Women in Music

Music has been around since the beginning of time. It has the ability to influence us or to change our perception or mood.  Music is different in many cultures and performed many different ways. Women of all different ages have changed music over time.

Loretta Lynn is an American country-music singer-songwriter. Born in 1932, she is now 80 years old. She grew up in a very poor family with her father as a coal miner. Lynn sung all her life and taught herself how to play the guitar. She went on to win dozens of awards from many different institutions, including 4 Grammy Awards , 7 American Music Awards, 8 Broadcast Music Incorporated awards, 12 Academy of Country Music, 8 Country Music Association and 26 fan voted Music City News awards. She was the first woman in Country Music to receive a certified gold album. Known as “The First Lady of Country Music”, shes in more music Halls Of Fame than any other female recording artist. Loretta Lynn changed the face of country music. She was the first female in a male’s genre.

Not only are music performers important but also teachers who inspire and teach music. For instance, Julia Ettie Crane, an American music educator. She was the first person to set up a school, the Crane School of Music, specifically for the training of public school music teachers. Crane is one of the most important figures in the history of American music education. She was inducted into the Music Educators Hall of Fame in 1986.

Another influential woman in music is Ella Fitzgerald.  Ella contributed greatly to jazz music. Also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Queen of Jazz", she was born April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia and died June 15, 1996. Ella’s mother died of a heart attack when Ella was 15-years-old. Abused by her stepfather, she was taken in by an aunt. On November 21, 1934, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York she made her singing debut at 17-years-old. Fitzgerald later won 13 Grammy awards, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom, National Medal of Art, first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award (named "Ella" in her honor),  and the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement. Fitzgerald was a “quiet but ardent” supporter of many non-profit organizations and charities, including the City of Hope Medical Center and the American Heart Association. In 1993, she established the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, and it continues to fund programs that carry on Ella's beliefs.

All these women show that you don’t have to be a certain gender to be successful or make a difference. These women revolutionized music in their own ways and gave women the confidence to become artists. That’s the beauty of music; it can come from any person or place.

--Christina DeSalvo