FROM ROCK 'N 'ROLL TO HARD CORE PUNK - UKZN ...

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musicians. As macho star David Lee Roth (rarely
accused of being an ardent feminist) observes: 'What
if a little girl picked up a guitar and said "I wanna
be a rock star". Nine out of ten her parents would
never allow her to do it. We don't have so many lead
guitar women, not because women don't have the ability
to play the instrument, but because ther're kept
locked up, taught to be something else ... '
McClary's article on Madonna as an exception to the rule outlines
the problems encountered by a woman rock musician:
To create music within a male-defined domain is a
treacherous task. As some women composers of so-called
serious or experimental music are discovering, many of
the forms and conventional procedures of presumably
value-free music are saturated with hidden patriarchal
narratives, images, agendas. The options available to
a woman musician in rock are especially constrictive,
for this musical discourse is typically characterised
by its phallic backbeat. 4
The issue of electrification of music seemed in many cases to be
the dividing line between what was considered to be strictly
'male' and acceptable as a 'female' experimental zone. In other
words, amplified music was considered 'male' because of its loud
and often aggressive sound, while acoustic music was considered
a more 'feminine' arena.
It is true that heavy metal, of all forms of rock music, has
'been viewed as the epitome of maleness's. Walser's recent
study, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy
Metal Music, contains perhaps the most insightful study of
gender in relation to rock music, and deals with the issue of the
'male' domination of the genre (heavy metal) as well as the
3 S. McClary, 'Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly',
in Feminine Endings: Music Gender and Sexuality, Oxford: University of
Minnesota Press, 1991, pp. 150-151.
154.
4 McClary, 'Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly', p.
5 M. Bayton, 'Feminist Musical Practice: Problems and Contradictions',
p. 185.