I stopped talking an hour ago

Deborah M Withers' 'Women's liberation, relationships and the 'vicinity of trauma' is essential reading for anyone who organizes, participates in or is connected to feminist activism. I'd really like to see this conversation expanded to a point where the issues she addresses - the dis/function of trauma in feminist spaces, silencing in group activities, inchoate personal/collective voices and invisible/inarticulated languages of inter-personal oppression - can be properly confronted, and strategies for evolving the WLM out of these traps can be considered and implemented.

Withers takes the 70s women's lib movement (specifically Bristol-based groups) as a jump-off point, but I was struck by how the verbal accounts of those women who felt marginalized and silenced in supposedly safe spaces could just as easily be women of today, me even, speaking about their experiences in feminist and homosocial spheres.

Take a minute to sign up (if yr not already an Academia.edu member), and grab the paper, for free, here.

I ate the meklah fruit, I fell in love with blues

My Q+A with Cat and Stas of rad Sub Pop duo THEEsatisfaction is out now, in the April edition of Diva magazine. We talked about recreating samples, the (unspoken) power of instrumentals (and slang), hip hop rebellion, and making music "travel". THEE are crazy talented, and also the first out black queer female outfit to be signed to Sub Pop. I've been hyping/hearting them for some time (here and here).

 

Long, supine upon the bank, his gaze is fixed on his own eyes, twin stars

I got sick of seeing all those 'ROCK IS DEAD aka where have all the men gone?' articles in January, so I wrote about how awesome rock in 2011 sounded to me.

Take a lathe, and scrape all the glitter off

I saw this in Liberty, just before Christmas. How do girls know what they really want when we grow up in a world that force feeds them aspirations before they've hit puberty? It made me think about the wild yearning power of Courtney Love's early journals, and about how we use diaries to write our futures, how they are spell books, a place where we pour out our secrets and desires.  I couldn't see a target age group sticker on this creepy little life-planner, but the bold, bright font colours look like crack for the pre-school crowd. I wanna go back and slip queer-feminist zines inside each copy.

"A lot of people don't want to see a woman on the mic, just like they don't want to see a woman play an electric guitar"

"Race to me is a low blow that people just use when they have nothing real to hate on. To me, being a woman is the biggest hindrance; a lot of people don't want to see a woman on the mic, just like they don't want to see a woman play an electric guitar. There are a million and one things that I go through as a woman and as a human being that we can all relate to, and colour is just an extremely small thing to me.  I have to view it that way if I want the rest of the world to take on that mind frame too."
Iggy Azalea, talking to Dazed Digital on being a white female rapper. 

I originally intended to lift the guitars and mics comment of the title as a stand-alone, because it draws a smart line between the misogyny of those two worlds, and confronts ideas of permission, but Azalea's 'woman is the nigga of the world' stance is ultimately problematic if she can't/won't also address her co-existing privilege: whiteness. I suppose Azalea means "colour" (not the preferred nomenclature) is a "small thing" in terms of artistic ability, and women *are* still very much the visible minority in rap, but race is an inherent and loaded issue in hip hop, and dismissing her white privilege in that context comes across as willfully ignorant.



Like Eminem and Yelawolf, Azalea's whiteness grants her a privileged otherness in her adopted rap world, the same 'temporary minority' status that earned Kreayshaun her hype. Her gender complicates this, SURE, and we/she should have that discussion, but if we whitewash one of the things that's so clearly allowed Azalea to stand out in the hip hop blogosphere, we're only having half the conversation. If Azalea chooses to capitalize on and appropriate black culture's socio-musical traditions, she has an obligation to address that culture's histories, and the role her whiteness plays in that sphere. Subvert responsibly!



Eminem and Yelawolf earned their seats because, skills aside, their experiences intersect with rap's black working-class narratives; they have shared oppressions, and can express a complex, if sometimes problematic, solidarity. Maybe the "rural" Australian background Azalea is loosely attached to in interviews is equally working-class, maybe that's why she dismisses her whiteness as a "small thing"; there's certainly explicit links to be made between working-class gender stereotypes and the "ratchet rap" tropes Azalea favours. If that's the case, I'd really like to see Iggy elaborate on that and acknowledge those dynamics.

Yela is astute where Azalea, perhaps unwittingly, obfuscates. He made his opinions known last year when asked about White Girl Mob and V Nasty using the N-bomb. What starts out as an initially specific response turns, quite naturally, into a wider, holistic discussion on the systematic appropriation of black music cultures, and how white emcees have a duty to conduct themselves responsibly in these spheres:

"You don't take that shit lightly. Hip hop...American music culture is black culture. Don't ever get it fucked up. Know your roots, know who the fuck you're getting this music from."

Quite. 

I've been holding off on this post because I have an exclusive Tricia Rose quote sitting in my inbox that I'm waiting on permission to include, but it feels pertinent to post now, given Azalea's just-announced XXL Freshman cover. Over to Ms Banks...

01.03.12 update

I spoke to Tricia Rose last year about all the debate around Kreayshaun. Our conversation covered most of the issues discussed above, and given the parallels between Azalea and Kreayshaun, the Prof has kindly given me permission to include part of that conversation here:

"There is a long and painful history of black musical (verbal, clothing, dance) and other cultural styles being appropriated by white artists and industry for far greater profit than black artists could garner. At the same time these same cultural styles are disparaged, labeled inferior or denied legitimation and under-documented. This is the proper context for the criticism you say white female rapper Kreayshaun is facing . However, it is not reasonable at this point in the industry saturated genre of hip hop to pretend that hip hop style has not become a global style to which all people around the world have been exposed and perhaps have found deep interest and appreciation. The main issues for me are:  how much does an artist know about the styles, codes, tropes, and traditions he/she is borrowing? Do they know the racial dynamics at play that consistently provide more opportunity for whites than blacks, even when they play in black cultural backyards? Is the white artist in question willing to be honest about this dynamic and express proper appreciation, solidarity and connection to the traditions and the people behind the music?"  

Complexities, treacheries, we watch through glass, we see nothing

I reviewed the new Tindersticks album, The Something Rain, for The Guardian.  Its an affecting record, streaked with jazz and loss and intimacy, and Stuart Staples' sad, rich, baritone poetry, which I think has the same kind of andro magic that I hear in Antony Hegarty.


 What I didn't have wordcount/space to say in the review:

The 9 min spoken-word opener 'Chocolate' (perfomed by David Boulter) felt initially problematic to me. It essentially ends with a MTF joke, which I think, despite being one of the worst, hackneyed transphobic punchlines, is in this song's context an unexpectedly tender (if clumsy) comment on love, acceptance and human connection, and about how precious that is when life can be so sad and ridiculous and expect so much of us. It's a shabby, ragged kind of love song (cheap pints, woodchip bedsits, Fox biscuits) and totally lacking the high jinx comedy of Cukor's films, but it made think of the queertastic outro scene in Some Like It Hot when Jack Lemon's honeytrap drag act (which by the end of the film had evolved in to a genuine trans ID) is revealed to his magnificently nonchalant millionaire lover as they ride off in to the sunset in a shiny-white fancy speedboat, with machine gun gangsters on their tail and Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis (in his own Cary Grant drag) making out in the back seat, the uniting factor between the film and song being not the punchline but the reveal that follows it, subverting that "SHE is a HE!" pantomime in to an act of trans acceptance/empowerment. 

Grief knits the album together, but I found the erotic instances the most exciting, particularly 'Show Me Everything'. Tight percussion, strip tease bassline, faintly sleazy organ notes and charged, ambivalent desire, glazed with numbness ("latex on my fingertips, we touch through glass, we feel nothing") but wanting and hoping ("We could take those stones, we could build something") to feel everything.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/16/tindersticks-the-something-rain-review

I wake up, eyes to the sun

I guested on the Guardian Music podcast this week, and talked about Georgia-based Rough Trade quartet Alabama Shakes, ex punkband kids playing a noisy, joyful fusion of blues, rock, gospel and classic RnB. Its easy to imagine Brittany Howard's huge, gravelly vox filling a revival tent, but they came up covering AC/DC and Led Zep as much as Otis Redding and James Brown, and shun the 'soul revival' label in favour of straightforward RnR. I heard their wrenching live version of 'You Aint Alone' before anything else, and was struck by Brittany in the same way I remember feeling when I heard Millie Jackson's 'If Loving You Is Wrong' as a kid, overcome by the sheer force of the song's emotion, swept up in those tumultuous leaps from huge, frayed, stomping wails to desperately hushed, shivering from-the-gut whispers. 

Dyke comix, from Second Wave counter-culture to the New 52

My Diva magazine feature on the herstory of lesbians in comics is out today. I'm not ashamed to say that writing it sent me a little crazy. Its such a niche branch of comics, with roots in Second Wave feminsim and late 60s underground counter-culture publishing, so all those early artists and volumes proved tricky to track down and draw out. The power of the lesbian phone tree came good, and I ended up e-talking with Mary Wings, Trina Robbins and Roberta Gregory, the real 70s matriarchs of dyke comix. Can you imagine emailing with women who were creating lesbian legacies in a pre-internet world? Seeing the PDF panels of 'Sandy Comes Out' in my inbox one chilly November morning was a BIG deal. I spent an obsessive amount of time drawing up timelines and cruising Amazon and Ebay, to moderately successful ends, for obscure issues, and spent a lot of cash padding out my collection with volumes I could ill-afford. I plan on pouring everything I've amassed into a bumper-sized zine at some point.

In the mean time, head to Queer Zine Archive Project to download a copy of Roberta Gregory's Dynamite Damsels. 
  

And because there appears to be a tag limit in Blogger: Wimmins Comix, Gay Comix, Tits N Clits, The 24 Group, Dianne DiMassa, Leanne Franson, Erica Smith, Girl Frenzy, Alison Bechdel, Erika Moen, Carrie McNinch, Arial Schrag, Michelle Tea, Laurenn McCubbin, the Hernandez Bros, Jennifer Camper, Nicole J Georges, Cristy C Road, Ross Campbell, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Gail Simone.

"Step into your grace"

I dig Tori's advice about how women should navigate aging. I think she means embracing the process, and owning the value in it. But I quibble with the word "grace", mostly because it has such well-behaved connotations. When bestowed upon women, its a word rewarded to a very obedient and composed kind of beauty. Its also, in my experience, a substitute for "careful".

I guess it suits Tori, because she's made her icon outta princessy high femme, and so the "great queen" is, for her, a fittingly regal progression; but I really enjoy seeing older women being loud and subversive, crashing their way through old age, wearing purple and really fucking things up. 

Sometimes I've got the jungle under my skin

I wrote this, in response to Chuck Klosterman's beatdown of Tune Yards and their Pazz and Jop win. Seems like a pertinent time to post some of my Feb 2011 conversation with Merrill that didn't get published in the final interview, mostly the parts concerned with age, beauty/gender standards, feminism, facial-hair and finding freedom in queer/androgynous voices.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/26/chuck-klosterman-tune-yards

*** 

ME: You said in a previous interview that, “in my experience that its really good for women of all ages to see other women being weird and bizarre and loud, so I wondered if we could talk about what weird, bizarre loud women have inspired you, and also I would add to that that your dad pointed out earlier that a lot of the work you put in (to Tune Yards) was during your 20s and that you didn't really start feeling like you were successful until after 30s, which is really empowering considering that the majority of successful pop women tend to be under 30.

MERRILL: Isn’t it weird?  Which unfortunately also connects with what physical image they’re able to convey at that age. I mean they’re beautiful, model-ish, but - and I’ve talked to other women musicians about this - its hard to be un-groomed, no make up - as a woman

ME: Anywhere, let alone on stage.

MERRILL: Exactly. Its been really hard for me, even in pictures of myself that I think are great - they don't always get a good reaction from people because I don't….maybe I have…I don't, an atypical image for a woman to present.

ME: Just the fact that you even have to be aware of that is upsetting.

MERRILL: I know. Men have a lot of pressure, but they have a way wider range, they can be a really doofus-looking  dude, like real pot belly, and still get respect for what they’re are. Even stuff like…having hair on a woman’s upper lip….I’ve noticed….and that was a huge deal for me growing up. All these things that keep coming up are like teenage things for me, like shaving every hair on your body. When people see pictures of a woman with hair on her upper lip, its like - she has a mustache and that makes her too masculine for what is considered beautiful. 

ME: It's the gender binary.

MERRILL: Mmm hmm. And every woman I know has hair on their upper lip, and most of them shave that shit, or wax it. If I were ten years old right now, I wouldn't know that. I wouldn't have any examples of women with facial hair in the imagery I see. And so to be a woman with hair on her upper lip….I don't wanna be "the girl with mustache", necessarily, but I do wanna provide…and that's with everything, I mean, that's one example.

ME: Do you feel like your always having to navigate whether you stay true to what you believe in or do you compromise who you are?

MERRILL:  Totally. And I usually chose not to compromise who I am.

ME: I wax, and every time I do it I feel like I kinda betray some of the things I believe in, but I had a conversation with my mum, and she said the things is, as women, there are already so many obstacles laid out in front of us, so you have to pick your battles. As an artist, you’re allowed to fuck things up a little, there’s more of a space for you to do that.

MERRILL: I know. Its true. I may, at some point, say I can’t stand this anymore. On the comment boards, every comment is about my facial hair, more than it is about my music. It hasn't really been like that - that's more like the nightmare in my head. But I think, unfortunately, that's so in this culture, involved with image, that’s the first thing that happens; Its not about the music, its about what the picture is…and I don't wanna be the poster child for this one thing, I wanna be my artist self. And there are enough hurdles, so at some point, there are these things I have to give myself permission for, and that means, you know, the way I dress and things. Its constant; like, do I wanna fight this battle? I just wanna do something where I don't have to explain myself.

ME: Kathleen Hanna said she had very few women to emulate when she was growing up, and had to be the idol that she wished she’d had.  I can think of many women in pop who had facial - not that that's your defining feature, of course…

MERRILL: I mean Patti has always been someone who embraced the masculine image, and…not embraced, took it! Like, “this is MINE now”. She appropriated it. And I appreciated that. I mean Ani DiFranco, I always say although with her…I was a freak for her when she first came out because who else was doing what she was doing when she came out…her voice, it was gnarly at the edges, and she was all about not being pretty and conventional, and being fiery, and while I don't connect with the music as much any more, it was so important for me to have that. She was the like the primary female icon in a world of….I mean even like, I can love Tori Amos at times, but there was a femininity with her that I didn't connect with. And then there’s thee women like Miriam Makeba, who come form different cultures, who’s voices are allowed to take on this different character. People ask me sometimes if I’m ever compared to Nina Simone and I’m like….yes, but no, that's not like…her voice is so epic, and so her own, that I hate to make that comparison,  but she has that “what gender is she?”

ME: I remember asking my mum the first time she played me a Nina record - “is this a man or a woman?”

MERRILL: Totally. Listening to her, I realised that in music, there is this ability to shake off those stifling ideas about what women are 'meant' to be.