
Like the blues musicians before them, girl groups explored themes sex and desire through music. Groups like the Shirelles helped advance women’s overall ability to sing about their sexual experiences.4
By expressing desire and incorporating themes of sex and sexuality into music, women of color did the work that gave future women musicians the ability to explore these themes in their music. This music in the early twentieth century laid the groundwork for the explosion of women’s music in the Golden Age.
Further Reading
- Gertrude “Ma” Rainey Biography – The National Women’s History Museum
- Feminism and the Blues – A review of Angela Davis’s Blues Legacies and Black Feminism
Bibliography
1Morris, Bonnie J. The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016.
2Faderman, Lillian. “Lesbian Chic: Experimentation and Repression in the 1920s.” In Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. Columbia University Press, 1991.
3Morris, Bonnie J. The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016.
4Douglas, Susan J. “Why the Shirelles Mattered.” In Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, 1994.