ABSTRACT
Building on notions of 'hidden' musicianship, exclusion and access, this chapter uses Sheffield's rock and pop 'scene' as a lens to explore the ways in which women negotiate place-specific and more widely established barriers to participate in musical practice. The vast majority of 'rock' bands on the BDP developed their skills collectively, within the fraternity of an all-male group founded upon an ideological allegiance to the process and practice of making music that simultaneously defined them as musicians. This social practice reinforces the masculinity of its participants, a fragile construct that, as Bayton argues, 'is only preserved by the exclusion of girls'. In sum, narratives of Sheffieldness shape of entrepreneurship in ways that naturalize the masculinity of creativity. The homosocial norms of rock and pop are potentially disrupted when mixed-gender or all-women bands perform however and returns to the initial fieldwork to examine some of the key strategies developed by women music makers in Sheffield.
