Male Images in Rock and Pop Music

Being part of patriarchal society, popular music has been dominated by men at all levels: composing and playing music, arranging and engineering it, and making the business deals about it. But in certain areas of popular music, quite complex divisions of labour have operated between men and women. For example, although in jazz the greatest instrumentalists have been men – Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker and so on – the greatest jazz/blues singers have been women – Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan.