Leading up to BRIDGE Festival, we step -together with Niels Guns (journalist; guitar freak; storyteller)- into the world of guitars, guitarists, guitar music and guitar gear. Niels touches the sensitive chord with tantalizing background stories and hands-on interviews, in the series 'Guns about Guitars'.

The top 25 of the world's best guitarists in Gitarist magazine's annual poll this year does not include a single woman. Only two ladies appear in the top 25 in the Netherlands: Sonia 'Anubis' Nusselder and Simone van Straten. With them I make an alternative list of top guitarists. Because, of course, there are plenty of cool guitarists who are not men.

 By Niels Guns

The BRIDGE Festival stage features a lot of cool female heroes such as Gwenifer Raymond, Merel van Hoek, Erja Lyytinen, Ella Zirina, Inge Lamboo, Hawkxx and Sisters of Suffocation (which includes local guitar heroine Simone van Straten). Yet the guitar world is still a man's world. Women are heavily underrepresented in the annual guitar polls. And that's not justified.

For a while I toyed with the thought of writing a piece here in which I would look for the why of the low number of top female guitarists. But what is the use of that? I'd rather focus on women who do play brilliantly. First I call Simone van Straten. She and her band Sisters of Suffocation are very successful. Not for nothing did she manage to get a spot in the list of Gitarist.

"I deliberately play in an all female metal band."

It touches me what Sonia tells me. It has become a real life goal for her to expose more women to guitar music and persuade them to start playing guitar themselves, she says from Madrid where the guitarist is to record a new Cobra Spell record. "I myself just enjoy playing guitar so much. I grant that to everyone. I deliberately play in an all female metal band. Certainly the metal world consists mostly of men. I hope I can do a little bit to make that world less intimidating for young girls. I myself used to find that quite exciting sometimes: going to a concert where there were really almost only men."