Pub Promotes Women’s Music

As students filed into the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub Saturday night, they were greeted with glow sticks, temporary tattoos, and “Women rock!” pins in preparation for a night of music featuring female artists.

“Women, Rock!,” which was sponsored by the Harvard College Women’s Center, sought to promote female student musicians at Harvard.

“We wanted to make sure that there is a venue where woman musicians are featured prominently,” said Susan B. Marine, director of the Women’s Center. “Women don’t get as much exposure in popular music, and it’s important not to buy into the idea that all bands are male.”

Marine said the pub has been a great partner in promoting female performers, noting that it co-sponsored two similar events last year and hopes to host similar concerts each semester.

“It is a great way to work together for a goal everybody supports,” she said. “The pub is trying to become a place for student bands to be promoted.”

Catherine D. Tuttle ’09 kicked off the evening with a solo performance of folk, jazz, and rock.

She said in an interview after the show that female musicians face additional challenges.

“There’s a lot of pressure as a woman artist—from how you look, to how you sing,” Tuttle said. “As a woman in this industry, it is so important to have a sense of camaraderie with other female artists.”

The weekend’s concert was a way of promoting this sense of fellowship and of encouraging women to work together, she said.

“Having an all-woman line-up is really rare,” Tuttle said. “Usually women are competing for one spot in a line-up.”

Tuttle’s performance was followed by Kelsey M. Quigley ’09 and her band.

Between performances, audience members competed in a trivia contest to identify famous female musicians, answering questions such as, “Who was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?” The answer: Aretha Franklin in 1987.

Although the lead performers were all women, many men came to see the Women, Rock! show, including Seth A. Pearce ’12. “It was the only reason I came,” Pearce said. “I think it’s awesome—it definitely rocks.”

­—Staff writer Arianna Markel can be reached at amarkel@fas.harvard.edu.