If you have names, videos, or pictures, please leave them in the comments below. With your help, we hope this list can continue to grow. Others were found in liner notes, vintage photos without names, and obscure websites deep within the internet. It’s to learn about our past and evolve into our future-and without Black history, we cannot accurately do so.īelow are 100 women-some of which you’ve heard about countless times, such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Elizabeth Cotten, and Barbara Lynn. It’s for the young Black girls aspiring to be musicians but seldom see a history that represents them. It’s for all of us who can’t count the names of Black women guitarists on one hand.
Rather, it should be treated as a step taken towards exposing the truth. This list is not to be brushed off as just another list. In February 2019, we published “50 Historic Black Women Guitarists and Bassists You Needs to Know” to showcase the influences that Black and Afro-identifying women musicians have had on music history. Since then, we’ve been consistently updating this list because we should constantly be celebrating the innovation, resilience, and talent of Black music communities.įor this particular list, we choose to focus on Black women guitarists and bassists whose careers started prior to 1999 to specifically showcase the legends-many of whom have unfortunately been overlooked, dismissed, or forgotten-who should be recognized as pillars of music history.
