Smith College’s Oral History Project on Women of Rock Music

Tanya Pearson, an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, has conducted an oral history project documenting the history of women in rock music. The video interviews and written transcripts will become part of the Sophia Smith Collection at the Smith College library.

“Rock music has become this inherently masculine entity where women are seen as an anomaly and their creative output as less authentic than that of male-fronted bands,” Pearson said. “My goal is to start an oral history collection by women, for women, that represents individuals who’ve been left out of the popular rock narrative.”

“Everyone I’ve interviewed is so grateful I’m doing this,” Pearson said. “They don’t want to have to keep saying ‘we’re angry because nobody knows who we are.’”

Pearson is considering applying to graduate school for public history. She believes oral history projects are an important tool.  “It’s an opportunity to give women a voice,” she said.