GMALL presents: Who Gets Played? Women in Country Music

MANCHESTER, Vt. – Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning (GMALL) is excited to welcome back Hamilton College Professor Lydia Hamessley to talk about women in country music. Women have had a presence in country music since the beginning of the genre’s commercialization in the 1920s when Sara and Maybelle Carter made their first recordings with A.P. Carter. But despite the presence of women artists like Rose Maddox, Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Reba McEntire and more recent performers like Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert, the Chicks, Taylor Swift, Kacey Musgraves, and Mickey Guyton, recordings by women still make up only about 10% of country music played on the radio. In this talk, professor and musicologist Lydia Hamessley (author of Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton) will explore the contributions of women in country music history up to the present and talk about the continued struggles of women – and BIPOC and queer – performers to be fully included in the country music industry. This presentation will be accompanied by musical examples. Registration is required in advance. For more information or to register, please call our office at 802-867-0111 or visit www.greenmtnacademy.org.