Chapter 2: Black American Women and the Gendered Literacy of Musicking

Black women have a long, unheralded presence playing acoustic and electric guitar in the United States. Memphis Minnie (1897–1973) was a working-class, Southern woman who became one of the first Black women guitarists to successfully sing and record blues in the early 20th century. This chapter uses a biography, Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues (1992) by Paul and Beth Garon, and the oral histories of contemporary electric guitarists to explore Black women’s musicking with the instrument as a form of gendered literacy. Musicologist Christopher Small (1998) defines musicking as the actions that constitute musical performance, from composing to rehearsing to listening. A broader conception of literacy takes advantage of the multiple meanings that can be “read” into women’s lives as cultural producers, practicing forms of literacy to engender empowerment.