What is it about?
This article is about the careers of women harmonica performers in Vaudeville and other stages in the 1920s and 1930s. Included in this is the all-girls band, The Ingenues, and soloists such as Lilyan Bernard, Margaret Mulcay and athlete Babe Didrickson.
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Photo by Scottsdale Mint on Unsplash
Why is it important?
These women had careers that were important and impactful and yet few people, even those in the popular music field, have never heard of. These examples of women as performers add to our knowledge of the history of popular music in America. What's very important is that it demonstrates that, despite what we may believe, women had active roles as performers on stages that have otherwise been thought to have been occupied by men only. In addition, people tend to look at the harmonica either as an instrument only used in blues and rock or as a toy. The careers of these women show that the harmonica was an instrument that required a high degree of technical skill and was used in Vaudeville and even Classical music.
Perspectives
I'm so excited to have had the opportunity to write this article and introduce the public to an area of performance that is really not known. We need to fill in the gap of our knowledge of popular music history and especially how women were part of it.
Dr. Carol Shansky
New Jersey City University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘She’s an expert on the harmonica’: Women, stage shows and harmonica playing, Journal of Popular Music Education, July 2022, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/jpme_00086_1.
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