According to market analyses performed by my industry, a paltry 7% of women represent my customer base. This is troubling from a business perspective. How could any business fail to capitalize on the portion of the population that makes a majority of the buying decisions in the household? It just does not make sense to me, despite the fact that these findings reflect my experience, as I observe who walks through our door at Moore Music. Truth be told, there is some sense to this statistic; I just don’t like the sense it makes. It’s unfair, and frustrating to me on many levels.We’re nearly two decades into the 21st century and it seems like the guitar is mostly associated with male-driven Rock bands.
I’m troubled by this, not only because my business would really grow with more women shopping for and buying guitars for themselves, but because women can and should have the same fulfillment I experience through playing guitar, communing with music, and enjoying the gift of “me-time” you can only give to yourself. Is our patriarchal culture solely to blame for this 7% statistic? Is this reflective of the disproportionate amount of time women in our society spend working after work in the household? What about the early learners, the children who have the time to integrate the guitar into their overall education? Are we as parents unwittingly perpetuating a musical and instrument-based stereotype? Is playing the guitar and this gender disparity comparable to the under-representation of girls in STEM subjects, as well as the dearth of females on an academic track traditionally dominated by males?
Societal and cultural norms are dynamic, and change is inevitable. It may interest you to know that this great disparity, which vexes me, was not always the case. In fact, the imbalance was in the other direction when, for societal and cultural reasons, women were far more representative of the guitar-playing public. At one time the guitar was referred to as a “gypsy-instrument” because proficiency could be accomplished in an era when formal education in music was synonymous with general literacy. Only the gentry had time and resources to pursue the arts and education. The majority of people had no choice but to work sun-up to sun-down with time for little else. Yet, a stable-boy with a little time and resources could be an accomplished guitarist. The guitar was a folk instrument, closely linked with romanticism, poetry, expressions of love and a non-Anglo association with exoticism in the 18th and 19th century when the Orient began with the Pyrenees. Much of history, the guitar (a non-orchestral instrument) was not afforded the same respect as other musical instruments outside of its regional association with Spanish cultural tradition.
“Ladies,” and, I mean the word not in the modern usage as it now pertains to gender, but as a class or societal status in the much more rigid patriarchy of the 19th century, were, among other things, to make them attractive to prospective suitors, taught to entertain. The ritual of refined ladies entertaining suitable gentlemen took place in view of the assembled family in a room dedicated to entertainment in the public portion of the home known as the Parlor. In the 19th century, Martin Guitar made many guitars for this purpose, with this customer in mind. These small by today’s standards, Size 3, Size 2, and Size 1 guitars grew larger over time as their use moved out of the parlor and onto the stage and concert halls with 0, 00, 000 and OM or Orchestral Model.
The size of guitars increased still more with the introduction of the dreadnought, which celebrated its centennial in 2016 and is the standard shape of acoustic guitars today. For most us, when we picture an acoustic guitar in our mind, the dreadnought is the shape that we see. If volume and projection is what you want in a steel-string acoustic, this has been the go-to body style since its introduction. Recently, the trend in sales is going back in the other direction. The popularity of smaller-than-dreadnought acoustic guitars is growing. These smaller acoustic guitars are ideally comfortable for all players, but particularly for women. Parlor-style guitars are coming into demand once again. Also, for the comfort of a smaller acoustic without an appreciable sacrifice of a dreadnought’s tone and volume, the so-called “Concert” size guitars that have really taken off, and Breedlove Guitars is the brand that’s doing it best right now.
Breedlove Guitars, out of Bend, Oregon has been building acoustic guitars for over 25 years and is successfully producing a concert size guitar with a very big and full sound. At issue is the tendency of smaller bodied acoustic guitars with smaller soundboards to have a more pronounced mid-range tonality. A smaller body results in a smaller box for air to move, sound waves to propagate and a nasally tone can be the natural outcome. While Breedlove is a relatively young company compared to other American brands, they stand out with a willingness to break from tradition in the sometimes-regimented approach to designing and building acoustic guitars. Breedlove’s forward-thinking approach makes my customers that are unfamiliar with the brand take note of, buy these guitars, then tell everyone they know how much they love their Breedlove.
With only 7% of women buying guitars, there’s obviously a long way to go towards some kind of market parity and the resulting increase in their market share. The good news is female guitar players aren’t the rare breed they once seemed to be. The Evansville Music Academy, based here at Moore Music, has quite a few female guitar students and is doing its part to encourage young women to pursue an instrument that shouldn’t be as gender-specific as the above sales analysis indicates.
Finally, many of you are probably familiar, with Lita Ford, Joan Jett, Jennifer Batton, maybe Orianthi, Nita Strauss, and even Sister Rosetta Tharp. However, I leave you with a link to an amazing guitarist who popped up on my Facebook feed and who just happens to be female too. Lari Basilio - she captured my ear this past Easter with her performance of “Porque Ele Vive” https://www.facebook.com/laribasiliomusic/videos/1428990660496772/ reminding me that the higher power that music connects us all without being gender specific. It’s a gift that cries to be picked up and shared by all.
