Women created the blues. Now they are taking it back.

When blues legend Buddy Guy headlined one of Asia’s signature musical events of 2020, he invited several other artists on the bill to jam with him onstage for an encore – including two women from Nashville, Tennessee.  

For Rebecca and Megan Lovell, who record under the moniker Larkin Poe, appearing at the Mahindra Blues Festival in India was a highlight of a year that also included earning a Grammy nomination for best contemporary blues album. 

The millennial guitarists have been building their reputations since they were teenagers. (Fun fact: They named their group Larkin Poe after their great-great-great-grandfather, a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe.) They’ve appeared on a solo album by Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler. They opened for Keith Urban’s tour in 2019. And the sisters blew back Conan O’Brien’s pompadour when they performed on his talk show.

At the Indian blues festival in February, Larkin Poe was hailed as the breakout act as the sisters played tectonic riffs that probably registered on the Richter scale. 

“While Megan raised eyebrows with her ability to shred as skilfully as the more famous axe wielders on the bill, Rebecca showcased a powerful voice,” wrote a reviewer at Indian news site Firstpost. 

Their appearance offered a snapshot of how the blues is evolving. The music that originated in the late 1800s from Black workers in the American South is becoming increasingly international, multigenerational, and – most strikingly – female. 

When the first gramophone recordings of the blues emerged a century ago, its primary recording artists were Black female singers. But once the genre started to center around the electric guitar, it became largely dominated by men. That’s now changing. Young female artists such as Samantha Fish, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Jackie Venson, and the sister-led Larkin Poe are emerging as