From: owner-wireless-digest@smoe.org (wireless-digest) To: wireless-digest@smoe.org Subject: wireless-digest V2 #148 Reply-To: wireless@smoe.org Sender: owner-wireless-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-wireless-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk wireless-digest Saturday, November 6 1999 Volume 02 : Number 148 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [Imogen] gender and music [Shirley Ye ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 10:15:03 -0800 From: Shirley Ye Subject: [Imogen] gender and music Remember that debate a couple months back about whether women were treated badly in the music business because of their gender? Well, Gillian Gaar has written a book called "She's a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock&Roll" (1992) and there is another book called "Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender" by Sheila Whiteley (1997) that deal with this issue. I mention the dates because Tori Amos isn't mentioned in either of these books =( But thy are still wonderful: both do a very good job of covering all aspects of women's role in music whether in punk, postpunk, girl groups, blues, pop videos. I think "Sexing the Groove" has a good bibliography that can give you good leads on anything else you may be interested in. A very nice Kate Bush section in both =) I have "She's A Rebel" and I am still reading snips here and there and like it a lot. Anyway here is a snip from the introduction of "She's a Rebel" just so you get an idea of what it talks about. "She's a Rebel" also covers - again selectively - the careers of female performers who are well known, examining the expreiences these artists have faced as women and placing them in the larger context of how those experiences have had an effect on their work as rock performers. Too often, one well-known female performer has been seen as representing all women performers. In interviews, the artist themselves sometimes comment on their being the only female rock performer in a certain position, when, in fact, there have been others; there is little sense of an ongoing tradition of women in the music industry. And the so-called "breakthrough" artists, who have confidently stated their position as women-in-rock only seems unusual because of the lack of well-known women involved in the rock industry, might be dismayed to to know that the same type of comments have been made by female performers a decade earlier - and may well be made a decade hence. Yte there has been a substantial increase in the visibility of women in the rock world, even if women-in-rock are still presented as something of a novelty.... When one considers the gains women have made on an industry-wide basis in the music business since the '50s, it becomes readily apparent how misleading a tag like "women-in-rock" is. Ultimately it promotes a perceived musical similarity between performers based on the fact that they are women - a similarity that is, in reality, non-existent. The flaw in this perception becomes clear whne you take it to its logical conclusion, which would mean devising a category for "men-in-rock" - writing articles on the new crop of "all-male bands," and perhaps, identifying the Beatles as "separatists" because they made "all-male records." ..."She's a Rebel" presents an exploration of the many roles women have played in the development of the rock industry, both onstage and off. Women-in-rock do have a similarity between them, but it is not simply because they are women. It is in the experience they have faced as women working in a male-dominated industry. "She's a Rebel" chronicles their side of the story. Shirley Ye Berkeley, California shye@uclink4.berkeley.edu I am not an angry girl, but it seems like I've got everyone fooled. Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger and never to their own fear. - -Ani Difranco, Not a Pretty Girl ------------------------------ End of wireless-digest V2 #148 ******************************