The Women of Rock Oral History Project is a collection of digital interviews and written transcripts housed at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, documenting the lives and careers of women in rock music, focusing primarily on artists who have been left out of the popular rock narrative. The Women of Rock Oral History Project has been made possible, in part, by the Helen Gurley Brown Magic Grant (2016) and the Rebecca Samay Rosenthal Memorial Fellowship (2015). The project is otherwise self-funded and sustained entirely by volunteer labor. This labor includes travel, video recording and editing, transcribing, grant writing, event organization and promotion, and publicity. You can view the list of volunteers here.
Press Roundup
Women of Rock Unite!: Oral History Project founder/director Tanya Pearson Explains How
Frustrated over a lack of sources about women rock musicians, a Smith College grad student decided to go to the sources themselves. Five years later, Tanya Pearson-writer, musician, archivist-has amassed a world-class archive of digital interviews and transcripts and is the director of the Women of Rock Oral History Project, housed at Smith College.
https://www.pasadenaweekly.com/2018/01/04/kristin-hersh-legal-weapon-neon-music-phranc-azalia-snail-and-patty-schemel-join-the-women-of-rock-oral-history-project-fundraising-launch-party/
This L.A. Event Basically Features Your Inner Riot Grrrl's Dream Lineup
This Thursday, rock stars and aficionados alike will meet at Zebulon Café Concert in Los Angeles for a night of music, history, and empowerment. The Women of Rock Oral History Project, a collection of digital and written interviews documenting the careers of women in rock n' roll, is primarily located at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, but the women highlighted by the project will be in L.A.
L.A.'s Female Punk Pioneers Are Writing Themselves Into Rock History Los Angeles Magazine
When Tanya Pearson was an undergrad at Smith College, she wanted to write a paper about representations of women in 1990s rock media. Then she encountered a problem: Even among bands who were well known in that era, there was a dearth of research material. Pearson decided to change that.
Women Will Rock at Women of Rock Tonight
Ever since rock began, it has been kind of like a little boy's fort with a big NO WOMEN ALLOWED sign (Written in adorable crooked letters, which is probably the only time misogyny has ever been considered the least bit adorable). The history of rock, and especially punk, has been dismissive at best, if not completely overlooking women' contributions.
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Women of Rock Oral History Project Is Making Noise - Nasty Galaxy
Scratch that-it's remaking history. And this time, it's getting it right. By Remy Ramirez From Led Zeppelin to Nirvana, the term "rock 'n roll" is practically synonymous with masculinity-rarely is the genre readily associated with even the heaviest woman-identifying hitters. But maybe that's more about historical bias than anything else.
Women of Rock Oral History Project Launch: Panels
Party with a purpose! Thursday night at Zebulon in Silver Lake launched the Women of Rock Oral History Project fundraising events, with a punk rock price of only ten bucks. The fundraising events will sustain the project's growing travel and transcription costs. The Women of Rock Oral History Project began in 2014.
The Women of Rock Oral History Project At Zebulon Café, Thursday January 11th 2018
There was a very hot ticket in town on Thursday night, Zebulon café was hosting a very special night with many famous women of rock.
http://www.ocweekly.com/arts/the-women-of-rock-oral-history-project-aims-to-rewrite-history-8711216
Valley Show Girl: The Case of the Missing Wiki Edits
Tanya Pearson has been accumulating a continuous list of female musicians for her Women in Rock Oral History Project which she started at Smith College in December 2014. Accompanied by 29 video interviews (so far!)
Clubland: Activist musicians unite to make history with 'Wikipedia versus Women'
Tanya Pearson lives a life of research. She's a Ph.D. student at UMass Amherst who in 2014 created the Women of Rock Oral History Project. It's an ever-expanding collection of video interviews and written transcripts, housed at Smith College, documenting the lives and careers of women in rock who've been underrepresented - or not represented at all - by rock journalism and historical scholarship.
VALLEY SHOW GIRL: Leave it to the Women
A couple weeks ago I wrote my column based on the fiasco that is Wikipedia Vs. Women, where locally and nationally non-male musicians are getting edited out of the popular DIY online encyclopedia due to male editors not accepting articles from certain publications (with some being discounted just for having the word "feminist" in the title).
My publications - PREVIEW April 2017 - Page 20-21
PREVIEW April 2017
An Evening with Three Legendary Rebel Women at Le Poisson Rouge, January 27, 2017: Margot Olavarria, Bibbe Hansen, and Alice Bag
For full intro and part one of the series click here. For part two, click here. For part three click here. Our Punk Sound series implicitly argues that sound studies methodologies are better suited to understanding how punk works sonically than existing journalistic and academic conversations about musical genre, chord progressions, and/or genealogies of bands.
Two Smithies Awarded Magic Grants for Novel Oral History Projects
Tanya Pearson '16 and Meridith Baier '14 will use the grants to support groundbreaking oral history projects. Established at Smith in 2011 by the late writer and editor Helen Gurley Brown, who led Cosmopolitan magazine for more than three decades, the Magic Grant program honors Brown's commitment to educating women with diverse life experiences through the Ada Comstock Scholars Program for nontraditional-aged students.
Women of Rock Oral History Project aims to create equal representation in music's narrative - Vanyaland
Tanya Pearson has a goal, and it's one that is pretty awesome: "I'm determined that five years from now, every girl or genderqueer kid playing in a band will know who or Julie Cafritz or Alice Bag or Phranc is."
Women Rock: sexism and music go together like rock and roll
Attending a Veruca Salt concert as a teenager in the '90s, Tanya Pearson never imagined that 20 years later she'd be asking lead vocalist-guitarists Nina Gordon and Louise Post about sexism in the industry. A photo documenting Pearson's reunion with the two band members last year - she interviewed them for the Women of Rock [...]
Women Rock: sexism and music go together like rock and roll
Attending a Veruca Salt concert as a teenager in the '90s, Tanya Pearson never imagined that 20 years later she'd be asking lead vocalist-guitarists Nina Gordon and Louise Post about sexism in the industry. A photo documenting Pearson's reunion with the two band members last year - she interviewed them for the Women of Rock [...]
