'Not Bad For a Girl': Blurring the Lines Between Gender and the Bass

I had always been drawn to bass lines in music. Hearing that funky rhythm dominating the roots of a song feels like a stream of an addicting drug. After I had initially written about how dirty bass lines are the new love language back in December 2021, I had begun thinking about picking up the groovy instrument myself. After understanding the lack of diversity of female bassists, I began to do some research on the topic. From legends such as Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth, Melissa Auf Der Maur from Hole, and Esperanza Spalding we saw movement in the industry filled with complex harmonies, rigid melodies, and thousands of recordings becoming legendary pop, punk, rock, and folk sounds. 

One of the most influential female bassists that I came across is Carol Kaye. With over 10,000 recordings in her career as a bassist beginning in the late 1950s, she has become a household name for bass guitarists. Gail Ann Dorsey, best known for her role in David Bowie’s band, pursued her music career at the age of 22. I find Dorsey’s story truly inspiring as she was able to find her musical passion nearly 8 years after she was gifted her first bass guitar at 14 years old. Moving from being a screenwriter to a musician, she picked up her old guitar and became an inspiration for many young female artists.

Until the emergence of New Wave and Punk music, very few rock acts before the 1970s included women. The introduction of punk/new wave  has been defined by scholars as a prominent explosion of opportunities for women to merge into all-female or women-led bands. The emergence of punk in the UK and America altered a sense of reality for women, offering them specialized opportunities to create their independent ‘do-it-yourself’ groups. A scholarly journal I found while conducting research on the topic comments on this introduction of female bass players, as Kim Deal, bassist of the Pixies states “now you’re not even a cool band unless you have a girl bass player.” It became common to see bands emerging that were male-led with a girl bassist, for example, Smashing Pumpkins. Alternative rock was still a male-oriented genre with few exceptions. The bass guitar remained as a women’s limited access to gaining control in a ‘masculine’ role, genre and industry.

The entrance of women into a predominantly male occupation offers us an idea of the idea of stardom of the electric guitar. The rhythm guitar is the star of a band and if a rock band is identified as a ‘masculine’ unit, the guitar is quickly also identified as a masculine entity. The bass guitar is least likely to be desired by a man since the star factor of rock n’ roll is registered by the spotlight of the electric guitar. The bass guitar became less monopolized by men as they regarded it as the less-powerful instrument. Having at least one female member in an alternative rock band during the peak of New Wave and Punk music in the 1970s, came as a plus factor for success - and the bass guitar was the women’s tool to deconstruct the misogynistic atmosphere.

 Now, to ask ourselves the question as to why the bass is argued as a ‘male-identified’ instrument. The bass creates a lower-registered sound that commonly keeps the rhythm along a melody line. Most bass lines are sung with a lower tone, a tone that men are more commonly to reach with their low-registered vocals. 

After discovering who had the hands behind the soulful bass lines of some of my favourite songs, I began to look into more modern bass guitarists to discover a similar feeling. Blu Detiger unofficially took over the musical world of TikTok in 2020 with her bass covers. Her glistening, electric blue bass was covered over my ‘for you’ page - and after discovering her music, I was hooked. I hadn’t seen a woman jam out on a bass as smoothly as Blu before. 

Since Blu took over the internet as a Gen-Z female bassist, she reminds me of the talent of Kim Gorden, Kim Deal and other talented bassists we mentioned previously. I believe there are still some misogynistic beliefs in gender orientation identified behind musical instruments, but how can we still be organizing specific instruments to gender roles. The women in the 1970s behind New Wave and Punk genres began to make a change, and now we have artists like Blu Detiger and Este Haim who continue that legacy ultimately inspiring many young girls to play any instrument they fancy.