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Signature: _____________________________________ _________________ Mashadi Ione Matabane Date Axe to Grind: A Cultural History of Black Women Musicians on the Acoustic and Electric Guitar in the United States By Mashadi Ione Matabane Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts ______________________________________________ [Advisor’s signature] Regine O. Jackson, Ph.D. Advisor ______________________________________________ [Member’s signature] Allen Tullos, Ph.D. Committee Member ______________________________________________ [Member’s signature] Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, Ph.D. Committee Member Accepted: ______________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies _________________________ Date Axe to Grind: A Cultural History of Black Women Musicians on the Acoustic and Electric Guitar in the United States By Mashadi Ione Matabane M.A., New York University, 2001 B.A., Spelman College, 1999 Advisor: Regine O. Jackson, Ph.D. An abstract of A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts 2014 ABSTRACT Axe to Grind: A Cultural History of Black Women Musicians on the Acoustic and Electric Guitar in the United States By Mashadi Ione Matabane Though readily recognized as vocalists in American popular culture, black women are generally overlooked as instrumentalists on the acoustic guitar and its more iconic counterpart—the electric guitar. Cultural scholars and writers routinely ignore black women electric guitarists’ creative and innovative contributions to the blues, gospel, jazz, and rock of which the instrument is an essential element. This research study documents and explores black women’s experiences playing the guitar as creative enterprise and as a means to redefining their roles in life and self-identity beyond racial and gender limitations imposed by the broader society. Black women have a long record as professional and amateur guitarists from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. They have used acoustic and electric guitars to shape and transform their lives for social mobility, entertainment, artistry, recreation, and evangelizing. This study analyzed oral history narratives of contemporary black women musicians discussing how they use the electric guitar in the construction, negotiation, and representation of their identity, self expression, and musicality. Racism and sexism render black women musician's identities as hypervisible and invisible. Still, they employ the electric guitar as a source of distinction, personal achievement, employment, spiritual- and self-expression, and physical and emotional self-defense. As musicians they challenge dominant social meanings and fantasies about the electric guitar as a culturally white and masculine enterprise; demonstrate creative possibilities valuable to the politics of location specific to black women in the United States; and critique popular (often narrow, pathologized) representations of the black female body. Axe to Grind: A Cultural History of Black Women Musicians on the Acoustic and Electric Guitar in the United States By Mashadi Ione Matabane M.A., New York University, 2001 B.A., Spelman College, 1999 Advisor: Regine O. Jackson, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts 2014 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My acknowledgements are really a praise break in print. I have encountered so many clever and kind people who have been indispensable in the completion of this project… Dr. Regine Jackson and Dr. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, I am happily indebted to you both. Dr. Allen Tullos and Dr. Kevin Corrigan, thank you for your support. Dr. Virginia “V.A.” Shadron, for teaching me it takes character and a sense of humor to withstand the “rigors” of academia. Randall Burkett and Pellom McDaniels, III, thank you for fanning my archive fever through counsel, conversations, introductions, and opportunities. In earned solidarity to all the Steely Dames I encountered: Beverly “Guitar” Watkins, Jennifer Bliss, Tamar-kali, Denise Reese, Monnette Sudler, Rabia Yamazawa, Monica “Nerdkween” Arrington, Cheryl Cooley, BB Queen, Suzanne Thomas, and Diamond Rowe. Paula Ione Whatley Matabane….a thousand times over I choose you, mom. My daddy, Madumane Moromokwene Matabane, Amandla! Awetho! To my Emory friends: stony the road we trod. My Dixie Chicks: Whitney Peoples, Sheri Davis Faulkner, and Aaliyah Abdullah. X amounts of soul claps to my writing hero Lisa Jones Brown for writing about super fly sisters making art and making waves. My research role models whose published works have meant so much to me: Maureen Mahon, bell hooks, Nancy Levine, Maria V. Johnson, Jayna Brown, Angela Davis, Mireille Miller Young, Tera Hunter, Beverly Guy- Sheftall, Daphne Brooks, Sherrie Tucker, Greg Tate, Susan McClary, D. Antoinette Handy, Daphne Duval Harrison, Linda Dahl, Paul and Beth Garon, Gayle Wald, Paul Gilroy, Steve Waksman, David Evans, Christopher Small, and William “Bill” Barlow. X amounts of soul claps to folks who acknowledged my work, and shared support, suggestions and connections with me: Chaunette Lumpkins, Allison Wright, Queen Esther, Iman Abdulfattah, Tim Duffy, Music Maker Relief Foundation, Nicole Herring, Birgitta Johnson, Dorian Turner, Sharyl Chatman, Jr., Alyson Murphy West, Raina Moore Bouphavong, Anna Crosby Brooke, Fredara Mareva Hadley, Mahlatse Mphoentle Gallens, Kafi Sanders, Beretta Smith-Shomade, Tracy Laird, Tara Kollmann Harris, Jennifer Cohen-Vigder, Kara Gladney, Laina Dawes, AnneMarie Mingo, Meredith Franco-Meyers, Vanja Scholls, Agnieszka Czeblakow, Brian Poust, Portia Maultsby, Channing Peoples, Brigid Scarbrough, Kamasi Hill, Laura Polk, Inga Willis, Micah Rose Emerson, Shelley Doty, Felicia Collins, KJ Denhert, Deborah Coleman, Danielia Cotton Roberts, Ashley Greenwood, Malina Moye, Venessia Young, Samantha “Ghetto Songbird” Johnson, Zayani Rose, SharBaby, Scott Poulson-Bryant, Shelton Powe, Jr., Okorie Johnson and Heather Infantry, Rob Fields, Anne Powers, Sheila Hardy, Melissa Young, Laura Polk, Barbara Grant, Danny “Mudcat” Dudeck, Delilah de Sousa Shepard, Marcia Clinkscales, Nancy Lewis, Allison Parker, Adrienne Lanier-Seward, Cousin Rico and Adria, Sandy Jones El-Amin, the Black Rock Coalition, and Lauren Onkey. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 2: Race, Gender, Genre, and the Guitar ........................................................... 20 CHAPTER 3: Black Women Playing the Guitar in the United States ............................ 51 CHAPTER 4: Beverly “Guitar” Watkins ........................................................................... 132 CHAPTER 5: BB Queen, Jennifer Bliss, Suzanne Thomas & Cheryl Cooley .............. 158 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................ 188 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 205 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................ 219 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The electric guitar is a culturally iconic instrument in the United States, crucial to evolutions in blues, gospel, jazz, and rock music. Playing electric guitar is typically represented as a masculine activity in popular culture, functioning as a signifier of male sexuality and virility. Yet women, including black women, play the instrument and have a long cultural presence of playing it in blues (Lizzie “Memphis Minnie” Douglas), gospel (Sister Rosetta Tharpe), and rock (Peggy “Lady Bo” Jones). Black women guitarists as instrumentalists are often overlooked in popular culture writings and research where the focus remains on black women as solo vocalists and back up singers. This dissertation explores black women and their engagement with the electric guitar to construct and negotiate their self-presentations, identities, and cultural expressions as musicians. Mainstream contemporary American culture clearly privileges men as the great guitar players and elevates them as the primary creators of rock (usually white men), blues (usually black men), and jazz (usually black and white men). In the 1930s, the electric guitar began to flourish in jazz and, later in the 1940s and 1950s, in blues and rock, respectively. Southern