Artist Kaki King: Guitar 'has completely changed me'
NEW YORK (FOX5NY.COM) - Kaki King, a Brooklyn-based guitarist, first started playing when she was 4.
"My father loved music and both my parents wanted me to play something," King said. "Because my dad was really into late '70s rock, and he kind of slid the guitar in there."
For King, the guitar became therapeutic.
"It's the only place and time when my brain shuts down enough for it to be just me and the guitar and the music that's happening," King said.
Perhaps other women are making similar connections. A new study from guitar maker Fender found that 50 percent of new guitarists in the U.S. and U.K. are female.
King's response? There is still work to do.
"I think that the guitar manufacturers and the industry itself—they really need to catch up, they need to catch up fast," she said. "That does not mean pink guitars. That means marketing to a consumer group that has a demand."
Fender's study cited guitar playing performers like Taylor Swift among others as having an impact on female millennials who are now picking up the instrument.
King, a name in her our right, having been the first female selected by Rolling Stone magazine for its new Guitar Gods list, calls the instrument her muse in the truest sense of the word.
"I'm fascinated with this instrument. I will learn it for the rest of my life," King said. "I have not changed the guitar. It has completely changed me. When I play it, when I go to it as a tool for composition, I'm like, 'How is this—this thing is amazing."