It’s thrilling to see female-led groups like The Beaches claim space in rock culture at Junos 2024 and elsewhere

By Jacqueline Warwick, Dalhousie University

What a thrill, for a feminist scholar of popular music, to see Toronto band The Beaches close out Canada’s 2024 Juno awards! They had just won both Rock Album of the Year and Group of the Year. The only other all-female group ever to have won the coveted Group of the Year was Tegan and Sara, 10 years ago.

Rock Album of the Year has gone to all-male bands 31/34 times since 1991. The Beaches themselves won it in 2022, JJ Wilde won the previous year, and Alanis Morissette won in 1995.

Can it be that a girl takeover of rock culture is actually upon us?

Rock’s origins, shifting forms

Rock (nowadays often called “classic rock”) solidified as a style in the mid-1960s, alongside the emergence of rock criticism. It drew on the youthful energy and sounds of rock ’n’ roll to attempt more serious artistic expression.

Rock has been the dominant style of mainstream popular music for my whole life. It is notoriously centred around white men with guitars, to the near exclusion of everyone else. So totalizing is this view that fans sometimes have to be reminded of rock’s origins in African American music.

The most common shape for a rock band is a quartet of electric bass, drums, rhythm guitar and lead guitar, with vocals either by instrumentalists doing double-duty, or assigned to a standalone singer.

https://youtu.be/ubE2Mh5fHXw?si=lXbluutvacEkuJpE

The classic four-piece band is an efficient unit that can produce a rich sound, and it is an easy fit for a group of friends.

The logistics of band life, from co-writing songs to sharing hotel rooms on tour, have been simpler for men of similar background.

Black women pioneer guitarists

The more this all-male version of rock band was seen, the more fans and musicians came to accept it as the right — or only — version.

No real surprise, then, that rock culture became male dominated, and that the music became part of the performance of manhood.

Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/its-thrilling-to-see-female-led-groups-like-the-beaches-claim-space-in-rock-culture-at-junos-2024-and-elsewhere-226182