Today I went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, because they had an exhibit called Women Who Rock about women in music, and it was really cool and so I thought I would write about it. They started in the 1920s ish and then into now except they went from now back to the 1920s so it wasn't in chronological order which was kind of annoying. But they had the costumes, and lps, and lyrics, and they had Joan Jett's guitar, they had a bunch of people's guitars and several bass too. So that was really cool, especially getting to see the handwritten lyrics. They had tv screens playing biographies for all the artists featured, and then they also had a room where they played music videos.

The exhibit was broken down into several different time periods, and I'm now going to write about one person from each time period (briefly) and then link a video. Because that little paragraph was short, and everyone in the exhibit was really good. So to start off our journey through female music making or whatever, let's look at Maaaaa Rainey. It's actually just Ma Rainey. She was one of the earliest, and a very influential blues artist, known for her powerful voice, energy, and her peculiar "moaning" style of singing. She made songs that poor people in the South could relate to, like "Bo Weevil Blues" and that made her really popular also she was really cool so that helped. Here is one of her songs. Quality isn't that great, because at the time Paramount had terrible audio recording equipment so sad. It's called Booze And Blues.

It's really bluesy, and wonderful, and you can kind of hear her excellent voice. Alright so now we move on to the thirties. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was not only an excellent guitar player, she was also willing to cross the line between spiritual and secular, and bring gospel to us atheists. Fun fact: a video of her playing is also featured in the movie Amelie (the first e should have an accent but I don't really feel like figuring out how to do that). Anyway, so Rosetta was really influential on people like Elvis on Johnny Cash, and she was really good, so here's some of her playing. It's called Up Above My Head.

Ok now to be honest I can't really remember the forties very well, so I think what we'll do now is just sort of skip over to Ruth, yes Ruth Brown. So Ruth Brown was an R&B artist, who made R&B more commercially successful. Ok so now we're going to start getting into the part where not only are the female artists influential and good, they write songs about women's issues. So Ruth Brown popularized R&B, and Atlantic (record company) was known as "the house that Ruth built" because she was so successful and everyone loved her. She also wrote a song about being in an abusive relationship, and the song ended with her saying that she was going to leave. This is technically not the regular version, but I like it better. It's called Mama; He Treats Your Daughter Mean.

So then there was the sixties. Doo-woppy girl groups, or single acts, was how women interacted with music. There were actually just a lot of them, and they usually had really cool names. So for the early sixties (by the end it had changed a looot so the museum divided it into two halves when organizing, and i am following in their footsteps) we're going to look at Leslie Gore. Besides having a good name, she wrote one of the first feminist anthem songs. She also decided to go to college, instead of continuing on with her 15 minutes of fame kind of career. So while she may not have really influenced music a whole lot, she was an important figure for women. Here is You Don't Own Me.

The second half of the sixties were pretty different from the first half. Psychedelic rock, folk, hippies, all kinds of weird stuff. Janis Joplin is a favorite of mine, and also a very influential person, so she is our focus person (that sounds right) for the late sixties. She had a fantastic voice, and sang with so much passion, and was incredible, and her lyrics had all of that too. It's so raw, and she sang about things without boundaries really. She sang about love REAL LOVE MAN I feel kind of silly saying that, I'm all of sixteen years old, but you can hear it in her voice it's real for her. So I have to link Piece Of My Heart what kind of person would I be if I didn't.

And so now it's the seventies, in time travel women's music land. My personal tastes are going to greatly interfere here, since they gave pop artists like Cher and then rock musicians like Joan Jett I'm going to go for Joan here always. So this paragraph is about Joan Jett. She founded one of the first all-girl rock bands, and it was even mildly successful in Japan yeah! Then she started Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and wrote awesome songs, and was an awesome guitarist, inspired at least in part the riot-grrrl movement, and she still plays today. Way to go Joan. I'm gonna go with Bad Reputation here even though it had bad words aahhh

And now we're onto the eighties almost done guys they kind of lumped the nineties in the with the eighties and the two thousands I guess everyone would just like to forget them, right? Haha well moving onto Kim Deal, and punk! Kim Deal was the bassist for The Pixies, and then she went on to form her own band, The Breeders, where everyone except for the drummer is a girl. She's a great bassist and guitarist, and she achieved success with both The Pixies and The Breeders. Both bands were really popular in the 90s, and the punk movement. This is Cannonball, one of The Breeders' most successful songs.

And so now we're in the present! Mostly the museum people chose to focus on pop music artists, which makes sense, since they're the ones who have been the most visible, and it's sort of our generations music much as it pains me to say that. But ok so they had three separate display cases for Lady Gaga which really bugged me, because Lady Gaga is really just a pale imitation of Madonna and there are tons of other people in that exhibit they could have given two extra cases too. One of them was her meat dress too. Ugh anyway, back on track, this paragraph is about Bikini Kill, from the riot-grrrl movement which was pretty much all feminism and Bikini Kill was one of the biggest bands out there. The last couple of songs haven't been really explicitly about feminism, but pretty much all of Bikini Kill's are. So this is the last song, and it's not exactly a calming finish but whatever. The video is cool too. Here is Rebel Girl.

So in conclusion, it was a really cool exhibit. I knew a lot about the later musicians, but not a lot about the early ones. There were a lot that I didn't mention, but they were all very interesting. Like other women in the 19th century, they had to fight to make their voices heard, and we can still hear them today how poetic was that. But they made good music, about important issues, and it was a good exhibit. If you can go see it before January 6th at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, you should because it's pretty interesting. The end.