Project
An Opening Statement by Patty Larkin
The goal of this project is to better define the contribution of women to the history of modern guitar. I have been asked repeatedly, "Why are there no great female guitar players?" The answer is, there are. Demographics are changing as young girls and women take up the instrument with increasing dedication and commitment to technique and repertoire. It is my belief that women guitarists of the past played a part in the evolution of the instrument and that their story is largely untold. I also believe that there are women guitarists today who are actively changing our preconceptions about gender and guitar heroes. This project is dedicated to these artists, past and present, waiting to be discovered, needing to be heard.
More On The Music
The CD is a snapshot of an ever-changing landscape. It is a glimpse of
how women have influenced the guitar over time. An aural image in the
feminine form. The women on this compilation are innovators and
educators, alt types and concert hall performers, jazzers, blues players,
composers and interpreters. They have been around for a long time, they
just broke onto the scene, they are our archetypes and our future heroines.
They are only the tip of the iceberg. To say that our research led us to
hundreds of women players of the instrument would not be an
exaggeration. We had the unenviable task of selecting from talent too
numerous to mention, but too amazing to overlook. We ended up
choosing the music and the stories and the history for what we now
consider to be the first installment of La Guitara. Rather than
marginalizing women guitar players or creating a circus oddity, our goal is
to expose some of the most prodigious guitar talent that happens to also
be female. As we began to research women and the guitar and the history
of the instrument, we made a decision to create a collection of women
instrumentalists from many different musical styles, and from many places
around the world, including archival selections, to tell the story.
So, there's Sharon Isbin beginning classical guitar studies at age 9,
studying with the masters, including the revered Andrés Segovia. There's
Mimi Fox playing folk guitar when something shifts in an instant and she
falls in love with jazz and never looks back. There's Kaki King playing
drums throughout childhood and then returning to the harmonic pull and
the percussive potential of six strings. There's Rory Block sitting in her
dad's sandal shop in Greenwich Village in the 60s absorbing all of the
nuances of a revived American folk music as John Sebastian and Geoff
Muldaur trade songs. There's Wu Man, whose musical journey on the pipa
spans centuries, breaking the sound barrier between ancient and modern.
There's Muriel Anderson whose fingerstyle renderings and depth of
repertoire tell of years of concentrated study and a passion for music that
has no borders. There's Badi Assad, who decided to devote her life to the
instrument and ended up creating her own genre of Brazilian music that
includes voice, percussion and flights of fancy. There's Vicki Genfan, whose
jazz and classical studies took her to a place where she composes music
that encompasses the soul and lyrical beauty of the source. There's Ellen
McIlwaine who grew up in Japan and then returned to the States as a teen
and wondered why no one else heard the world music she heard humming
in her head. There's Elizabeth Cotten, who could hear a tune once and play
it, writing "Freight Train" as an adolescent, giving up the guitar only to
return some 40 years later while working for the Seeger family who
"discovered" her unique fingerstyle technique. There's Canadian Alex
Houghton who started on classical and progressed to funk, combining her
previous studies with her love of Prince. And there's Jennifer Batten, who
wowed them on the Michael Jackson "Bad" tour, playing with inspired rock
'n' roll brilliance before 1.5 billion people during the Super Bowl halftime,
who had looked for role models as a young player and ended up becoming
one herself. And then there's Memphis Minnie, of whom it has been said
"the novelty of a guitar toting woman blues singer was soon replaced with
respect for her abilities as a musician" (Neil Slaven).
To say that Fernando Sor begat Kaki King takes a huge leap of faith. But
that's what I'm asking you to do. Come with me. Who knew that Rossini
and his wife both played guitar? Why were there so many artistic
renderings done of women playing parlor and harp guitars in the centuries
before the last one, yet there were so few women who actually played? Or
did they? This much I know: It's So Over. This - "There are no
girls/women/chicks (god help us) who play guitar." This - "Why are there no
great female rock guitar players? Must be genetic." This is the eye opener,
the Maiden Voyage, a glimpse at what's already been going on behind
those not so closed doors. The sampler. The collection. Whatever you want
to call it. There is more to come. Begin here. La Guitara, Volume One.
PATTY LARKIN/On the Outer Cape/August, 2005
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