ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how gender has shaped the narratives of popular music history and heritage. The first part considers how the established rock music history and heritage projects came to exclude women. My analysis shows how white male music critics and rock historians formulated a history of rock and established criteria for attributing historical importance to performers which reinforced a definition of rock as a male art. The second part addresses the discourse about ‘women in rock’ in music journalism and highlights how the museum sector has sought to address the absence of women rock music history by putting on exhibitions celebrating the achievements of female performers. Finally, I examine the practices of history- and heritage-making deployed by feminist music archivists and show how online archives have constructed and continue to negotiate a popular music heritage that recognises feminist and queer music-making in the past and the present.
