Gender Distorting Genre Distorting Gender: Exploring
Women's Rock Musicking Practices in Contemporary
Portugal
INTRODUCTION
1. Uses of rock music by women amateurs
This research explores the everyday uses of rock music by women rock
musicians, fans and DJs, in a specific place (Portugal) and in a specific time
frame (1990s-2014). It attempts to take the standpoint of women, and to
examine socio-musical action as it unfolds on the frequently overlooked stage of
everyday life, not just on “spectacular” rock stages. As such, this research
hopes to contribute to the growing body of scholarship on gender and music in
sociology and in popular music studies.
Everyday life is not considered an isolated sphere of the social, nor is it
considered to be mere routine or ordinary. In the tradition of interactionism,
phenomenology and ethnomethodology, people “practice” everyday life
(Certeau, 1984). The everyday world is where people perform social life,
(re)producing it, often challenging it, reconfiguring other spheres, other times
and spaces (DeNora, 2000; Pais, 2002; Pink, 2012; S. Scott, 2009).
My aim is to reframe women “amateur” rockers, and by the term
“amateur” I mean two things. On the one hand, I mean the colloquial definition -
“non-professional.” On the other hand, and in Hennion's (2001) sense,
“amateur” means to be a lover (amator is the latin for lover). In both senses,
however, amateurs are those who love music. They are also, therefore, music
users, active practitioners of a love for music, whether it involves playing an
instrument, singing, attending concerts, listening to records, DJing, etc. They
are, in other words, ‘doing things with music’.
In this thesis, I employ an ‘in-action’ focus (DeNora, 2000, 2011b,
Hennion, 2010, 2012) with the emphasis on following amateurs as they do
things with music ‘live’. I believe that if we follow human-music interactions, we
can also consider amateurs’ musical practices as “musicking” (Small, 1998,
p.9), which highlights music as a relational, collective, performative,
allencompassing activity (from composing to singing in the shower, from talking
about music to contributing in virtually any way to the making of a musical
event). And I hope to show how including all the configurations that the love of
music can assume – understanding rock music as rock musicking – has
analytical consequences. This perspective opens our eyes to the social,
technical and emergent features of what we speak of as ‘music’, and as ‘good’
music or ‘appropriate’ music. It highlights musicking as a social activity and an
active process. It also highlights musicking as an instance of “practicing culture”
(Calhoun & Sennett, 2007) and it restores music ‘consumption’ to the status of
an activity (Hennion & Gomart, 1999). Importantly, it opens music up to being
examined in terms of its network of connections between people, materials and
activities, and how these connections give rise to social phenomena such as
scenes, situations, social relations and aesthetics.
This analytical perspective allows me to explore the diversity and plurality
of what woman do with rock music and to restore that practice to its central role
in the production of gender writ large. As such, it connects to and advances
feminist scholarship that has criticised the marginalisation of the activities of
female music lovers – e.g. decorating bedroom walls with posters, dressmaking
and clothes customising, dancing, and so forth (McRobbie & Garber, 1990). I
want to consider all the possible forms of interaction with rock music that the
women I have studied performed, and to make their attachments to rock music
visible as they occur within mundane (everyday) settings.
By exploring these mundane practices, I believe we can greatly illuminate
the mutual shaping of genre and gender, a topic that places what people do with
objects in the spotlight, and vice versa (Pinch & Oudshoorn, 2003). To account
for the constitutive mutual relation between gender and music is to account for a
gendered way of (re)producing rock and a rocker way of (re)producing gender. It
is to study how gender shapes the rock music world, and how socio-musical
goods and socio-musical opportunities are allocated to gender and, at the same
time, how rock music is an “active ingredient” in the formation of gender (and
other social categories, such as class, race, age, and so forth) (DeNora, 2000,
2002, 2013; Dibben, 2002b; Green, 1997; O’Neill, 2012; Rolvsjord & Halstead,
2013; Roy & Dowd, 2010). In short, rock music is an “active ingredient” in
everyday life (DeNora, 2000, 2003a), in the sense that music is a mediator
between the society and experience (Hennion, 2001). Music is not just passively
shaped by the social/society (determined by social structures) nor passively
independent of it (a finished object), but with specific active possibilities that
differentiates it from other (non-musical) objects when appropriated by its users,
in situated contexts. This appropriation configures and is configured by aesthetic
agency, (gender) identity, subjectivity, opportunities for social interaction and
relationships, as well as contingency and serendipity.
My aim therefore is to understand how gender relations shape women’s
participation in rock, and to account for how women make sense of rock as an
active ingredient in the making of (gendered) identities.
1.1: Rock musicking: towards genre-in-action
Genre-in-action signals an understanding of genre as socio-material practice in
its collective, situated contexts of use (DeNora, 2011b). This research moves
away from an understanding of “genre-as-text”, common in musicology, and
from “genre-as-reflection” of society, most common in sociological approaches
that analyse homologies between music and society, and which are akin to the
production-of-culture approach (Dowd, 2004). As such, this research stands in
line with other studies on genre cultures, genre worlds, music communities or
music scenes (Frith, 1996; Hagen, 2012; Lena, 2012; Negus, 1999; Small,
1998; Straw, 1991; Toynbee, 2000). For example, in Banding Together, Lena
presents genre as a community of genre practitioners, as they tune in with
others, in specific contexts of use: “musical genres as systems of orientations,
expectations, and conventions that bind together industry, performers, critics,
and fans in making what they identify as a distinctive sort of music” (Lena, 2012,
p. 6).
Rock music has its own genre conventions, music technologies of
(re)production, artefacts, musical properties and styles, iconicity, discourses,
ways of listening, modes of attention and patterns of use over time. For
instance, in rock music, the iconic electric guitar, the loudness and the amplified
sound have held an important place within rock discourse since the late 1960s
(Théberge, 1997; Waksman, 1999; Walser, 1993).
Also, although listener/producer roles blur, these roles are distinct as they
are constituted through different socio-material practices (e.g. use of
instruments, use of the DJ mixer and CDs, playing, sequencing, using earplugs
or stereo, etc.). Thus, rock music cannot be used in a totally free way by its
users. Rock music “asks and does things” from/to its users (in a way that, say,
electronic dance music does not) because it has affordances.
The concept of affordances was originally formulated by the psychologist
J.J. Gibson. It has been used and refined in sociology and other disciplines (R.
Anderson & Sharrock, 1992; J. L. Davis & Chouinard, 2016; Streeck, 1996). In
music sociology, the concept helps to capture “how music’s specifically musical
properties and materials may – via their physical features (e.g. tempo, melodic
and harmonic structure) and their conventional associations (e.g. love songs) –
lend themselves to forms of being and doing” (DeNora, 2003b, p. 170).
Following this, my research question asks how rock music affords specific
gender performances and identities for women in Portugal.
To sum up, genres have affordances as they are appropriated by their
users. Genres construct and organize music-making and playing, selling and
listening – popular music genres are constructed within both a commercial and
socio-cultural process (Finnegan, 2007; Frith, 1996, pp. 88–89; Waksman,
1999, pp. 237–276). As Hennion (1999, 2001) also argues, amateurs are not
opposed to the market, they are derived (and derive their pleasures) from it, as
they share the categories and formats provided by the music industry. As such,
genres are forms that “hold us together” (Hennion, 2007).
However, this is not a straightforward process. New genres emerge and
expand, others decline. Because genres are “sociocultural classifications”,
genres revolve around rule testing and bending, through ongoing boundary
work processes that characterise music genres (Lena, 2012, p. 7; Frith, 1996, p.
93). As such, ‘genre trouble’ is worthy of study in itself, not a problem to be
avoided. And the process of rock’s boundary making is a form of gendered
genre trouble.
1.2: Gendering the genre: women rock amateurs
The literature has had a good deal to say about the gender and sexual politics
of rock music, identifying rock as a male-dominated activity. Going beyond this
theme however, scholars have also documented how rock music is actively
(re)produced as masculine through the social practices that organise rock music
– in other words, underlining how there is nothing essentially male or masculine
in rock itself (Leonard 2007; Cohen 1997; Whiteley 2000; Walser 1993).
Following this theoretical path, and taking insights from other disciplinary fields,
I aim to understand the ‘mutual shaping’ of genre and gender. That is to say, not
only how gender shapes the rock music genre, but also in which ways gender
identities, discourses and gender relations are constructed and enacted through
the uses of rock music – it being the case that both genre and gender are
understood as socially constructed and performative.
Although rock is a male-dominated field, there have been prominent
women performers who have received recognition, and noticeable feminist
music mo(ve)ments. However, women remain under-represented and
misrepresented both as musicians and fans (sexualised, derided or ghettoised)
in mainstream rock music and in the rock music press (Bayton, 1993;
Feigenbaum, 2005; Leonard, 2007, pp. 65–88; McRobbie, 1990).
This under-representation has contributed to a burgeoning compensatory
history of ‘herstories of rock’, from academic studies in the form of (new)
musicology, sociology, popular music and cultural studies to journalistic
accounts, as well as some(auto)biographies5 and interviews (Gordon, 2015; E.
McDonnell, 2013; Raha, 2004; P. Smith, 2011). So too, empirical studies have
documented how women musicians have entered a male-dominated music
industry (Bayton, 1998; Gaar, 1993; Gracyk, 2001; Leonard, 2007; O’Brien,
2002; Raphael & Harry, 1995; Reynolds & Press, 1995; Warwick, 2007;
Whiteley, 2000), and/or male-dominated local music scenes (Bayton, 1998;
Sara Cohen, 1991; Finnegan, 2007; Groce & Cooper, 1990). Studies have
focused on women’s involvement in specific music scenes and subcultures –
most notably, the riot grrrl movement (Downes, 2010; Driscoll, 1999; Gottlieb &
Wald, 1994; Keenan & Dougher, 2012; Leonard, 2007; Marcus, 2010;
Rosenberg & Garofalo, 1998; Schilt & Zobl, 2008; Strong, 2011), but also punk
(Leblanc, 1999; Reddington, 2012) or grunge (Schippers, 2002). Rock
scholarship has focused on media representations of women in popular music,
mostly well-known/famous musicians, but also fans. A critique of the negative
representations of female fans in music journalism, epitomised by the figures of
teenyboppers and groupies, has been systematically conducted (Carson, Lewis,
& Shaw, 2004; Ehrenreich, Hess, & Jacobs, 1992). However, the above
mentioned “compensatory” thread has left the actual practices and worlds of
female rock music fans unexplored – with a few notable exceptions, such as a
study of heavy metal fans (Hill, 2016), girls’ consumption of popular music (S.
Baker, 2004; Lincoln, 2014) or female involvement with specific artists
throughout their lives (T. Anderson, 2012; Vroomen, 2004). It is time women as
amateurs (musicians, fans and DJs), and their actual engagement with rock
music were taken seriously, at the everyday level. It is this form of women’s
musical world-making practices, in a specific time and location, which my
research will document.
5Rock autobiographies and memoirs are a popular literary genre (Stein & Butler, 2015; Swiss,
2005), and there has been a growth in this female rock literature from the 2000s onwards (Roś,
2017). This female rock literature is mostly divided (and somehow apart) according to its
authors: either written by female rock musicians (Roś, 2017) or written by groupies (Larsen,
2017). They have the focus of women’s experiences in the rock music industry in common, not
at an amateur level.
1.2.1: Women as rock music users: articulating standpoints
The focus of this research is on gender and popular music, rather than “women
in rock”6. The focus is not on sexual difference, but on the social construction of
gender relations, musically mediated. It will analyse the process through which
gendered (classed, sexed, raced) relations are made, unmade and remade. Or,
in other words, how women are doing and undoing gender (Butler, 1990; West
& Zimmerman, 2009), through rock music.
Feminist standpoint theories posit that all knowledge is situated
(Haraway, 1988). They aim at building knowledge from women’s lives (D. E.
Smith, 1987). Taking the perspective of the socially underprivileged (their
standpoint) will not distort the analysis; on the contrary, it will provide “strong
objectivity”, as it will be less partial and hence more objective (Harding, 1991).
Taking inspiration from these theorists, I argue that it is possible to analyse rock
– and the mutual shaping of genre and gender – from the standpoint of those
who practise it, women rockers. There is nothing essential or homogeneous
about the category “woman” – there are differences between women, as there
are similarities between women and men. In fact, feminist scholars have shown
how women’s experiences are diverse and contradictory (Harding, 1991, pp.
173–181). More recently, the term “intersectionality” captures this diversity more
systematically, drawing attention to the fact that gender intersects with other
categories, such as class, race, ability, age or sexuality (Choo & Ferree, 2010).
The compensatory history in popular music and other fields is in line with
early feminist and radical sociology research, which has made “giving voice” to
women’s experiences a feminist flag. The aim was to counter traditional sexist
research agendas, which implied that the voices of the powerless have been
silenced (Skeggs, 2001). However, this perspective has sometimes fallen into
the trap of essentialism and realism, both in tension with post-structural
perspectives, because it undertheorises institutional power relations (Simpson &
Lewis, 2005), and in tension with post-humanist perspectives in turn because it
under-theorises all the socio-materialities (social, technological and corporeal
relations) that constitute voices – which are neither pre-given, nor merely
6 The field of technology studies also signals this shift towards “gender and technology”, rather
than “women and technology” or “women in technology” (Lohan & Faulkner, 2004, pp. 320–
321).
verbal/linguistic, but socio-cultural-political constructions (Moser & Law, 1999;
Rolvsjord & Halstead, 2013).
Avoiding any essentialist (positivist) pitfalls, articulating voices highlights
the social construction of giving voice. This is based on three premises: voices
are not pre-given nor neutral (to give a voice is not to give a given voice), voices
emerge in situated contexts (including the research process). Finally, voices are
not exclusively verbal/linguistic, as there are non-verbal features of agency, from
“communicative musicality” to embodied agency (Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2013).
My research is underpinned by a feminist commitment to how women’s
voices get articulated through their uses of rock music, in order to “fight against
the waste of [subaltern] experience” experience” (B. de S. Santos, 2002).
1.3: The Portuguese Case
Amateurs do things with music in situated contexts, in specific times. I followed
women rock music amateurs in a specific location (Portugal) and in a specific
time frame (1990-2014).
The body of work on women and rock music stems from Anglo-Saxon
social sciences (sociology, cultural studies, popular music studies,
communication). Most studies on women rockers have been carried out in the
UK (Bayton,1998; Cohen, 1991; Downes, 2010; Leonard, 2007; Reddington,
2012; Robson, 2011), U.S.A. (Schippers, 2002; Clawson, 1993; LeBlanc, 1999)
and Australia (Bannister, 2010, Strong, 2010). Furthermore, case studies on
popular music and gender have focused on Anglo-saxon artists (Whiteley,
1997). In Europe, there is a growing body of work on gender and rock, to my
knowledge in France (Ortiz, 2004) in the Netherlands (Berkers, 2012), in Spain
(Wheeler, 2016) and in Italy (Varriale, 2016). In South America, the Brazilian riot
grrrl has been documented (Guerra, Gelain, & Moreira, 2017), as well as in
Chile (G. Becker, 2010).
The choice of Portugal as a case study is firstly intended to address the
gap in the social sciences and humanities literature, as there is no sociomusical
study on Portuguese women rockers. In this sense, my research is exploratory.
The study of popular music by Portuguese sociologists is fairly recent, which is
explained by the late institutionalisation of the social sciences in Portugal. This
also applies to gender studies (Âmancio e Oliveira, 2014; Neto, 2013; Pereira,
2012). The few existing studies of rock music in Portugal show that men
outnumber women as key protagonists. But they tell us little about the lived
experiences of women.
Secondly, Portugal, a southern European country, is an interesting case
study due to its specific position in the modern world-economic system
(Wallerstein). Portugal’s “semi-peripheral” condition, configures the specific
character of Portuguese society, marked by intermediate development, by
heterogeneity, and by the prominent role of the State (Santos, 1993). The
singularities in Portuguese socio-political-economic history and contemporaneity
(dictatorship and colonial war, the transition to democracy and the integration
into the European Union) all have implications in the production, distribution and
consumption of rock music.
Thirdly, because space/place, both physical and imagined, is an active
ingredient in musical experience, the choice to conduct empirical work in
contemporary Portugal is important. However, my research focus is not on a
national music landscape nor on the Portuguese music industry. My research
focus is, instead, on local music scenes, and amateur rockers, as they carry out
their non-professional or semi-professional activities in specific places. In this
sense too, my research is exploratory, as the research subject is a fleeting one,
given women rockers’ low-profile as “hidden musicians” and the often shortterm
participation of women in music-making activities (usually confined to
adolescence).
Local music scenes include both local and global dimensions, as
de/reterritorialisations create new listening communities that transcend local
boundaries (A. Bennett & Peterson, 2004; Kruse, 2010).
Hence, my research is on trans-local rock musicking practices in
contemporary Portugal (1990s-2014). These contemporary practices converge
upon an “aesthetic cosmopolitanism” as proposed by Regev studying Israeli
pop-rock music (Regev, 2007a, 2007b, 2013). Regev claims that the
standardisation of national music cultures along the lines of the pop-rock
aesthetic (expressive isomorphism) has allowed similarities (not differences) to
emerge in an “aesthetic cosmopolitanism” of late modernity. The pop-rock
aesthetics produce a shared sonic vocabulary (e.g. amplification) that pervades
everyday life across the (western) globe.
As a result, there is a blurring of the national specificities (and cultural
otherness) in the production, distribution and consumption of music that were
once much more influenced by Portuguese 20th century history. Although this
research is territorially bound to Portugal and to specific Portuguese cities, by
taking Portugal as a case study, I address broader issues that are of
significance in the field of socio-musical studies and gender studies. Namely,
the socio-material processes that both constrain and empower women (as a
minority group) doing and being in a masculinist world. I also examine how
people use aesthetic materials in the processes of performative gendered
identity making relationships with others, as well as world building.
1.4: Organization of the thesis
After this introduction, in chapter 2, I review the literature that informs my
theoretical approach: music-in-action (Part I). Next, I review the current body of
scholarship on gender and rock (Part II). I conceptualise music ecologies,
affordances and asylums, musical taste, musicianship and music learning,
drawing from the field of cultural and music sociology, but also taking insights
from other fields of study, such as cultural studies, media studies, STS, music
therapy, material culture, consumption and audience studies, as well as the
sociology of work and occupations. As the research followed a grounded theory
approach, and the literature was read while doing my research, the literature
review rationale is in itself data-driven. To end the literature review, I briefly
outline the historical socio-political context of Portugal (its semiperipheral
condition and the women’s socio-political status). I then discuss the emergence
and place of rock in this country, based on the current (Portuguese)
sociomusical literature on rock in Portugal. This third part will work as a prelude
for the data chapters.
In chapter 3, I describe the research process undertaken. I will present
the participants that are the key actors in this thesis. I move to the
methodological issues (data analysis, validity and ethical issues) that are
informed by a grounded theory approach and feminist methodological concerns.
The following chapters (4-15) are the empirical ones, where I present data
guided by emerging themes from the fieldwork (Smart, 2009 as cited in
Einarsdóttir, 2012).
Four main threads underpin the data chapters. First, I document the ways
in which gender shapes access to music worlds. Here the focus will be on
gendered pathways into rock musicking practices. As found in other studies, the
role of family (fathers, but also brothers), (male) peers and boyfriends/partners
(rock couple cultures) in access to instruments, instrumental learning and band
membership is crucial (chapter 4 and chapter 5). Adding to this literature, my
findings unpack the ‘black box’ of getting access to male networks or parental
support, by showing the embodied gendered performance it entails (chapter 6).
My findings also show that these processes unfold throughout someone’s
lifetime, expanding on other research scopes that tend to focus on youth or
ageing.
Secondly, I detail band membership in two different socio-musical spaces
which shape musical participation in different ways: a male-centred band
giving rise to phenomena such as instrument segregation and
multiinstrumentality (chapter 7) and the female band (chapter 8), where I also
discuss the appropriation of riot grrrl, grunge and girl power in the Portuguese
context. Finally, I account for women’s discourses on musicianship (chapter 9).
Having acknowledged the gender segregated rock music worlds, and
how women negotiate their positioning, the third thread moves to a more
productive outlook on the uses of rock music in constructing gendered,
embodied musical identities through the use of each of the main instruments
that compose the band – voice, strings and drums – with a focus on the
gendered playing body, the socio-materialities of playing and the pleasures of
playing (chapter 10, 11 and 12).
The fourth thread focuses on amateurs’ rock musicking practices,
documenting activities, crafts and services that have been overlooked. In
chapter 13, I unpack the ‘black box’ of a rock music DJ set, following women
rock DJs as they “play the song”, de-scripting the mixer and ‘doing gender’ in
the set. Chapter 14 illustrates rock crafting practices: clothes and accessory
making and baking. Inspired by a DIY ethos, reconfiguring domesticity and
traditional female roles, these rockers (re)produce the ‘sight of sound’ and craft
rock worlds’ material cultures. Finally, in chapter 15 I show how rock moms
pass on their love of music, reconstructing themselves as (rock) mothers.
I then present the Conclusions, an overview of the research. I consider
its limits, and I offer some reflections on directions for future work.
LITERATURE REVIEW
This section is divided into three main parts.
In Part I, I will present the theoretical lens through which I analyse the
empirical data. I follow a “music sociology” in action approach, one which takes
artwork itself seriously, through the way it affords identity, agency, bodily action,
sociability to its amateurs, as they are appropriated in situated contexts (2.1.1).
The performative approach to music that music sociology undertakes brings the
music user’s body to the fore, considering how music affords embodied action
(2.1.2). Everyday life is the privileged lens through which to watch music’s
affordances as practice and process (everyday life is not a different social
sphere). And the literature on leisure sets the affordances of musicking on an
empirical plane, from music-making to personal listening (2.1.3). In the style of a
short conclusion, I restate the main theoretical tools of music sociology in the
context of the post-critical arts sociology (2.1.4).
In Part II, I will review the literature available on rock music and its gender
and sexual politics. I start by stating my approach to music as a mediator of
gender identity, and the working definition of gender as performative doing, as
emergent in social interaction within institutionalized practice (2.2.1). I introduce
the main feminist movements and moments of girls’ and women’s engagement
in rock (2.2.2) followed by the way those mo(ve)ments (and others) construct
gender performances in rock worlds, both the gender subject positions on-stage
and off-stage (2.2.3), as documented by the literature. Rock music is a
gendered genre, with specific gender stereotypes and ideologies (e.g. creative
male artist versus passive, sexualised female consumer; serious artistic rock
versus commercial feminised pop) that circulate and persist in the music press
(2.2.4). These gender ideologies have material effects on (gender) segregation
and other exclusionary forms of musical practice, at the level of the music
industry and local musicianship, but also in music making or fandom (2.2.5). I
then zoom in to detail gender segregation in fan practices and musical leisure
(2.2.5.1). Afterwards, I show how gender segregated dynamics shape music
making practices, both in the music industry (2.2.5.2) and at a local level. In this
matter, I detail the gender organisational culture of amateur rock, and how girls
and women negotiate their socio-musical roles (2.2.5.3). Finally, I focus on
gender segregation in the rock band, and on the gendered meanings associated
with playing and performing rock instruments (2.2.5.4).
In Part III, I present the place where my empirical work will be conducted:
Portugal. I present the main socio-political characteristics of the country that has
historically shaped the production, distribution and consumption of rock music
until the present day. I dedicate special attention to the sociology of popular
music made in contemporary Portugal, and how music and gender have been
portrayed.
Part I – Music-in-action
2.1: Music sociology: Towards a socio-ecological understanding of music
The issue of the “artwork itself”, to quote Becker (2006), has been re-addressed
in the current sociology of art (Zolberg, 2014). It is concerned with aesthetic
experience and with actual engagements with artworks(DeNora, 2000; Frith,
1990; Hennion & Grenier, 2000; Tota, 2014; Witkin, 1995). This shift is in line
with broader developments in the social sciences, as Acord & DeNora (2008)
described, namely: 1) the ‘strong program’ in cultural sociology (Alexander &
Smith, 2001), which understands “social action as cultural performance” and
performative action (an approach indebted to the seminal work of Victor Turner
(1986); 2) the ‘practice turn’ (Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & Savigny, 2001) 3) and
the performance turn (Eyerman & McCormick, 2006). Hennion (2012) adds
another turn, 4) the mediation turn in the analyses of institutional, material and
human intermediaries.
This concern with artworks resonates with Actor-Network Theory (ANT).
That is to say that it takes into account the agency of non-human actors
(actants), of which art works are one kind. In ANT, material artefacts are
conceptualised as mediators of human activity (distributed agency). But ANT
studied laboratories, where the ‘material agency’ of objects in connection with
talk and practice, could be seen to contribute to how scientific work got done
(Latour & Woolgar, 1986; Lynch, 1985; Pickering, 1995).
More generally, it also resonates with studies of material culture, which
have long been focusing on the role of objects – their specific material and
sensuous properties – in human (inter)action. One piece of work which has
been Influential in the sociology of the arts (as in other disciplinary fields) has
been Alfred’s (Gell, 1998) anthropological work on assigning agency to artefacts
and artworks (art-as-agency). Gell, like other contemporary material culture
scholars shows how objects’ meanings produce social relations through their
uses by individuals and collectivities, through the way people talk about objects
and how objects are located in larger cultural narratives (Appadurai, 1986;;
Kopytoff, 1986; Vannini, 2009; Woodward, 2007).
In this vein, and putting forward a more dynamic understanding of
(musical) objects-human interaction or artefacts-in-use in situated contexts
(Suchman, 2007), I use the concept of affordances. What can affordances
afford?
As described in Chapter 1, the concept of affordances, within a
socioecological tradition, has been a useful way to approach music, suiting a
sociomusical research that draws together the concerns of new musicology
[“How musical discourse could shape or reflect society”] and sociology [“How
society shaped music”] (DeNora, 2003a, p. 41), allowing a practical
understanding of how music comes to have meanings and can become a
template for action (Ansdell, 2014; D. Clarke & Clarke, 2011; E. Clarke, 2005;
DeNora, 2003a; Dibben, 2001, 2012; Windsor & de Bézenac, 2012).
Affordances allow us to go beyond the divide of music-as-text versus
music-as-context (DeNora, 2003a), towards music-as-action.
Along with affordances, there are people’s abilities, and the relationship
between dispositions and abilities, captured in the idea of “learned affordances”
(E. Gibson & Pick, 2000).This idea is one that stretches back to Howard
Becker’s (1953) classic study on “becoming a marijuana user”, which described
the interactional, tacit, informal, situated components of learning which initiate a
novice marijuana user into the experience of being high, and activate the effects
of the drug: how one learns to smoke, to create the symptoms, recognise them
and connect them to the drug use. Becker showed how dispositions towards
objects and the environment are “built up in the course of learning” (H. Becker,
1953, p. 235) and in ways that demand work should be done by users (in his
case, marijuana users) and in ways that structure actual experience.
As with marijuana, so too with music, in and through what music is found
to afford, structures for action can be provided, in the sense that “doing music is
simultaneously doing other things: “thinking and remembering, feeling,
moving/being, and co-operating, co-ordinating, and sometimes colluding with
others” (DeNora, 2003a, p. 165). As such, music can inform consciousness,
action, subjectivity and emotion (E. Clarke, Dibben, & Pitts, 2009; Juslin &
Sloboda, 2011; Sloboda, 2005).
The entanglement of sonic materials with corporeal, physical, emotional
and psychic states signals a move (Gilbert, 2004), towards musical affect in
practice (DeNora, 2000, 2003a, 2011a; Finnegan, 2012; Grossberg, 1988).
There is an emotional and cognitive dimension at play in human-object
interaction, recognized by a “theory of resonance” (T. E. McDonnell, Bail, &
Tavory, 2017), that shows how (cultural) objects are ‘in action’ when actors use
them for problem-solving, world-building and meaning-making (in the pragmatist
vein of John Dewey or William James). As such, objects’ meanings emerge
through the actual (not presumed) social interactions between people, cultural
objects and situations, whereby actors continuously interpret and reevaluate the
world around them in response to repeated interaction with cultural objects (T.
E. McDonnell et al., 2017, p. 2). Capturing music’s role as a mediator of the
social, DeNora suggests that: “affordances are produced through an interaction
between people, interpretations and decisions and the use of materials.
Affordances are the product of practices of appropriation, achieved in and
through practical action (…)” (DeNora, 2011b, p. 162), in a specific context in a
specific time. In fact, it is only when music users link or associate – using ANT’s
metaphor – music and other things that music can afford something. Without
making assumptions a priori about those links (as Hennion would put it), about
“what” music might do to people (music’s effects), sociologists should follow
agents as they do things with music (DeNora, 2003a, p. 41).
Against this backdrop of affordance/appropriation, we can now return to the
study of amateur musicking with a clearer understanding of how to musick is to
build a world, to make lines of action, to produce (our)selves and to curate
scenarios for social (inter)action.
Amateurs and the pragmatics of taste
Against the view of music lover as a cultural dope, Hennion proposes the figure
of the amateur, as an active practitioner of the love of music:
the amateur (in the broad sense of art lover) is a virtuoso of
experimentation, be it aesthetic, technical, social, mental, or corporeal.
She is the model of an inventive and reflexive actor, tightly bound to a
collective, continuously forced to put into question the determinants of
what she likes. She is as self-aware about pieces and products as about
the social determinants and mimetic biases of her preferences; about the
training of her body and soul as about her ability to like music, the
technical devices of appreciation and the necessary conditions of a good
feeling, the support of a collective and the vocabulary progressively
designed to perform and intensify her pleasure. Studying diverse
amateurs, then, provides a better understanding of our attachments
(Hennion, 2012)
It is the diversity and combination of amateurs’ practices, supports and devices
as they use music, that, as Hennion argues, should produce useful typologies of
forms of music loving: from the practice of an instrument, singing, listening to
records at home or in the car to concert going. These are all possible (and not
mutually exclusive) forms of attachment to music (Hennion, 2001). Hennion’s
concern with the diversity of music listening formats is shared by Michael Bull
(2000), who has proposed a typology of music’s uses, rather than – as in
Bourdieusian-inspired music sociology – typologies of users. Hennion
considers taste as a collective, situated, pragmatic activity, intersubjectively
accomplished by specific amateurs (Hennion, 2010). Hence, taste is a modality
of attachment to the world and is one of those “things that hold us together”
(Hennion, 2007).
2.1. 2: Musicking as an embodied performative event
In his emphasis on taste ‘as performance’, Hennion (2001) focuses on the
performative character of music and musical engagement. He moves away from
the meaning in-the-text to be decoded by actors who use it as an index for
cultural capital and displays of power, reflecting social class; instead, this
perspective understands music as social performance – music becomes a
performative embodied social activity. This is a topic that has been subject to
considerable focus within socio-music studies in recent years, across different
disciplinary fields (Atkinson, 2006; H. Becker & Faulkner, 2009; Boia, 2014;
DeNora, 2002; Green, 1997; Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2017; Hara, 2013;
McCormick, 2009, 2015; Procter, 2013; Rolvsjord & Halstead, 2013).
Putting the body at the center of this performative event will, as I shall
describe, be central to our understanding of women and rock. Bodies are
integral to the construction of self-identity, interpersonal interaction, and
emotion, in late modernity – the body project (Giddens, 1991; Shilling, 2005).
The body is (re)produced through a range of bodily practices and modifications
(Featherstone, 2007). Bodies’ (self)regulation and representation are two of the
issues regarding ‘bodily order’ (B. S. Turner, 2008).
The body is also social and “embodiment is not an isolated project of the
individual; it is located within a social world of interconnected social actors” (B.
S. Turner, 2008, p. 245).
In the ‘society of individuals’, bodies who do not consume correctly are
associated with irresponsibility and moral inferiority (Bauman, 2007). On the
other hand, “looking good” is “feeling right” (S. Woodward, 2005), as health and
well-being are linked to physical appearance (Monaghan, 2001).
There are “schemes of perception and appreciation inscribed in the
bodies of the interacting agents” (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 63). This concept of bodily
capital is expanded by Wacquant, showing how social actors’ bodily capital is an
embodied learning process over time, which is carefully managed (Wacquant,
2004, pp. 127–149).
In Goffman’s dramaturgical tradition, and drawing on Mauss’s legacy on
techniques of the body, we enact bodies through “self-reflexive body
techniques” (Crossley, 2004, 2015).
As Mol & Law (2004) propose, not only we “have” bodies (bodies too
have their materialities, such as size/height, weight, color, genitalia), but we also
“do” bodies, and we “become” bodies over time, and in specific contexts, more
or less voluntarily, with more or less control, more or less consciously. The issue
at stake is to study empirically in what ways social actors “have”, “do” and
“become” their bodies.
This focus and these concerns are integral to the practice of musicking, where
indeed, as we shall see, there are many themes and issues relating to the
music-performing body.
The musician’s body: embodied occupational identities
Within the social organization of rock, where live music is a locus for the
ideology of authenticity (Auslander, 2006a; Moore, 2010; Pattie, 2007), the body
is on display and communicating (Crossley, 2015; Davidson, 2005).
Here we can learn from the sociology of work scholars, as musicians’ bodies
become an occupational resource giving rise to embodied occupational
identities (C. Sanders, 2006; Driver & Bennett, 2015). Musicians’ occupational
identities become deeply embedded in aesthetic, bodily and emotional
dimensions, which all come together in the (embodied) interactions that take
place in everyday exchanges between actors at work (in this case, not only the
musicians and the audience, but also sound engineers, venue managers, etc.).
Part of on-stage “body work” (Shilling, 2005; Wolkowitz, 2006) demands
(embodied) “aesthetic labour” (Witkin & DeNora, 1997; Witz, Warhurst, &
Nickson, 2003), as musicians’ corporeality is subject to the aesthetics of bodily
style and presentation. As the body has gendered and sexual meanings, there
is a trend to the sexualisation of work. Adkins (2000) studying the hotel industry,
shows that female attractiveness and fetishisation of uniforms and appearance
were “part of the job”. Cockburn (1991) reports similar findings in a retail
company.
For musicians being onstage also demands (embodied) “emotional labour”
(Hochschild, 1983). As with flight attendants, musicians are also expected to
configure themselves as specific types of agents, using specific forms of
emotional display (smiling, looking friendly, helpful) that “embody” the
organisation’s purposes, even if they are not contractually written.
Musicking as embodied action
Beyond embodied occupational identities, musicians enact their body, as
playing is embodied action (H. Becker & Faulkner, 2009; DeNora, 2002;
Sudnow, 2001).
One important way that music ‘performs’ the musician/music consumer’s
body is through how it works as a “prosthetic device” (DeNora, 2000). Taking
aerobics as her case study, DeNora shows how music can afford bodily
entrainment, suppress pain or fatigue (by facilitating ‘embodied awareness’, and
states of cool or warm consciousness (DeNora, 2011c). DeNora describes how
this idea is by no means new: she draws on Paul Willis’s ethnographic study on
bike boys and their taste for fast-paced music as an empirical example of how
music entrains the body, as constitutive of trajectories and styles of conduct in
real time. As one of the boys put it; ‘if you hear a fast record, you’ve got to get
up and do something, I think. If you can’t dance any more, or if the dance is
over, you’ve just got to go for a burn-up [motorcycle ride]’ (as cited in DeNora,
2000, p. 7).
In addition to music’s role as an organising medium for bodily capacity,
music also offers specific kinetic and tactile-kinaesthetic experiences in terms of
how it is played and made. Performers hold, touch, feel, and tinker with their
instruments. They develop physical dexterity and motor coordination as part of
their craft. However, the significance of (vibrant) physicality and the sensorial
experience of art works (music included) has been marginalised, not just in the
sociology of music (Boia, 2014; DeNora, 2000; Driver & Bennett, 2015), but in
sociological analysis generally (Blackman, 2008).
Music affords different actions for different bodies and different types of
bodily movement, through actual bodily-material practices, related to playing
and listening techniques. The piano player develops specific tacit “ways of the
hand” (Sudnow, 2001), over time the music listener accumulates sensibilities to
specific ways of hearing (DeNora, 2000; Hennion, 2001), and dancers are music
lovers that activate specialised listening practices – dance is also a performance
of musical taste (Fogarty, 2015).
As has been observed, the body can be enacted in multiple ways (Mol,
2002). In relation to rock music the body is enacted in specific ways. Heavy
metal affords headbanging in a way that indie rock does not – the body gets
musically entrained by tempo and by patterned (institutional) modes of body
behaviour (DeNora, 2002, p. 22). The body emerges from the interaction with
objects (e.g. music, a guitar) within an environment (a gig, at home rehearsing,
in the car etc.). Bodies (and bodily action) emerge through human-music
interaction becoming music cyborgs, to use Haraway’s cyborg metaphor as
other scholars have done, highlighting the potential for research of the
articulation of (physical) bodies and identities through technologies and its
socio-material practices and their ‘dance of agency’ (Pickering).
2.1.3: Musicking in everyday life: identity and sociability
Everyday life here is understood as a site where experience and sense-making
unfold, and therefore it is understood as practice and process, not as a different
site that contrasts with the extraordinary, nor as a ‘taken-for-granted’
background that is the context of experience (A. Bennett, 2005a; DeNora, 2014;
Pais, 2002; Pink, 2012; S. Scott, 2009). Instead, the everyday becomes a
privileged site to explore experience and interaction.
The call to study 'music in everyday life' comes from the recognition that
music is pervasive and “ubiquitous” (Kassabian, 2013) in contemporary daily
life. Music is part of the western societies’ “soundscape” (Schafer, 1993). Music
offers a soundtrack for work, on the factory floor (Korczynski, 2011), at the office
(Dibben & Haake, 2013), when shopping (DeNora & Belcher, 2001), and in
public spaces. Music is also on TV (Negus & Street, 2002) and on the radio
(Longhurst, Bagnall, & Savage, 2001), in advertising (Tota, 2001), films,
computer game soundtracks and telephone ringtones and so forth.
Within popular music studies, the focus on everyday life has been a
corrective against field biases, namely a focus on (male, heterosexual) youth,
and spectacular styles. Against a reading of popular music as either resistant, or
co-opted, there has been a shift towards a more pragmatic and balanced
assessment of the role of music in the everyday life of people (not just the
“rebellious youth”). Recently, the focus has shifted from youth to ageing (A.
Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012; A. Bennett & Taylor, 2012; Hodkinson, 2011;
Jennings & Gardner, 2012; Kotarba, 2013); from the “spectacular” and visual
dimensions of subcultures to include the more mundane and sonic dimensions
of musical listening, as music is integrated within varied activities and situations
(Hesmondhalgh, 2002; Kahn-Harris, 2004). In fact, as recently as the late
1980s, Laing (1985) and Richard Middleton (1990) have criticised subcultural
theorists (for example, Hebdige) for their neglect of musical sound in favour of
visual style.
The role of “music in everyday life” and in mundane contexts signals a
move from “meaning” (music as object) to the pragmatic, situated “uses of
music” (rather than interpretation) (DeNora, 2003a, pp. 44–45; P. Martin, 2006,
pp. 180–201). This move converges with ethnomusicologists’ concerns about
the “everyday usage, function and meaning of music” (Edstrom, 1997: 19 as
cited in Martin, 2006, p. 206). Studies on music in everyday life show how
music, technologically mediated, is an “active ingredient” in identity and
subjectivity construction – a “technology of the self” (DeNora, 1999) – thus
affording narratives for world-building, meaning-making and identity (Crafts,
Cavicchi, & Keil, 1993; DeNora, 2000; Frith, 1996; Halstead, 2013; MacDonald,
Hargreaves, & Miell, 2002; Merrill, 2009).
For instance, the field of music psychology investigates people’s use of
music in everyday contexts (and emotional outcomes), whether by individuals or
groups (D. J. Hargreaves & North, 1999; Juslin & Laukka, 2004; North &
Hargreaves, 2008; North, Hargreaves, & Hargreaves, 2004; Sloboda & O’Neill,
2001).
Music therapy studies also investigate how music affords well-being in
everyday life in ways that foster coping (Ansdell, 2014; Batt-Rawden, 2007;
MacDonald, Kreutz, & Mitchell, 2012). Michael Bull (2000, 2007) and Marie
Skånland (2011) look at the role of personal stereos in the construction of the
self, well-being, cognition (looking, listening, thinking, remembering, fantasising
etc.), interpersonal relations, as well as the organization and management of
time and space in everyday life. Additionally, Simon Frith’s observations point to
“after” and “beyond” subcultures make evident (A. Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004; Huq, 2006;
Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003)
a socio-ecological understanding of music and identity as later proposed by
DeNora (2000, 2011, 2013).
Frith specifically analyses popular music and ‘the social functions of
popular music are in the creation of identity, in the management of feelings, in
the management of time… [Popular music] is special…not necessarily with
reference to other music, but to the rest of life.” (Frith, 1987, p. 144).
Music is also relevant to building sociability and affiliation with others,
from intimate culture (Denora, 1997; Wilson-Kovacs, 2004) to collective music-
making, singing and remembering (Einarsdóttir, 2012; Hagen, 2012; Pinar &
DeNora, 2015). Music affords collective action and protest (Eyerman & Jamison,
1998; Roy, 2010), and can also be a medium for conflict resolution (Bergh &
Sloboda, 2010; Robertson, 2010). Music can also foster communal ties
(Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2008; Stige, 2010). Some community music therapy
scholars advocate the idea that collaborative musical ‘furnishing’ activities can
be a resource for the generation of bonding and bridging capital (Putnam, 2000)
or even a form of proto-social musical capital (Hara, 2013; Procter, 2011).
On the other hand, music also affords a (temporary) respite from
identities, as the concept of “music asylum” helps capture. In her critical
rereading of Goffman’s Asylums, DeNora detaches the concept of asylum from
its physical location and/or groups of personnel (and its total institutions), and
returns to its original meaning as a shelter and as a haven. This means that
asylums are both phenomenological experiences and (an environmental)
construct: “asylum can be defined as a space, either physical or conceptual,
that either offers protection from hostility (a refuge) or, more positively, a space
within which to play on/with one’s environment, whether alone or in concert with
others” (DeNora, 2013, p. 47). This is to say that musical asylums can be
workplaces for both “removal” (individual, private) and “refurnishing” (public,
collective) activities and experiences, and I will discuss these terms again later
on.
Musicking as leisure
Beyond listening to music, a lot of people engage in music-making and playing
instruments on their own or in a group, singing alone or in choirs or bands,
which are also uses of music (Frith, 2012, p. 157; Hennion, 2001). Another way
of conceptualising people’s musical engagement in everyday life is to see music
activities as a (more or less) time-intensive leisure form, in addition to the role of
music in so many contemporary forms of leisure (A. Bennett, 2005b). Leisure
(including musical leisure) is a site for identity construction (contestation and
negotiation), sociability and social capital building, as documented by (feminist)
leisure scholars (Aitchison, 2003; Raisborough,
2006). For actors involved in ‘serious leisure’ practices, a display of
commitment, identification (with the activity) and a sense of belonging are
organising principles in their lives (Stebbins, 2014).
This resonates with the work of music education scholar, Stephanie Pitts
(2005), who advances and takes seriously the “value of musical participation” in
everyday life and throughout the lifetime of individuals. Considering different
forms of musical participation from music making to concert attendance, Pitts
argues that there is no separation between music and life.
Finnegan’s landmark study (2007 [1989]) captures music-making across
different musical genres, as “social practices and process” in the everyday life of
amateurs in a small English town. Finnegan calls them the hidden musicians
(who are only hidden due to the focus on “great” and professional musicians).
Finnegan argues that music-making provides “pathways” through life that are
paved out by social and musical networks, and that intersect with other spheres,
and in this complexity, they constitute the everyday life of people: “to be
involved in musical practice (…) is to be involved in social action and relations –
in society” (Finnegan, 2007, p. 329).
2.1.4 Towards a (post-critical) music sociology
This collection of concepts – affordances, use, pragmatic meaning, materialities,
body, amateurs, musicking and everyday life – fosters an understanding of
music as society, which is best encapsulated in the use of the label “music
sociology” – or rather, as a medium for world-building.
This point has been discussed explicitly in the “new sociology of art” (de
la Fuente, 2007) or a “post-critical […] new music sociology” (Prior, 2011, p.
122).
Despite the legacy and the paramount contributions of Bourdieu’s
(European) critical sociology and (North-American) production of cultural
approaches (privileging an organisational understanding of art worlds), the
postcritical sociology of arts argues that “not all aesthetic processes can be
reduced to questions of power, symbolic exclusion and institutional process”
(Prior, 2011, p. 125). That is to say, artwork is more than a mere display of
power or reflections of deep social structures. Even if more recently Becker’s
work has been influential, in terms of analysing the “art itself” (H. Becker, 2006),
it has been criticized (and refined) for not taking a performative approach to
music
(McCormick, 2012), and for “sociologising” the organisational aspects of art
worlds without accounting for what is central for artists – the art itself (Hennion,
2001). Bourdieu has been criticised for his lack of engagement with (creative)
agency and artistic motivation. In fact, agency and creativity have been
undertheorised in the sociology of the arts (Born, 2010; Straw, 2010).
Hennion points out that the system of artistic production has been
overlooked at the expense of the artwork and aesthetic experience, dismissed
“as either the mere stakes of an identity game – an illusio, as Bourdieu calls it –
or the purely conventional products of a collective activity” (Hennion & Grenier,
2000, p. 342). Currently, the “aesthetic turn” (Prior, 2011) in the sociology of the
arts aims at “putting arts back into the social” (de La Fuente, 2007).
The music sociology that I shall develop in my empirical case study looks
at the “mutual shaping” of art and society and follows actors as they “do things
with things” (Streeck, 1996). At the same time it avoids establishing mediating
links between art and society “when this is not done by an identifiable
intermediary” (Hennion as cited in DeNora, 2003a, p. 40). This is a music
sociology that can capture the otherwise elusive ways in which assemblages of
(music) mediations (e.g. instruments, musicians, scores, stages, records) are
made in real time, by situated agents.
In music sociology’s theoretical movement from representation to
performance, the body is put “in a cultural-material context (ecology) from
which it emerges” (DeNora, 2011b, p. xvi). That is to say, (this approach) music
sociology is not so interested in the representations of the body (in line with
other critiques of bodies’ over-textualisation (Howson, 2005), but in the ways the
music gets into the body and the ways in which the body itself becomes
“musically composed” (DeNora, 2000).
In other words, the new music sociology places the emphasis on the
active and reflexive agency of actors: “music is a resource for modulating and
structuring the parameters of aesthetic agency – feeling, motivation, desire,
comportment, action style, energy” (DeNora, 2000; Witkin & DeNora, 1997). In
this respect, the new music sociology highlights the idea that music is not just a
socially constructed medium but also a medium of social construction (DeNora,
2003a, p. 148). Music as a cultural workspace is furnished and furnishing: it is
created by and aids in the creation of people’s aesthetic sensibilities. Meaningful
interaction cumulatively translates such sensibilities into dispositions. This
aesthetic furnishing, like craft practice (e.g. ways of handling materials and
objects, ways of perceiving), is a trans-individual, inter-subjective practice
(DeNora, 2014, p. xv). This (inter)action is not just cognitive, but also has an
emotional, embodied dimension that is often tacit.
Part II – The gender and sexual politics of rock music
There is a burgeoning literature on the relationship between gender, sexuality
and popular music. These studies range from social sciences to the ‘new
musicology’, with different methodological approaches, from ethnography to
discourse analysis and semiotics (Bayton, 1998; Sara Cohen, 1997; Downes,
2010; Finnegan, 2007; Jarman-Ivens, 2007; Leonard, 2007; McClary, 1991;
Middleton, 1990; Moos & Contreras Zubillaga, 2013; Shepherd, 1991; J. Taylor,
2012; Walser, 1993; Whiteley & Rycenga, 2006). More recently, two
allencompassing volumes are a show-case of work on these topics (Hawkins,
2016, 2017; Kearney, 2017).
The earliest feminist research critiqued rock music as a masculinist
culture, dominated by men (McRobbie, 1990; McRobbie & Garber, 1990). This
perspective has informed subsequent studies in different disciplinary fields and
in a way that has meant that the critique of rock as “a male form” (Frith &
McRobbie, 1990, p. 373) has served as the unquestioned starting point for later
researchers (Auslander, 2004; Leonard, 2007). Yet, the fact that men outnumber
women in rock and other genres is not enough to explain rock’s masculinity and
why rock is equated with male(ness) (Leonard, 2007, p. 24). Neither is it
sufficient to claim that the music itself uncomplicatedly represents masculinity
(Jarman-Ivens, 2007). In fact, masculinity and femininity in rock have always
been “troubled” and ‘queered’ (Auslander, 2006b; Bruzzi, 1997; Clifford-
Napoleone, 2015; Hawkins, 2016; J. Taylor, 2012; Whiteley, 1997).
The question can and should be shifted so as to emphasise practice: how
rock is (re)produced as a masculine music world. Moreover, the question should
concern how a particular genre is actively produced as masculine within a set of
(contested) gendered spaces, discourses, and practices (Auslander, 2004; Sara
Cohen, 1997; Downes, 2012b; Green, 1997; Leonard, 2007).
Instead of considering the masculinity of rock (or other male dominated
music scenes, such as hip-hop) as oppressive (patriarchal, racist) per se,
scholars need to empirically analyse the uses of rock by real girls and women.
Only by following actors as they do things with rock (including gender
performances), without establishing a priori relationships, can we get out of this
reductionist position:
The point of criticism should not be to decide whether rock music is
oppositional or co-optive with respect to gender, class, or any other social
category, but rather to analyse how it arbitrates [one could say mediates]
tensions between opposition and co-optation at particular historical
moments (Walser, 1993, p. 136)
The focus of my analysis is how music and gender are mutually shaped,
and locally produced, how the social organization of gender is mediated by rock
music. This means shifting the analysis of homologies to the affordances of
music in terms of gendered performances and identities; that is to say, not only
analysing how gender shapes rock music, but also how rock music is an active
ingredient in the formation of gender.
2.2.1 Identity as Performed: gender performance through music
performance
Gender performances of masculinity, femininity and (hetero)sexuality are
constituted through the practices of musicking. Identity involves the presentation
of the self (Goffman, 1990). Identity demands the practical work of achieving it,
of “passing as” (Garfinkel & Rawls, 2006).
Following this tradition, part of this “identity work” (Snow & Anderson,
1987) consists of presenting the self to others (projection) and to oneself
(introjection), through cultural, bodily, behavioral, technological, textual and
discursive practices (DeNora, 2000). Identities are not pre-given, they demand
practical engagement in identity work and self-reflexivity (Giddens, 1991).
Identity work gets done through “impression management” and careful
monitoring of self-image (Goffman, 1990). The self is accountable through
governmentality/self-governance by negotiating (in a Foucauldian sense)
subject positions (Butler, 2005; N. Rose, O’Malley, & Valverde, 2006). What
counts as identity and difference is situated, relational, material and distributed
(DeNora, 2000; Law, 1999).
The gendered self is produced through performative on-going actions.
The gendered self is an outcome of the process through which gendered
relations (distinctions, but also similarities) are made, unmade and remade
(Butler, 2004; West & Zimmerman, 2009).
Gender identities take shape in relation to the ‘gender order’ (Connell,
2002, 2005) that aligns gender and sexuality with binary categories
(masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual) that interrelate hierarchically
(masculinity over femininity, and heterosexuality over homosexuality).
This is what Butler describes with the concept of heteronormativity: the
norms and practices that construct heterosexuality as “natural” also reinforce
dichotomies of male/female, constructing “feminine women” and “masculine
men” (Butler, 1990), because heteronormativity and homophobia play a role in
the regulation of gender.
Gender identities are moreover performed, negotiated and sustained at
the level of everyday interaction, and in ways that result in institutionalised
practices (S. Jackson, 2006; S. Jackson & Scott, 2000). Between sameness
and difference, in situated contexts people are always “doing gender” (West &
Zimmerman, 2009). Masculinity is a practice traditionally associated with men,
but it can be performed by girls and women – tomboyism (Francis, 2010;
Paechter, 2010; Pascoe, 2007; Reay, 2001) and ‘female masculinity’
(Halberstam, 1998).
As a practised social category (Connell 2003), the body is vital for the
social construction of gender (Grosz, 1994; J. Holland & Adkins, 1996; Mol &
Law, 2004).
Gender is hence understood as an embodied “doing” (rather than a
being), a verb rather than a noun, acquired through repetitive stylised
performative acts (Butler, 1990, p. 25). A person learns how to “do gender”
through socially located interaction (West & Zimmerman, 2009), for example
one can learn how to “throw like a girl” (I. M. Young, 2005) or “fake like a
woman” (S. Jackson & Scott, 2007). Garfinkel (1967) refers to gender as an
‘ongoing accomplishment’, Goffman (1978) points to the performativity of
“gender displays” through gender as a social ‘arrangement’ and a frame.
To say then that gender is performative and discursive does not mean
that there is a free, willing individual choosing to express their identity either as
a man or a woman – although some hyper-optimistic versions of postmodernism
in its defence of fluid identities run the risk of this kind of misinterpretation. To
say that gender is performative is not a matter of discursive or linguistic idealism
(as if discursive was at odds with materialism), as it does not deny the material
reality of differences, which are often on the basis of inequalities, experienced
by real people.
Against a kind of “discursive idealism” it can also be added that gender
intersects with class, race, age, ability and intersectionality (Choo & Ferree,
2010; Frankenberg, 1993; Walby, Armstrong, & Strid, 2012).
Performing gender through music
In Music, Gender and Education (1997) Lucy Green sets up her performative
reapproach to music and gender, informed by a Foucauldian approach. Green
argues that gendered meanings – inherent and delineated – act upon the
musical experience of both performer and listener on musical practices and on
the construction of music discourses. Green distinguishes (virtually) between
inherent and delineated meaning: the former is “the sound of music”, music
materials and its interrelationships; and the latter are the connotations or
associations which derive from the social context of music’s use (production and
reception). Inherent and delineated meanings are in a mutual relationship –
although in some genres, such as popular music, delineated meanings are
more prevalent (unlike in classical music).
The gender of the performer – and their attractiveness – is one of the
strongest contextual factors of music’s delineations, Green argues. Women
singers “affirm femininity” through the association of women with nature and the
body (supposedly devoid of technological mediation), and the appearance of
sexual availability (Green, 1997, pp. 21–51). In contrast, Green contends that
women playing instruments (Green, 1997, pp. 52–81) or composing
(Green, 1997, pp. 82–115) “interrupt femininity”, and hence the scarcity of
women and the restrictions placed on their musical opportunities as composers
and performers (Halstead, 1997).
Two instruments constitute a historical example of “interrupting femininity”: the
cello and the piano. In Victorian society, playing the cello between opened legs
was seen as incommensurate with femininity and female cellists were required
to play in problematic “side-saddle” positions to avoid it (Cowling, 1975). In the
19th century, playing the piano also became incommensurate with gendered
notions of bodily decorum, after Beethoveen’s piano performances and their
association with masculine musical aesthetics (DeNora, 2002).
But masculinity too can be interrupted. That is the case when boys sing
(Welch & Howard, 2002). The case of women conductors also complicates
gender performances. Due to the “bodily choreography” and bodily display
required to conduct, women might be said to risk bodily decorum (and interrupt
some notions of femininity). On the other hand, they also interrupt masculinity,
as anxieties about the “feminising” character of conducting arise (Halstead,
2005).
The gender delineation of music also affects the musical experience of
listeners and their perceptions of inherent meaning and the way women’s work
is assessed: “A great deal of music by women has been denigrated for its
alleged effeminacy, other music has been more favourably received as
displaying positive feminine attributes such as delicacy or sensitivity, and a tiny
amount of music by women has been incredulously hailed as equal to music by
a man” (Green, 2009, pp. 145–146).
Green’s distinction between singers and instrumentalists is to some
extent restrictive, not taking into account the practical action required by the
singer, and further considering technology and mediation in a very narrow
manner. However, Green’s theory of gender delineated meaning shows how
music comes to signify extra-musical things. Hence, music is a cultural
workspace (DeNora, 2011b) for gendered object lessons, e.g. what is
(in)appropriate for females.
Gender places constraints upon musical opportunities. At the same time,
musical practice, musical taste, instrumental choice and playing-as-performing
is used as an active ingredient in the construction of a gendered musical
identity. People negotiate gender identity through musical practice as
documented by music education scholars, ethno-musicologists and music
therapy scholars (Dibben, 2002a; Doubleday, 2008; Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2017;
R. MacDonald et al., 2002).
In this vein, my empirical research looks at how gender and rock mutually
shape each other in terms of subjectivities, identities and practices.
2.2.2: Feminist music mo(ve)ments and (sub)cultural participation
Rock is a male-dominated field. Yet there have been some noticeable feminist
music mo(ve)ments, where girls and women have been active in their
(sub)cultural participation in rock worlds.
Within a “compensatory [rock] history” of women (Citron, 1993), that has
reclaimed women's (historical) contributions to (popular) music, a wave of
scholarly (within the “new musicology” and cultural studies) and non-scholarly
studies have provided revisionist accounts of the history of popular music and
musicians – Madonna, Laurie Anderson, the Spice Girls, more recently Lady
Gaga, and many more (O’Brien, 2002; Ono & Gaar, 2002; Raha, 2004; Raphael
& Harry, 1995; Reynolds & Press, 1995). There have been many research
articles published on pop singers, most notably during the 1990s and 2000s.
There has also been a growing interest in the study of Anglo-American vocal
girls groups of the 1960s (Bradby, 1990; Warwick, 2007), as well as 1960s allgirl
rock bands (beat groups, in the wake of the Beatles) (Feldman-Barrett, 2014),
that up to now held marginal positions in academic rock history – displaced by
“cock rock” and male rock bands on the one hand, and on the other hand, by an
emphasis on commercially successful individual artists.
Punk, grunge, riot grrrl and subcultural participation
Punk was the first pro-feminist music movement in the late 1970s that opened
up space for women in music-making. Punk’s genre characteristics (Do It
Yourself (DIY) punk ethos) afforded the increased participation of women as
instrumentalists, and many female bands emerged – The Raincoats (O’Meara,
2003), The Slits (Cogan, 2012), The Runaways (E. McDonnell, 2013), The
Bangles (Mercer-Taylor, 1998).
However, the rise of women performers did not translate into more
equality within the music world. The commercialisation and male rewriting of
punk18, as well as the misogynistic traits within the punk movement itself, tended
to obscure women’s presence (Downes, 2012b, p. 208; Green, 1997, p. 76;
Reddington, 2004, p. 239; Rosenberg & Garofalo, 1998, p. 809). Still, the legacy
of punk women was imprinted in the alternative rock music scene of the late
1980s and 1990s.
In the 1990s, female bands continued to emerge (e.g. Hole, L7). The
grunge movement was responsible for the increase of women on electric bass
(Clawson, 1999).
Riot grrrl developed through the 1990s. It has its early origins in the USA,
initiated by female-centred rock bands Bratmobile and Bikini Kill, and spread as
a translocal scene (Schilt, 2004), reaching from the UK (Downes, 2010) to
Germany (Reitsamer, 2009) and as far as Brazil (Guerra et al., 2017).
Riot grrrl is a grassroots feminist movement in music that addresses
gender inequality within rock music and the cultural and political marginalisation
of young women and girls, using extensive zine networks and online spaces,
where girls and young women debated issues of music, gender and sexuality
(Downes, 2012b; Kearney, 2006; Leonard, 2007, pp. 137–162; Schilt, 2003b).
Riot grrrl challenged the gender power relations in many ways. It reclaimed
girlness and girlhood – rewriting girl as grrrl, with a defiant political tone
(Gottlieb & Wald, 1994, p. 266), and the sexist words “slut” or “bitch” were also
reclaimed (Attwood, 2007, p. 236). Gig conventions were also challenged: “girls
to the front”, which made the area directly in front of the stage (usually where
the mosh pit happens) a safe space for girls (Downes, 2010).
The creation of female-oriented spaces has been a strategy to raise
public awareness of gender imbalance. Beyond the riot grrrl movement, of
utmost importance is the creation of women bands (Reitsamer, 2009), DJ
collectives (Farrugia, 2009), and women-run activities. These range from
women-only record companies and independent label distribution networks,
such as Olivia Records (Green, 1997, p. 47), to online forums run by women
and devoted to the discussion of women in metal (Vasan, 2011) or the creation
of the Tom Tom magazine “dedicated to female drummers”. The creation of
women-only events/festivals and gigs has been an important part of women’s
presence in music over time (although these festivals differ from each other in
their feminist aims, in the available resources, and in the media attention
received). Various examples can be given. In the 1970s, there was Rock
Against Sexism, which subsequently disintegrated (Berkers, 2012; Sara Cohen,
1991). In the 2000s, and in a continuum with riot grrrl, LadyFest began, initially
in the USA and eventually spreading beyond (Schilt & Zobl, 2008) and queer
cultural festivals – Queeruption (Downes, 2010a). More recently, the
phenomenon of “Girls Rock Camps”, where girls are taught traditionally “male”
instruments and “implicit” feminism (Giffort, 2011) has spread across countries.
On a local grassroots level, it can take the form of individual action, such
as bands who deliberately “feminize the gigs” – knitting before going onstage,
asking for a sanitary towel onstage, as found by Bayton (1998, p.134).
Femaleonly spaces can take the form of “ladies only” nights at death metal
clubs (Vasan, 2011), or club nights and gigs for queer and/or feminist
performers and audiences (Downes, 2010, p. 233), or even performers who
“police” the audience for non-violent gendered behavior (Schippers, 2002).
Musical engagement should not be restricted to musicianship, listening or
dancing but occurs here just for analytical purposes. If we consider cultural
participation generally, not just in music, but in the material cultures of music,
we see a more dynamic picture of the involvement of girls and women, as I
hope to show throughout the empirical chapters.
Mostly within the riot grrrl movement, not-for-profit communal activities
often take place, such as knitting, eating a meal or providing cake (Downes,
2012). Piano has argued that such kinds of DIY practices contribute to the
establishment of a (third wave feminist) alternative economy, through the
production and distribution of “women-oriented goods”, mostly zines, but also
crafts, and clothing (Piano, 2002, 2003).
Previously, McRobbie (1993) demonstrated that girls and young women
gained some economic autonomy through their engagement in aspects of music
subcultures, such as art, graphics and most notably, style (by gathering and
imaginatively re-creating items of dress and styles), going beyond the most well-
known example of Viviane Westwood.
In fact, against the exclusion and marginalisation of women and girls in
subcultures, and as a corrective to the under-theorisation of the domestic and
mundane in subcultures (McRobbie, 1990), scholars have also documented
girls and women’s broad (non-strictly musical) active participation within
(sub)cultures.
In addition to fashion, clothing and style, girls and women are active
(although not always visible) in the making of (alternative) music media – such
as fanzines, rock journalism, webzines and blogging (Hickam & Wallach, 2011,
p. 255; Rhodes, 2005; Schilt, 2003b) or photography (Bannister, 2010). Girls
and women also have important roles as band managers or record label
personnel (Green, 1997; Kahn-Harris, 2007; McRobbie, 1989a, 1993; Vasan,
2011).
2.2.3: Gender performances in rock worlds
Rock scholarship considers two possible subject positions available to women
rockers. On the one hand, as “one of the boys”: either the tomboy (Frith, 1981,
p. 239), the woman with balls (Gottlieb & Wald, 1994, p. 260) or the “female
machisma” (Reynolds & Press, 1995, p. 233).
On the other hand, rock scholarship has analysed how women rockers
are positioned as sex objects, either in the roles of wives, fans (groupies) or
musicians. This is a status that is difficult to transcend, especially for musicians;
once sexualised, women are considered inauthentic (Schippers, 2002, p. 28). In
fact, the physical attractiveness (physical capital) of women musicians might act
against them – the more “sexually attractive the woman singer is constructed to
be, the less seriously she and her music can be taken” (Green, 1997, p. 46).
Ethnomusicologist Koskoff (as cited in Doubleday, 2008, p. 22) demonstrates
that, in the male-dominated music worlds, it is common to heighten female
sexuality as the quality of strangeness (or ‘oxymoron’) is capitalized upon.
This is also the case with female musicians in rock bands, as men in the
music business treat women in sexual, marketable terms. Women were often
recruited to “add glamour” or sex appeal to bands (e.g. singers), or due to their
novelty value (e.g. a drummer in a band, instead of the cliché of the female
singer) (Cohen, 1991, pp. 206-207).
Whereas some women explicitly reject seductiveness at the risk of not
being hired or even of being rejected, others use it either a great deal or in a
subdued way (Buscatto, 2014). The use of this “feminine capital” (Skeggs,
1997) , either seductiveness or gender difference (Buscatto, 2014) can be seen
as an attempt at "reversing stigma" (Goffman 1963), and where pride is often
the theme of identity discourses. Organizational studies also found that some
women prefer to enact femaleness, as having a sexualised status is better than
having no status and being invisible (Watts, 2010b).
The literature on women rockers claims that women in rock succeed only
by subscribing to masculinist conventions and ethos (with the exception of the
riot grrrl movement). This approach takes a rationalist perspective on human
action, understanding action as strategic choice. And yet, many decisions are
accomplished by feel or intuition, unconsciously (DeNora, 2003). At the same
time, to become “one of the boys” is seen as merely emulating masculinity.
Women ‘doing gender’ in men’s terms are dismissed or considered inauthentic
by many feminist readings, falling into the trap of gender essentialism, as
pointed out by some authors (Auslander, 2004, 2006b; Downes, 2010; Leonard,
2007).
The rock music literature seems to posit a straightforward relationship
between oppression and empowerment: women by subscribing to rock’s
masculinist conventions are oppressed/dominated in the rock scene, but they
are also empowered and resist the norms of mainstream society. As with men,
the opposite takes place, as the rock scene allows for a liberation from
mundane and domestic life commitments.
However, a closer look at gender performances in the rock world based
on empirical detail shows how and when musicians and fans face the
ambiguities and (often contradictory) positionings of gender subject positions in
the rock world.
Auslander takes musician Suzi Quatro’s performances as a case study.
Quatro embodies a masculine image (androgynous) and cock-rocker gestures
onstage. However, she disrupted conventions: she played the bass and not a
guitar, but she took guitar’s leading role for her bass; she also did not change
the subject of the male repertoire she chose. As such, Auslander claims that she
is not a mere imitation of cock rock, she destabilises its gender coding. She
performs “female masculinity”, as she is a “masculine female rocker who was
not fully understandable either in terms of conventional femininity or as “one of
the boys” (Auslander, 2004, p. 212). However, Suzi Quatro was dismissed by
feminists as a “gender traitor”, as according to the feminist critique “it is not
enough for women to make rock music; they must also change rock by
transcending its masculinist origins and making it somehow specifically female”
(Auslander, 2006b, p. 209).
Women punk musicians have been exploring gender boundaries,from
androgyny to hypersexual visual imagery The latter is the case of Wendy O.
Williams of Plasmatics (cf Downes, 2010), and the former is the case of Patty
Smith. McRobbie, (1989, p.42) claims that “punk androgyny”, is best exemplified
(and created) by Patty Smith’s iconic cover album, which “was never
unambiguously butch or aggressive, it was slim, slight and invariably
'arty'. ” Punk androgyny was “cautious but somehow threatening” (McRobbie,
1989, p.43).
Joan Jett also challenges conventional understandings of gender and sexuality
(Kennedy, 2002), as well as Annie Lennox’s drag and camp performances
(Rodger, 2004), among others.
The Riot grrrl movement displayed tomboyism and androgyny in new
ways by valorising the (subversive potential) of “feminine signifiers” and
recovering “femme femininity” for queer politics as Downes (2010) claims.
Those elements have been downplayed and under-theorised in gender and
sexual (sub)cultural resistance. Not just in rock – as rock’s masculinity devalues
the feminine – but within classic lesbian-feminist politics (Downes, 2010).
Gottlieb and Wald (1994, p. 268) claim that riot grrrl’s performances by
making their bodies highly visible challenge sexism: “this visibility counteracts
the (feeling of) erasure and invisibility produced by persistent degradation in a
sexist society. Such performances recuperate to-be-look-at-ness as something
that constitutes, rather than erodes or impedes, female subjectivity”.
As such, this complicates the version that women musicians are just the
object of the sexually objectifying male gaze (and the gaze of (corporate) rock
culture, which tends to market women's sexual desirability at the expense of
promoting their music or their legitimacy as artists). Women also display sexual
power and thus sexuality is not only interpreted in terms of romance.
Schippers (2002) studied how alternative rockers do “gender
manoeuvring” (p. 116), that is to say, how rockers “manipulate the relationship
between masculinity and femininity in ways that impact the larger process of
gender structuration” (Schippers, 2002, p. 37). This meant a process of
negotiation, whereby meanings and gender norms are challenged, transformed,
and re-established.
Finally, masculinity is also performed in different ways. Connell (2005)
establishes four categories of masculinity: hegemonic, complicit, marginalised
and subordinate.These are hierarchical and relational, hegemonic masculinity
being at the top of this power hierarchy. Rockers and people doing music have
been critics of hegemonic masculinity (and hypermasculinity), which goes back
to disco (Dyer, 1990; Gottlieb & Wald, 1994, pp. 260-261). Criticism can be read
in glam rock performers such as David Bowie (Auslander, 2006), or when male
musicians adopt feminine styles from Queen in drag (appealing to the gay
community) (McLeod, 2001) to Kurt Cobain (Schippers, 2002, p. 110).
The construction of “alternative masculinities” has been a feature
documented in indie rock (Bannister, 2006; Houston, 2012). In the queercore
scene (USA, in the 1990s), a wave of gay punk and hardcore bands’ stage
shows intended to mock and challenge conventional heterosexual identities and
the overall heteronormativity of the scene (Ciminelli & Knox, 2005; Leonard,
2007, p. 92; Rauzier, 2012; Shoemaker, 2010).
Gender performances offstage
The popularity of rock’s masculinity among (real) girls and women is recognised
in some studies (Halberstam, 2005; Leonard, 2007, p. 25).
Empirical work shows how women claim to have been tomboys when
growing up, and that was what attracted them to male dominated music worlds,
from punk (Leblanc, 1999) to rock (Bayton, 1998; Carson et al., 2004) to death
metal (Vasan, 2011, p. 342). Bayton goes further to argue that gender rebellion
– the tomboy – is one of the factors enabling women’s participation in rock,
something which McRobbie and Frith’s early critique of the masculinity of rock
(“cock rock”) failed to acknowledge. In fact, the how, why and when of girls and
womens’ use of masculinity in ‘doing gender’ is of utmost importance, and
should be answered through empirical data and specific case studies.
In this respect, Leblanc's (1999) ground-breaking ethnography is an
excellent example. LeBlanc documented how punk girls (in the USA), through
behaviour, style and discourse, negotiate and construct gender within a punk
subculture. Girls have to embody and enact a tomboy position. But punk girls
never rejected the notion that they were themselves feminine. They engage in
subversions by juxtaposing masculinity and femininity in both dress and
behaviour. Punk girls occupy a third space: not just girls, not just punks, but
punk girls. In challenging femininity, these girls are alienated from one another
(they pay the price of isolation and confinement, the undermining of the
generation of female solidarity).
In heavy metal cultures, there are the same type of contradictions as in
punk, based on “a ‘whore/goddess’ paradigm which is in turn based on the
knowledge of the female heavy metal fan; the balancing act of ‘acting male’ and
‘looking female’; and the gender ‘twilight zone’ of being insufficiently male for
heavy metal culture, while being insufficiently female for the mainstream world
(Nordstrom & Herz, 2013).
Krenske and McKay's (2000) ethnographic study of a heavy metal music
club in Australia found “multiple femininities” beyond “emphasized femininity”.
There are also internal hierarchies among women (intra-sex differences): “an
array of competing femininities evident in Club Thrash, as it was clear that Metal
Wenches, Glam Chicks and Hardcore Bohemians had different statuses”
(Krenske & McKay, 2000, p. 302).
Vasan (2011), documenting the participation of women in death metal,
also shows the differences between women’s participation: women who opt for
male codes of dress and behaviour often consider themselves superior to
women who “dress provocatively” and do not engage in specific codes of
behaviour (such as moshing, headbanging, or singing along with bands in live
performances).
In short, rather than prescribing gender performances, ethnographic work
is needed to achieve a situated, ecological understanding of gender
performances in rock worlds.
2.2.4: The gender(ing) of a musical genre
Throughout history and across geographical locations (Doubleday, 2008),
musical opportunities and musical agency are distributed across lines of class,
ethnicity and – my focus here – gender.
Gender stereotypes and ideologies (discourses about expected
characteristics and behaviours of women and men) contribute to gender
segregation and other exclusionary forms of musical practice.
Gender stereotypes and ideologies inform gender segregated musical
practices. There are many examples, across disciplinary fields, that document
gender stereotypes, based on the dualities of hard and soft, strong and weak,
aggressive and delicate, reason and intuition/emotion, creativity and physicality,
culture and nature, all of which have privileged masculinity over femininity (Bray,
2007; Cockburn, 1985; Edwards & Wajcman, 2005; Pinch & Oudshoorn, 2003).
In their now classic paper, Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie
(1990[1978]) point to two foundational gender dichotomies in rock ideology that
are embedded in these stereotypes. The first is based on the opposition
between the male creative, active, producer (playing “cock rock”) versus the
female passive consumer, either a “groupie” or a “teenybopper”.
The second is the opposition between (serious, male) rock versus
(frivolous, female) pop. These two (gendered) divides remain part of the rock
discourse today (Beer, 2013; Frith, 1996, pp. 75–95; Schippers, 2007). Within
this discourse, rock is often associated with the romantic ideology of “art versus
commerce” (the romantic artist rejecting the material world) whereas the
women/pop music axis is seen to be a form of ‘mass culture’ and therefore
commercial. These discourses which highlight the inspired, autonomous,
rebellious male artist and which promote values of originality and integrity,
construct women as its Other(Keightley, 2001; Mayhew, 1999; Pattison, 1987).
Gender stereotypes and ideology have consequences for people/music users’
subjectivities, and further marginalise women at many levels, as the literature on
rock music documents.
Music press and the persistence of gender stereotypes and ideologies
The Pop/rock divide has less to do with the music itself than the practices and
discourses that organize music as a meaningful social practice (C. R. Martin,
1995). Here, the music press, as widely documented by rock music scholars,
plays a big part in gendering aesthetic hierarchies of musical value. This has
consequences at both the amateur and professional industry levels.
Music journalism discourses can be seen to construct pop music as
commercial and artificial in opposition to rock as artistic and therefore
“authentic” (N. Coates, 1997). The “myth of authenticity” is part of rock’s
ideological effects (Frith, 1987, p.137). The genres in which women are most
successful are portrayed as more commercial and thus lacking in cultural capital
(Bannister, 2010; Faupel &Schmutz, 2012; Schmutz, 2009). At worst, women
singer/songwriters are denigrated as ‘‘pop’’, “folk” or “soft rock” as opposed to
the ‘‘serious music’’ produced by male bands (e.g. Cohen, 1991, p. 30; Shuker,
2001, p. 119).
As Coates argues, and using de Lauretis’ concept of “gender
technology”, rock criticism is a “technology which reinforces and reinscribes the
male gender in rock at work” (Coates, 1997, p.54), ignoring (not writing about)
the work of women performers and eroticising and sexualising them,
foregrounding gender issues and physical attributes at the expense of music
(Bayton, 1998; H. Davies, 2001; Reddington, 2003; Wald, 1998).
The music press treats women musicians as a constant novelty, as
groundbreaking practitioners challenging a male field, who are “discovered”
against a backdrop of previous female bands, working against the normalisation
of women rock musicians (Leonard, 2007, p. 35). The music press marginalises
women by placing these artists in an exclusive female lineage, creating a
distinction from canonised (male) musicians and, through endless comparisons
with other women artists, by “lumping” them together, even if their music is
totally different (Davies, Helen, 2001; Leonard, 2007, p. 36; Strong, 2011, 2013).
Yet, even if female artists are assessed within a male lineage, there are
representational issues that work to marginalise women (Kearney, 1997, p.
212), which persist over time, as the press coverage of Amy Winehouse and
Janis Joplin attest (respectively,Berkers & Eeckelaer, 2014; Leonard, 2007, p.
37). These musicians are presented both as “one of the boys”, but also judged
against accepted codes of feminine behaviour that frame their lifestyles (similar
to their male counterparts), not, however, as heroes of rock’n’roll, but as
“rock’n’fall”. Female performers are thus portrayed as victims of the enactment
of hegemonic masculinity.
Another case study of the music press devaluing women musicians is the
media portrayal of riot grrrl. Considered to be a female derivation of a punk past,
the music press has reproduced authentic punk as masculine, and women as
inferior, undermining the explicit feminist intentions of riot grrrl culture (Downes,
2012, pp. 214-215). The restrictive and ghettoising categories work as
“strategies of containment” (Coates, 1997, p. 53), explicit in the “women in rock”
moniker (Coates, 1997, pp. 61-62). As with “women in rock”, the “riot grrrl”
moniker worked to ‘lump together’ women musicians. Coates suggests that the
moniker “women in rock” can be embraced as a (identity) politically useful term,
to denounce the tacit rule of ‘men in rock’. In contrast Kearney (1997, pp.
212213), has argued that media framing undermines and commodifies the
political features of the riot grrrl movement. The literature suggests that Riot
Grrrl was co-opted and commodified by the mainstream media, and it was
rebranded in two different ways: as “angry women in rock”; and in a
commodified version of
“girl power” by bands such as the Spice Girls (Bessett, 2006; N. Coates, 1997;
Schilt, 2003a).
Riot grrrl’s alternative media press (fanzines), created by and targeted at
a community of female readers is particularly relevant given the way music
magazines have always targeted a male audience, reproducing rock’s
masculinist culture (Kruse, 2002). In fact, guitar magazines were aimed at male
audiences as discussed by Théberge (1997); and music journals aimed at a
male readership (Sara Cohen, 1991).
The mass-media play a big part in the marginalisation of female fans too.
The “screaming girl” stereotype has persisted over time, from the Beatlemania
fans (Ehrenreich et al., 1992; Herrmann, 2008; L. Lewis, 1992) to the screaming
girls for boy bands and girl groups (Duffett, 2013; Railton, 2001; Wald, 2002),
creating “moral panics” (Stanley Cohen, 1972). The mass-media frequently
represent female fans as either teenyboopers or groupies. That is to say as
tasteless consumers of mainstream pop music (mass culture) – usually girls –
or as sexual objects at musicians’ disposal – reducing women’s musical
appreciation to a sexual experience only, and constructing sexual desire as
inferior (and mutually exclusive) to musical enjoyment (Hill, 2016; Reddington,
2012, p. 3; Schippers, 2002, p. 28).
Beyond media representation, the issue that remains to be analysed is
the female fans’ lived experience of music. Empirical studies of (female) fandom
are scarce, with a few exceptions (T. Anderson, 2012; Bessett, 2006; Fast,
2001; Hill, 2016; Savage, 2003; Vroomen, 2004).
2.2.5: Gender segregation in rock music worlds
Art worlds, as organisational cultures, are shaped by (and shape) particular
gender segregation dynamics and a gender segregation of (music) labour and
activities based on the idea that occupations should be divided according to
gender: certain occupations/ tasks are for men, whereas other are best suited to
women (Buscatto, 2014).
Gender restricts musical opportunities and has an impact on the actual
musical practices and participation of women (and men as well as non-binary
people), either as fans or musicians.
Regarding fandom, gender shapes musical taste as well as music-related
leisure activities and their associated sound reproduction technologies.
There is a gender (and age) division of musical taste: whereas boys tend
to prefer rock, ‘fast’ music or music that ‘has a beat’, girls prefer classical music
and “slow”, “soft” music (Green, 1997). Women are said to prefer soft music and
pop, and men hard rock (Frith, 1983; McRobbie, 2000). Men tend to be jazz or
rock music lovers, whereas women tend to be classical music lovers (Buscatto,
2014, p. 46). Within the broad genre of heavy metal, female fans favour more
melodic extreme metal subgenres such as power and gothic metal (KahnHarris,
2007, p. 71).
Regarding musicianship, gender shapes music-making both at amateur
and at the music industry level. Scholars have showed how music making is
characterised by patterns of (horizontal and vertical) gender segregation within
the popular music industry (Carson et al, 2004; Leonard, 2007), and at the local
level of amateur and musical leisure practices (W. E. Baker & Faulkner, 1991;
Bannister, 2010; Clawson, 1999a, 1999b; Sara Cohen, 1997; Finnegan, 2007;
Groce & Cooper, 1990; Reddington, 2012; J. Robson, 2011).
In the music classroom, gender also impacts music practice. For
instance, in British schools, the most popular choices of girls (or students whose
“psychological sex type” was female) were instruments perceived to be
“feminine”, and boys (or students whose “psychological sex type” was male)
preferred “masculine” instruments (Green, 2010; Dibben, 2002c; O’Neill &
Harrison, 2000).
Early (gendered) instrumental choices will be translated into later leisure
and professional musical practices. As a result, gender segregation in music
groups has persisted over time and across different locations. There is gender
(horizontal) segregation in (professional) orchestras and ensembles (Ravet as
cited in Buscatto, 2014; Conde, Martinho, & Pinheiro, 2003), as well as in choirs
(Einarsdóttir, 2012) and rock bands (Clawson, 1999a; Sara Cohen, 1997).
This means there is male dominance over instrumental playing, with
singing coded as a (natural) feminine activity across music genres (Bayton,
1998; Clawson, 1993; Green, 1997). Instrument playing is so strongly
delineated as masculine that women are expected to be not just (back-up)
singers but have the added pressure of being entertainers (Clawson, 1999;
Mayhew, 1999; Mcrobie & Frith 1990; Buscatto, 2007b).
2.2.5.1: Gendering fandom: taste, leisure and sound reproduction technologies
Beyond musical listening, dancing has been a source of acceptable sexual
expression open to girls (Sara Cohen, 1991; McRobbie, 1993; Pini, 2001), and
one of the few out-of-home leisure activities that women engage in more than
men (Thornton, 1995, p. 103). Within popular music, studies in club cultures,
raves and EDM (Thornton, 1995; Pini, 2001), and more recently in break-dance
(Fogarty, 2012), take this form of female participation seriously. Pini (2001)
showed how the rave dance-floor offered women a space to experience
physical pleasures and affection in conjunction with “ecstasy happiness” and a
sense of collectivity. New modes of femininity also emerged: raves were a way
for single mothers in their mid-20s to overcome the hard work of being poor and
raising a child (Pini as cited in McRobbie, 1998, p. 147).
The repertoire of bodily movements associated with rock music (e.g.
headbanging, fist-raising, air-guitar, toe-tapping, finger-snapping, rhythmic
clapping, pogoing, slamming and moshing) is not usually categorised as
'dancing', although we can consider these body choreographies ‘dancing' in the
broad sense of the word (Thornton, 1995, p. 71). The “rocking body” (the
repertoire of rock’s body movements) has been taken for granted, but not
explored – with the exception of moshing and the slam dance pit (Gruzelier,
2007; Riches, 2011). Thornton (1995, p. 71) situates this historically: “In the late
1960s, when rock'n'roll became rock, the music abandoned its overt function for
dancing. (This is not to say that people did not dance to rock, but that dancing
was not considered the optimal response.) If rock was to be taken seriously as
an art form, then listening, not dancing, would be the requisite mode of
appreciation”.
As this form of love became feminised, dancing and the dance floor
became derided (N. Coates, 2003; McRobbie, 1993).
Unlike dancing, the practice of record collecting and audiophilia are
masculinised and held as legitimate forms of music love. This is part of the
history of the gendering (as male) of (domestic) sound recording technologies
(Keightley, 1996).
Hi-fi has given rise to the figure of “audiophiles” (mainly white,
middleclass men), who in search of “absolute sound”, invest financially in
purchasing dedicated audio equipment for extreme hi-fi listening to recorded
music and have their own special spaces in their homes – typically the
basement (Perlman, 2004).
Another practice related to audiophilia is record collecting, a
maledominated practice (Shuker, 2010; Straw, 1997). The nerdish homosociality
of the male record collector, who embodies the figure of the rock connoisseur, is
“as fundamental to the masculinism of popular music as the general valorisation
of technical prowess and performative intensity more typically seen to be at its
core” (Straw, 1997, p.15).
2.2.5.2: Gender segregation in the music industry
In the music industry, there is a lack of women in (top) power positions (e.g.
managers, senior executives, record company owners) and women tend to
concentrate in lower status, and lower paid occupations, such as secretaries,
within A&R departments, as well as in the press and public relations
departments (Bayton, 1998; Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2011, 2015; Negus, 1992).
Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2015), in a recent study on creative
industries, show that despite a rise in the number of women in the music
industry, inequality patterns persist. The main forms of sexual segregation the
authors found were “the high presence of women in marketing and public
relations roles in the cultural industries; the high numbers of women in
production co-ordination and similar roles; the domination of men of more
prestigious creative roles; and the domination by men of technical jobs”
(Hesmondhalgh & Baker, 2015, p. 26). Gatekeepers such as radio DJs and
music journalists are mostly men (Frith, 1983; Negus, 1992, 1999; Steward &
Garratt, 1984); Negus explains occupational sex segregation of PR and
marketing due to sex stereotypes of women as caring, nurturing and social, as
the job “involves the employment of skills which have traditionally been
associated with women rather than men: looking after sensitive artists,
maintaining personal relationships, providing support, and acting as a facilitator
and catalyst” (Negus,1992, p. 114). Women are also under-represented in
technical roles such as sound engineering and production (Negus, 1992;
Bayton, 1998; Hesmondalgah & Baker, 2015, p. 28; Smith, 2009).
Gender representations intersect, moreover, with race (T. Bennett, Frith,
Grossberg, Shepherd, & Graeme, 1993; Mahon, 2011). Wicke (1990) has
analysed the history of Anglo-Saxon rock from the 1950s to the postpunk era,
and relates the rise of rock in the musical aesthetic of African-American rhythm
and blues (R&B) and gospel, and the politics of the social mentality of country
music (conservative and tame). Women have been influential in some music
sectors, perhaps especially African-American women, and in genres emerging
prior to rock, such as R&B, blues, jazz (Gottlieb & Wald, 1994, p. 271) and
gospel (e.g. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “the godmother of rock”, gospel singer and
electric guitar player, performing gospel music in secular night clubs (Wald,
2004). Green (1997, p. 37) has highlighted the importance of blues women (e.g.
Bessie Smith) who challenged (white) femininities, most notably the virgin/whore
dualism, representing themselves both as sexually active (but necessarily
heterosexual) and maternal. But even here women’s participation has been
fraught. For example, Carson and colleagues (2004), describe in a case study
of Motown how black female artists in the music industry, have been ghettoised
in specific genres, and have endured other forms of discrimination, due to their
gender, colour and sexuality.
2.2.5.3: Gendered organisational culture of amateur rock
In the world of amateur rock, there are organisational practices – the band and
gigging culture and its live performance which work to marginalise girls and
women and which constrain their access to the “informal” world of rock music
making.
Women lack access to rock equipment and transport as usually they
have fewer financial resources (either as adolescents or as adults due to the
pay gap and the sexual division of labour) (Bayton, 1998, pp. 35-48). Girls’
practices are more restricted than boys’, usually taking place in domestic
spaces (commonly lacking a private space), and not in public spaces – in the
bedroom, and not on street corners, and clubs/bars (McRobbie, 1990). When
going out to music venues such as pubs, women engage in various procedures
to avoid potential events, ranging from sexual innuendo to assault (Bayton,
1998; LeBlanc, 1999; Schippers, 2002).
The bohemianism that characterises rock ideology is also pointed to as
another reason for the exclusion of women from rock music cultures (Frith,
1983, pp.85-88).
Time is also more constrained for both girls and women (Bayton, 1998,
pp. 35-48). Feminist leisure scholars have focused on the political question of
access to leisure as structured by (unequal) gender relations in the non-leisure
world, showing how leisure sites are not ‘free’ from gendered relations (Adam,
1989). As a consequence, there is a gender gap in leisure. Women’s leisure is
experienced in fragmented and interrupted ways or combined with household
chores and caring tasks – the “second shift” which persists (Bittman &
Wajcman, 2000). Other differences shape access to leisure, namely, age and
life-cycle (Roberts, 2012) as well as class and race (Watson & Scraton, 2013).
Some scholars argue that girls and women involved in the cultural activities of
punk rock are mostly white and middle-class, having the time and money to
produce zines (Schilt, 2005).
The rock band: a homosocial music-making group
Even when girls and women have money and time to learn to play an
instrument, rock is a group activity that takes place within the band, the
privileged place of (informal) skill acquisition (H. S. Bennett, 1980; Campbell,
1995; Clawson, 1999a; S. G. Davis, 2005). The band can be seen as a “small
group”, and its interactional (gendered) dynamic should be noted. Gary Allen
Fine’s work on small group culture shows that it is in and through interaction in
small group settings, according to the resources available in the local
environment, that culture is located and produced (Fine & Harrington, 2004).
Learning is social, pertaining to those who have access to instruments
and to musical learning; how musical knowledge and training is passed on
affects access to music making. This is especially the case with popular
musicians, for whom notation plays little or no role, and hence they do not need
(and usually have little) formal training (H. S. Bennett, 1980, Finnegan, 2007).
They develop their skills, technical knowledge and other “sensibilities” by
maintaining relationships with other musicians, often more experienced (Green,
2001; Thebergue, 1997, p. 174).
Bands are usually a “boy’s club”, with ‘no girls allowed’. Walser (1993, pp.
114–17) has showed how bands function as socio-musical spaces for male
bonding (homosociality) and power displays, which they legitimate through
sexism and misogyny (in song lyrics, album covers, music videos) and
“exscription” (the creation of fantasy worlds without women).
As such, women are not just absent, they are actively excluded. Cohen
(1997) found that in Liverpool, all-male bands tended to preserve music as a
male domain. Wives and girlfriends are often kept away from rehearsals,
recording sessions, gigs, seen as intruders and a (potential) threat to the band’s
existence. Also in the UK, Bayton (1998, pp. 36-39) documents how many
young women are dissuaded or excluded by their male friends and boyfriends
from band participation. Or, if women already have a musical career, they might
give it up to support their male partner’s career or to start or care for a family. A
musician’s homosociality and manhood, as in other male-dominated terrains,
are built through familiarity with and mastery of technology itself and intimacy
with other men (Bird, 1996). If men are constructed as technologically able,
women are represented as technologically incompetent (Cockburn, 1983, p.
203), not just in bands, but in other homosocial spaces. The literature describes
how female electric guitarists are patronised and even harassed when hanging
out in the guitar shops (Bayton, 1997; Carson et al., 2004; Sargent, 2009).
As a result, exclusion from informal male networks means unequal access to
the resources, making it difficult for women to gain access to musical skills.
Inclusion in male networks: homogamy and family background
Women tend to be excluded from male peer groups and informal male
networks, but it is also through male networks that women have succeeded,
either by establishing a romantic relationship with one of the boys who form the
boy’s club (homogamy), or by belonging to their family (usually the daughter).
Anecdotal evidence suggests that families play an important role in
musicianship (Bayton, 1998; Carson et al., 2004; Finnegan, 2007, pp. 193–
206). Specifically in the rock music world, the picture of ‘the youth’ rebelling
against parents is far less commonplace, as rock baby-boomers age and rock
enters the music industry (A. Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012). Bayton (1998, pp.
56–57) claims that in rock worlds, it is the father as role model that is of the
greatest significance. Carson and colleagues (2004), referring to the USA,
confirm the importance of fathers, although mothers also assumed a prominent
role.
Clawson (1999) found that girls and young women were recruited into
bands, not through heterosexual dating, but through their participation in
mixedsex friendship groups, recruitment by 'friends of friends'. In the USA,
access to male friendships and acquaintances is the main factor in women
joining bands, not boyfriends or the women themselves forming bands.
Homogamy has been found in music for musicians in rock (Ortiz 2004 as
cited in Buscatto 2014; Schippers, 2002) and in jazz (Buscatto 2007). In the
British rock world, both Bayton and Cohen found that women gained access to
musical participation through their relationships with male musicians.
Homogamy is also found among music fans, as in metal (Arnett, 1996) or punk
(LesBlanc, 1999).
Women might become musicians in bands due to the encouragement
and support of their partners (Bayton, 1998), or they might become musicians or
band managers as an attempt to integrate their social lives more closely with
that of their partners (Bayton, 1998, p. 59; Cohen, 1991, pp. 207-208). This is
part of the invisible and unacknowledged work and personal/private service
carried out by (and expected of) women, in their roles as wives/girlfriends, but
also as mothers, in order to facilitate men's’ careers (Bayton, 1998, p. 9; Cohen,
1991, p. 265; Finnegan, 2007). The opposite solution to pursuing music careers
has been to give up having a partner and/or children (unlike their wives,
husbands and boyfriends do not always support and service their partners,
Bayton, 1998, Buscatto, 2007b).
2.2.5.4: The gendering of rock instrumentation
The three instruments most commonly used in rock bands’ traditional basic
lineup are the electric guitar, electric bass guitar, and the drum kit – although
some rock bands also use keyboards/electronic synthesizers and other
instruments
(Strong, 2011; Bayton, 1998; Green, 2001). Voice is also an “embodied
instrument” mediated by the microphone (Frith, 1996). However, the literature
has pointed out that singing is culturally framed as a natural (bodily) activity, as
opposed to instrument playing, which is equated with real rock musicianship
and acquired skill (Weinstein, 2004a; Frith, 1996; Bannister, 2012; Gay, 1991).
Musical instruments are here conceptualised as sociotechnical artefacts,
in the vein of/as in the field of Science and Technology Studies and Sound
Studies (Pinch & Bijsterveld, 2004; Pinch & Trocco, 2002; Théberge, 1997). This
approach to musical instruments captures instruments meanings inaction,
examining their performative, situated and distributed agency.
As “artefacts have gender” (Berg & Lie, 1995), so too are instruments
inscribed by gender ideologies. Rock instruments like other instruments,
technologies and artefacts have gender scripts. If uses are inscribed in
technologies – scripts (Akrich & Latour, 1992, p. 208), the representations of
masculinities and femininities is embedded in technological artefacts too –
genderscripts enable or constrain performances of gender identities and
relations (Pinch & Oudshoorn, 2003, p. 10; Wajcman, 2007, p. 295).
A body of literature in the fields of music education, ethno-musicology,
musicology and music therapy have shown that instruments’ different musical
roles, status, different physical characteristics, material features, as well as
gender delineated meanings are mediators of people’s personal and musical
identities, shaping the construction of gender identities and gendered
selfpresentations (Doubleday, 2008; Green, 2009; Hallam, Rogers, & Creech,
2008; Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2017; O’Neill & Harrison, 2000).
Most of the research on female rock instrumentalists has been on
guitarists, a representative example of females playing traditional
maledelineated instruments (Bayton, 1997; Bourdage, 2010; Halstead &
Rolvsjord, 2017; Laurin, 2009; Reddington, 2004). Opposed to the archetypal
figure of the male guitar-hero, the drummer and the gender(ing) of the drum kit
has not received much attention in popular music research, nor has the electric
bass guitar.
Within the rock band, vocalists (men or women) who are “dedicated
singers” (non-instrument players) have a lower-status among band peers and
their musical role is undervalued (Weinstein, 2004a, Bannister, 2012). This
negatively affects women’s status as singers in rock (Clawson, 1993) as well as
in other popular music genres (Buscatto, 2007a). As a consequence of being a
female-occupied job within rock, the role of the female rock singer has been
analysed along the binary axes of reproduction/resistance,
disempowerment/empowerment (Whiteley, 2000). Female singers have been
devalued in rock music discourses as the passive female singer and entertainer
in some rock music scholarship as recent work on the 1960s vocal girls groups
points out (Stras, 2010; Warwick, 2007). On the other hand, the female voice
and singers (especially acoustic and singer-songwriters) have been celebrated
as examples of feminist resistance (Whiteley, 1997, p. xvii; Sara Cohen, 1991,
p. 203).
The white male guitar hero
The electric guitar has been theorised as the iconic representation of masculine
power, aggression and domination, including sexual prowess – a
“technophallus” (Waksman, 1999). The guitar is used as a resource for
masculinity displays within “cock rock” performances and heavy metal,
epitomised in the figure of the male guitar hero (Frith & McRobbie, 1990;
Strohm as cited in Laurin, 2009; Walser, 1993; Waksman, 1999). However, the
guitar-based virtuosity of heavy metal and hard rock (Walser, 1993), contrasts
with the indie rock rejection of the “guitar hero” virtuosity (Bannister, 2006).
Not just gender and sexuality, but also race have shaped the history of
the electric guitar throughout the 20th century, which became male, heterosexual
and white:
[in the 1970s] the process of heroization was already well underway, and
a new hierarchy of masculine achievement was created, continually
reinforced by magazine polls that ranked guitarists according to their
abilities. Guitarists, Page included, were expected to combine virtuosic
display, bodily flamboyance, and mastery of the ability to control and
manipulate technology” (Waksman, 1999, p. 252).
Guitar design has influenced its players, and its players have reshaped
the guitar. The guitar began as a predominantly female instrument, but as the
guitar became a male instrument, so too it increased in size (e.g.the Martin
guitar in 1916), making the instrument more difficult for women to play (Carson
et al, 2004, p. 11). However, as girls and women in the 1990s and 2000s started
becoming visible as guitarists, guitar manufacturers also turned to this market
segment, making guitars with smaller bodies and slender fingerboards “for
women” (Carson et al, 2004, p. 12). In the 1970s, Charlotte Ackerley (as cited in
Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2015) described how female guitarists were discouraged
from playing lead guitar, with most women learning to play rhythm guitar or
accompaniment guitar, a phenomenon which still holds true (Bourdage, 2007;
Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2017).
Bayton (1997) starts with the question: “why are there no great female
electric guitarists?” Based on interviews with female electric guitar players in the
UK, the sociologist and guitarist analyses the role of the musician’s body in
guitar playing, and examines how guitar design, as well as its playing
conventions, work to exclude women. Women cannot escape the issue of how
to stand and hold the guitar: at the pelvic level? Above the waist? The fact that
women are left with the “dilemma of either "looking good" and playing in a
masculine way, or “looking sissy”, denotes the implicit masculinist design.
Perhaps if guitar designers considered that women have breasts, maybe guitars
would be designed to be held above the waist (Bayton, 1998, p. 115). A further
consideration can be put forward: cutting short the fingernails, necessary in
picking the strings, is also incompatible with ideals of conventional femininity;
further, technical jargon around amplification technologies works as an
exclusionary male power strategy (Bayton, 1990, 1993, 1997). Not just the
iconic guitar, but the power chords (an amplified, overdriven guitar riff) have
become delineated with performative masculinity (Kearney, 2017, pp. xv–xvii;
Leonard, 2007, pp. 89–114).
The feminisation of the electric bass guitar
Clawson (1999b) discusses the feminisation of the bass, using a sociology of
work approach. Clawson shows that due to men controlling access to the guitar
(the most valued instrument within the band), they push women out from guitar
playing to the bass, a low-status instrument with a “supportive role” – unlike the
leading roles which the guitar and drums have assumed in the band. The bass
also combines lower entry-level skill requirements (although it is hard to play)
with greater demand.
As women become bass players, there is a growing identification of the
bass as a women's instrument, contributing to its low-status. At the same time,
there is a claim to the gender-appropriateness of bass. Bass is a “woman's
instrument” because bass playing is a form of emotion work at which women
excel (an explanation given by both men and women), and because women
have a natural (physical) propensity for rhythm. This explanation was put
forward only by women bass players themselves, who often used notions of
gender difference to claim a status of superiority, grounded in a framework of
difference (falling into gender essentialisms of inborn traits such as a claim to a
natural, female sense of rhythm).
Clawson concludes that although bass playing ensures women’s
participation in bands, the feminisation of the bass guitar has reinforced, rather
than challenged, rock gender ideology. By stereotyping women as bass players,
leaving the lead and rhythm guitar for men, the bass has been devalued on the
assumption that it is easier to play. The women in Clawson’s study are, as such,
engaged in contradictory processes of resistance and reproduction.
Drummers and the drum kit
Women are under-represented in drumming in popular music genres, such as
rock and jazz (G. D. Smith, 2013).
The drum kit is represented as a masculine instrument as studies on
gender-biased instruments and instrument gender-stereotypes show (O’Neill &
Boulton, 1996; Hallam, Rogers, & Creech, 2008), and the loudness and
physicality of the drums have been coded as “masculine” (G. D. Smith, 2013).
The two most comprehensive studies on drummers and the drum kit are
by Berger (1999) and Gary D. Smith (2013), a drummer himself. The former is
an in-depth innovative phenomenological account of a heavy metal drummer,
but leaves gender aside. The latter includes a chapter on female drummers.
There is a gap in the study of the artistic careers of female drummers and in the
use of the drum kit for gender displays.
Despite the (gender) scripts, there is no essential or ultimate use that
can be prescribed onto the object itself. As such, technology in itself is neither
inherently patriarchal nor unambiguously liberating (Wajcman, 2010, p. 148).
One needs to analyse “technologies-in-use” (Suchman, 2007). Following this
research strand, and following actors as they do things with music, I intend to
examine both the traditional roles of women in rock (as singers) – and detach
them from a priori assumptions – as well as non-traditional roles throughout the
empirical chapters.
Part III – “Made In Portugal”
2.3.1: Aesthetic cosmopolitanism, national and local socio-materialities
My research takes place in contemporary Portugal (1990-2014). This chapter
provides background information about the country and the rock music “made
in” Portugal.
Two main socio-political events in the 20th century left their mark on
Portuguese society, shaping the reception of rock music in Portugal, as well as
women’s socio-political status. Salazar’s dictatorship (1933-1974) sustained a
long-term patriarchal, colonial legal order that was put to an end with the
Carnation Revolution or the April Revolution (25th April, 1974). This top-down
revolution put an end to the colonial war (1961-1974) and the secular
Portuguese colonial empire. The other event was the integration into the
European Community (1986), with its convergence policies and structural and
cohesion funds as political-economical devices (B. D. S. Santos, 1993).
Altogether, the April Revolution and the integration into the European
Union furthered the democratisation and the modernisation of the country,
increased urbanisation (Lisbon and Oporto), increased literacy levels, and the
growth of an urban middle class – in which rock played a role, as part of the
opening-up to foreign influences, and in the emergence of a certain postmodern
‘movida’ (leisure community) (Guerra, 2010, 2013a).
Another major socio-political transformation in Portuguese society was
women’s status, concerning education, work and politics/civil rights. Girls went
to school, women entered the labour market and began to participate in political
and social life, although with limitations.
Although the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic in 1976,
established the democratic principles of equality and universal suffrage, it was
not until 1979 that equality was established between men and women in
employment. This meant a top-down legal transition, in which there was no
need for negotiation with the old regime, and resulted in a “weak civil society”,
and a strong State (B. D. S. Santos, 1993). In fact, women’s movements in
Portugal are characterised by their weakness (V. Ferreira, 1999; Tavares, 2011).
There is low participation in trade unions (V. Ferreira, 2002) and in political
decision-making positions. In 2006, affirmative action was taken and a Parity
Law was established. The only exception, effective in mobilising the fragile
women’s movements in Portugal, was the issue of abortion. In 2007, in the
aftermath of a national referendum, abortion become decriminalised38 (Monteiro,
2012).
A major change over the last 40 years has been the rise in the
educational level of the population, and especially women. Nowadays, Portugal
has highly feminised rates of qualification, especially in Higher Education.
However, the high qualifications of women have not translated either into an
equal participation in political life nor into equal access to the labour market and
wages (Araújo, 2010, Casaca, 2010, Abrantes, 2013). Women tend to do
degrees which offer fewer prospects of getting well-paid work after graduation,
and are mostly absent from technologically-related degree courses with better
employment prospects.
Significant advances for gender equality in Portugal come from the
territorialisation of European policies, as a “mainstreaming strategy”, formulated
in the “National Equality Plans” – although they are not without their pitfalls
(Monteiro & Portugal, 2013).
After this short overview, I will provide a portrayal of the history of rock
music produced, distributed and consumed in Portugal before and after the
democratic revolution. This portrait is guided by previous scholarly work on the
topic (a short literature review of the sociology of music in Portugal), following
the general thread to periodisation by decade.
The study of popular music by Portuguese social scientists is fairly
recent. This is explained by the late institutionalisation of the social sciences
and gender studies in Portugal (Amâncio & Oliveira, 2014; Neto, 2013; Pereira,
2017), which only became possible after the dictatorship.
Currently, systematic research on music in Portugal is being conducted,
privileging an empirical focus on topics related to the country’s history and social
reality, and a theoretical frame dominated by a production-of-culture approach.
Studies have focused mostly on music industries (Abreu, 2010b; Losa,
2013; Neves, 1999; P. Nunes, 2014; Pestana & Silva, 2014); the music industry
and the Internet (Oliveira, 2012) on music institutions and its education services
(Quintela, 2011)) and music archives (A. M. Nunes, 2011; Pestana & Silva,
2014). There is also a body of work on music journalism/press, music radio and
music criticism (Augusto, 2016; Lima, 2011; I. R. Martins, 2011; P. Nunes, 2004,
2010).
Music reception tends to study (outdoor) consumption practices, such as
Music Festivals (from jazz to rock), at the cross-roads of cultural policies, local
development and tourism, using quantitative or mixed methods approaches
(Guerra, 2017; Lourenço & Gomes, 2005; Martinho & Neves, 1999; Sarmento,
2007). Empirical studies on music fans and personal listening (or their actual
practices of engagement with music) are scarce. Contador (2001) has analysed
issues of ethnicity among young black music fans; Campos (2015) has studied
the music habitus among jazz lovers, and Vítor Ferreira has studied youth
microcultures around music consumption and sociability (V. S. Ferreira, 2008).
The identified lack of studies on amateur cultural practices (Abreu, 2000)
seems to persist, with the exception of the study of amateur musicians in the
context of group music-making, such as choirs (Pestana, 2011, 2015),
philharmonic bands (Mota, 2009), Portuguese afro-descendants’ music-making
practices (Pais, 2013) but mostly in the context of pop-rock bands. Regarding
the latter, there are studies on garage bands or youth underground
musicmaking (Gomes, 2013, 2014; P. E. A. Martins, 2013; Nóvoa, 2011; Pais,
2004;
T. T. Santos, 2012) and studies on specific (male) bands: Parkinsons (Guerra &
Quintela, 2016); Tédio Boys (Alcaire, 2005); Mata-Ratos (Lemos, 2011).
Doctoral researcher, Pedro Félix (2013) has conducted an ethnography on a
very popular rock band Xutos & Pontapés, which has been in existence for 30
years.
This fits the trend towardsstudying producers (creators and artists) across
genres. Luis Campos (2007) has studied some professional (male) rock
musicians, and there is a concern with musicians’ internationalisation (Neves,
2007).
Studies on music communities, scenes or neo-tribes usually explore both
musicans and fans – that is the case of rock and punk (Abreu, Silva, Guerra, &
Moreira, 2017; Guerra, 2010; Moreira, 2013) and of rap and hip-hop practices,
such as graffiti and break dance (R. Campos, Nunes, & Simões, 2016;
Fradique, 2003; Raposo, 2010; J. A. Simões, Nunes, & Campos, 2005). The
relation between online and offline in these communities has been analysed
(Fradique, 2003; J. A. Simões, 2010; J. A. Simões & Campos, 2016), and also in
heavy metal (H. Silva, 2010).
In this body of work, the issue of gender is at most a side topic,
acknowledging the under-representation of women and/or profiling the few
women in the fields. Studies on the relationship between music and gender are
rare.
2.3.2: Portugal is a punk rocker: emergence and contemporaneity of rock music
in Portugal
The mid-1950s are seen as the time when the first rock music projects in
Portugal emerged. Group or solo, Portuguese musicians oscillated between two
main Anglo-American musical role models: The Shadows or The Beatles
(Guerra, 2010, p. 202).
In her doctoral research on the (male-dominated) Portuguese
phonographic industry over the 20th century, Abreu (2010a) shows the
importance of this industry in establishing pop rock. Fado de Lisboa was
wellestablished in performance circuits/spaces (House of Fado), but pop-rock,
as well as other genres (Coimbra song, Balada, protest song), had reduced
performance spaces. For instance, pop-rock was performed in high-schools’
proms/balls. It was the phonographic record that allowed for these musical
genres in the cultural public sphere (Abreu, 2010a, p. 299).
Rock/pop music first appeared in the form of phonographic records in
Portugal in the 60s, through two different phonographic companies/labels:
Valentim de Carvalho (VC) and Orfeu. The former was one of the biggest
phonographic companies operating in Portugal, also representing international
labels such as EMI and Decca, and Columbia; and the latter had the status of a
small independent label (Abreu, 2010a, p. 294-294).
It is important to note that in the 1960s, with the Colonial War breaking
out (1961), there was an expansion of the musical genre Balada, Música de
Intervenção and Fado de Coimbra (José Afonso is one of the best-known
examples) which became associated with resistance to the fascist regime;
whereas Fado de Lisboa, became associated with the fascist regime’s
cultural/national policy (crystalized in the popular Fado singer Amália
Rodrigues). At the same time, because many pop-rock musicians were
university students, the pop-rock bands broke up when their young male
musicians were conscripted to fight in the war.
Valentim de Carvalho had an important role in promoting the first poprock
Portuguese musical groups, like the Sheiks – who sang in English, and had both
covers and originals – or Quarteto 1111 (Abreu, 2010a, p. 296). Orfeu
combined in its Portuguese catalogue a more traditional strand with a modern
one, and in 1967 they edited the EP of the Portuguese band with English
influences Pop Five Incorporated (Abreu, 2010a, p. 297). This was quite unique
at the time because it branded the “made in England” issue.
The Portuguese radio programme “In Orbit” (from Radio Clube
Português) was the first one to be dedicated solely to promoting British popular
music like the Beatles. The only exception was when they played Quarteto 1111,
for the first time, which then became considered the first musical success of
“Portuguese rock” (Abreu, 2010a, p. 297).
Pop-rock was emerging (competing) at the same time as other musical
genres. It must be noted that Balada and Nova Canção de Coimbra, unlike
poprock music, were musical genres which were considered disruptive and
publishing/releasing them was censured by PIDE (the political policy at the
service of the fascist regime). VC distanced itself from this political repertoire,
and did not risk editing that kind of music, while Orfeu embraced it. However,
even with the support of a big phonographic company such as VC and even
without the opposition of the regime, the socio-political circumstances in
Portugal did not allow those pop-rock musical experiences to flourish (Abreu,
2010a, p. 340).
In the wake of the Carnation Revolution, the previously forbidden songs
and musicians became national icons for freedom and liberation – while other
musical genres, such as Fado de Lisboa, were linked to the previous regime,
stigmatised and their performance in public spaces diminished – a situation that
has now changed, with claims to Fado as world heritage (Mendonça & Abreu,
2013). With the nationalisation of radio and TV, the pop-rock that had only
recently, and in an extremely restrictive way, begun to be broadcast was
banished. Also, the economic activities of the phonographic industry (as well as
other sectors) were restrained, affecting all music genres.
The post-revolutionary musical landscape was composed of national
protest songs. The 1970s saw a broad/general decay of pop-rock – although the
late 70s also saw the first steps of punk and the emergence of heavy metal
soundss (Almeida, 2009; Guerra, 2010, p. 211). In 1979, Hot Club started a jazz
school that remains an important music school for both jazz and rock musicians
to this day (Mendes, 2016; Roxo, 2010; H. Santos & Abreu, 2002, pp. 242–
244). This is particularly important regarding popular music education, as there
are no other rock schools, and popular music has been largely absent for a long
time from the school music curriculum (Mota, 2015).
Democracy Rocks: 1980s-2011
The 1980s constituted a benchmark for the history of music and rock in
Portugal. It was the time of the “New Portuguese Rock”. There was a boom in
bands and performance venues. Indie record labels appeared and a dynamic
phonographic industry bloomed (Abreu, 2010a, p. 340; Guerra, 2015, p. 13).
Music journalism and criticism were established, for example, Blitz was
launched in 1984, and has survived as the only specialist title (P. Nunes, 2004),
as well as radio shows which played rock and heavy metal, but also new wave
punk and post-punk styles (António Sérgio in Lança-Chamas (Augusto, 2016;
Guerra, 2013a).
After 1986, several changes led to the creation of a Portuguese
alternative rock, as Paula Guerra (2010) explains in her doctoral thesis, in which
she traced its genealogy (1980-2010). She examined the existence of agents
and structures opposed to the ‘establishment’, as well as the country’s socio-
political situation – its opening-up to foreign influences, increased urbanisation
and the emergence of a leisure community (‘movida’) and the expansion of
leisure structures (bars and nightclubs), mostly in Lisbon and Porto.
In the 1990s, the music-industry reached its “golden age”: the
establishment of the former big five music corporations (EMI, Warner,
Polygram/Universal, Sony and BMG) (Abreu, 2010a; Losa, 2009; P. Nunes,
2014).
The 1990s were the time of the expansion, professionalisation and
internationalisation of music production, creation and distribution (Félix, 2010).
Portuguese popular music journalism achieved consolidation from 1992
onwards (Nunes, 2010), as well as MTV. In Portugal, this meant the emergence
and the consolidation of new popular music genres, namely dance music
(drum’n’bass, trance, techno), heavy metal and punk. Grunge also had local
manifestations – e.g. Blind Zero (Félix, 2010, p. 1054).
In the 21st century, a pluralism of styles and aesthetics characterises
music in Portugal (Cidra, 2010, p. 1386). In the second half of the 1990s, two
different (not opposite but in a continuum) patterns emerge regarding the
different ways in which musicians appropriate music materials and language in
their musicianship, constructing their (local) identity in a transnational market. In
the first pattern, musicians appropriate music materials and language
(Portuguese) in articulation with international popular music genres. The second
pattern is more in line with “alternative rock” (but also post-grunge, nu-metal )
relating to subcultural trends and history or to the international music industry.
The musicians’ hybridity is related here to their appropriation of sound and
music materials recognised mostly by specific transnational music communities,
and using English, not Portuguese (Cidra, 2010).
The participants in this research tend to conform to this second pattern. It
is this second pattern that matches Regev’s notion of the existence of a “global
structural dimension” of pop-rock, which is overlooked in cultural sociology.
Regev claims there is a process of standardisation of national music cultures
along the lines of the pop-rock aesthetic (what he calls expressive
isomorphism). Portugal has similarities with transnational scenes, as rock’s
circulation in a global mediascape (Appadurai, 1996) is an outcome of a
process of cultural syncretism, a process accelerated by the use of new
technologies (Guerra, 2013a, 2015).
The tension between domestic/national and international repertoire,
between writing/singing in Portuguese or in English, pervades music discourses
and practices in Portugal at every level. It is a theme in the imaginary and in the
Portuguese cultural public sphere. There is a tension for musicians and music
scenes, majors, indie labels, music journalists and consumers. It is frequently
claimed in the media that Portuguese music is under-appreciated by Portuguese
audiences(Félix, 2002; P. Nunes, 2003). In pop-rock, punk, metal and
alternative rock, English gained a particular relevance in the 1990s and 2000s,
regarding band names, lyrical writing and phonographic registries (Félix, 2010,
p. 1053).
However, Portuguese has a music language which has gained new
strength from 2007/2008 onwards (Guerra & Silva, 2018, p. 8; A. S. Silva &
Guerra, 2015).
The way in which the key Portuguese punk actors interpret the
relationship between Portuguese punk and the global punk scene is also
illustrative of this tension.
As Guerra and her research team found, Portuguese punks’ discourses
revealed three broad positions. The first defines the relation as mimetic (just
imitation); a second prefers to describe it as an adaptation and appropriation of
themes (it stresses the specific dimensions of Portuguese punk); and the third
denies in itself the existence of any autonomous Portuguese punk, and
questions the relevance of such a relationship.
The work of Nunes regarding music journalism and record labels
illustrates one of the angles of this tension. Music journalists face the challenge
of deciding how much attention should be given to Portuguese artists in the
press. This is especially important in a small-scale music industry where the
national repertoire is peripheral to multinational record companies, journalists
and the Portuguese media in general are an important referent for the national
industry in the promotion of Portuguese music.
Journalists have taken up positions either as “the good Samaritans” with
a proactive, engaged attitude towards Portuguese music, or as the (industry)
“cheerleaders” with a more detached position. But in some moments this
tension is more acute than others. From 2001 onwards (arguably, 2008), the
global recession/crisis in the music industry, caused by the growth in the digital
distribution of music, and the loss of sales in physical recordings (Nunes, 2014)
had local effects: major record labels were reluctant to expand or invest in local
musicians. For labels and the music industry, the way music journalists deal with
coverage of the national repertoire is difficult, especially in times of recession (P.
Nunes, 2010, p. 42).
This tension between domestic and foreign is also illustrated by the
music recording industry and alternative music industries. The “golden age” of
record labels in Portugal (1988–2000) served mainly the marketing and
distribution of international repertoire (non-Portuguese). However, it also meant
that Portugal was now part of a transnational music industry, as the Portuguese
divisions of majors either merged with local independents (e.g. EMI and
Valentim de Carvalho) or invested in the local repertoire – with the exception of
Warner (P. Nunes, 2014, p. 91). This contributed to raising the profile of
independents as well as majors, and, more importantly, the commercial profile
of Portuguese artists – the global crisis did not impact negatively on local and
domestic music repertoires (Nunes, 2014, p. 93).
2.3.3: Portuguese gender segregated music world
Music-making in Portugal is male-dominated55. In classical music, women are a
minority in orchestras, a gender segregated musical space. There is an
opposition between the male-dominated management and leadership roles and
the feminine “base”, as well as a contrast between the high proportion of women
in string instruments and their almost complete absence in brass/percussion
(Conde et al., 2003, p. 292).
While only one woman conducts an orchestra, in contrast, choral
direction opens doors to women, with 38% of choral directors being women
(Conde et al., 2003, p. 281). In Philharmonic bands, there has been a slow rise
in the number of women conductors – from three to twelve (Mota, 2009). In
higher education music schools, the only traditional and clearly feminine field is
that of singing (74%), with women also represented favourably in ancient music
and keyboards (female rates of 50% and 58%), and the intermediate cases of
orchestra and chord instrumentalists, (41% and 43% respectively), (Conde et
al., 2003, p. 281).
The picture is not too different in popular music. Electronic Dance Music
is also a male-dominated world, at production and consumption levels (Lopes,
Boia, Ferro, & Guerra, 2010). In every sub-set (trance, techno and drum’n’bass),
men are over-represented as producers of music and DJing, as well as event
organisers. When women participate, they do it in non-musical
55 According to the Census of the Portuguese Population, from 1991-2001 women represented
17% of composers, musicians and singers, the lowest level in Europe (Conde, 2003, p. 263264).
roles (ticket selling, drink selling). However, in trance there is a growing
presence of women as DJs (called DJanes), who founded a women-only
agency. The research carried out on women club goers (a minority, when
compared to men), has revealed a diversity of practices, which reveal both
empowering and more traditional versions of femininities.
Women are under-represented in hip-hop (J. A. Simões, 2013) – virtually
absent from DJing, breakdance and graffiti (a heavily masculinised field within
hip-hop, (R. Campos, 2010). Only one all-female crew exists: OGA (Only Girls
Aloud). Women’s participation (often by male invitation) is more relevant in rap,
but usually in the (less prestigious) role of backing vocals.
Heavy metal is also a male-dominated world. In the analysis of LOUD!, the
single and long-lasting Portuguese magazine dedicated to heavy metal, Martins
(2011) found that women are under-represented as music journalists (two in
twelve) and as topics of writing – from a total corpus of 870 articles (interviews,
album and concert reviews), only 67 articles mentioned women in any way.
Besides the unbalanced differentiation, the issue is also how women are
represented discursively as a stereotypical and homogenous entity, which
reinforces hegemonic ideological constructs. The construction of the
pseudogenre “female fronted metal” (based on the sex of the lead
singer/vocalist, regardless of the musical genre or style) illustrates segregation
of the womenartists’ musical activities in metal, aimed towards their containment
in a space of alterity - women’s othering in the music press.
Punk, like rock, is a male world, considering the social profiles of its
protagonists (Abreu et al., 2017). Between 1977 and 2014, female punks not
only constitute a small minority (from the 214 respondents, 86% are men and
only 14% women), but also generally occupy subaltern and background
positions in the punk scene: 43% of women say they are just fans (compared
with 9% of men); 40% had or have a performative musical activity (compared
with 74% of men); only 23% say they have it now (compared with 49% of men);
only 17% say they now perform mediation activities (compared with 37% of
men). In-depth interviews with ten punk women who experienced the arrival of
punk in Portugal (late 1970s, early 1980s) show that although punk was
experienced as freedom and openess, it was never a space for gender equality.
Those women were part of a socio-cultural economic elite, as most Portuguese
punks at the time were. Women accessed punk worlds via their traditional roles
as girlfriends or wives (they describe how they hung out with punk boys). They
complained about the sexist and catholic society where they lived, being
criticised for their “anti-feminine” punk looks, feeling secluded from the public
sphere, and pushed towards the domestic sphere and traditional female roles,
(Guerra et al., 2017, pp. 29–30).
In line with these findings, Rui Telmo Gomes' (2013) recent ethnography
on Lisbon’s underground musicians shows a young, male-dominated world. The
few women musicians have higher educational qualifications. Women were
present in Gomes’ fieldwork mainly as audiences and in sociability networks.
From classical to popular, the findings point to the fact that for
Portuguese women musicians, the feminine condition is less important than
their professional identity – women wish to stand as musicians. Despite strong
inequalities in musical practice that have segregated women in less prestigious
roles, a discourse on gender equality persists – difficulties are attributed to the
artistic profession, and not to their sex status and discriminatory
institutional(ised) practices.
It was in this landscape that my academic interest in researching women
rockers took off.
METHODOLOGY
In this chapter I detail how the fieldwork was designed and carried out. I
describe how participants were selected and recruited, and I present the profile
of the sample, discussing the advantages and pitfalls of the methods used, and
the practical problems encountered as well as ethical procedures.
I employed a grounded approach (Charmaz, 2006) and conducted the
research in several stages. I combined this grounded approach with an
ethnographically informed approach to data collection (Hammersley & Atkinson,
2007).
Here, I argue that qualitative methods best suit the exploratory nature of
this research with women rocker amateurs in Portugal if we are to explore the
diversity of these women’s musical engagements.
As everyday rock fans, my informants were not always connected
‘physically’/locally to each other; they were not specifically involved in any
subculture/scene or any fan club, although they were sometimes friends or
acquaintances. And they were geographically dispersed; there was in other
words, no specific “field” to which I could gain access. Instead, I could explore
personal and professional networks.
The ethnographic work on popular music (and gender) has traditionally
been carried out by researchers involved previously as participants in the field,
although with different depths of involvement. For example, Bayton was a
guitarist, and Downes was a drummer involved in the British riot grrrl scene.
Leblanc used to be a punk. Reddington, Finnegan and Cohen were also
musicians. That was not the case for me. Although I do like rock, and I build my
rock persona as someone who listened to the “classics” (Ramones, Clash), I
was not involved in any (Portuguese) rock music scene.
Being neither a current nor former member/participant in any
(Portuguese) rock music scene, I found the interview to be a particularly flexible
research tool and interactive device that suited the research aims throughout
the different research stages (Denzin, 2001; Gubrium & Holstein, 2002).
In-depth interviewing was a way to learn the (emic) meanings of participants’
actions (J. M. Johnson, 2001, p. 106). For that reason, the interview schedules
followed DeNora’s appeal to keep “the right level of analysis” and move away
from the “why” questions to the “how” questions (DeNora, 2003a) – or in
Hennion’s words (Hennion, 2001, p. 5), I tried to desociologise the interviewees,
by asking them to talk about their ways of doing things (with rock music).
In this sense, I designed the interview questions with the aim of leading
respondents back to the practical level of real-life examples of who-did-
what-when-how, the ‘nittygritty’ level of mundane action that has the
capacity to undermine accounts and the various identity claims,
posturings and role play that often occur within an interview. Sticking
close to the level of respondents’ musical practices helped to reveal how
respondents used music rather than their depictions of relations between
themselves and others.(DeNora, 2000)
Studying an unfamiliar setting, my researcher role was that of a novice
and I adopted the (acceptable) incompetent position of the outsider
(Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p. 76). In the field of popular music, this role
has also been termed the “ethnographic tourist” strategy (Kotarba & Vannini,
2009, p. 5). This has implications for the research. My outsider role allowed me
not to take anything for granted. I made the most of my ignorance and got
permission to ask, and request clarifications throughout the interviews – or
interviewees themselves would clarify; “you might not know this, but…”. On the
other hand, as a non-participant/novice, it takes a long time to begin to “hear”
what members are saying about their lived experience (J. M. Johnson, 2001, p.
107; Rubin & Rubin, 1995).
I am, however, Portuguese, and grew up in Coimbra, the city that was
arguably labelled the “Portuguese capital of rock music”, due to the active rock
music scene in the 1990s (Alcaire, 2005; Guerra, 2013a). Despite I was never
directly involved in Coimbra’s rock music scene, coming from Coimbra
contributed to my welcome when entering the field (and to being asked if I could
book gigs there).
In the sense of classical ethnography, and geographically speaking, I can
say I am a “native anthropologist”, as I study my own society, and not a distant
community. Hence, there is a shared culture between me and my interviewees.
However, this status is complicated by the fact that I was a Portuguese emigrant
in the UK, studying Portuguese women rockers in a foreign (British) university.
The fact that the study was funded and being conducted in a foreign
(English) university, generally increased the sense of legitimacy of the topic. On
the other hand, non-participants that were not musicians found it quite odd (and
even outrageous) that this research had public funding – I started my fieldwork
at the dawn of the austerity crisis in Portugal (2011-2012).
3.1: The Participants
The participants were sixty white Portuguese women who self-identified as rock
music fans and/or musicians and/or DJs (see Appendix 1).
Most of the participants were non-professional musicians who were
active in the time period of 1990-2014. Only four were professional musicians,
making a living from music making and playing – in which I include teaching
music, either “moonlighting” or as their main job. In fact, one of these four
women owned a music school where she also taught, and another was a school
music teacher.
Participants played several instruments, which was data in itself as I will
explore throughout the empirical chapters. Considering their main instrument
(the ones they have been playing for the longest period), and with a sense of
the participants’ profiles in terms of musical roles, I interviewed six guitarists, ten
drummers (and three more drummers who played the drums as their second
instrument), ten singers (five of whom also played the guitar, so they are also in
the category of guitarists), and eight bass players. I did not find any participant
who played the keyboards exclusively, although musicians who were mainly
singers and a bass player also played the keyboards. I did five group interviews
with female bands (although I interviewed individually women who play(ed) in
female bands).
I conducted interviews with thirteen DJs (including collectives of female
DJs). Twelve interviewees were fans: they had no current or former musical
experience as rock/electronic instrumentalists and/or singers and/or DJs
(although some had contact with the acoustic guitar or the piano). They all live
in urban areas of Portugal (Lisbon, Oporto, Coimbra, Santarém, Aveiro, Viseu,
Faro). The majority had at least one degree (only ten did not attend university at
all, eight of whom had completed secondary education).
The oldest interviewee was fifty years old and the youngest eighteen, but
most of the interviewees ranged in age from their late twenties to their early
forties. This age range has had limited coverage in studies on popular music,
which usually focus on youth and subcultures (in Portugal, see V. S. Ferreira.
2017; Gomes, 2013; Guerra, 2013b; Pais, 2009; Pais & Blass, 2004) or, more
recently, on ageing (A. Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012; Jennings & Gardner, 2012).
This age range allowed me to follow women’s musicking at different life stages.
Some of the interviewees gave retrospective accounts of their musical
trajectories in childhood, but mostly their accounts covered their adolescence
and (emergent) adulthood, which allowed me to follow meaning-making
experiences throughout the course of their lives. These transitions (informed by
decisions concerning professional/academic careers and leisure activities, as
well as personal relationships) are often musically mediated and have
consequences for musical engagement.
The socio-demographic features of the participants in my sample, namely
their age and qualifications, match those of the (mostly) male participants in
Guerra's (2010) sociological research on the Portuguese alternative rock scene.
The creators and producers of Portuguese rock music in Guerra’s study were
mostly men in their thirties (followed closely by those in their twenties and
forties), with a high level of educational skills and correspondingly high social
positions. The profile of these rockers contrasts with the average Portuguese
population, but is similar to profiles of other artists (Guerra, 2015, pp. 2–3).
3.2: Doing the Research: Documents, Interviews and Observations
The data for this research was mainly gathered through interviews, some of
which included elicitation techniques. Most interviews were individual, but I also
conducted group interviews with female bands and DJ’s collectives.
The interviews with musicians were supplemented as much as possible
with observations at rehearsals and gigs. I tried to do one observation for each
interview, but some bands no longer existed, or musicians were not in a band at
that moment, or were not active as musicians any more.
I made an effort to track and interview female bands from the 1990s until
2014. Following the lead of Reddington (2012) and Bayton (1998), I assumed
that many female bands existed but were not covered by mainstream/traditional
media. I thought that information and contacts would pop up (by word of mouth
and online ads), when I started the research. However, this was not the case. I
do not claim I was able to track all the female bands that existed in this time
period in Portugal, but I think I covered the ones that had something recorded (a
single, a demo-tape) or that have gigged.
However, as I closed my fieldwork, from 2015 onwards, new
(selfidentified) queer/queercore bands emerged in Lisbon – some of which were
assembled by people that had belonged to other female bands.
Group interviews with disbanded female bands brought debate (different
versions of what the band had been, etc.), which I found particularly useful. Also
the opportunity to attend a reunion show of a disbanded band (after having
interviewed them) was a fortunate event. Two interviewees said they had set up
female bands that “never left the garage”, not even for a gig. I do not know how
many female bands never left the rehearsal room, but this goes beyond the
scope of this research. In any case, I realised that belonging to a female band
was the exception (and not the rule) in the musical trajectories of the women
interviewed.
The interviews with DJs were complemented with observations on the
set. In the case of female fans, I did not undertake observations, with one
exception.
I attended a one-day music festival with a participant. In the aftermath of
the interview when the participant, in her early forties, complained she had no
friends or company to attend a music festival with, and she would not go alone, I
invited her, and we went together. This “hanging out” produced very rich data,
not only about the interviewee, which I used as triangulation, but it also gave
insights into the presence of women in music festivals – young, white,
heterosexual and committed.
3.2.1: “Documents” as second-hand and naturally occurring data
Besides first-hand data, documents were used as second-hand data. In order to
build background knowledge for this research, I collected “documents” (in the
broadest sense, both digital and paper).
I read the “formal” documents – the academic works on rock music in
Portugal. I collected newspapers articles on Portuguese rock women musicians,
as well as navigating through websites, blogs, forums, Facebook, YouTube and
MySpace musicians’ pages. Not just in the beginning, but throughout the
doctoral period, I paid attention to the news, as well as to the very few
documentaries, TV series and trade books on Portuguese rock bands and
musicians – confirming the absence of women as key actors.
Given the Anglo-Saxon literature on fanzines and digital communication
as alternative media in rock worlds, especially within the riot grrrl movement, I
expected to encounter those fanzines when I started browsing, which I did not
(and I was not interested in studying the representations of women and
feminism in non-feminist fanzines). During the fieldwork, I always asked
interviewees if they ever participated in and/or read fanzines. Very few had.
Only three participated in fanzines: two of them had boyfriends who were
involved in zine making, the other one was a punk. The empirical Portuguese
reality is in contrast with the Anglo-Saxon context. In Portugal, fanzines are
mostly linked to the punk movement (especially in the 1980s), and only during
the 1990s did new ethical and political topics such as women’s rights, feminism,
sexism, homophobia, among others, gain in relevance in Portuguese fanzines
(Guerra & Quintela, 2014; Mateus, 2016).
Although I did not conduct a systematic analysis on this documentary and
archival material, it helped me to have a sense of the field, as well as
“(sensitising) concepts” (Charmaz, 2006) and to stimulate (analytic) ideas.
This body of documentary material helped me to narrow down the
research chronologically to the 1990s onwards. I realized that the 1980s were
already well documented and canonised. If I chose the period of 1960s-1970s
this would have to be historical research, where access to (live) informants – not
only former musicians, but mostly, fans – and music and archival material would
be extremely difficult to get. Instead I chose a contemporary take on amateur
women rockers.
As my main goal was to collect first-hand data among “hidden musicians”
and fans, I wanted to track the women rock musicians whose
biographies/trajectories were available in the public domain, either through
academic work or media accounts69. This body of documentary material also
allowed me to exclude those (few) women musicians from my list of
interviewees. Not only did I have access to material that I could work from as
second-hand data, but also, those women musicians were, to some extent,
public and popular. Also, people who often appear in the media can be
considered “well-trained informants”, who privilege analysis rather than
description (Atkinson & Silverman, 1997; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p.
221), and this was another reason to exclude those musicians from the body of
interviewees.
Given the problems pointed out by the literature on the representations of
women rockers in the mainstream media, and given their lack of involvement in
fanzines, I had a particular interest in musicians’ and DJ’s self-publishing
materials and social network sites (mostly Facebook and MySpace); not just
because musicians have more control over their representations, but also
because their self-presentation online is of extreme importance in a time when
there is an embeddedness of the new media in everyday life (H. Horst, 2012).
Prior to the fieldwork and often before interviews, I would “lurk” on
interviewees’ public pages/content (Facebook or MySpace). Most of the time,
musicians had a Facebook profile picture of themselves playing in a concert –
indicating that their amateur activities were of the utmost importance for their
identities. In some cases, they became my “Facebook friends”, and I could
access their posts.
The textual, sonic and visual elements published and made public can be
used as ‘naturally occurring’ data – although always representations of reality.
These elements can be used ethnographically70, especially in the first stage of
ethnographic fieldwork (Pink, 2001, p. 98).
This online lurking was not used as data in itself, but as elicitation for the
interviews – usually at the end of the interview: “I could see on your Facebook
page that … Could you tell me more about that?”.
Knowing from the literature review that rock is a world of “sound and
vision” (Frith, Goodwin, & Grossberg, 1993; Hauge & Hracs, 2010), I had a
69 That was the case of the female band Pega-Monstro, and the bass player Cláudia Guerreiro
(Linda Martini). I initially planned the interviews with “media musicians” for later stages of data
collection. But by then, I had already reached saturation and decided not to interview them. 70
And not in a semiotic vein.
public space to watch the colours (dark colours, black, but also red), the body
postures (moving bodies, spread out bodies), the gestures (mouths open, the
popular “rock hands”, the rock hand gesture ‘rock on’ with hands-horn).
3.2.2: Fieldwork: 2012-2014
The fieldwork was carried out from 2012 to 2014, covering different time
periods.
I started the fieldwork in the summer of 2012. In the following (academic
breaks) of Christmas and summer (2013 and 2014) I went back to Portugal, and
returned to the field to collect more data. Contact was maintained up until the
end of 2014. Some participants kept in touch by e-mail, writing to me voluntarily
to share news in their musical lives, or added me as “friends” on Facebook
(either prior to the interview or after).
I conducted a total of 51 semi-structured in-depth individual interviews, 7
group interviews (2 to DJ’s collectives, 5 to female bands, which included a
skype interview), 2 follow up interviews and 14 observations directly related to
the interviews (6 in DJ sets and the rest in gigs and rehearsals). I also
conducted 7 e-mail interviews and 1 online interview (by Facebook chat). The
interviews done through online platforms (eg: Skype interview, email interview
and the Facebook interview) not only have a residuary weight, but also they
took place only when it was not possible to interview in person due to the costs
associated with travelling or due to the unavailability of the interviewees. As
such, there are specificities of online communication which I did not consider
when analysing data (L. Gibson, 2010). Regarding e-mail interviews, they took
place with residents outside the main cities where I did the research. The skype
interview was with a disbanded female band. The Facebook chat was to a
former punk drummer, living in a remote area in Portugal.
All the interviews were audio recorded and some were also video
recorded – group interviews with bands and DJ’s collectives and when
interviewing musicians while playing or rehearsing.
The interviews took place in the cities where participants lived. Interviews
were conducted in different locations. Most of these were in public spaces, both
outdoors and indoors such as cafes and public gardens but also at participants’
homes, offices/working place or rehearsal place (studios, garages, houses). The
interviews were conducted at different times during the day to suit participants’
schedules and mine, as I would often travel from my hometown (Coimbra) to
other cities. The observations in gigs and DJ sets took place at night. The
organisation of time in rock worlds is around gig schedules, which in Portugal,
are late (especially when compared to the UK). Gigs start around 11pm/midnight
and finish at 2am/3am (this is why bands do not like to be the last ones playing).
Afterwards many people go to clubs and after-parties (with DJs). Clubs close
from 4 to 6 am. Interviewees, musicians, DJs and fans, often complained that it
was late and that is why people with jobs could not attend more concerts (also
found in Gomes, 2012). In order to attend sets and gigs, the participants were
kind enough to put me on guest-lists whenever the event cost money, although
most of the gigs and sets I attended were free or cheap.
For purposes of observation, I tried to make my presence at gigs and DJ
sets non-disruptive. At gigs I often took the role of an audience member
(sometimes I filmed or took photos, which is also normal “fan behavior” at gigs
and part of local visual cultures). In DJ sets I also took the role of an audience
member or the friend of the DJ (with her “in the cabin/booth”). Whenever I did
interviews or attended gigs/sets, I tried to dress accordingly, which meant most
often wearing more black clothes.
The interviews varied in length from one hour to six hours. The lengthier
interviews took place in specific circumstances: interviewees were on holidays
and/or they welcomed me in their homes or rehearsal studios.
First stage of fieldwork: Summer 2012
A first set of 35 semi-structured interviews and observations was carried out in
the summer of 2012.
The participants were first recruited by convenience from my personal
networks and in gigs. DJs and musicians were recruited by identifying their
websites/social network sites (Facebook, MySpace), by using snowball
sampling and word of mouth. I also posted online recruiting advertisements (see
Appendix 3), hoping to expand the age and geographical scope of my sample.
All interviewees were asked a set of questions about their listening
activities, concert going, tastes (see Appendix 4 for Interview Schedule 1). For
interviewees who were also musicians and/or DJs, I added another set of
questions about musicianship (instrumental learning, gendered on-stage
performance) and DJing.
In the first stage of fieldwork, my goal was to capture the range/diversity
of musical uses and practices of rock for women, from which to examine the
similarities and differences between them to obtain an overview of the overall
process of (gendered) rock music use. This allowed me to have a bigger picture
on different ways of being in rock by “following” the biographies of individual
women as they move over time (and space) across instruments, stages of
musicianship, bands, and fandom.
I selected respondents according to socio-demographic diversity and
representativeness of the experience. I tried to ensure diversity and
representativeness in terms of music sub-genre affiliations, musical and
instrumental role, and in terms of age, educational background, socio-economic
status, as well as in terms of geography.
This methodological choice brought both advantages and limitations. The
fact that I did not focus on a specific genre, nor represent all musical genres and
styles equally, and that I did not focus on a specific musical role impeded me
from having a deep understanding of a specific (sub)genre and style (e.g.
hardcore, heavy metal, punk, indie rock, rockabilly or even blues), or a deeper
understanding of specific musical practices (e.g. personal listening).
This last issue was data-driven – and it will be reflected in the size of the
empirical chapters. Initially, I considered interviewing more fans. But when I
thought I was going to interview a fan, either in the initial contact, or during the
interview, they would often surprise me by saying they had played an instrument
in their youth, or that they had been DJs or were still DJing. Also, the women
rockers recommended (through snowball sampling) were often musicians. And
the few “just fans” I interviewed regretted not learning to play an instrument. I
took this as data which allowed me to understand that being a woman rock
musician has a particular social and musical status for both musicians and fans.
My starting point was to consider the categories of musician, fan and DJ
with analytical flatness.That is to say, I make no distinctions between these
categories, they are just different forms of music love. However, empirically,
social actors draw ditinctions, and draw hierachies of value between musicians,
fans and Djs (passive-listener, active-producer). These are part of popular music
cultures, reproduced through boundary work, giving way to symbolic and
material exclusions (Frith, 1996; Lamont & Fournier, 1992).
Even though the flexibility of the first slot of interviews allowed me to
interview a great many participants, and produced rich data, it had some
drawbacks. It made the use of visual elicitation to supplement the participants’
accounts impractical. It was only possible at home or in the rehearsal studio for
the participants to have visual memorabilia (albums, posters, old videos) at
hand or to pick up the instruments and play. The interviews were also really
lengthy, especially with musicians and DJs, as I would also interview them both
as musicians and/or DJs and as fans.
This is why I made some changes regarding the following stages of data
collection.
Second stage of fieldwork
In the second stage (Christmas 2012, Summer and Christmas 2013 and 2014), I
carried on with (pending) interviews, follow-up interviews and follow-up
observations.
Using a “funnel” approach to research (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, p.
160), and bearing in mind sampling principles, in this second stage of fieldwork,
I had a grounded, comparative framework to work with.
As the research developed, navigation in the field was guided by
emergent themes, and I moved from a convenience sample to recruiting
participants through purposive theoretical sampling (Morse, 2007).
For this reason I decided to interview only “active” musicians. I also
decided to focus on drummers -- as I understood there was a gap in the
literature, and the first set of interviews pointed to a strong female drummer
identity. I also continued with the exploration of the emergent topic of
motherhood.
At this stage, I redesigned the interview for musicians. The new interview
schedule became more focused on the musical and gender performance, the
modes of playing and the appropriation of the instrument, which allowed me to
keep a thematic focus (see Appendix 4 for Interview Schedule 2). I was more
demanding about the interview setting/conditions. I only interviewed musicians
who agreed to do home/studio interviews, with elicitation (photos, video, sound,
collections, real-time playing).
I also re-designed the observation in the DJ set. When I did the first
observations of DJ sets, I was not close to the DJs, I was on the dance floor,
where I thought I had a privileged view of all the action that was going on. In the
second stage, I tried to be in the DJ’s cabinet, and as close as I could get to the
DJ, so she could talk to me while DJing, and I could observe what she was
doing. This was particularly relevant as all the DJs told me they do not prepare
their sets, which meant that a DJ’s set is a site for tacit, embodied and “on the
spot” musical decision-making.
Elicitation techniques
I used elicitation techniques during the interview (e.g. musical maps,
photoelicitation, video-elicitation, playing demonstrations and Facebook Tours).
Elicitation techniques – either with musicians or fans – were inspired by the
“home tours” (Pink, 2001, 2003) and by music-elicitation techniques
(BattRawden & DeNora, 2005; Hara, 2013).
In this first set of interviews (in the first stage), I had planned a procedure
where I would ask the participants to draw me “musical maps” representing their
music trajectories and their music affiliations (across different genres or bands,
or songs, whatever the significant unit was for them), and the emotions and
people they associated with the music that was important to them. However, I
did not find it particularly useful and I felt it interrupted the flow of the interview
and put off participants. In the second-stage I abandoned this idea. There was
only one exception, reproduced below (see Figure 1). Inês, in an interview
which took 6 hours, happily drew a map of her relationship with music, where
we can see how it is mediated by human actors (father, friends, record store
owner) and non-human (TV, tapes). These are mediators in action in specific
contexts (home, concerts, and her grandparent’s house).
Figure 1- Musical map draw by Inês, heavy metal fan.
I found it more useful when fans would talk (and show, if the interviews took
place at the participants’ home) about their audiolibraries (most were digital, and
many had a very sophisticated organization), music lists and other music
memorabilia; fans kept tickets of memorable concerts, concert posters, bands’
posters, tapes, t-shirts.
In interviews with musicians and bands I asked them prior to the interview
to bring/prepare whatever material related to their musical activity they had so
they could “show and tell”. Musicians and DJs brought newspapers clips, photos
and photo-albums, posters (of their gigs), set lists, tapes, letters/notes to each
other, drafts of lyrics, videos…. This material worked as elicitation during the
interview, which I tried to film (not just record).
The photo-elicitation was particularly important for (former) bands and
musicians active in the 1990s, before the advent of the Internet (e.g. Pickle
puss, Black Widows, Muses Land, etc.) (see Figure 2).This technique prompted
some nostalgic accounts, and, when in a group, conflicting accounts of the
band’s identity and activities.
Figure 2 - Photo-album elicitation with Black Widows’ founder Rute Fevereiro (snapshot from
the footage)
Regarding video elicitation – mostly with footage of musicians’ concerts –
I asked the participants to “watch-and-stop”: to make comments and stop the
video at any point if they wanted to make a deeper comment. I also asked
questions while we watched it together (Haw & Hadfield, 2011).
Regarding instrument playing elicitation/playing demonstrations, I drew
on previous work on the use of video in studying action and practices which are
not always verbally accessible (embodied action). Namely, the innovative Acord
(2010) work on museum curators, and Boia's (2014) work on viola players. In
the second-stage especially, I would set up the camera, leaving it steady and
staying next to it. I started asking questions, and when reaching the topic of
instrumental playing, I asked participants to demonstrate their way of
playing/their own style and give a comparison of playing in different genres or
bands while explaining it to me. A selection of these snapshots will be in the
empirical chapters on drummers.
I also asked some participants, DJs and musicians, to do a “Facebook
tour” (see Figure 3). This technique was inspired by Bakardjieva's (2005)
computer tours and Internet-related spaces in the respondents’ homes. I would
sit with participant(s) in front of a computer, and ask them to go through their
public Facebook page, commenting on their posts (and comments to their
posts) as they would like to.
This enabled a better understanding of their activities and the
surrounding ‘off-screen’ contexts.
Figure 3 - Facebook Tour with Swinging Sisters (a female DJ collective).
3.3: Data analysis and validity
The data was analysed using a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). It
is advised that data collection and data analysis are not separate processes
(Morse, 2007). However, the first stage interviews were not determined by the
need to write memos, as I had a limited amount of time to collect data, and the
constant travelling and finding accommodation in friends’ houses and (busy)
hostels made it more difficult. The planning and the tracking of interviewees
added to the difficulty. The feeling that this research stage was somewhat
exploratory in nature also made it difficult to just start writing. Although I did not
engage in proper memo writing during the time I collected data, I took
descriptive but reflexive fieldwork notes, which helped me in the following
stages of data analysis.
After each interview I would jot ideas down in my notebook. Sometimes
even during the interview I took notes, although not many, as I did not want to
lose the conversational flow (prior to the interview I asked consent to record the
interview, and I informed interviewees that I might also take some notes just to
guide me). In DJ sets and gigs, I often took notes on my mobile as if I was
texting – which helped me in the following ways: 1) it allowed me to keep
chronological track of the action in the setting; 2) it was not disruptive or socially
awkward as it could have been if I was writing in a notebook on the dance floor;
3) it avoided unwanted attention as a woman alone on the dance floor, as it
looked as though I was texting someone.
I employed a “formal data analysis process”: collecting data first, followed
by analysis. Hammersley and Atkinson draw attention to the fact that “engaging
in sustained data analysis alongside data collection is often very difficult in
practice.” They go on to say, “Some level of reflexivity can and should be
maintained, however, even if it is not possible to carry out much formal data
analysis before the main fieldwork has been completed” (Hammersley &
Atkinson, 2007, p. 160).
When I left Portugal and went back to Exeter, I started an iterative
process of listening to the recorded interviews, reading my notes, and writing
analytical memos. Each interview was strategically and selectively transcribed ,
and at the same time as I was transcribing, I started the “initial coding”. As
advised by Charmaz (2006, p. 46), I tried not just coding themes, but describing
(coding) action, and accounting for the processes, for which the use of the
gerund was helpful – what Saldana calls “Process Code”. I chose as my code
unit not line-by-line, but incident-by-incident (Charmaz, 2006, pp. 53–55).
After these initial types of coding, I used the Constant Comparative
Method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The main themes were identified through
constant comparative data analysis: I compared coding amongst “clusters” of
interviews. These clusters were organized around interviewees’ musical roles
and band membership. I looked for similarities and differences within each
cluster and between clusters (e.g. becoming a rocker was a similar embodied
process common to all), and it was the presence of a male peer – friend or
boyfriend – in adolescence that made them become musicians or DJs, with very
few exceptions, which worked as “deviant cases” or “negative cases”
(Silverman, 2011, p. 20).
I simultaneously wrote analytic memos and several times read the
interviews transcripts and fieldnotes thoroughly, and watched the videos – I
cross-referenced particular themes and codes across that varied data produced,
in a comprehensive way.
In the last stage, the initial codes turned into “focused codes” (focused on
key analytic ideas) (Charmaz, 2006, pp. 57–60). I also tried to understand the
“how” of action, but at the same time not to forget the way in which a story is
told. Stories (with their metaphors and narratives) have functions, from passing
on a cultural heritage to maintaining a collective sense of the culture of an
organization (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996, pp. 56, 63–68). For instance, I used
some “horror stories” as a way of talking about the dependency of women on
men in female bands, as I explain in section 8 of data chapters
Getting “lost and found” in translation as a process and analytical tool
The process of language translation played a big part throughout the research
process, a bilingual one. The most challenging translation moment was
translating the empirical material and the data collected and produced in my
native language (Portuguese) into English. The translations were done by me,
and checked or suggested by other Portuguese speakers (Pereira, Marhia, &
Scharff, 2009; Temple, 2002).
I often got “lost and found” in translation (Pereira, Marhia and Scharff,
2009). The task of translation was time-consuming and demanding, not just
because I am not a native speaker of English, but also because the context was
frequently very specific, e.g. instrumental playing. Translations cannot always
retain the linguistic richness, the deepness or symbolism of some expressions
or convey the differences. This loss can be frustrating, especially for “in vivo”
coding, “emic” categories and folksonomies/ethnocategories. At the same time,
some things were also found in the incommensurability of language difference –
ideas and concepts can emerge here. Translation became a (analytical) tool to
think with. It helped me gain some distance from the familiarity of language – in
Garfinkel’s terms, it helped me to make the familiar strange (Hammersley &
Atkinson, 2007, p. 161).
The main examples are related to the main topics of my thesis: popular
music and gender. Popular music – literally translated as “música popular” – in
Portuguese mostly refers to traditional musical genres and styles, folk music
and national-singing (nacional-cançonetismo) or fado or protest songs, (Lisboa
apud Guerra, 2010, p. 196) and “pimba”. Also, the term used to refer to rock
music in Portugal has historically varied, from “ié-ié” to “modern music” to
“rock”.
The word “gender” translated into Portuguese (“género”) is homonymous
with genre (“género musical”, “género literário”). In Portuguese, the adjective
“feminino/a” means both female and femininity. For instance: in Portuguese the
female voice [“voz feminina”] might not be feminine at all [“uma voz feminina
masculina”].
As in other Latin languages, the words in Portuguese are highly
gendered. In this sense, translating a more gender neutral language into
English was easier. For instance, the term musician is sexed: “músico” is a male
musician, “música” is a woman musician. However, “música” is homonymous
with the word “song” and “music”. It gets a bit confusing in the writing. The fact
that I wrote in English erased this difficulty, but it softened its potential as a
political statement. Also, in Portuguese when people want to signal musical
belonging, rather than using the Portuguese word for “rocker” (which would be
“roqueiro/a”) they more commonly use the expression “s/he is of rock”, as if rock
was a place. This spatial metaphor of musical belonging also gets lost in
translation.
Having to translate “miúda”, helped me to understand that this word had
a meaning I had not thought of. It was not the same as girl (“rapariga” is the
formal word for female child/adolescent/young woman) nor chick (“gaja” is more
of a slang word for young adult female). “Miúda” is the female for “kid” although
it is also used for girl and chick. However, there are also reappropriations, and
the English word “chick” was also used and “Portugues-ized” – i.e. chica, which
is also the Spanish word for “female” broadly speaking.
The word for tomboy in Portuguese is “Maria-Rapaz” (a literal translation would
be Mary-Boy). Although these two concepts perform the same cultural
role/function, it must be said that the word in Portuguese still retains a female
element – Maria is the most common Portuguese female name, and it has been
used in the history of feminist Literature (e.g. The Three Marias: New
Portuguese Letters). I believe the trope/moniker “Maria-Rapaz” still has an
important symbolic currency in Portuguese society. It is used by girls, boys and
adults to classify girls (as one can see through school ethnographies), but it is
also reacted against, through its feminist re-writing to “Maria-Capaz” (a
wordplay with rapaz (boy) and capaz (able/skilful).
In Portuguese, the use of English words and expressions is very
common. However, as I soon found out, they do not mean the same in English.
For instance, in Portuguese, the term “wanna be” is used in music scenes to
describe people who are not “authentic” music lovers. And it is especially used
for girls/women who dress properly, but who do not engage with the music
deeply. However, as I found from the literature, the Anglo-Saxon term for that is
“try-hard”.
Another example was the word groupie. In Portuguese people use the
word groupie to refer to female fans in derogatory terms. However, to be a
groupie in Portugal does not mean engaging in prolific sexual activity with
musicians – that is framed as an American phenomenon.
A further example: interviewees when referring to authentic music would
say a song or a musician must have feeling [“tem de ter feeling”] in order to
move someone. Another expression, associated with playing was to “play ‘com
garra’” (like playing with soul, but also, strongly, energetically). Both these
expressions were usually associated with musical performance that goes
beyond technical ability and are about emotional journeys. But “com garra” was
also used across different (sub)genres to characterise women rockers. This
suggested that women rockers seem to be “women of value”, combining
“strength and sensibility”, which is the performance of an alternative femininity
(alternative to sense and sensibility, for instance). This is an illustration of how I
“found” that rock is an active ingredient in gendered subjectivities through
translation.
Validity
Triangulation is one of the strategies for ensuring the validity of research
findings, that is to say, checking codes and interpretations (Silverman, 2011, p.
365).
The fact that I collected data from different sources and that I
supplemented interview data with observational data and, to a lesser extent,
with documental material, both hardcopy and online, which included Internet
lurking (Silverman, 2011, p. 106), constituted a variation in the methods of
triangulation, allowing for different angles on the same phenomenon.
The second stage of research also worked as a (reflexive) triangulation
source as I did follow-ups, video-elicitations and collected more data in a
different time period (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007, pp. 183–185).
Unlike Lucy Green (2001) I did not try to triangulate musical quality. In
fact, the participants had different levels of instrumental proficiency and musical
expertise (interviewee’s longevity of playing varied from beginners to
experts/advanced/professionals); different musical ambitions and expectations
(some wish to become professionals, others just want to keep it as a hobby);
and diverse band membership experiences. However, I see this as an asset to
my work. For instance, proficient musicians might find it hard to go back to all
the hazards of musical learning, therefore having beginners and advanced
musicians helped me to capture the minutiae of musical experience as it
unfolds.
Given the methodological triangulation, the longitudinal scope of the
research (distributed across stages), the use of primary and secondary data
sources and the use of elicitation techniques, I kept my (theoretical) claims
grounded in participants’ experiences, in participants’ real-time and everyday life
engagement with socio-musical activities, achieving “ecological validity”
(Cicourel, 1996; DeNora, 2013).
Finally, another form of triangulation was peer research – a variation of
“team research” (J. M. Johnson, 2001, p. 114) -- through presenting data and
drafts to supervisors and SocArts’ colleagues, as well as by presenting papers
in European conferences, and getting critical feedback.
Sociological Association Annual Conference). In the second interview, they criticise the paper for
the too schematic way in which I was presenting rock, arguing that rock goes beyond my
scheme, as it is something quasi-spiritual. This comment was very useful as it alerted me to the
fact that the language I used to describe rock was still too “sociological”, leaving aside the
“artwork” itself and what it does to subjects (a spiritual power). This female band was
“desociologised” already. However, it also pointed to the difference in reading contexts: my
Powerpoint presentation had been prepared for an academic conference and employed a
sociological language appropriate to a conversation with other sociologists/peers.
3.4: Research ethics and privacy
The participants were informed at the beginning of the research what it would
involve when I contacted them by e-mail. The information was repeated at the
beginning of each interview, when we signed the consent form (two copies, one
for me, the other for participants) (see Appendix 6). Before the interview, I asked
participants if they had any questions for me, and reassured them I would
always be available through e-mail if they had any questions.
I made it clear that I wanted to learn from their musical experiences.
Although I had some guiding questions, I framed the interview as an informal
conversation where they were the experts, not me.
Confidentiality was fully assured: only I would have access to the
interview recordings, and the interview material would be used for research
purposes and in publications.
Concerning anonymity, the names of the fans (or of the musicians in their
role as fans) have been changed, and I assigned them (or they chose)
pseudonyms.
Anonymity for musicians was discussed with each of them. Musicians
have “public personas” they want to promote/publicize and most musicians did
not want to remain anonymous. When I use interviewees’ full names (first name
and last name), it means that the interviewees wished to be identified by their
real names or actual stage names/scene nicknames (in which case I used
commas, e.g. “Suspiria Franklyn”). When I refer to interviewees just by using a
first name, it is a pseudonym, indicating that the interviewees wished to remain
anonymous. However, throughout the interview, musicians asked me to keep
their statements private in a particular area: (personal) critiques of other
musicians’ and/or bands’ musical work/performance.
I do not think the topics were particularly sensitive, and participants are
not part of what is traditionally considered a “vulnerable group” However,
research always plays a role in “deprivatising” participants’ lived experience
(Holstein & Gubrium, 1995).
I kept the principle of doing no harm. However, what counts as harm is
multi-dimensional, ranging from the threat to personal safety to reputation
(Watts, 2006, p. 386). Because reputation is very important among artists, I
reconsidered musicians’ anonymity while writing-up, informed by
“representational tact” (Strathern as cited in Skeggs (2001, p. 436). Even if they
chose to be identified, I anonymised the names of the musicians in some parts
of the text I considered sensitive to their reputation/self-esteem.
Overall, I established mutual trust with the participants. The shared taste
for rock fostered closeness – I felt what Cavicchi (1998) describes as “not
feeling at odds” with other fans. However, Cavichi was a “serious” Bruce
Springsteen fan, and I am more of a casual rock fan. Interviewees would often
feel disappointed or surprised that I knew so few songs and bands’ names (not
only Portuguese but Anglo-Saxon). And they would talk enthusiastically about
their music favourites, e.g. “Oh you don’t know [band’s name]? Oh, you gotta
listen to them, they’re great!”
Some interviewees added me on Facebook. Of those, some posted
content on their walls, usually a song with a comment related to the issue of
women and rock music, as approached in our interview, and tagged me
(publicly) (see Figure 4).
Figure 4 - After-interview Facebook Tag: “This [song] is for you, Rita Grácio… It was a pleasure
”
3.5: Reflexivity
My academic interest in women rockers was much welcomed in the field,
especially by musicians and DJs, although fans were also supportive. In the
field, people would agree there was an absence of women musicians, and that
my research should contribute to increasing the visibility of Portuguese women
rockers. However, people in the field showed less interest in women fans.
Sometimes male musicians that I met while doing the fieldwork would also joke
about how unfair it was that they were left out.
Musicians and DJs were the ones most interested in my topic. Musicians,
especially the “older” ones, had a sense of “fitting in” in my research – some had
a feeling of being valued and (finally) recognized. Many musicians thanked me
for including them in the research, especially those in female bands. By the end
of the interview, musicians often told me that it was a “therapeutic” moment for
them, and it was good to have an occasion to talk.
In contrast, most of the fans I interviewed had a sense of not being
research-worthy. The fans agree to be interviewed as they were “willing” to “help
me”, but they had doubts about whether they were the right people to be
interviewed, claiming they probably would not have anything interesting to say
to me.
Throughout the interviews, both fans and musicians would apologise for
talking too much, for not being so articulate or for “rambling” in the interview.
Apologetic rhetoric is strongly gendered female and can also be seen as part of
the (polite) turn-taking in conversations.
Women musicians’ partners also expressed their interest in the project,
and enthusiasm (pride) about the selection of their partners for the study. I often
met interviewees’ partners, as they were present at rehearsals, gigs and sets.
The women I was interviewing would often claim I should be interviewing their
(male) partners – “he’s a music encyclopaedia” – and not them, as they claimed
they lacked the skills or the connoisseurship (not remembering names of bands,
albums etc). I would often reassure them it was in their experience I was
interested, not their partners’. Also, this comment was never made by the few
lesbian or bisexual women I interviewed, although their partners were also
present in the rehearsal/gigs/sets too.
In one case, the interviewee said her husband was not so happy that I, a
stranger, had come to their home, and in another case, the partner’s interviewee
was angry the interview took so long. In yet another case, the interviewee’s
partner stayed at home (in the same room) while we were doing the interview.
However, no joint interviews were taken. And, also important, this “presence” (or
reference) of partners was only relevant for women (both musicians and fans) in
long-term relationships (both heterosexual and homosexual).
The fact that (long-term) male partners shaped their wives’ musical
participation will be discussed throughout the empirical chapters. The fact that
they also shaped women’s participation in the research project itself is
mentioned by other studies (Storr, 2003; Wilson-Kovacs, 2004).
Although I took the role of the ignorant novice and cast participants in the
expert role, I would still be cast in the role of the expert as someone who had a
“deep music culture”, who would know all about music labels and names of
bands. Interviewees (especially fans) expressed concern that they were not the
ideal (competent) interviewees. I avoided that role by using my disciplinary
identity as a sociologist as opposed to a musicologist – someone who would be
interested in that kind of musical knowledge, in labelling through strict musical
analysis what is and is not rock. As a sociologist, I assured them I would be
interested in how, why, where and with whom they listened to music, so our
interview would be more of a conversation about their relation to (rock) music,
where I would learn from them.
There are always issues of power asymmetry between a researcher and
participants to be considered. For starters, researchers have the time and
resources that participants often do not have. However, the fact that most of the
participants self-identified as women, were white and had a very similar
educational background, generational belonging and class to me contributed to
the “narrowing” of the power gap.
Regarding power asymmetry issues, most importantly, the research has
to deal with representing the other.
In this case, it has historical implications in the process of women
musicians canon-making. Due to the newness of the topic in Portugal, there is a
sense of “doing history” and “doing archive” in many academic accounts (Sara
Cohen, 2015; Reitsamer, 2015), including my own. I cannot ignore the fact that
an academic work on women rockers that includes musicians becomes part of
the process of canonization (despite the fact that as sociologists we do not take
the issue of musical value for granted at all ).
That is reflected (and constituted) in the expectations of interviewees. My
work was often presumed to be a historical work on women musicians in the
history of Portuguese Rock Music, and as such, a valuable piece of archival and
feminist research. In this sense, there were concerns that I would “get the story
right”. For instance, a disbanded band organised a dinner the day before the
interview to catch up and get the story right to tell me the next day. Generally,
musicians (both men and women) worried about which people I had
interviewed, and would often advise me on whom I should talk to. This
“memorialising” strategy – in this case, memorialising women musicians – was
also found regarding other topics “with no official or academic history but with a
collective mythology results in multiple versions of events being accounted, and
multiple parties claiming to have been the first or most significant in some
involvement in these histories” (Strong, 2011).
For instance, disbanded female bands from the 1990s were curious to
know who “banded together”/set up the band first. A disbanded female band
also started a Facebook page -- which acted as a digitised archive on its own –
after the interview that reunited them. Even in the present, female bands were
curious to know if they were “alone”/the only ones – even if just locally – or if I
had found more active bands in the country.
Beyond nostalgia and memory, participants also asked me to mediate
their female networks. Some (older) women musicians asked me if I knew of
other women musicians that I could put them in contact with, because “finding
women musicians, especially good ones, is so hard!”. And from 2014 onwards, I
realised the women musicians I had interviewed were “crossing paths”, and
playing with one another in female bands.
Beyond the issue of recognition of the absence of women, feminist issues
were not brought up spontaneously unless I asked, which I did, usually at the
end of the interview – even with all female-bands, where I expected that the
issue of feminism would be brought up.
In fact, at an early point in the fieldwork, I thought my research had very
little to add to the feminist agenda, and was not even sure whether gender was
a relevant category at all, as most interviewees kept saying that they rarely (or
never) felt discriminated against or excluded for being a woman in the rock
world.
Participants arguing that their practices are gender free are also found in
other research on women rockers, namely Schipper’s (2002) and Clawson’s
(1993) as well as in other fields. Within the sociology of work, Lewis (2006)
claims that female entrepreneurs’ endeavours to “keep gender out” just shows
the centrality of gender to the assessment of their performance. In the world of
work, the naming of the practice of sexual harassment is often absent from
women’s stories, although they reluctantly describe threats to their safety and
varying forms of sexual harassment (Watts, 2010a, p. 183).
And, most notably, long-term, Skeggs’ ethnography on working-class women,
demonstrated how they engaged in class dis-identification and “maintained a
critical analysis and distance on the categories that were used to position them
whilst putting their energy into showing they were something else.
The process of ‘becoming respectable’ was a continual repeated performance,
produced against dominant classificatory systems” (Skeggs, 2001, p. 433).
This misunderstanding has often raised the issue of “false consciousness”.
However, women's experiences of their lives are not necessarily the same as
feminist knowledge of women's lives, and women’s discourses are not always
feminist: to be a woman is not necessarily to be a feminist, as a feminist
standpoint is a socially constructed position (and not available to all women)
(Harding, 1991, pp. 10–11; Simpson & Lewis, 2005, p.
1269).
DATA CHAPTERS
Data chapters are divided in four main sections. Section I shows in which ways
pathways into rock musicking are gendered (chapter 5 to 7). Section II
describes band membership in a male and female band (chapter 8 and 9) and
chapter 10 summarizes the participants’ discourses on musicianship. Section III
describes how gender identities are mediated by the most common rock
instruments in the band: the singing voice, the string instruments and the drum
kit (chapter 11 to 13). Finally, a reappraisal of what counts as an instrument,
allows me to introduce in section IV the unsual pathways of musical
transmissions, as rock is distributed by DJs, crafters and mothers (chapter 14 to
16).
I – Gendered pathways into rock musicking
From the beginning of their involvement in rock worlds and throughout their
(rock) lives, young girls’/women’s experience of rock musicking is shaped by
gender. The participants enter rock worlds through family heritage and male
networks of peers and partners. In the process, rock music and its material
culture become an active ingredient in “doing” and “undoing” gender.
4: Daughters of rock
Most interviewees referred to belonging to a “musical family” where fathers and
brothers play an especially important role in their musical beginnings. When the
interviewees talked about their musical preferences in terms of a specific
musical genre, rock was identified in their personal musical maps as something
inherited from the “rock father”. These “daughters of rock” were born in the
1980s and there is a correlation between this age group and the reproduction of
rock music tastes in Portuguese families, since they are the daughters of the
first generation of rock music fans in Portugal. This is very similar to the
situation in Japan, as described by Koizumiâ (2011), who highlights the
importance of intergenerational shared music listening, reconfiguring the
meaning of popular music in Japan - from a symbol of youth rebellion to a
communication tool between parents and their children. In the same way, these
Portuguese women proudly described rock music as “inborn” or “genetic”, part
of their “upbringing”: “I don’t have that prejudice of seeing rock as aggressive,
because my father is a rocker and I always grew up with rock” (Inês ‘Bunnie’,
DJ).
The “rock father” is presented by the interviewees as an audiophile who owns
records (an audio library) and sound technologies (stereo, turntables, etc.).
Participants recalled, with some nostalgia, shared listening practices with their
fathers involving recorded music and described rock music as part of their home
soundtracks.
Participants’ families also played an important role in providing access to
instruments and sponsoring music education (pay for music lessons in music
academies or private instrumental tuition), especially in childhood and
adolescence.
Instruments available at home were owned mostly by male relatives – fathers,
siblings, cousins - who incited participants to tinker with those instruments.
Instrumental tinkering at home, and the emotionality attached to it, was
described as a very significant form of early musical engagement.
The presence of the (father’s) acoustic guitar at home is an enabling factor to
start “plucking and strumming” (Carolina, Bruna, Violeta, Teresa, Liliana).
Sometimes it was accompanied by musical instructions and tips on guitar
playing.
If acoustic guitars are affordable and easily accommodated into the household,
the drum kit is by contrast considered one of the most expensive instruments,
as well as one of the loudest and least space-efficient. It is rare to have a drum
kit available as a home instrument. Only two interviewees mentioned having a
drum kit available at home – one belonged to an older brother (Zélia), and the
other to an uncle with a music-related job (Diana Peste).
When not home available, parents or grandparents can sometimes offer musical
instruments, sometimes accompanied with financial support with music lessons.
Gender negotiations in girlhood
Parental gift-giving contributes to the (re)production of instruments as gendered.
Electronic keyboards (small ones), pianos and acoustic guitars are perceived as
being proper instruments for (young) girls, with parents sending their children to
music academies and paying for them to have private tuition to learn these
instruments. If this is a tacit assumption, there are more explicit cases of
instrumental gender stereotypes constraining girls’ access to what are
perceived as male instruments: Helena Fagundes and Shelley Barradas both
wanted to play the drums in their teens, but their parents thought that was not
an appropriate instrument for a girl. In both cases, their parents presented them
with an acoustic guitar as an alternative and paid for private guitar tuition.
Parental gift-giving is often the result of active/dynamic (gender) negotiations
between the participants who request the desired musical instruments and their
parents, through “nagging” them (Beatriz Rodrigues,
Sara) or “saving up” their pocket money. Sónia Cabrita presents a unique case,
relating how she got her first drum kit: at high school. She collected money from
her school mates to buy a drum kit so the all-female band Pickle Puss could
start up as “a real band”. This proto-crowdfunding is described proudly, as Sónia
Cabrita frames this musical event as an early sign of her entrepreneurialism; the
spirit of initiative and proactivity being characteristics she needs to have in order
to make a living as a musician: “I can be a
[professional] drummer, because I do things, I make things happen.”.
For the participants, getting their first instruments demonstrated high
levels of motivation towards music, extending to commitment and the capacity
for financial decision-making. “Taking it [music] seriously” was a sentence
repeated by most interviewees, showing how musical commitment and maturity
are an important part of these girls’ identities.
In contrast, the participants’ interest in music is regarded as merely
another leisure activity by their parents. In exchange for instruments and
permission to participate in bands, parents do not expect (or even desire) their
daughters to become musicians, but simply to do well at school/be a good
student.
Girls are usually more subject to (informal) pressures, calling for
responsible behaviour (Fonseca, 2007; Griffin, 1999), which is intensified when
girls enter male-dominated domains. Parents tend to have a sex-specific
protective attitude towards girls’ leisure. Even when they are good students,
some parents might see participation in rock bands as a threat to their children’s
educational success (Bayton, 1998). That explains why the guitarist of the
allfemale teenage band, Pickle Puss, now a lawyer, had to drop out of the band.
Band-related activities were forbidden by her father as he was afraid her
musical commitments would jeopardise her school achievement.
Parents can also develop strategies that are both controlling and
supportive at the same time. For example, Alice’s parents would watch all her
concerts, and they would pick her up promptly at the end of rehearsals.
Although Alice’s parents allowed her to hang out with boys in this controlled
way, Patrícia’s parent might not have – she doubts her mother would have
allowed her to tour with the male-centred band she was in at the age of 16,
because it was composed of older males (band members’ ages ranged from
2735 years old). When a teacher offered to take Shelley Barradas to music
classes in the nearest city (she lived in a remote place), her parents would not
allow it, because they were afraid of leaving their daughter alone with a male
teacher.
Beatriz Rodrigues’ vignette illustrates (generational) conflicting views on rock
music activities and what participants had to negotiate when entering rock
domains:
Finally [at the age of 14], I talked my parents into buying me an electric
guitar and an amplifier. At that time, I remember my father looking at the
guitar and saying: “just another piece of junk that’s going to be put away,
gathering dust”. And that just made me want so badly to take things
seriously! (…)
I always passed as a “rebel” and “tomboy” [Maria Rapaz]. So this was a
label that would allow me the opportunity to get away with doing things…
now it is more “the artist” [label], like… the crazier you are… it’s not
crazy, but… well… it’s all ok, it’s all part of it. I always have an excuse. I
don’t surprise my parents anymore. Of course I had to educate/teach
them, right? Because there are a lot of people who are put off by that
[parental restrictions]… but my parents are open-minded. And although in
some moments they weren’t, we ended up reaching an agreement. But
this is why: I never failed at school, I never had bad marks, they could
see I could do everything, and I was happy doing it, so why should they
deprive me of all that?
The sentence “I never failed at school” was proudly repeated by virtually
all the interviewees. As opposed to the British working class boys and girls who
developed a gendered culture of resistance to formal education – aggressive
‘laddism’ and hyperfemininity respectively (McRobbie, 1990; E. Smith, 2003;
Willis, 2000); the participants in this research developed a culture of compliance
with formal education. Lucy Green also found that school girls are seen to
conform to their teachers’ and school’s values, expectations and standards of
behaviour: through their engagement in classical music, girls can display their
femininity safely (Green, 1997). My findings relate to the fact that most of the
participants are middle or upper class. The production of girls’ educational
pursuits as a middle-class trait was also found in other studies (Walkerdine,
2006), but it is also a Portuguese specificity. Given the high levels of illiteracy
after the dictatorship, girls and their parents in particular invested highly in
education regardless of their social class (Fonseca, 2002; Fonseca & Araújo,
2007; Portugal, 2014).
Summary
Tinkering with instruments is a significant part of musical engagement. Getting
an instrument, either by inheriting, nagging or saving up, is an important
moment for a girl’s musical engagement and display of musical commitment
(“taking music seriously”) . It is also a musically mediated display of maturity.
Musical activities are subject to gendered and classed parental
regulation, and to sex-specific protective attitudes towards what parents see as
girls’ leisure.
It was school achievement in combination with specific gendered
performances (the tomboy), which enabled these girls to resist (gender) norms
and access otherwise male-only spaces.
The good student discourse regulates girls’ musical activities and
identities. If on the one hand, it acts as a (Foucauldian) disciplinary technology
of parental control; on the other hand, the good student discourse is part of
these girls’ identities, and girls invest emotionally in their educational
achievement – “I never failed at school”.
5: Rock couples’ cultures
Boyfriends, partners, cross-sex friendship and male siblings enable participants’
access to electronic instruments, instrumental learning/skill acquisition and
participation in bands. It is mostly heterosexual dyads that allow young and
older women’s musical engagement. Homogamy characterises Portuguese
music worlds as it does in classical music (Conde et al., 2003) and
hiphop/graffiti (J. A. Simões, 2013), and rock is no exception.
If the literature has shown that access to male networks enables rock
music participation92, it has not fully unpacked this process.
Electronic musical instruments, mostly guitars and bass, are borrowed
from friends, boyfriends/partners and sisters’ boyfriends/brothers-in-law.
To hang out with male (boy) friends who are band members is also an
opportunity to tinker with instruments available in (private) rehearsal rooms.
Attending (boy) friends’ rehearsals and trying out instruments during the band’s
rehearsal break was mentioned by some participants (Katari, Liliana, Alice) as
an important event/occasion for connecting with the instrument, especially those
not so often available at home such as the drum kit and the bass.
(Boy) friends not only provide insider information such as how to reach
good rock music teachers with “pedagogical authority” (G. D. Smith, 2013); but
also they provide instrumental tuition and informal mentoring themselves.
As found in other studies, for Portuguese female rockers membership in
a male network is social capital, and the role of these supportive93 males
(whether or not romantically involved) is similar to the role of the “senior mentor”
in organizations (Amâncio & Santos, 2014; Ibarra, 1993) who enable access
and a kind of “upward mobility” (e.g accessing non-traditional female
instruments).
Couples’ musicking together
Music is an active ingredient in couples’ identity work: it is shared leisure, it is a
lifestyle. Women valued their romantic relationships built through a shared love
of rock music, which could include listening to music together at home,
attending concerts, being in a band or other music-related activities. Inês Misha,
likely that they are not the best representatives of how women’s leisure is structured by male
exclusionary strategies (Rojek, 1995, p. 29). In a similar vein, studies in sports, where
homogamy was found, also suggest that if women are introduced, trained and managed by
partners (or relatives), it is not likely that such men would exploit their boxers for example
(Halbert, 1997, pp. 14–15).
92 Reitsamer (2011, p. 34), studying Austrian female DJs, claims that social capital is more
important than female DJ’s “subcultural capital”. However, my research points to the need for
both simultaneously.
93 Partners attend each other’s gigs, and provide feedback on their performances (usually
praising), as well as assessing audiences’ reactions.
a heavy metal fan who became a co-producer of her male partner’s heavy metal
fanzine claims: “It’s like that song says: ‘you can’t love someone that doesn’t
listen to the same song’”. Love is musically mediated. However, couples’ shared
musical culture has not been explored very much within the popular music
literature beyond the homogamy frame.
Not all the interviewees had partners who shared their love of rock music
but the majority did. When they did not, that influenced the relationship
negatively. Lúcia could not stand her (recently acquired) partner’s taste for
pimba music, and Sílvia claims that as “open” as she might be, “I couldn’t be in
a relationship with someone that listened to Toni Carreira”. In Portugal, pimba
music is a popular music genre associated with working class and uneducated
people (Lopes, Louçã, & Ferro, 2017). Participants do (white middle) class
through their disidentification with pimba music. However, because the self is
shaped by social and musical interaction with others (Halstead, 2013, p. 84),
class is also musically mediated not just by personal music choices and dislikes,
but by their partners’, to whom their social identity is (or would be) attached.
Couples build a shared culture through their attachments to rock, and
being in a band is one aspect of this. Some interviewees reported having joined
a band and developed a love/romantic relationship with one of their band mates
(Carolina, Sílvia). Others reported setting up bands with their boyfriends and
then gathering together the rest of the musicians (Filipa, Patrícia), and another
group of interviewees reported being brought into partners’ existing bands (Sofia
Silva, Isabel Newton). Some participants were also in two different bands at the
same time with their partners (Katari, Helena Fagundes).. Only two interviewees
reported keeping their bands separate. One interview revealed that it was her
great instrumental skills that enabled her to gain acceptance within the
boyfriends’ circle of (male) friends. He was a musician as were his friends.
Musical instruments can be exchanged as gifts (not just borrowed) in
romantic/love relationships.
Partner/boyfriends’ music tuition or just shared guitar plucking or other
musical engagements were reported to take place mostly in the domestic realm.
In the case of adolescent or young couples, they hang out at each other’s
parents’ homes (and garages). Adult couples live together, and home becomes
a shared musical setting.
When boyfriends take the role of a supportive (informal) teacher, musical
learning becomes a positive learning experience, which can counteract bad
experiences within a formal learning environment, as reported by interviewees.
Two interviewees had bad experiences with formal guitar lessons in
music academies. Filipa and Sara mentioned that they had trouble with
memorisation. Filipa could not memorise the names of the strings after a month
of classes; and Sara could not memorise the names of the notes that match the
chords – she knew what a C sounded like, but she could not play a C on
request. Filipa’s teacher screamed at her and as a result she believed she was
untalented and gave up the guitar; but Sara’s boyfriend, also an electric
guitarist, kept mentoring her and she became a guitarist.
Partners/boyfriends can also make a difference to women accessing non-
traditional musical roles. Filipa (who gave up the guitar) started playing the
drums after her boyfriend assessed her rhythmic skills as good. He suggested
the possibity of becoming a drummer:
Rita: How did the drum kit appear in your life?
Filipa: I was dating L. and he was playing the guitar, we were at his
home. He had a djembe. And I started to play the djembe. I’ve always
had… well, my father always motivated me to have rhythmic skills. He
would go: “can you do this?” [claps a different rhythm with each hand].
This kind of thing, he used to do this with me. And I think it helped. So, I
was playing djembe and L. said: “you would be good at playing the
drums”. So I decided to have drum classes (laughs).
Filipa already had the motivation (she was classically trained, and she
had tried to learn the electric guitar), but lacked the confidence her boyfriend
helped her to achieve. Having her drumming skills assessed on “rhythm” and
not on “strength”, perceived as a manly category, also opened up opportunities
for action. After Filipa gained drumming skills, she and her boyfriend started a
band.
The band can become another space to foster couples’ relationships, as
Fátima exemplified:
We got together [as a band], not really because I played – I’d never really
actually played any instrument – but because it made sense that we
would be together all the time. And they needed someone to play the
bass, I said yes, just for fun, but it got serious because we set up the
band. (…) So I took the bass, he [her partner] taught me. I was never a
great musician, I’m not a musically gifted person [smile], but I could do
the basics, which works in rock’n’roll, so I did well [laughs]
When sharing the love of music, some of these women tend to display
some “accommodative behaviours”, which are “other-oriented” as also found by
scholars who analysed how women’s leisure is dependent upon their
(heterosexual) romantic relationship (Herridge, Shaw, & Mannell, 2003). Fátima
mentioned she did not like to play the bass that much, but in order to
accommodate to her husband’s band’s needs, she played the bass.
This has some resemblances to Pitts’ findings regarding collective music
making in other musical genres: it is not uncommon for people to enjoy playing
together, and to enjoy the social side of music even when they do not like the
musical repertoire itself (Pitts, 2005, pp. 53–72).
However, in the case of rock, women’s musical opportunities are
narrower. Not iust the repertoire, but the instruments and the social side of
music are dependent upon their partners. Women access band membership
through their partners, and this is defined in their partners’ and/or their partners’
band’s terms, as also found by Bayton (1998, p. 59) and Cohen (1991, p. 207).
Also, homogamy configures the vulnerability of women’s musical participation –
as found among jazz singers (Buscatto, 2007a). All the participants reported
that when the relationships end, the bands also split up.
Fitting in as ‘women’s work’
Clara is a 36-year-old woman with a (non-musical) day job. Clara’s partner is a
(part-time/non-professional) popular musician. They have been together for
more than fifteen years and they live together. At the time of the interview, she
was the vocalist in her partner’s band. Her partner had asked her to write the
lyrics for his musical compositions, which she did. As he had started a band and
had no one to sing, Clara became a vocalist.
Clara describes her musical experiences throughout her life, since
learning music in childhood (and the inspiring figure of her violinist grandparent).
Clara like most of the interviewees is “bi-musical” (Green, 2001), having both
formal and informal learning experiences. In childhood, she had piano lessons
where she learned to read notation and in her teens, she learned acoustic
guitar. Clara also played the bass in her teens, just for one gig (“a very short-
lived experience”). This is how it happened: her partner’s band had a benefit gig
and they had no bassist, so she borrowed a bass and learned the band’s songs
by ear, just to play for that particular benefit gig.
Feminist scholarship has shown how wives contribute in diverse ways,
directly and indirectly, to their husbands’ work and leisure, and how wives’
(unpaid) labour benefits both employers and their husbands personally (Delphy
& Leonard, 1992; Finch, 1983). And so too (aspiring or part-time) musicians can
benefit from having as partners “musical” women. Clara works as a kind of
backup musician, always on call, filling in whenever necessary (similar to a
session musician). Much of Clara’s servicing and “relationship work” (Delphy &
Leonard, 1992, p. 174) is thus musical work. Musical roles in her partner’s band
become an extension of the wife role (Bayton, 1998). Musicking becomes part
of the “labour of love”.
Although Clara had the musical skills “initially”, she describes how her
partner always acted as her “musical mentor” as she refers to him. More
specifically, he gave her a guitar, which she enjoys playing: “If I could commit
myself to the guitar, I could play better because my partner has been teaching
me how to play”. After detailing her diverse musical engagements, Clara
concludes:
Despite being able to play this and that, I can’t really play anything. I
mess around with the instruments, but... I can’t say I can really play any
instrument. (…) Of course I’m not tone-deaf, but please, let’s keep it real,
don’t compare me with my partner, he is a real musician.
Clara holds a view of herself as a musical person, but not as a musician,
despite her long-term engagement with musical activities and instrumental
playing. In Western popular music discourses, being a musician is frequently
equated with being able to play a musical instrument (O’Neill, 2002). For Clara,
being a musician is equated with songwriting and a skilled performance. For
Clara, being a musician is equated with songwriting and a skilled performance.
Clara is making the distinction between being a musician and being musical by
comparing herself to her partner, who writes songs and is a “seriously good
player”, as well as being her “musical mentor”. The kind of musical work she
does, the one of musically ‘fitting in’–– writing lyrics, singing, playing different
instruments, for specific occasions, in different bands, suiting the musical needs
of her partner is not seen by Clara as a proper, real, serious musical skill. This
type of work is crucial, but it is non-specialised (she is not specialised in any
specific instrument as she explains) and it is occasional (not on a daily basis),
leading to Clara’s view of herself as not being a musician. Similar to the work of
a personal assistant (Pringle, 1988; Truss, Alfes, Shantz, & Rosewarne, 2013),
Clara gets little personal/individual recognition. To recognise her partner as a
musician and herself as (“just”) musical is also part of the way she sees her
musical self, not individually, but as a by-product of her partners’ musicianship in
close (hierarchical) relation to her partner.
However, Clara feels rewarded by her musical work and takes pleasure
in being “on [music] call”. Clara experiences band membership not only as a
leisure activity (as opposed to labour/work), but more importantly, as “a good
hobby”. It enables her to mark off a space where she can temporarily get away
from all the seriousness and responsibilities demanded of her at work.
The acceptance of given (non-leadership) musical roles can be a tactic of
“calculated ignorance”. In the same vein, Ann Gray studying the gendering of a
leisure technology such as video cassettes, found that “women resisted
becoming involved in the VCR simply to avoid yet another domestic servicing
function” (Gray, 1992, p. 151). In the case of Clara, she might avoid heavy
musical tasks in her spare time, as she is already heavily committed in
leadership roles in her work.
Being “pushed into” musicking can be a pleasurable experience, as these
“musical obligations” can also be a site for demonstrating skills (e.g. lyric writing,
singing in tune, having a good ear, being a band member) – it is not the same
as being pushed into non-glamorous, mundane activities such as domestic
chores.
Despite Clara considering herself the ‘non-musician’, we will see how she
renegotiates her status through her role as the singer of the band. Being in a
band is about gaining aesthetic agency, and this is part of her biographical
narrative. Clara puts great value on her musical activity and on the band (and
the band’s other activities, such as travelling and encountering new places and
people) as a source of reward and enjoyment.
Summary
In line with other studies, this research shows how women’s musicianship is
dependent upon belonging to male networks as a form of social capital –
providing access to electronic instruments, musical skill acquisition in a positive
learning environment, engagement in non-traditional “female” instruments, as
well as participation in bands. Homogamy configures access to band
membership, and at the same time women’s precarious musical participation
(e.g. multi-instrumentality instead of instrumental specialisation), is dependent
upon their partners and their bands’ needs. Despite asymmetries, musicking
together is an active ingredient of these couples’ shared culture. More than
asymmetries or exclusion, the interviewees’ discourses highlight men’s support
and mentorship – the practices are unequal but the representation of those
practices is one of equality.
6: Gender performances in rock worlds
Gaining access to rock’s male networks demands specific embodied gender
performances. LeBlanc’s (1999) work is exceptional in this regard, showing how
punk girls access male friendships. This meant earning the respect of the boys,
accomplished “through the adoption of masculine characteristics, such as
aspects of male punk dress (e.g. Mohawk or boots) or aspects of male punk
behaviour (e.g. toughness or coolness)” (Leblanc, 1999, p. 120). Expanding
LeBlanc’s focus on youth, Schippers (2002) has elaborated on how adult
alternative rockers do ‘gender manoeuvering’, manipulating the relationship
between masculinity and femininity through dress and behaviour within the
localised setting of the rock show.
Schippers’ and LeBlanc’s accounts are illuminating. However, they do not
mention that beyond dress and behaviour, the music itself is a resource for
doing gender. My research builds upon, but extends the scope of LeBlanc and
Shippers’, not just in terms of age and genre, but also by considering the use of
music itself.
The participants managed the (contradictory, sometimes conflicting)
positioning of femininity and masculinity through embodied behaviour and
gestures, and rock music material cultures, such as clothing and styles (the
latter explored in section 7.2); but also instruments, as well as through the music
itself (here explored more deeply in section 7.3 and throughout section
III).
Becoming a rocker means looking like a rocker and sounding like a
rocker in everyday life. As DeNora (2014, p. 52) notes (in a Wittgenstein reading
of instances of reality “must” look like, and using Hoschild’s concept of
emotional work) “one learns to ‘cooperate’ with an image. They are realised time
and again in open-ended, but still structured ways”. Aligning oneself with the
“image” – mediatised, sensed – of what the “rock chick” is expected to be like,
requires the reflexive monitoring of one’s own behaviour, clothing/ways of
dressing and musical tastes.
Tapping into cultural and material resources (gender stereotyped
embodied behaviour, clothing) intricately bound up with historically produced
and culturally situated imaginations of rock femininities and masculinities, these
women compose a cultural repertoire as they engage with the world where they
operate.
6.1: Doing rock’n’roll, rockin’ gender
A structuring element of most of these women’s discourses on their (early)
participation in rock music worlds is the theme of identifying with or distancing
themselves from being a tomboy.
It is worth quoting this interview excerpt with Patricia at length, showing
how the assimilation to masculine norms is not a straightforward process.
Instead, gender performances are an intuitive ‘tuning-in’ to a specific
environment:
Rita: When did you start noticing that there were not so many girls
around, that girls would “just watch, not play” [as she was saying]… when
did you start noticing that?
Patrícia: I noticed immediately. And that made me sad and… in a way, I
started feeling masculine. Because I was always like that in other
things… like doing what boys like to do, enjoying the boys’ company
more than girls’, because they got to do the fun stuff. In a way, you end
up having to wear pants, and assume that role, so you can hang out with
boys, without being harassed all the time, or having to put up with silly
comments
Rita: Can you give me an example of what it means to wear pants?
Patrícia: (silent) I can’t recall any concrete situation… it’s more about
your [overall/general] posture. I started noticing that even the way I
spoke… I would become aggressive, and my voice would go down half a
tone [laughs], my voice deepened when I was communicating in that
masculine environment.
Rita: But just in that music environment?
Patrícia: Well, in other things dominated by men, yes. You end up
adopting that posture, so you can feel respected, even if it’s unconscious
Patricia illustrates how adopting rock’s masculinity does not just mean
following a (pre-set) code of norms, but is achieved reflexively and cumulatively,
over time. Patricia, like other interviewees, taps into what are culturally
gendered male attributes (assertiveness; low-pitch, deep voice), which become
incorporated into embodied constructions of specific femininities.
Being a ‘tomboy’ is described in the literature as a rebellious childhood
gender identity (Paechter, 2010; Reay, 2001). If this gender rebellion in
childhood is not only accepted but celebrated, as the girls grow up, its
acceptability decreases and becomes problematic (Halberstam, 1998; Pascoe,
2007). However, punk allowed tomboys to extend tomboyism into adolescence
and young adulthood (Halberstam, 2004, p. 192). Halberstram coins the term
‘female masculinity’, calling into question the easy association of masculinity
with male bodies (Halberstam, 1998, 2002). Participants described how they
undo traditional femininities, and do female masculinity.
For Patrícia, as for other interviewees, “doing boys’ things” – engaging in
practices associated with masculinity – is a way of inflecting the usual
restrictions on girls’ activities and their restricting femininity. Having “more fun”
means enjoying the freedoms associated with boyhood, accessing boys’
privileges (Fonseca, 2007, p. 91). Some of the masculine freedoms are
appropriated not just in girlhood, but also in adult years. For instance, many
interviewees asked if they could swear during the recorded interview. Others
referred to excessive drinking practices when going out (although it becomes
less frequent as they age). However, not all masculine freedoms are taken: no
sexual excesses103 or recreational sex. The participants were in monogamous
heterosexual relationships. Halberstram’s (2002) discussion on female
masculinity (masculinity without male bodies) focuses on lesbian female
masculinity (epitomised by the dyke or the butch). However, Halberstram
acknowledges that heterosexual female masculinity still menaces gender
conformity, although it is a licensed, socially approved form of female
masculinity.
Participants describe how they learn to talk and behave not just “like a
girl”. The process of embodying acceptable femininity demands a constriction of
space, body and voice from an early age. Girls learn not to use the physical
possibilities of their bodies, and learn to “throw like a girl” (I. M. Young, 2005)
and to display a powerless body (Bartky, 1990). It is precisely this restricted
femininity – a “super-feminine girl with an angel-like posture” – that is contested
by participants, when they make claims about their “irreverent side”. Thus,
participants do other femininities, such as the “tough-one”, as Carina Frazão, a
former hardcore vocalist describes herself:
Carina Frazão: I’m hardcore. I ‘m fearless! I take responsibility... I’m not
afraid to stand up… it’s all about my school, it’s the hardcore school. If I
listened to electronic music, it wouldn’t be me. That’s it. Rita: Ok
Carina: And I think people see me as the chick who... well, I’m much
softer than I appear, but I don’t mind if people think I’m tough. Then they
don’t bother me, or they don’t bother me as much…
Rita: Ok. I was about to ask you whether hardcore influences your life,
your everyday life.
Carina: Hardcore influences everything, all my life, and the way I think
about others.
Rita: Could you talk a bit more about that thing you said about being soft
and tough?
Carina: What do you mean? It’s like people think I’m tough ‘Gee! There
goes Carina, the tough one’. All that bullshit, but Carina ‘the-tough one’ is
not a thing, she is a person. It’s much easier to say ‘oh, this chick thinks
she’s a badass’. It's easier to say than asking yourself “oh, what’s
beneath that attitude?” or to think “why should I also take action [and not
just cross your arms?]”. I was taught that way, to fight for what I believe
in.
Toughness ensures the survival of girls and women within the male
domain of the rock culture, and being able to use that social space safely – “no
one bothers you” (Carina Frazão). For participants, performing toughness
ensures cultural approval from rock peers, and gaining access to instruments,
bands and informal mentoring. Otherwise, engaging in cross-sex activities can
be risky, as described by Patrícia: sexual harassment, unwanted sexual
attention, receiving social scrutiny or mistreatment.
Interviewees who act masculine are not trying to pass as male or trying to
be boys, nor do they identify as transgender. Participants often express some
anxiety about not becoming “too masculine”.
Carina Frazão does not see herself as unfeminine. On the contrary. She
explains how she deploys her hardcore way of being (toughness, fearlessness),
with her feminine posture: “I cross my legs (as a girl)”. Carina Frazão is both
“tough” and “soft”. As she explains, she is “nice” to customers as part of her
customer service day-time job (“I have never had any problems at work”).
Carina is both a nice and tough girl.
Participants often engage in gender performances that combine
masculinity and femininity traits, through clothing and beauty practices:
I was always a tomboy. I didn’t care for make-up, but then I started liking
it. Although I was always a tomboy, wearing my Doc Martens [army
boots], I always cared for my red lipstick, my eyeliner, and the nail polish.
Although I was always into the masculine stuff, the shirt, the boots, I
always cared for the feminine stuff: the eyeliner, red lipstick, nails. And I
always wore my hair short. (Isabel Newton)
Patricia states she never lost her “feminine side”:
Rita: Ok, so you felt that need… and about the way you dressed?
Patrícia: Not in the way I dressed... I don’t know… I never lost my
feminine side, I never dressed as a boy, not really. Rita: What
does it mean to dress as a boy?
Patrícia: For instance, not that it’s really like this, but… not wearing skirts,
or… wearing trousers all the time, or not wearing any dresses… Rita:
Was it difficult for you to balance that feminine side of yours with a tough
posture? Or did it all make sense?
Patrícia: Sort of... you end up having conflicting feelings, like “men, I
wanna be a chick, I wanna be delicate”, but here I have to be tough,
because... but this is not conscious, I mean, there are some moments of
consciousness about this, and others not really.
One cannot look ‘too masculine’, because it is necessary that these
bodies do not endanger heterosexual femininity – avoiding the lesbian threat
(Halberstam, 1998, p. 28). To reconcile their masculinity – which the rock culture
valued – with expected (heteronormative) femininity on the other hand, these
interviewees, as well as LeBlanc´s (1999), counteracted masculinity with
elements culturally gendered feminine (‘acting feminine’). Rock’s female
masculinity is heteronormative and should not preclude attractiveness. Female
masculinity and the less restricted practices it engenders is far more acceptable
when performed on bodies whose heterosexuality, whiteness and
middleclassness is not called into question.
If embodying ‘too much’ masculinity is heavily derided, also ‘too much’
femininity is discouraged. If it is important to maintain markers of femininity, it is
crucial not to look too feminine. In rock worlds, there is a disdain for traditional
or ‘emphasised femininity’ (in its compliance to patriarchy (Connell, 1997)) and a
disdain for feminised activities and leisure (shopping, over-concern with fashion
and beauty practices).
This is reproduced in interviewees’ discourses, as they police theirs and
others’ appearance, especially the ones that dare to approach mainstream
femininity and sexualisation, either onstage or offstage (also found by LeBlanc
and Schippers). For instance, a punk rocker (in her thirties) criticised another
rocker for looking “too pretty” when attending concerts, “with her hair done as if
she’d just come from the hairdresser”.
It is expected that rockers care for clothes, but not excessively.
Otherwise, one runs risks: if they are musicians, they risk being labelled “a
poser”; if they are fans, they risk being mistaken as “try-hards” – those who are
more interested in the aesthetics than in the music itself. However, “some girls
can reach the music [heavy metal] through the aesthetics [clothes]” (Inês
Misha), implying that there is a possibility of conversion into an “authentic” fan,
one that is “really there for the music”.
Rebel and Shy Rock Femininities
Carina Frazão, voicing other participants’ experiences, found in hardcore a
template to be “herself”: “I was always a rebel girl, you know? In a way, it
seemed that [in hardcore] I finally found my role and my home… and a place
to… let it all out”. Or, as Iolanda, a heavy metal fan, puts it: “I like metal because
it is just like me: there's no stopping us”.
Unlike these “tough” and “rebel” participants, other participants described
themselves as shy. Shyness has been defined as a social problem in
contemporary societies. It is seen as an undesirable personal feature
associated with vulnerability (S. Scott, 2004).
Zélia, a drummer who describes herself as very shy, explains how
participating in a masculine rock world and playing a male delineated instrument
changed her way of being: “You’ve got – to use the popular expression– to
have the balls!”. Other participants made claims to have (metaphorical) balls,
another way of referring to toughness.
If rebels and tomboys find in rock music a template to be themselves; shy
girls too find in rock music a template to act upon (rework, reimagine)
selfidentity. Interviewees who describe themselves as shy, quiet or well-
behaved, also find in rock music the same pleasure in this “heavy”, “loud”,
“rebellious” music:
[Rock] gives you energy, it gives you power, power is the word, it really
gives you power” (Luisa)
Rock, generally speaking, is always connected with a certain flippancy,
not to accept things, a willingness to change, and a certain rebellion,
which has always seduced me. Although I’m a really quiet, shy person
[laughs], but I like that in rock music (Ema, 40 year old, ex-guitar player)
For shy girls, rock is “a prospective device of agency” (DeNora, 2000), a
template for aspirational identities.
Filipa, within specific conditions (e.g. a specific album from a specific
band, a specific place), feels powerful and protected:
When I listen to Nine Inch Nails, I feel aggressiveness, it’s a thrill, I feel
energy. It depends on the CD. When I listen to “Still”, I feel like crying.
That’s the most depressing thing I’ve heard. And also the prettiest. But
it’s… I don’t know… you feel… powerful, powerful, in a certain way. You
feel strength. You feel aggressive. And as I walk down the street listening
to Nine Inch Nails and I look at people passing by with a menacing look –
I give them the eye. And I hope I’m scaring them! Or it’s just a fantasy as
if I could scare them and I would be respected. People would be afraid to
come closer…
Rock “shields” women from potential external threats and shields them
against their perception of vulnerability as shy girls. This transformation is
(facially) embodied.
Zélia uses the metaphor of hard music as a “shield”. To be in the rock
world, one has to have “a hard shield to overcome some things”. Unlike the shell
metaphor that Scott’s shy participants use to describe the shyness of their
character (S. Scott, 2004, pp. 125–126), this “shield” is constructed in specific
situations through the music itself.
Participants who described themselves as shy and quiet, use rock music
reflexively to enact (and embody) attributes (that they perceive themselves as
lacking), namely strength, assertiveness, power.
Rock’n’roll configures specific gender performances, which have many
discursive nuances: tomboy, rebel, tough, ballsy, defiant, strong, assertive,
confident, different, women “com garra” [women of value], chicks with attitude.
We have also seen how Beatriz Rodrigues claims she was always a tomboy,
and how, in the present she states she can “get away” with things by being an
“artist”.
A distinction between assertiveness and aggressiveness was repeated
by several participants, encapsulated in this sentence: “Rock gives me the balls:
it allows me to be assertive without being aggressive” (Adélia). In any case,
being a “women of rock’n’roll” precludes also being nice, being responsible
and/or being a good student.
The participants are legitimising other gender configurations, are doing a
(as interviewees often put it) “different” girlhood and womanhood, and undoing
traditional femininity portrayed as passive and submissive. Virtually all the
participants (either self-identified tomboys, shy and even sexy rockers) display
an oppositional identity towards towards those who epitomise more traditional
notions of femininity.
More than youth (gender) rebellion, the participants use rock’n’roll as a
mediator of “alternative femininities”, as a way of life. Although there are
temporal variations on what counts as a rocker, rock’n’roll enacts biographical
continuity throughout their lives.
A gendered aesthetics of “dissonant juxtaposition”
Tactical deployments of specific forms of both masculinity and femininity are
done and undone through embodied behaviour, clothing, footwear, beauty
practices and hairstyles, underpinned by an aesthetics of “dissonant
juxtaposition”.
I borrow the term from Bayton, and I want to push it further, as the idea of
“juxtaposition” is also present across a number of works on gender and rock
music, as well as in other studies on girls and women entering male-dominated
fields.
Bayton (1998, p. 114) uses it to describe a strategy of British female
bands’ onstage gender presentations that combines the use of ball gowns with
Doc Martens. Punk girls engage in subversions by “juxtaposing” masculinity and
femininity in both dress and behaviour (LeBlanc, 1999). Riot grrrl musicians,
through the “juxtaposition” of a feminine visual aesthetic and feminine signifiers
[femme femininity] within conventionally masculine acts of music, create a
powerful effect resistance (Downes, 2010). The aesthetics of “dissonant
juxtaposition” can be seen as a combination (juxtaposition) of “having attitude”
(the rock attitude) and having feeling”. In the same vein, Schippers (2002, p.
42) describes one of her participants as “an interesting combination of girly-girl
and badass”.
This aesthetic of “dissonant juxtaposition” pervades the everyday life not
only of musicians, but also fans. Gender performances are done and undone
through embodied behaviour, rock music and its material culture. As found in
other organisational worlds, in rock worlds because it is men’s bodies that are
the norm it is women’s bodies that are defined as problematic (Edwards &
Wajcman, 2005, p. 84). The aesthetic of “dissonant juxtaposition” is a way of
managing the (contradictory) positioning of femininity and masculinity in rock
worlds – the female body and the male sound. Different looks and body types
give access to rock worlds in different ways. Whether for musicians or fans, the
presentation of the “right” body image participates in the legitimation of certain
actors and gender performances – and not others – both onstage and offstage.
It is the aesthetic discourse of an aesthetic of contradictory juxtaposition (with its
specific variations, and embodied and materialised in bodies and uses of
objects) that enables girls and women to operate and remain in the
maledominated worlds in a safe manner, either as musicians or as fans.
The concept of “dissonant juxtaposition” is used as a valuation criterion in
itself. Participants are praised: the little girl with the powerful voice, the petite
girl holding the big electric bass, the thin girl playing the loud drums, the woman
holding and playing a guitar, the sexy DJs playing dirty rock, the fan’s
combination of the rockabilly sexy looks with the “heavy”, “dirty” soundtrack and
in-your-face attitude. The aesthetic of “dissonant juxtaposition” produces
specific gender configurations in rock worlds.
6.2: Dressing like a woman of rock’n’roll
Styles, clothing, hairstyles, are a well-documented topic in popular music
scholarship, but with a focus on “spectacular” subcultural styles or with a focus
on subcultural capital – to have and display objectified and embodied
subcultural capital that often grant status, serving as a form of social distinction
(Thornton, 1995). However, subcultural capital is not a given (either you have it
or not). Analytically, and building upon but expanding the subcultural capital
frame, I want to explore the idea of body modification, as accomplished through
clothing practices, which can be thought of as low-tech body modifications
(temporary and often cheaper).
Appearance matters. When the love of music does not go hand in hand
with the looks, this mismatch is commented upon: “I dressed as a betinha, but
inside I was punk” (Shelley Barradas). In contrast to this is Virgínia who claims
that she dressed as a metalhead among betinhas, but she was, really a
betinha115. This was the only occasion when participants would use the word
betinha to describe themselves in a positive way when referring to themselves
as good students, detaching betinha from its visual meaning.
Clothing practices have to be understood not only as individual choices
and preferences, but also as forms of social positioning (S. Woodward, 2005),
related to the rock world’s expectations. I am interested in the details and the
minutiae of how assembling material culture (clothes) is done, through
adjustments, over time, and on specific occasions. The way one dresses varies
over time, with age and life stages, body shape and musical affiliations.
Regarding what to wear (colours, types of clothes), “starting to dress all in
black” is narrated as a foundational moment in becoming a rocker.
At the time these participants were adolescents (1980s and 1990s), it
was difficult to get black clothes, especially in summer, claims Sofia Silva -
consumer culture was still restrictive, and black clothes were not available in
(high-street) shops, and neither was there an established alternative/subcultural
market. The older participants (now in their fifties) remember with nostalgia the
times when they “didn’t have access to anything” in Portugal, and how they
would make and customise their own clothes or managed to get clothes from
England. This is why the question of where to buy clothes also matters. As one
interviewee complains; “Now everyone buys Ramones’ T-shirts from Primark,
and they don’t even know who the Ramones are!”.
To have and wear (rock) concert T-shirts is seen as a sign of belonging to
rock worlds. However, there is a gender segregated market (concert T-shirts for
men and women), of which participants complain about preferring to buy men’s
T-shirts. How to wear clothes and what to wear them with also matters: “I would
buy boys’ trousers, but I would wear them with crop tops” (Carina Frazão).
Occasion also matters: “I’m not going to buy courgettes at the supermarket
wearing my spike belt!” (Rosa). Participants who dressed the same way at work
as in concerts explained that their occupations and lifestyle
‘allowed’ them to dress as they did and be who they were.
For many participants, to “stay dressed in black” is important for
maintaining a sense of self as they grow older and age. Many interviewees,
especially those who were punk, stress the “toning down” of their image.
Holland’s study of “alternative femininities” found that “toning down” was a
metaphor for ageing (S. Holland, 2004, pp. 117-138). In my study, as women
“tone down”, they tend to “glam up”. This is illustrated by a former punk
drummer (always wearing punk outfits and a dyed spiked hairstyle), who as she
became older not just “toned down” (“I dress much more tidily and subtly
nowadays”), but “glammed up” into a rockabilly pin-up style – she works as a
photographic model as an odd job.
Other interviewees stress that toning down was accompanied by
continuing to wear black. When participants cease dressing all in black, there
are still clothing items that they keep using, even if occasionally (e.g. leather
jackets and skinny jeans, torn jeans, concert T-shirts…). Older male punk fans
also reported that they keep using some “identification symbols” (A. Bennett,
2006; A. Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012). For these participants, the use of specific
clothes as well as remaining tattoos, are a reminder of their (old) rock style,
which serves to perform a biographical continuity. These women’s clothing items
constitute an aesthetic totality.
Clothing practices also change with age and subsequent modifications in
body shape. Adélia stopped wearing skinny jeans because she is selfconscious
about her weight gain and she feels she does not look good anymore. Hilda is in
her late forties and says she dresses in black for many reasons. Not only does
she always dress in black in order to save money for her children, but she also
believes black makes her look slender (it “disguises” the body that she
considers is not so fit anymore). Body literature highlights surgical practices as a
form of bodily modification, and interviewees highlight clothing management as
mundane, low-tech “anti-ageing” strategies. However, despite having “the same
[in-your-face] attitude” (Isabel Newton), and dressing (almost) the same, there
are limits. These are the (embodied, physical) limits of the (aged) body to
agency.
6.3: Sounding like a woman of rock’n’roll
The participants use rock’s musical properties and discourses (the heaviness,
the loudness, the speed/fast pace, the lyrics, rock’s history(ography) of
counterculture and rebellion) to articulate gender performances:
Being myself, that’s my rock attitude, not being afraid of expressing what
I think, my ideas (Júlia)
Rock is a kind of music that makes me feel self-confident, more
affirmative/assertive… that makes me feel I don’t have to be ashamed of
who I am! I’m going to like myself! (Joana)
I see myself as a woman who listens to proper music, heavy music
(Filipa)
Being a rock fan affords specific gender subjectivities: rock mediates
strong, powerful, self-confident, assertive woman. Doing gender with reference
to rock music is to position their femininity as different from others’, and as
worthier. Every time femininity gets undone, there is an elevation of status of
heterosexual women (Halberstam, 2002, p. 371). In this case, rock mediates
this undoing. Interviewees highlight the heaviness of the music they listen to. To
listen to hard and heavy music is to be at the top of a music hierarchy, which is
also a moral hierarchy – being a rocker is to have a moral status.
Rock’n’roll is at the core (it is the “roots”) of the participants’ musical
maps, but expanding their musical taste towards a new repertoire is seen as an
expansion of musical knowledge and musical value, which is built upon the
diversity/wideness of musical genres one can listen to and be able to enjoy.
Musical value is recognised by those who listen to “more music”. Musical value
is recognised by those who have been described as omnivorous regarding
music and cultural taste (Lizardo & Skiles, 2015; Peterson & Kern, 1996;
Warde, Wright, & Gayo-Cal, 2007). Omnivorousness implies the rejection of
highbrow snobbishness, an openness to cosmopolitan tastes, the play between
high and popular culture.
Most participants do not want to be compartmentalised or pigeonholed in
one music genre or subculture – only one interviewee described herself proudly
as a “rock Nazi” (Catarina). Being a ‘univore’ is mostly believed to restrict
opportunities for action and sociability. Musical migrations to different and/or
wider music repertoires are both a pathway into and an outcome of life course
trajectories119 (for some participants embracing other musical genres is even a
musical articulation of “growing up”), an outcome of geographical movements
and/or the expansion of socio-musical networks (if musical participation derives
from (male) networks, musical participation also expands social networks).
Carina Frazão loves a good guitar riff and a great message!”, but her favourite
musician is Bjork, and she is proud of being an “eclectic person”: “I feel enriched
as a human being, listening to different music and being amazed [by it]”.
Expanding the personal musical repertoire is seen as a tool for finding personal
self-fulfillment, as it allows one to achieve a broader spectrum of emotional
states – an eclectic musical repertoire is used as a technology of well-being.
Iolanda is a thirty-year-old heavy metal fan, who wears all black. She
complains about being labeled a “metalhead chick”, and gets offended when
she is mistaken for a “Goth”. That label is wrongly imposed on her and it is
restrictive in terms of personal identity and (musical) worth. She claims she is
“more than that”, as she has “diverse music tastes”, which include the Beatles,
electronic music, industrial music and rap with the exception of North American
hip-hop. Iolanda “still” cannot enjoy jazz or reggae. That is why she admires her
partner, who unlike her, “.. can listen to everything, I’m not like that. He can even
listen to world music or jazz”.
To avoid “being labelled a rock chick”, Penelope chooses a bricolage to
construct a musically omnivorous identity through appearance and style. The
tattoos signal her attachment to rock, but she uses clothes to distinguish herself
from a rock chick; “even a frilly dress”. Penelope is against musical
“fundamentalisms” or other fundamentalisms (“either feminism or machismo”),
she wishes to “feel good in every environment where I am”. Being a bricoleur
and an omnivore affords her more opportunities for agency (musical and
nonmusical).
However, to be omnivorous, as pointed out by Peterson and Kern
(1996, p. 904) , “does not imply an indifference to distinctions”. Carina does not
like trance (“it says nothing”) or mainstream hip-hop. Neither does Penelope.
Iolanda dislikes “operatic/symphonic metal, usually with female vocalists
singing. A lot of mainstream audiences enjoy that”. Iolanda constructs her
femininity by distancing herself from specific heavy metal (feminine) femininities
(the Goth and the operatic voice).
Women of rock’n’roll distance themselves from mainstream music (pop,
pimba and hip-hop). This phenomenon is one of ‘‘symbolic exclusion’’, as
studied by Bryson: educated respondents were more likely to display cultural
tolerance, but also more likely to dislike specific music genres and styles
(“anything but heavy metal”), drawing symbolic boundaries in relation to
lessprivileged groups (Bryson, 1996, pp. 892–893). In the case of women of
rock’n’roll: “anything but mainstream pop, hip-hop and pimba”. The participants’
musical disaffiliations construct ‘the others’ of rock’n’roll (hegemonic
masculinities of working-class and black men, emphasised femininities of girly
girls). The attachment to rock mediates a gendered, but also a classed
presentation of the self and its significant others – partners and children, as we
will see in chapter 16.
Summary
Identity work of girls and women rockers is not merely “emulating masculinity”,
but is a process through which selves are performed through the attachments
and detachments between individuals’ bodies, music and other materials
(DeNora, 2000; Hennion 2007).
Claims to respect(ability) that enable access to rock worlds (and often to
musicianship) were made through embodied self-regulation and monitored
performances by reflexively mobilising material culture (clothing), embodied
behaviour (e.g. posture, voice tone) and the music itself (hard’n’heavy and
omnivorous).
Participants’ gender performances can be described as (heterosexual)
female masculinity, often underpinned by an aesthetics of “dissonant
juxtaposition”. Participants describe more or less explicitly how they achieve a
delicate balance of not being too masculine and not being too feminine. It grants
girls and women access to male networks in rock worlds. Female masculinity
has different expressions throughout their lives (from tomboys to women with
balls or tough women).
Interviewing participants of different ages allowed me to understand that
these women are committed to disaffiliating from traditional femininity and ‘the
mainstream’ throughout their lives. All of them, from the shy ones to the rebels
to the tough, negotiate in situated contexts through rock music the performance
of their identities for themselves and for others.
Gender performances are intricately bound up with historically produced
and culturally situated imaginations of rock femininities (that are gendered, but
also classed and raced). Gender performances are reflexively achieved through
styles of bodily appearance that allow female rockers to circulate in rock worlds
safely and successfully.
Specific freedoms associated with masculinity are granted to these girls
and women on the condition that they achieve high levels of education and later
on that they succeed at work. The good student discourse that regulates
girlhood is updated in later life in the responsibility (and duty) discourse.
Participants claim they can “have fun”, and still be responsible.
This can be seen as part of what McRobbie has termed the “new gender
regime”, in the post-feminist and post-girl-power era, based on an “ethic of
freedom” (Nikolas Rose), whereby young women can choose to do what they
want if they act as self-responsible subjects (McRobbie, 2009, p. 21).
Disruptive gender identities – either in girlhood or adulthood – because
they are potentially threatening (to the heteronormative matrix), are
counteracted by exhibiting heteronormative bodies (“I’m feminine”) and/or
behaviour (being in long-term heterosexual relationships; respectable
heterosexual monogamous lives). Alternative, but respectable femininities are
musically mediated by rock’n’roll music and aesthetics. Interviewees play out
socially acceptable forms of gender transgression that can be translated into
white, middle-class heteronormativity, which regulate access to rock worlds and
to musicianship.
II – Staging the band
The women in this study have participated in different bands throughout their
lives, from adolescence to adulthood.
The bands these women participated in were quite different concerning
their professional ambitions and musical styles (in the continuum between
music-making as a business or a hobby; and eclectic/experimental or a more
genre-oriented style), but also in terms of the bands’ group dynamic. However,
what they have in common is that they all associate playing together in a band
with a great deal of enjoyment and fun.
Participation in male-centred original rock bands is the most common
experience of band membership for these rockers. Participation in femalebands
is infrequent. Despite all the similarities of the rock band as a musicmaking
group, belonging to a male or female band shapes women’s musical pathways
in specific ways, as I detail in chapter 8 and 9, respectively.
7: “The girl in the band”: musical and non-musical
(gendered) spaces
Band membership in male-centred bands is characterised by instrument
segregation and male skill ascription, as found in other studies (Carson et al.,
2004; Clawson, 1993, 1999a). Adding to this body of literature, I detail the
interactional context in which segregation takes place. I also explore the
gendered socio-musical performances the participants engaged in as they
became “the girl in the band”.
7.1: Instrument segregation, skill ascription and exclusion from decisionmaking
The process of instrument segregation takes place at different stages in
the life of a band. Interviewees reported becoming vocalists by being invited to
be singers or replying to advertisements recruiting specifically female singers
(Patrícia, Beatriz Rodrigues, Carina Frazão, Aurora). The same was reported by
bass players (Joana Longobardi, Liliana). Sílvia was the lead guitarist and
singer of an all-female band in her teenage years. Later on, she was invited to
join a locally well-known all-male band. Despite Sílvia’s reputation as a guitarist
and singer, she was invited to be a singer only. Sílvia was very happy to be
invited, and successfully auditioned to be part of that band she admired. She did
not mind putting the guitar aside (although she never stopped playing at home).
Segregation also takes place in the early stages of the band formation.
Teresa, who had already had clarinet lessons in a Music Academy and learned
acoustic guitar with her father wanted to play rock and she assembled the band:
I decided at the age of 16 to put an ad up looking/searching for a band.
Because I thought I could develop musically as I had no choice [in terms
of rock music learning] and I wanted to have a band. So, when I set up
my first garage band, we started splitting the [instrumental] roles: you do
this, you do that. Ok. This needs to be done [bass], I don’t mind doing it!
In this band, every participant was at the same level of musical expertise,
and they all had rudimentary (acoustic) guitar skills. Despite that, Teresa took
the instrument that no one wanted to play (the bass). In cross-sex group music
making, Green found that girls were regarded as shy (as lacking confidence)
and cooperative (more cooperative and open-minded, more mature,
hardworking and reliable than boys) (Green, 2009, p. 149). Teresa, a teenager
at the time she set up the band, also described herself this way. Taking the bass
meant allegiance to the group in an exercise of selflessness, responding to the
band’s (just made) demands. Carolina, who started as an electric guitarist in a
band, moved to the bass for the same reasons.
Sara is thirty-two years old and she has played the acoustic and electric
guitar since her teens although she never had a band. She composes songs on
her guitar. At her workplace, she met a colleague who by chance was also
“interested in music” and “used to be in a band”. They started a band, and Sara
was assigned by her bandmates to be the band’s vocalist:
I didn’t want to be a vocalist. I didn’t even know if I sang well or if I sang
badly, because I sang alone at home. But my colleagues noticed
immediately that I could sing in tune, when I showed them my home song
recordings. And when we had to record the song [to participate in the
band contest] I was told: ‘you’ll be the one recording the voice! We don’t
know how to sing! You have to sing!’.
Sara was not consulted on this issue. However, this musical role
assignment was based on an apparently neutral musical judgement (she sang
in tune) and proposed as the best solution to the band’s demand. Before joining
the band, singing was not a musical activity in itself, but a complementary
musical task to guitar playing and song-writing. When Sara joins the band,
singing (and song-writing) comes to the foreground and becomes her main
musical role in the band.
Despite Sara’s recording being an unwanted and difficult process, at no point
has she contested that musical role. If in order to be in a band (as she wished) ,
she had to sing, she would do it. Fitting in also meant adding a new musical
skill for Sara – if she was said to sing in tune, she could be the vocalist. If the
band constrained her opportunities for action as a guitarist, the band also
represented an opportunity for musical action as a singer-vocalist.
Exclusion from decision-making processes in male-centred bands was
also voiced by Christina Quest: “When you’re the girl [in the band] you don’t
have an opinion! You’re playing there, oh so cool, but ‘shut up/be quiet’. Your
own creative material… you might as well forget it!”.
Male figures are usually the experts who judge women’s skills, the ones
who attribute qualities (as we have seen with male mentors). As found in other
studies on women rockers, men are perceived to have the cultural authority to
judge, and women seek male approval and musical validation (Carson et al.,
2004, p. 7). Women themselves delegate the “musical expert” status to their
male bandmates, developing their musical trajectories in accordance with
ascribed musical skills. This ascription of differences in talent then tends to
become a ‘self-fulfilling’ prophecy (Sloboda, 2005, p. 300). At the same time,
‘fitting in’ shows how musical skill is not a thing in itself – something that you
either have or do not have. It is created as collective music action develops (e.g.
for a band, for a moment, from a musical judgment made from a significant
other), and worked upon by its members (through practice and hard work).
7.2: Musical agile selves
Most participants had early musical beginnings in formal settings (music
academies, church, school choirs, and philharmonic bands) and only later
engaged in bands (informal learning). Some participants started playing in
bands and later engaged in formal learning settings. Fewer participants had
simultaneously formal and informal music education.
Playing several instruments and singing with different levels of
proficiency is common to rock musicians in this study.Bi-musical trajectories in
combination with membership in different bands and instrument segregation
leads to participants´ ability to play several instruments. The participants’
musical pathways are undertaken by a musical “agile self” (DeNora, 2013).
Experimental self and ‘performative boldness’
A type of musical agile self is the experimental music self, here illustrated by
Shelley Barradas. She started playing the acoustic guitar in her teens, having
private guitar tuition. It was during her university years that she started playing
the bass as she described:
I went to a [female] friend’s rehearsal and their bassist had quit. I had
never played a bass before, but I was dying to! But I didn’t want to ask, I
was acting cool. But then my friend asked me: “Don’t you play the
guitar?” and I said yes. Then she said: “then take the bass and do it like
this” – she explained to me how to do it, I was able to do what she told
me and she said: “you’re hired!”.
It was an opportunity to meet a need in a friend’s band. But more
importantly, it was her previous guitar knowledge/know-how that was considered
relevant by her female friend (and not dismissed as in the case of Teresa).
Shelley also started playing the drums in another band. If in her first band
she had waited to be invited, in the second band she “pushed it”. When
attending a concert by chance, she bumped into two friends, who were looking
for a drummer. Although she had never played the drums before, she
volunteered:
I knew they were looking for someone, and I pushed it a bit, like “I can
play the drums”, like, “C’mon! I can manage, it can’t be that hard” I
thought to myself. Then I went to the rehearsal, and Ricardo showed me
what I had to do, and it all worked out! It was really easy! And he goes,
‘you’re hired’ (laughs) and that’s how I became a drummer.
Shelley’s attitude (confidence; positive self-perception) towards playing
became important in her musical pathway. This is not claiming that playing an
instrument is a matter of self-belief or self-attributed musical characteristics – “I
am musical” (Ruddock & Leong, 2005). Shelley over time actively takes more
and more action and makes more effort in order to promote and maintain a
musical self (practising, rehearsing, and investing in music tuition). This
experimental ethos enables her to expand the socio-musical spaces she moves
into. It is also about non-musical characteristics – developing a confident self
that allows for a “performative boldness” in the face of broader limiting musical
opportunities for women.This attitude that encompasses persistence, high levels
of motivation, resilience and self-belief was mentioned by other musicians as
important in pursuing their musical careers, especially for those outside
(supportive) male networks. Performative boldness is about “just doing it” or
doing it “the punk way” (Beatriz Rodrigues), or rebelling against the teacher’s
authority (Suspiria Franklyn refused to learn and play covers as her guitar
teacher wanted her to do, because she wanted to play her own songs).
Trying new instruments or different ways of doing things is taking risks.
These risks are only taken when the band feels like a safe environment. Risks
are taken when there is support (from incitement to acceptance) from a partner
(Beatriz Rodrigues), supportive friends (Shelley Barradas) or siblings (Carina
Frazão, Suspiria Franklyn).
7.3: From “proving oneself” to “male protection”
The definition of rock music, and especially of instrument playing, as inherently
masculine continues to be experienced by women through their sense/feeling –
either more or less articulated – that they are not taken seriously, and that they
must constantly prove themselves as musicians not only to audiences, but also
to their bandmates.
Katari (Anarchicks) compares her participation in a male and female
band: in the former she felt she had to demonstrate/prove that she was good at
playing the drums; in the latter, she felt much more at ease.
Even when participants said they are invited into a band, they always
mentioned that they did auditions. Although this is a regular procedure in band
membership, girls/women always mention it in their discourses. The sequence
of events “invitation/reply to ads – auditions – success/get the place” reassures
them that their musical competence was (successfully) assessed/tested (by
their bandmates/male peers). Being worthy of band membership means
achieving musical recognition.
This is best illustrated in the words of Liliana, a drummer who played both
in male and female bands: “If you’re playing among the boys, it’s because
you’re good at it. If you’re a girl, you have to prove you’re good at it”.
Phi was invited by a friend to replace the rhythm guitarist in the
malecentred band he was part of. Phi was warned that the drummer of that
band did not regard girls as appropriate candidates for the position. She was
warned if she wanted to join the band, she would have to prove she could play
really well.
Therefore, she practised a lot for the audition:
I went to the rehearsal, the drummer looks at me and says: ‘But... you’re
a girl! Do you know we play hard and heavy?’ and I said: ‘yes, I have
listened to the bands’ songs before, I have prepared myself’. And then he
said “ok”. We did a mini-audition with the band, and in the end the
drummer goes: ‘ok. You can stay, we will try you out. It was not that bad’.
And then I stayed till the band split.
Once Phi “passed the test” by proving that she could play “hard and
heavy”, she became “the girl in the band”:
When I played with my band, and other bands would play too, I used to
be the only girl there. But that’s nice. Girls are well taken care of when
they’re among boys. If it’s all girls, we’re like an indistinct mass, but
because it was just me... I don’t know… I used to have a chair just for
me, a room just for me, the best food would be for me… we would arrive
at a place, and it was like “you can sit here, you’re the girl!” and I was
like: ok! So… it’s not just bad things.
This differentiated treatment is felt as a “privilege”. On the one hand,
these “privileges” include good working conditions, for example, having an
adequate dressing room and facilities (Bayton, 1998, pp. 133-134). On the other
hand, this “special status” based on sex difference also implies that girls are
more vulnerable and in need of special treatment.
Membership in a male-centred band enables recognition (a sense of
musical legitimation/validation) and status. But also a sense of physical
protection and security:
Rita: Have you ever heard unpleasant comments at the concerts? Phi:
Oh no. because I always had my protectors/guardians around, always
Bandmates’ protection was also mentioned by other girls/women. Rita
Barreto told me that she had suffered onstage with sexual innuendos in a time
when there were virtually no other girls onstage (the 1990s). But she felt
protected by her bandmates: “I was always a tomboy, and everything they
[bandmates] would do, I would do too. We hang out all together, we enjoyed the
same stuff, I was like their “protégée” little girl”.
Women who had had the experience of playing with both female and
male bands all asserted that while they felt musically recognised and protected
among the boys, they felt vulnerable among other girls/women. Phi played in
both a male and an all-female band. After I asked her if she would hear
unpleasant comments, she added: “Maybe when I played with Bellenden Ker,
we would hear some bad things from the audience, especially if they were
drunk”. Phi voices what other participants described: audiences tend to be
abusive to all-female bands.
Although most interviewees avoided participating in stage diving and/or
the mosh pit because they were “touched”, Diana Peste claimed “I get more
touched up on public transport than when I participate in mosh pits”. Except for
the recognition of sexual (verbal) harassment of musicians perpetrated by
audience members (strangers/outsiders), the participants felt safe in rock
worlds.
Strategies to avoid harassment were incorporated into these women’s
routines and it was not framed as a problem. One of the most common
(preventive/deterrent) strategies was to “dress down” (ignoring sexist comments
is materially achieved through the management of bodily display and the use of
clothes – either on or offstage).
Another interviewee believed she avoided harassment by displaying
extreme musical competence as illustrated by this excerpt:
Rita: Have you ever heard... nasty comments? [while playing] Christina
Quest: Well... I’m used to that. It doesn’t bother Me. That’s normal –
“you’re hot”, “take off your clothes”, pft, that’s normal. Rita: Everywhere
you play? I mean, not just in motorcycle rallies?
Christina Quest: Well... because we play really well, technically speaking,
that creates a wall. I mean… they have to be drunk to have the guts to
make those comments.
Displaying high standards of musicianship is also a form of “immunity
work” (Hagen, 2012).
Other (reactive) strategies range from “ignoring” and “just keeping on
playing” to “answering back”. The former was a more individual strategy, and
carried out by “shy” girls. “Answering back” was reported by the more assertive
members, and especially in the context of all-female bands.
Finally, another effective strategy to deal with potential sexual innuendos
or threats from the audience was to “bring friends” to the concerts (who would
immerse/blur within the audience and mitigate potential threats).
7.4: Performing “the girl in the band” onstage
After proving themselves, girls/women are welcome because their presence on
stage is perceived to enhance the band's appeal to the audience:
Rita: What was it like to be a girl playing? How did the audience react?
Phi: The audience would love it. The thing about bands with girls is that it
brings in people. Audiences love a band with a girl. So… That was actually the
whole marketing idea about the guitarist: a girl in the band! Cool! At the gigs I
noticed people liked it.... It was something different. There are a lot of bands
with guys, all the same, but then you watch a person [women] onstage with the
hair dyed red, with a guitar... so people like it.
The heterosexual female body (signifying seductiveness and
attractiveness) is mobilised as a (para) musical asset in the market within a
gendered politics of novelty value. This is part of the broader trend to lookism
(Witz et al., 2003) and the sexualisation of women’s labour (Adkins, 2000;
Adkins & Dever, 2014). Women who join male bands are (by default) expected
or asked to play upon their sexuality onstage (commodifying their bodies to “sell
sex").
Phi not only dyed her hair red, she “used to wear dresses, to flash out
that I was a girl, to show that I was the girl in the band”. Women are expected to
perform onstage their role as “the girl in the band”, by wearing feminine
markers, producing and reinforcing sexual difference.
To be clear, part of all musicians’ “aesthetic labour” is the craft of appearance,
aimed at presenting a proper rock body type (which will be consumed by the
audience). Fitting in is done musically, but also aesthetically.
The alignment of one’s image with the band’s genre is an essential
element of musicians’ embodied know-how (Pettinger, 2015). Musicians have to
know the moments to smile at the audience or avoid laughing and aligning with
a “bad ass” rock posture; but also to hide performance anxiety and to display
the “right emotion” for each song. Emotional control like body control is also part
of a skilled on stage performance.
Through an artful management of clothes, make-up and hairstyles, but
also through instruments, the participants managed styles that worked in
tandem with the band’s genre, as well as in accordance with their gendered
musical performance as ‘the girl in the band’. Not just their gender and the
band’s genre, but also membership in a specific band, as well as age (and body
shape) and personal aesthetics play a role in doing gender as the girl in the
band.
Onstage clothing aesthetic rationales varied in a continuum from “dress up” to
“anything that is comfortable”. There is a careful management of bodily display
onstage.
Either when dressing up or wearing comfortable clothes, participants
often “mimic” femininity (Irigaray), but a rock femininity (e.g. red hair not blonde
hair). Having the know-how to do ‘the girl in the band’ demands skill although it
goes unrecognised (or is taken for granted) as such by the participants and by
bandmates. Also, whether women onstage use an aesthetics of ordinary, or a
more sexual persona, it is important to wear clothes that are “you”, that fit your
(authentic) musical persona. Onstage (gender) dress rationales incorporate a
sense of authenticity.
Comfortable clothing is closer to an “aesthetics of the ordinary”.
Comfortable clothing not just incorporates a physical sensation of comfort, but
also means that clothes cannot impede the bodily movements required by
playing, clothes that favour ease of movement (the aesthetics of functionality).
To be comfortable was often equated with “dressing down” – a sartorial
decision not to display an overtly sexualised style and not to use revealing
clothes that uncover their bodies (not “sex up”). Dress down stands in
opposition to “dress up”, often equated with “sex up”, although one can “dress
up” without “sex up”.
It is implied that when women “sex up”, they will be more vulnerable to
abuse. Sexiness is an aesthetics of (individual) risk although to a lesser extent
in the context of a male band, which is seen as offering credibility and
protection.
The women’s performing body has been mostly analysed as an
objectified sexualised passive body, consumed by “the male gaze” (Mulvey,
1975); but other scholars claim that this “to-be-looked-at-ness” constitutes,
rather than erodes, female subjectivity (Gottlieb & Wald, 1994, p. 268). The
sexualised body is also a sexual, active, feeling body, that is to say, a (self)
reflexive embodied self (S. Jackson & Scott, 2007, pp. 98–100).
Rute Fevereiro tells me she likes to wear décolletages and “feel sexy”
onstage, embodying an onstage sexual persona. However, she does not wear
décolletages at the school where she teaches. Rute is framing the stage as a
proper public space to display female sexuality, where her erotic self (not an
objectified one) can be displayed (even if temporarily). The stage is a site for
embodied erotic and sexual performances musically mediated.
Because Rute Fevereiro has this “soft skill” (the “know-how” to “use my
image”), but also because she is an excellent musician, stage becomes a (safe)
place to be sexy and perform an erotic self without jeopardising her
respectability. She is able to move in and out of the stage as a (good) musician
and as a respectable woman – she is performing sexuality and respectability
through musicianship.
7.5: Performing “the girl in the band” offstage
In male-centred bands, women reported being assigned or taking on
nonmusical tasks that relate to typical female nurturing roles. Girls/women are
expected to take care of boys/men, they are responsible for their bandmates’
(potentially irresponsible) behaviours. Different examples illustrate what
girls/women in bands do as “care work” – from being responsible for the
unattractive, invisible but time-consuming routine tasks in the band to “keeping
an eye” on “wild” (sexual, drunken/bohemian, immature) boys. Women are not
expected to “engage in the excesses of rock ’n’ roll” – and its hedonistic
practices (Leonard, 2007, p. 59).
Rute Fevereiro is in her early forties and plays with other musicians in her
age range. She says that to be able to be in that band, she also has to keep on
good terms with her bandmates’ wives. One of her tasks is to make sure that
her bandmates do not betray their wives with another woman after the gigs or
when on tour.
Alexandra, a drummer in a punk band, explained to me that her
bandmates expected her to keep an eye on them, controlling what they drink
before the concerts so they would not get too drunk and be unable to play at the
gig.
Sara started to be the one responsible for scheduling the rehearsals. Her
bandmates were younger, so she said she was more “patient”, and therefore
more able to do that “kind of thing”, and that her bandmates were “just kids”. So
she took on the mundane responsibilities of scheduling rehearsals and booking
the rehearsal room, as well as “those other little things that are boring”.
Women are expected to excuse, tolerate and manage men’s behaviour ,
which is constructed by men and women alike as potentially unruly and
irresponsible. By exerting the right degree of control of men’s behaviour, women
derive some power (however, if women control too much, they are labelled
bossy or bitchy or “motherly”).
Sofia Silva is one of the oldest female heavy metal vocalists. The
following is an excerpt of a group interview with four female growlers (Female
Growlers United Front) in a national radio station, for an established heavy
metal programme by António Freitas. Sofia Silva is explaining to António Freitas
how she joined the band Neoplasmah:
Sofia: Basically, Alex [boyfriend] was already playing for Neoplasmah.
Their vocalist left and Alex said: ‘ you love the band, why don’t I talk to
them and we schedule an audition?’ and I was like ‘yea! Let’s go!’. It’s
funny because they were a bit sceptical, like, “oh, a chick, she’s gonna
spoil the band’s atmosphere”. But it didn’t! They’re still the same. They do
everything they used to do. And I have a laugh with them, and I love it!
(Laughs) António: (laughs)
Sofia: I’m not a tomboy at all! It’s a great atmosphere. I used to take them
cookies/cakes, so they wouldn’t starve in the gigs. António: Oh, you’re
so sweet!
Sofia: Yeah, I’d take care of them
António: You’re a bit… mammy-like. Sofia:
It’s more like the little sister.
Sofia negotiates the naming of her role in the band. She casts herself in
the role of the “little sister” – both a carer/care-giver and an
accomplice/complicit. It is this gender performance that allows her participation
without disturbing men’s camaraderie and the band’s atmosphere. She
becomes one among the boys, without being/becoming a tomboy. But she also
refuses the (authoritarian/controlling) role of a mother (or of the big sister).
The pervasive metaphor of the band as a family was often used by
girls/women who were in male-centred bands. The family gender regime
(division of labour) is mobilised by women to explain and maintain (gendered)
band dynamics – sorting out women into nurturing roles and/or invisible,
mundane, non-musical tasks, which consumed time and energy which would
otherwise have been available for other (individual) activities.
Underlying these discourses is the “ideology of maturity” (whereby girls
are supposed to become more mature at an earlier stage than boys and be
more academically oriented than boys), here used to make sense of gender
differences in the life of the band.
This is also why women at any stage prefer to work with older musicians,
and avoid younger musicians or “immature band projects” (Phi). Playing with
older musicians (advanced players, senior mentors) is a criteria for their musical
recognition and status attainment as a musician. They position themselves as a
“little girl” (inexperienced or less experienced), which enhances the value of
being invited/accepted by older (established, local/underground celebrities)
musicians.
In this case, even tomboys can “get shy”, showing that to be a tomboy is
not a fixed, given identity and neither is shyness. Shyness varies situationally
and over time, and it is mostly an emergent property of the interaction (S. Scott,
2004, p. 127). Beatriz Rodrigues considered herself a tomboy, but in the new
band consisting of older, experienced male musicians, she retreats into
shyness, often practising/rehearsing her singing in a room apart. Shyness is
enacted as a (gendered) individual and band performance of the beginner ‘girl
in the [male] band’, imposing a frame of reference of musical power relations in
cross-sex bands’ interactions. Shyness is not just a cultural metaphor for
inferiority or powerlessness, it is a practice that sustains a specific interaction in
a specific time. Age disparity in girls and women’s bands was never mentioned
as problematic.
Summary
Participation in male-centred bands through access to male networks is the
most common experience of band membership. However, it is a restrictive form
of musical participation characterised by instrument segregation, based on male
skill ascription as well as exclusion from decision-making processes. This
phenomenon in combination with musical beginnings in formal and informal
learning settings (bi-musicality) shapes women’s musical pathways – it
produces musical agile selves (playing multiple instruments and fitting in).
Women musicians are constituted as selfless musical subjects in male-centred
bands, fitting in (musically and aesthetically) according to the band’s needs,
displaying commitment to the group.
Interviewees also reported how they are expected to be “the girl in the
band”. Either by taking non-musical female roles within the band’s activities and
organisation (e.g. nurturing); or onstage, performing sexual difference, and
being appealing to the audiences.
Women feel they have to prove themselves to their bandmates to gain
access to the bands. Once they pass the test – showing they have what male
figures perceive as a musical skill, or fitting in according to the band’s needs,
they can rely on “male protection” (e.g. from audiences’ sexual harassment).
On the one hand, there is an unequal social distribution of musical
opportunities and expertise. On the other hand, it is the participation in bands
which opens up musical venues for these women – the opportunity to practise,
develop musical skills and new aspects of their musical selves are made
relevant and acted upon. In some cases, the (male) social
recognition/legitimation of a musical skill or the gendered politics of novelty
value opens up musical opportunities – also in non-traditional musical roles.
8: “Girls can do it too”: Female bands as female
(homo)socio-musical workspaces
In this section, I explore the socio-musical configurations of female bands.
Routes to band formation, gendered self-representations and female bands’
relation to grunge, the riot grrrl movement and feminism are explored.
8.1: Routes into female bands
Beatriz Rodrigues, who assembled Muses Land when she was a teenager, had
a dream:
I dreamt I had a band, and we were playing at the S. Mateus Festival! I
remember I was wearing light blue Doc Martens, matching my guitar, a
light blue guitar, and everyone in the audience was having fun! (…) In
that time in Viseu we had a strong music scene, so it was a natural thing,
I had this dream, woke up the next day and thought to myself: I wanna do
this! And bearing in mind the musical influences of those times, like
Babes in Toyland, L7, and many others…Alice in Chains… so I start
thinking about setting up a chick’s band. (…) So, it was me, Cláudia and
then Xaninha joined us. We were all high school friends and neighbours.
Pickle Puss started as a “photo’s band”:
We would get together, we would take some pictures, at Ana’s flat. That
was it. And the dream of being in a band. It was only photos, we didn’t
really play any instrument! Only when Sónia bought her first drum kit did
it started going somewhere...
Aspirations to band membership become real by mobilizing resources. The
conditions for the emergence of a female band are: girls/young women with
shared musical interests; available instruments (owned or borrowed), free
rehearsal space (usually in the garage of a relative), and a strong local music
scene that is sometimes supported by local youth and cultural politics.
Voodoo Dolls described themselves as a group of friends that got together as a
band. Their different age range (from seventeen to twenty-six) and occupations
(from university students to factory worker) was not a problem because “girls
too” can have a band:
When we decided… to set up the band, one of the main ideas was to be
just girls because we thought that would be nice. If a group of boys gets
together with their friends and sets up a band, I think it’s natural if you do
that with girls too.
Black Widows was the outcome of the meeting of two metal fans at university
and their wish to start a female metal band. These girls did not know how to
play instruments either, but unlike Voodoo Dolls and most beginner’s bands,
who use the band as a learning space, they went on a preparation journey.
Rute Fevereiro took guitar lessons and participated in a male band. One year
after, when they felt they have acquired the necessary musical skills to become
a “good heavy metal band”, they found a female drummer and set up the first
Portuguese heavy metal female band (1995).
Suspiria Franklyn, of Everground, and later Les Baton Rouge, and Christina
Quest of Rockalady reported to start their own female bands because they were
not accepted into other male bands in the role of guitarists. They were only
accepted as singers.
The assemblage of a female band is a response to the absence of women’s
rock bands. Women rock musicians’ status as a minority is reframed as a
feature of the Portuguese socio-cultural underdevelopment149. Beginning
musicians seek to model themselves after the bands they hear, read about and
see (Bielby, 2004; Campbell, 1995; Clawson, 1999a; S. G. Davis, 2005). Given
the lack of Portuguese role models and an aspirational identity to
cosmopolitanism, these bands position themselves in a (cosmopolitan) musical
such as the city hall photographer that would take pictures and give a free copy to the bands.
Local media (local newspapers and local radio) also played a role in giving visibility to these
bands.
149 As Clawson says: “women’s participation in the rock music world continues to be noteworthy,
defined by their status as numerical minority and symbolic anomaly” (Clawson, 1999a). Women
rockers status as a minority is re-framed as a Portuguese phenomenon. The idea that in
Portugal there’s only “a few” ones, as opposite to “abroad” was expressed in many interviews, in
many newspaper articles, online, local and national - Portuguese-ness as lagging behind.
lineage of Anglo-American female bands, such as L7, Hole, Babes in Toyland
(Reddington, 2012, pp. 23–25). However, these female bands do not selfidentify
with feminist bands and the degree to which one considers itself a “riot grrrl”
band varies.
The sentence “girls can do it too” was repeated virtually by all bands, as a claim
for girls’ “power to make music”. The main reason to start up a female band was
to gain female access to music-making: “the need for women to assert that they
can do the same as men. But with a female identity” (Pickle Puss).
8.2: Representations of gender
Gender is (re)produced in the context of a female band through band’s naming,
lyric writing, backing vocals, instrument use and onstage presentation. The
enactment of a “female identity” is done by the pull of music (the lyrical content),
but also by the pull of other aesthetic materials, such as clothes and stage
decoration and props.
The act of naming is crucial for establishing the band’s collective and symbolic
identity (Clawson, 1999a; Finnegan, 2007; Laing, 1985; Pais, 2004; Weinstein,
1993, 2004b). Most of all these female-centred bands play with gender identity
in their bands’ collective names152, displaying a female identity. It ranged from
playfulness and parody around female body and “feminine” traits (Pink Spit,
Unpredictable, T.P.M.) to powerful, often sexual, band names: Muses Land, Les
Baton Rouge, Rockalady, Anarchicks, Voodoo Dolls or Black Widows. Those
band names that were gender neutral, played with other identities, namely age
(Pickle Puss, Pega-Monstro), symbolism (Bellenden Ker), artsy word-play
(NoNo).
The bands I interviewed presented diversity in their onstage gender
presentations strategies. Regarding clothes, this ranged from an ordinary
aesthetic (“normal clothes”) to theatricality (costumes), from sexiness to an
“anti-image” look, from androgyny to “feminine” clothing. However, there are
female bands’ “performance idioms”, based on a shared rock aesthetics
vocabulary (Gottlieb & Wald, 1994) that was much indebted to the media and
MTV155. Especially in what concerns performance styles and appearance, there
is a visual iconography of rock women that has implicitly rejected “girlish
femininity” (Whiteley, 2005) while embracing girlhood (Wald, 1998). Regarding
female bands’ performance styles, I subscribe to Leonard’s remarks, in as much
they “(…) are intended to be challenging and engaging, they may not
necessarily be understood as subversive if related to the signifying systems of
indie rock music culture” (Leonard, 2007, p. 93).
Portuguese female bands who self-identified as grunge played around with doll
and bride imagery. Female bands created ironic pastiches of symbolic stages of
traditional heterosexual female life (childhood and marriage). Bellenden Ker
dressed in vintage baby-doll dresses, but wore ripped tights and put on
smudged make-up and smudged red lipstick, creating, in their words, a
“beautyugly” aesthetic – a form of “aesthetic of dissonant juxtaposition”. Pickle
Puss were inspired by it for stage decoration: “[we] took our Barbies and baby
dolls, and we hang them from the ceiling”. Sometimes Pickle Puss dressed as
men, painted their teeth black, making themselves ugly to “mock those sexy
girls’ bands, like the Spice Girls”. The bride’s imagery in a dissonant
juxtaposition was also used by Pickle Puss and Muses Land. The former used a
wedding veil combined with “normal clothes” while the latter wore wedding
dresses combined with trainers.
thought that was the original meaning. Therefore their band’s name is included as a play with
gender identity.
155 As in other countries, MTV shaped in specific ways the rise of female musicianship in
Portugal (L. Lewis, 1993).
Theatricality and the impersonation of onstage fictional characters, in different
ways, constituted an onstage presentational resource for both The Dirty Coal
Train (a female-centred garage band) and for Dead By Pregnancy (a riot grrrl
band mostly composed of men in drag). Bands who assume a more overtly
sexualised image onstage are not adolescents and played musical styles in the
spectrum of heavy metal and hard rock (eg: Anarchicks, Black Widows, Les
Baton Rouge, Rockalady and Voodoo Dolls).
Band membership in a female band was not the most common experience of
musical participation. The sex status of band members as “100% female”
(Pickle Puss) was a reason for pride and a criterion of authenticity for most
female bands interviewed. Due to the lack of female musicians, assembling and
maintaining a female band was a valuable accomplishment. Female bands are
more vulnerable than their male counterparts, for the reason that it is far more
difficult to find female replacement instrumentalists (Bayton, 1998; Buscatto,
2010).
Two opposite narratives stand out in female band discourses: autonomy and
horror stories. Female bands took pride in doing it without any male assistance.
Autonomy, self-reliance and independence were values proudly claimed by
female bands: “We did everything by ourselves”, both musical and non-musical
tasks. These tasks ranged from booking gigs to managing money, from driving
to concerts to loading and unloading their instruments without any help. Another
recurrent story in every band pointed to the opposite. There would be one
situation where they felt threatened, or potentially threatened, and had to rely on
male protection. For example, when Pickle Puss were still adolescents they had
to call one of the bandmate’s father, a motorcyclist, for help when they were not
paid for a gig. Voodoo Dolls had to call for their friends for help when they were
being car chased after a gig. I claim that, due to the emphasis on autonomy
stories, these other episodes assume the significance of a “horror story” (Allen,
2001; Dingwall, 1977), showing that girls and women still have to rely on men to
rescue them from peril. Horror stories are told as exciting and not threatening
events. They work both in the rhetoric “tradition of rock adventurism” (Reynolds
& Press, 1995, p. 272), but also as a reminder that female independence still
has its limitations.
8.3: The band as a musically mediated female friendship space
To set up a female band, these girls and women either drew upon their own
female networks of acquaintances or friends (who they had met at school,
university, in the neighbourhood) or they used advertisements in music
newspapers, online or word of mouth to pull female musicians. With the
exception of the Voodoo Dolls and Muses Land, who clearly stated that they
were friends first and then become a band, bands mentioned that they were
either acquaintances from school and neighbourhood or strangers and not really
friends.
However, the female rock band is constructed as a socio-musical friendship
space161 and female bands are enacted as a whole:162 “this is worth it because
we’re all in it.” (Anarchicks). Constructing the band as a socio-musical friendship
space meant there were no asymmetric relationships. It meant that, in the
context of a female band, girls and women made sense of their own ties and
relationships in a specific manner.
Friendships in rock bands might also be a strategic discourse rather than a
concrete practice, that is part of keeping the good face in self-presentation to
resist the stereotype of female rivalry. Gender difference was made either a
relevant or irrelevant factor of explanation for a good band atmosphere,
according to situated contexts. Gender difference is used strategically. To
emphasize band members’ “personality” rather than gender as a factor for
bands’ success or failure might be especially important. It is so because this
way female bands’ resist against their vulnerability to breakups and discourses
that that position women as more competitive and/or more emotional and
therefore more complicated to work with. Due to the scarcity of female
musicians, a female band was more vulnerable to split-ups, and the
continuance of the female band depended on each member staying committed,
and assuring stable relationships was seen to be a part of it (Bayton, 1998, p.
185).
In female bands and female-centred bands where self-identified lesbian women
participated, they felt it was a safe space. One interviewee who self-identified as
lesbian, and who had belonged both to a male and female band, claimed how
uncomfortable she felt in the male band. This was not because she was
discriminated against, on the contrary, her bandmates were very happy to find
out she was a lesbian. But, as she complained, “the moment they knew I was a
lesbian, they assumed I was one of them, and assumed that I, like them, liked to
rate chicks based on their looks, and assumed I, like them, enjoy objectifying
women” (Liliana).
Friendship is musically mediated. Bandmates became friends through musical
interactions themselves. Female bands placed importance on the construction
of band’s musical style as a result of each band member’s musical tastes.
Participants proudly reported being musically influenced by each other ways of
playing (accommodating musical diversity), but also ways of being. Musical and
non-musical roles in the band tended to be distributed democratically according
to one’s individual preferences, self-identified skills and personal convenience.
These bands highlight the collective authorship of the compositional process
(Clawson, 1993, p. 239). The collective creative process was described as
“having little orgasms” (Anarchicks). Female bands describe
“musical chemistry” among band members and bands’ musical interactions
were often compared to those of lovers. This was unlike participants in
malecentred bands who tended to describe the band as a family. The female
band can be considered a female homosocial space. Departing from
Sedgwick’s notion of homosociality, as a theoretical way to conceptualise men’s
same-sex interaction (Sedgwick, 1985), Sanders (2015) analysed a female
football team through the lens of “female homosociality”. So too the female rock
band (and even the female DJs’ duos and trios) complicates the
heteronormativity that has portrayed girls and women’s social dynamics, either
through the ‘friendship’ discourse (by default, desexualized relationships) or
through ‘the lesbian’ (bisexual or queer) sexual discourse (Sanders, 2015, p.
893). As found by Sanders, so too the participants did not live the female band
as an exclusively heterosexual or lesbian/queer socio-musical space. In the
same vein, Downes
(2010, 2012) refers to the “heterosexual queerness” of British riot grrrls bands
who did not conform to the normative femininity.
Musical competence was as important as interpersonal skills and commitment
to the collective to became a band member. The auditions for a female guitarist
for the band Anarchicks were illustrative:
Katari: There was a girl… it’s not that she didn’t play well, but it didn’t
work out. Then, there was another girl: she was a guitar “virtuoso” and
we were like: “oh my god!”, she played too well! Then, there was other
girl, but she was not that available to commit with the band – she missed
some rehearsals. Finally, we’ve heard of J.D. and asked her to come to
the rehearsal and play, and we were like “she’s really good! She plays
really well!” and she was really nice, we had really good vibes, she really
liked our songs. We asked her: “do you like it?” and she replied, “I love
it”.
JD: yeah, this was really what I was looking for!
Synthetique: Yeah, we really fit perfectly!
Female bands accommodate greater diversity regarding musical background.
And this heterogeneous ability grouping has proven to be more efficient
(Burland & Davidson, 2001). Having a music education or technicality is
irrelevant “if it sounds good” when playing for the band. However, female bands
are vulnerable to critics. This has led to female bands wishing to be assessed
as a whole, rather than based on individual members’ proficiency. In a gig, I
watched Teresa arguing with a male guitarist friend. He was criticizing the
quality of a female band’s female guitarist. Teresa argued that the band should
be assessed as a musical whole, rather than by the technical musical skill of
one member. Also, the band protected individual members when people
criticized them for their lack of musical quality.
Both the drummer of Voodoo Dolls and the singer of Pickle Puss claim they did
not play or sing well. To compensate for what was perceived as a lack musical
skill and technical ability, they over-performed by being “not just a singer, but an
entertainer” (Pickle Puss), and by “putting on a good show” (Voodoo Dolls). It
was passion, feel, expressivity and the uniqueness of their performance rather
than technical prowess that they turned into a source of musical legitimation.
When criticized or insulted, or even anticipated potential critiques, band
members did “remedial work” (Goffman), to save the face of the band as a
whole.
Women’s camaraderie and ease with each other bilt through non-musical issues
(women’s issues) was singled out by Bellenden Ker as a distinctive feature in a
female band: “there are certain issues [menstruation], that, no matter how long,
or how much trust and friendship you feel, there are certain things that you’re
not comfortable talking about with men (laughs).”
Talk (complaining, discussing, sharing, even bitching) about work or school and
personal issues, “listening to each other and exchange” (Buscatto, 2010, p. 9),
was integrated into the band’s interaction. Women’s camaraderie was often built
in the backstage, in the private spaces of the rehearsal rooms and garages,
which resembled bedroom cultures:
Katari: I came from work to rehearsal and I’m a wreck! Really down, face
down… And when I get out from the rehearsal it’s like… [Whistles, lifts up
her chin] all up!
Synthetique: me too!
JD: the same here, really!!
Synthetique: sometimes were assembling the instruments, and we start
talking to each other [complaining]. Then we start playing, and all of
sudden, everything is all right.
Katari: and then I’m like: “I’m glad I came to the rehearsal!” because
sometimes it’s hard to get there [to the rehearsal place], but when we
leave the rehearsal it feels damn good!
Pleasurable collective music-making linked to non-musical talk became a
motivational device to ‘move out’ of low moods.
Another important activity in the backstage (either in its physical space or
imagined) is the collective gendered dress for the gig, which is part of the broad
pre-gig ritual found in other studies (Weinstein, 1991, H. S. Bennet, 1980,
Bayton, 1998: 6). In the context of a female band, gendered dress and
preparation of the body for public display is subject to collective deliberation (“an
agreement”), respecting individual personal aesthetics:
Each one had her own personal style. Maybe I wouldn’t wear a concert
T-shirt, and other girls wouldn’t wear décolletages. So we tried to reach
an agreement, and we did it. (Black Widows)
Backstage became a collective female-only intimate space to try out the
appropriate feminine rock appearance. It resembled the way Skeggs describes
how working-class women dressed up all together before going out
clubbing, learning to “pass” as feminine: “this collective putting on [of femininity]
is about women being close, safe and self-indulgent. (…) it is a way of
belonging and of feeling secure” (Skeggs, 1997, p. 106). This is both a
pleasurable activity and a way of coping with female bands’ vulnerability to
critique and abuse.
8.4: Female bands’ good practices and bad practices
No more than in a female band is musical ability assessed according to a
musician’s sex status as female (Green, 1997, p. 50). Women rock musicians
are tokens, a term dubbed by Kanter (1977) to refer to the situation of women
of corporation crossing to a non-traditional gender occupation). Kanter’s now
classic study and conceptual tools inspired subsequent authors who approach
women tokens within the framework of the “(in)visibility paradox” (Simpson &
Lewis, 2005; Watts, 2010b), that is “a complex [and often contradictory]
dynamic that oscillates between visibility as an advantage and visibility as an
obstacle to professional progression [vulnerability]” (Watts, 2010b). That is to
say, on the one hand, the advantage of being different and known but, on the
other hand facing the loneliness of outsider estrangement from male peers.
Suspicions of women’s real musical skills increased in the context of a female
band, who did not prove themselves to male bandmates. Bellenden Ker
illustrates this situation, in their account of their participation in a bands’ contest:
A guy [musician] came to us and said he saw us in that contest. He said he just
thought: “the jury just selected this band because it’s a chicks’ band”. But then
he listened to us, and he was surprised because we had a good rhythm, we
were solid. And he even asked us if we spend all day rehearsing or what! He
was really surprised because we were really really well-rehearsed
If in a male-centred band femaleness is marketable, in a female band it can be a
greater risk. On the other hand, there is also “positive discrimination” towards
female bands, as some participants noted. For commercial reasons, venue
owners are favourable to book gigs and are encouraged to hire female bands.
There is a clear discourse on good and bad practices by female bands.
The following excerpt conveys the dilemma music versus image that female
bands have had to face when managing onstage collective appearance:
This raised discussion in the band. There was a time when one of the
(female) bandmates suggested that we wouldn’t wear any dresses on
stage. Almost as if we shouldn’t assert our… being a woman! Because
we could draw the attention in a negative way, and because the most
important thing is the music. (NoNo)
Female bands work to achieve a delicate balance between band’s overall image
in accordance with the musical style and capitalizations of femaleness
(attractiveness).
Individual musicians and female bands cannot “take advantage” of “being a
woman”. Reaching success based on one’s looks (attractiveness) is an
illegitimate form of musicianship: “selling out.” Women can only capitalize on
their physical femaleness, referred to as “use one’s image,” as long as they do
not compromise their musical skill. Female musicians have had to “really play”
and to play “really well.” Sexual attributes must not overshadow their musical
ability. Only in this situation, could women musicians “sell sex” without “selling
out”.
Instead of “taking advantage”, Black Widows claimed to have “known how” to
use their image as women: “Off course we wouldn’t dress as nuns, all covered
up. We’re women, we have to know how to use our image.” It is this know-how,
collectively negotiated and respecting personal aesthetics, combined with Black
Widows’ musical competence and heavy metal affiliation, which enabled Black
Widows to “feel sexy and pass on that to our audience” – without “selling out”.
Anarchicks’ media popularity raised while I was conducting fieldwork. I noticed
that Anarchicks had “glammed-up” since I first interviewed them, and the more
heterosexually attractive a female band looks, the more their musical quality
and value (authenticity) is at stake. From praise and support to comment and
critique, Anarchicks were used by interviewers as an example of the most
disperate things. Ones had pointed them out as an example of where only the
image sells (bad practices), claiming to have heard rumours that they did not
record in a studio. Some others had praised Anarchicks as icons of
“women-rockers” for their attitude. When a female band reaches success, it
becomes a basis for an aesthetic-based controversy.
8.5: Riot grrrl and “girl power”: reconfiguring feminism
A female band is not to be conflated with being feminist and/or a riot grrrl band.
The bands rejected or made ambiguous links between music and feminism
and/or riot grrrl bands, configuring new meanings for each.
The riot grrrl movement was mostly unknown among interviewees. Among those
who were familiar with it, there was a consensus that the first Portuguese riot
grrrl woman was Suspiria Franklyn, founder of Everground and later of Les
Baton Rouge (a band that is still active). However, for all other bands, “riot grrrl”
was a controversial label, with no single definition.
The female bands that related themselves to riot grrrl made distinctions between
riot grrrl as a musical style, as a feminist movement (through feminist lyrics) and
as an “attitude” (regardless of musical style or feminist lyrical content).
Even if some bands self-identified with riot grrrl, they did it in a selective way,
pointing to different degrees of “being riot”:
Rita: are you “riot grrrls”?
Bellenden Ker: Hum… I don’t think so. Maybe the musical style because
it’s associated with it… But not the songs [lyrics], we don’t talk about…
women’s liberation… maybe it’s just the music style because in what
concerns lyrics, we don’t have that sort of feminist lyrics. And we didn’t
have riot grrrl goals as the band’s goals to start with. Like “to be riot
grrrls” that was never the band’s goal.
Bellenden Ker, as well as Anarchicks, considered themselves “riot but not
grunge,” for different reasons. Bellenden Ker might have had a riot grrrl “musical
style,” but Anarchicks had a riot grrrl attitude that was sonically mediated by the
backing vocals:
We’re sooo riot! And many people classify us as riot grrrls – like Cláudia
Duarte, the girl from [radio] Radar. We think it suits us well! Although it’s
not grunge. But it’s riot. It’s more about the attitude, then about how we
sound. But our backing vocals are riot! That’s another detail, really
characteristic of chick’s bands: the backing vocals! It’s a feature because
we’re all girls and our voices sound so good all together! It’s so… riot!
Our riot stuff, it’s the attitude, it’s “in your face”. (Anarchicks)
Only Dead by Pregnancy considered themselves a feminist band, which was
expressed in their lyrics and onstage improvised performances (talking about
domestic violence, rape, cross-dressing and simulating abortions on-stage).
Dead By Pregnancy, along with Les Baton Rouge, participated in trans-local
feminist riot grrrl networks through song recorded “splits” with foreigners’ riot
grrrl bands).
Riot grrrl was a discursively contested category that both Dead By Pregnancy
and Anarchicks self-identified with but its legitimacy was not consensual. There
were critics to an undeserved use of the label. Some interviewees pointed to the
fact that Dead by Pregnancy were a heterosexual male-centred band. Other
interviewees criticized Anarchicks for being a commercial version of “riot grrrl”:
too pretty and too musically soft (no power chords after the second album) to be
a riot grrrl.
Often newspaper articles would label bands as “riot grrrls”, regardless of
whether or not the band itself did (eg: Pega-Monstro). Strong (2011) showed
how female bands that were grunge (L7, Hole, Babes in Toyland) were
progressively pushed by media into the category of riot grrrl. In this way, the
category grunge was for for men, and female grunge was moved into the
category of riot. This way as it fitted better in the logic of single-out and
exclude.
Being a feminist band was usually conflated with putting out feminist messages
in the lyrics. However, there are different degrees and arenas of engagement
with feminism in a female band, either as a practice or as an ideology.
Unpredictable felt the “need” to compose a song where they talked about their
experience of being girls which was a song they considered to be “the most
feminist song” of their repertoire: “We wrote the ‘XXX generation’, where we
talked about being a girls’ band, our desire of not being excluded, and our
willingness to do music.” The band considered that one song represented
“being a girl” topic was enough. Otherwise, they would turn out to be a “lame”
band. In the same vein, Helena Fagundes, a thirty-four year old Portuguese
Brazilian that had always taken part in female (Brazilian and Portuguese)
bands: “I consider myself a feminist, but… I also like other things… and… I like
to have fun! We don’t have to talk about feminism all the time!”
Anarchicks considered themselves to be feminists with the disclaimer that they
were not “phobic to men” nor were they “extremists.” They did not consider their
music or lyrics to be feminist, they considered themselves to be an “apolitical
band.” Instead, they reconfigured feminism as an onstage musical attitude:
“Hum… we don´t think about it [making feminist music]… we make the music
we like… the thing is all about our behaviour! We get there [on stage] and that’s
already a statement!”
When participating in a band’s contest, Bellenden Ker were asked by the (male)
contest presenter if they were feminists:
they asked us if we would like women to rule (over) men, something like
that… if we were feminists… and one of us replied: “no, we like man
woodcutters” (laughs!). Because there’s a lot of people that see our band
like a girl’s band and say: “oh, women’s liberation, they just want to be in
charge, and boss men”, blah blah… but…I think we just want equality!
Equality is not ruling… that’s stupid... (silence).
This episode tells us about the negative representations of feminism that had
been circulating in society and portrayed by the media. Feminism has popularly
been misunderstood as being the opposite of “machismo”, and feminists have
been equated to raging, “man-hating” women; feminism is represented as
hostile towards men.
In interviewees’ discourses about feminism, there was an attempt to make clear
their understanding of feminism as a struggle for equality and to assert that was
not a battle of the sexes. There was also an attempt to separate feminism from
the music itself. The goal was to locate and single out/mark out feminism in the
lyric’s themes and/or in the on-stage attitude (being there).
As With Tricia Rose (1994) female hip-hoppers, or with Farrugia (2009) EDM
DJs, the women rockers in this study tended to self-identify as pro-women, but
disavowed the label feminists, despite their feminist practices. The 1990s United
States alternative rockers studied by Schippers (men and women musicians,
from bands like Pearl Jam, L7 and Babes In Toyland) baulked at being labelled
“feminists” and they rarely talked about or sung about their feminist politics.
Women avoided identifying themselves as feminists, out of fear that it would
alienate audiences and employers. Even when they adopted what be feminist
practices, that I call here good practices, as they represent an “etiquette” for
female musicians.
Instead, 1990s alternative rockers reframed gender politics as a form of rock
authenticity, namely, an “emphasis on being a positive role model and example
is the most common way in which alternative hard rockers talk about the
relationship between their music and feminism.” (Schippers, 2002, p. 184).
Female bands took pride in the positive feedback from audience members:
“they like to see us [female bands] up there [on stage]. They like to see us
playing.” (NoNo). Also, Christina Quest (Rockalady) claims: “The audience likes
us. Men and lesbian women, all that thing about “girl power”, that thing of… the
girls that got together and they’re so cool. It’s a phenomenon of admiration.”
These Portuguese bands did not grow out of feminist activism, nor were they
connected to riot grrrl networks. However, they did identify, in a very selective
way, with features of riot grrrl, which showed how cultural forms circulated and
were appropriated by specific actors in situated contexts.
Most interviewees identify the female band as a site of “girl power.” This was
expressed by using the English expression “girl power” or, as we have seen, by
the sentence “girls can do it.”
Portuguese female bands resemble a “girl power” discourse as it has been
discussed in the Anglo-Saxon feminist literature. The commodified version of girl
power crystalized by Spice Girls as opposed to “authentic” riot grrrl version of
girl power, had been subjected to much feminist debate and criticism (Gill &
Scharff, 2012; Harris, 2004; Kearney, 2006; Taft, 2004). The girl power
discourse was associated with the post-feminism sensibility and “commodity
feminism” that undercut feminist principles by reducing feminist rhetoric, feminist
ideas and icons to individual consumer choices in the capitalist market.
However, I agree with Hains (2012, 2014) who claimed that a commodified
version of “girl power” is still productive. Hains (2014) shows how fans of Spice
Girls – “the commodified version” of grrrl power – experience their love for
music. Considering the girls’ and women’s personal chronology of listening, the
author shows that girls who encounter Spice Girls in the first place – as it was
mainstream music, it was easier to access – became sensitized to feminist
issues. Before they meet riot grrrl, they gained a feminist sensibility which they
pursue more actively as they become young women.
The female band is a socio-musical “woman-friendly” space. Portuguese female
bands assembled women together, not only as bandmates, but also with other
onstage roles, such as backing vocals (Pickle Puss, Muses Land); dancers
(Black Widows), and off-stage roles, such as manager (Voodoo Dolls), set
designer and sound technician (Bellenden Ker).
The female band supports women’s musicianship. Black Widows worked as a
“school” for female musicians, in the sense that it accepted and “trained” many
female musicians. Christina Quest started a project of female mentorship, giving
advice to novice women musicians and answering their questions. Another
example of good practice among female bands was the “borrowing” of female
musicians as temporary substitutes, as well as borrowing instruments (when
stolen, for instance).
Female bands organized gigs together (Voodoo Dolls and Pickle Puss; Les
Baton Rouge and The Dirty Coal Train; United Female Growlers). Sometimes at
their own gigs they featured other women musicians they admired (Anarchicks
featuring The Chick).
If these partnerships were often ephemeral events they were nonetheless
prowomen statements; a minority group’s strategy to raise their profile.Not
women’s festivals or “politik” but embodied musical participation and material
practices of mutual help is what counts as political action. Female bands have
been reframing feminism as an embodied musical performance and the band as
an object lesson on gender and rock, highlighting female musical ability,
autonomy and identity as creative producers.
Summary
Female bands are not the most common form of band membership for
Portuguese rockers and there is a weak riot grrrl scene in Portugal.. The female
band has specific features such as acting as a (homo)socio-musical space.
There is a female gendering of the female band, from bands’ naming practices
to lyrical content; from stage presentation to clothing. These materialities did not
represent the bands, they constituted the bands as such. Given the lack of
female musicians, being a “100% female band” was both a criterion for pride,
but also a reason for female bands’ vulnerability.
Becoming a band member in a female band demanded musical ability but also
interpersonal skills and commitment to the band. The band became a
“protected” context for music-making for girls and women because it was a
female homosocial musical space. Female friendship was constructed in the
backstage, through talking, sharing and bringing other non-musical elements
into the band. Female friendship became musically mediated.
Femaleness as a commodity was used in both male and female bands. While
for the former there was no risk to their musical reputation and authenticity, for
the latter, sexiness became an aesthetic of risk. Women could only capitalize on
their physical femaleness as long as they did not compromise their musical skill.
“Selling sex” without “selling out” was an example of good practices. To avoid
risk, female bands’ gender dress was subject to collective scrutiny with respect
for individual difference and personal aesthetics.
These Portuguese bands did not grow out of feminist activism, nor were they
connected to trans-local riot grrrl networks (except two bands). Female bands’
discourses were closer to a “girl power” discourse, which could still be
productive. When these bands used the stage as kinaesthetic cultural
workspace to act out women’s musical ability, they were providing important
object lessons; they were expanding the available musical and non-musical
roles for women. Sharing a trans-local rock aesthetic, new ways of being a
Portuguese female or queer rocker were being registered in the public musical
sphere.
9: Women’s discourses on musicianship
Women rock musicians feel they are not taken serious. There is a lack of
recognition and status subordination, within hierarchies of cultural value: “when,
in contrast, institutionalized patterns of cultural value constitute women as
inferior, excluded, wholly other, or simply invisible, hence as less than full
partners in social interaction, then we must speak of sexist misrecognition and
status subordination.” (Fraser, 2013, p. 168). Women engage in discourses and
practices to be taken seriously, to compensate their “femaleness as otherness”
in rock worlds, related to their status as women token (especially in the case of
female bands, guitarists and drummers).
9.1: High standards of musicianship
Participants situated their musical ability as a process,not innate talent, that
demanded commitment to the hard work of musicianship. Participants displayed
self–accounts of modesty. Clawson (1999a, p. 111) points to the contrast found
between men and women’s accounts of their musical activities: whereas men
have teleological accounts, women’s narratives are of devaluation. Atkinson
found that opera singers, who were mostly women, deployed various narrative
tropes of modesty and chance to account for their careers, interlinked with
accounts of hard work and thankless tasks (Atkinson, 2006, pp. 183–185).
These female musicians’ goal was to develop excellent musical skills –
“overperforming”. By engaging in formal music education and/or intensive
practice (just being in a band is not considered enough), women musicians gain
self-confidence. This enables them to present themselves as competent
(professional) to their male colleagues and audiences. Women expressed a
desire to improve their instrumental or singing ability, which they did by
engaging in formal music education. Even in rock worlds, there was a
recognised and prestigious “career” in classical or formal music learning (also
found by Finnegan, 2007, p. 136). Participants relied on family musical
sponsorship, and, when they grew older and had financial autonomy through
employment, they invested their money in buying instruments or having
instrumental tuition, which displayed commitment.
Musical improvement was also achieved through intensive practise.
Interviewees in this study revealed they planned and rehearsed their
performances extensively, wanting to disguise any potential flaws and ‘pass’ as
competent, good musicians. Female bands also undertook more mundane
actions to be taken seriously as musicians, such as having a post address as a
band (Pickle Puss) or having copyrights on their songs (Voodoo Dolls). Another
way of achieving a musical competent performance was to have “responsible
practices” (such as not playing drunk, not drinking before the concerts). These
strategies resembled what Buscatto has called playing “under protected
conditions” (Buscatto, 2007b, p. 74).
Achieving high standards of musicianship implies hard work and sacrifice of
time and money. In this sense, the “good student” discourse that was mobilized
in adolescence, was updated in adulthood through the discourse of
responsibility, hard work and commitment. Women’s discourses on
musicianship resembled military discourses: effort, sacrifice, goal-oriented,
strength, resilience and perseverance. Women often referred to those few
resilient women who “kept at it” and to the others who “don’t do it anymore.”
Those who “kept at it” were those who made it into the rock worlds. For those,
the perception of the obstacles at work, and their self-perception as a minority,
increased their sense of personal achievement. Participants’ rhetoric of
accomplishment in rock worlds was often heroic189 and worked in tandem with
the rhetoric of “othering”, which I will detail below.
The other side of hard work is to have fun. “Fun” holds a specific value within
rock music cultures: the duty to struggle for fun (Frith, 1983, p. 272). Pleasure
and enjoyment are important dimensions of leisure in a consumer society
(Bauman, 2007) and of “calculated hedonism” (Featherstone, 1991). “Fun” is
part of “play” (Goffman, 1972), and music is entertainment in all cultures
(Merriam, 1964). Participants highlighted fun and pleasure as the core emotion
enacted with music-making and all its surrounding activities. “Girls having fun”
while being responsible need to be taken seriously within the micro-politics of
female subjectivity.
It is only acceptable not having high standards of musicianship if one does it as
leisure or as another form of sociability (playing with friends). However, even in
those cases, there must be commitment. As Patrícia, a bass player, said: “even
to have fun, you need to take it seriously. For starters, you need to show up for
the rehearsals, if you schedule a day and a time with someone, you need to
show up, you need to be responsible, and respect the others.” It was also
acceptable to give up on high standards of musicianship in punk or grunge
bands, as well as in beginners’ bands (or both, as Un-predictable).
The participants negotiated the male standards of the “virtuoso”, mocking it,
reframing virtuosity as infantile, shallow exhibitionism or “showing off”.
Participants often refused the “rock star” label since it was equivalent to an
arrogant person. Punk, indie and grunge had undermined the “male-guitar-hero”
pose. Complex instrumental solos were dismissed and simplicity was favoured
in an anti-elitist vein that also enabled women’s participation in punk, indie and
rock music more generally (Bannister, 2013; Bayton, 1998; Reddington, 2003;
Schippers, 2002). For the participants, under-valuing technical skill moved
beyond being a genre performance idiom towards being a gender resistant
discourse. Against this position of “technological incompetence” (Cockburn,
1985, p. 12; Thornham & McFarlane, 2011; Walkerdine, 2006), participants
reworked old gender stereotypes of “men as rational and technical” and “women
as emotional” in accounting for musical performance. Participants undervalued
technical skill and placed high value on displaying of have feeling, ter garra, as
a form of “sincere emotionality”; as a mature, authentic performance.
9.2: Othering fans
Two common explanations were mobilized to account for the under-
representation of women musicians in Portugal: an individual female disinterest
and self-exclusion; and a societal phenomenon, symptomatic of the Portuguese
musical and societal underdevelopment that translated into the lack of material
opportunities and female role models for women.
The interviewees that were musicians criticized other girls who “do nothing,”
who did not pick an instrument and play. “If it was football, I could understand”,
adds Dina Peste. Music was compared to other spheres of leisure activity that
were perceived as masculine, namely sports, and more specifically, football.
There was the expectation that music was not, unlike sports, a masculine
pursuit. The assertion that girls are disinterested and excluded themselves
evoque a post-feminist discourse of individual choice. These assertions
reproduce gendered ideologies in rock, namely, the passive fan.
The radicalization of passivity is encapsulated in the figure of a specific fan: the
“groupie”. The word groupie in English was often used by both musicians and
fans. Fans would often claim “I’m not a groupie.” When I asked musicians if they
were inspired by any specific musicians, female or non-female, most
participants answered firmly they were not the “having-idols-type” or were
dismissive. They did not just verbally step back from that label, but they also
revealed to avoid groupie behaviour towards male bands/musicians. For
instance, they avoid looking like groupies by not asking for autographs and not
being around male musicians all the time. This indicated that “groupie” is a
stigma, and, as found by Schippers, it circulated as a discourse of regulation
(Schippers, 2002, p. 65, p. 91). However, to be a groupie in Portugal referred
not so much to engaging in prolific sexual activity with musicians, as it was
framed in the USA, rather groupie refers to be immature and mindless.
Rute Fevereiro described thatonce she set up a band and became a
musician,her identity as a musician was established. Then, she would not run
the risk of being placed in the groupie category (also found by Bayton, 1998, p.
97). In fact, every time women’s identity as a musician was not recognized they
ran the risk of being mistaken as a groupie. Shelley Barradas’ story makes this
explicit. Shelley went to a music workshop, and she was invited by the foreign
musicians to have dinner with them. However, according to Shelley, the event
promoters did not allow her in, which she attributed to being mistaken for a
groupie.
If the participants refused groupie behaviour towards men, women would often
label themselves as groupies of their (female) bandmates or groupies of peers
(female friends’ musicians).
9.3: Inspiring women
Because women rockers are “rare”, interviewees claimed that watching a
woman on stage was “inspiring”. It is especially inspiring if she was “a good
musician” (musical competence) with “attitude” (with a charismatic, strong
onstage presence).
The inspiring women musicians with whom interviewees identified with, who
could act as role models, were mostly the well-known Anglo-Saxon rockers like
Patty Smith, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, d’Arcy, Kathleen Hannah, Cat Power, but
alsoNina Simone. Regarding Portuguese women rockers, Xana was often
mentioned as an icon. The importance of “the attitude” in the making of a rocker
(and not necessarily the music itself) led to some interesting bluring of genre
boundaries. For instance, Anarchicks claimed that Amália (Portuguese fado
singer) could be thought of as the mother of Portuguese rock. Diana Peste also
claimed that Zeca Afonso (a protest singer songwriter) could be hailed the father
of Portuguese punk.
Interviewees that were musicians often mentioned their peers, other “local”
women musicians, as being inspiring women they admired. There was also a
generational issue at stake: the older participants were, the fewer female role
models they had growing up. In the group interview with the four female
“growlers,” the younger three (in their early twenties) regarded the German
Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy) as a role model. But for Sofia Silva (in her early
thirties) it was Rute Fevereiro (in her early forties) that was an inspiration, after
she watched her performing:
She [Rute Fevereiro] had a different attitude! And she’s like… she’s like
an iron lady to me! Because she would stand up, and she could take all
that pressure in those times, and in a chick’s band… I don’t know how
she did it. But she made it. And with all those guys making comments,
shouting, catcalling, even throwing things at them… And she was
standing up there [on-stage].
Naming and praising women peers (their female bandmates, their female
friends’ musicians) worked as a performative account of admiration. The
“inspiring female peers” discourse (which translates into cooperative practices
as seen in previous chapters) is a micro-political feminist act, as it provided
discursive spaces for recognition of women’s musicianship.
Female role models, peers or popular female rock musicians, were important to
the participants. Also, the under-representation of women in male delineated
instruments and music worlds did not derive, in a straightforward manner, from
the lack of female role models (Clawson, 1999a; O’Neill & Harrison, 2000). In
fact, most participants were inspired by male musicians to take up instruments,
and even rejected other women as role models. Christina Quest took male
performers (Aerosmith, Steve Vai) as her models. She found Joan Jett’s
performance, who was considered to be a paragon of a “hard rocker” for other
interviewees, as being “too cheesy, too soft, and not aggressive enough.”195
Anarchicks also warned: “it’s not just because we see a chick playing that we’re
gonna like her and support her! She has to be good!” On one hand, by
privileging music itself as a criterion, and not the sex status of its player, women
were refusing male standards and journalistic exclusionary discourses that
woreked to peculiarize women performers by lumping women altogether, no
matter their musical style or ability (N. Coates, 1997; Leonard, 2007, p. 32; I. R.
Martins, 2012). On the other hand, in the masculinist field of rock, this could
also be seen as following male standards of judging women more harshly. This
was also reported in Cohen’s work (Sara Cohen, 1991) and among female punk
fans who “colluded with the males in making sure that all subsequent girls would
be subjected to the same tests” (Leblanc, 1999, p. 122). A major difference must
be pointed out here: while male musicians approached women musicians as
bad musicians by default, women musicians approached other musicians as
potentially good , despite still having to prove themselves.
Inês Clemente changed her musical taste. Inês was not fond of female
musicians, on the contrary. “Before I didn’t even identify with those [female]
musicians… and probably I wouldn’t care for those [riot grrrl] bands. I would
listen to a chick’s voice and suddenly, it didn’t sound that good!”. By re-valuing
her taste hierarchy, re-gendering it, she also reframed her previous dislike of
female voices as prejudiced (sexism). Becoming a feminist was articulated
through gendering her musical taste and she started paying attention to women
singers and their lyrics; she started “hearing” female voices.
Summary
Rock musicianship enacts a specific version of femininity: committed and hard
worker, but also having fun. Women musicians claimed they were not being
“taken seriously.” Achieving high standards of musicianship and displaying
commitment were strategies to back up their claims of worthiness. This avoided
jeopardizing their musical value and enabled recognition in their rock worlds.
Part of this strategy implies othering women (non-musicians, fans); and naming
and praising female musicians as “inspiring,” but not without subjecting them to
musical scrutiny first.
III – Instruments in the hands of rock(h)ers
In this section, I will detail how gender identities are constructed as mediated
through each of the four common instruments in the rock band: the voice, the
electric guitar, the bass and the drum kit. As instruments are appropriated they
become an active ingredient in participants’ socio-musical gendered identities.
Musical and non-musical roles in the rock band are underpinned by an
instrumental ecology. In the rock band, the electric guitar performs solos and it
is the melody instrument. On the other hand, the drums are the rhythm
instrument, the timekeeper, in charge of structuring the songs – “it’s the song’s
skeleton” (Teresa). Interviewees referred to the electric guitar and the drums in
terms of their technically demanding skills; they were considered to be the two
most difficult instrument to play (Christina Quest). Situated between the guitar
and the drums, the bass has been described by the participants as an
accompanying instrument that was easier to play.
Outside of the performing band, instruments have different roles too. Guitars
were closely connected to singing and songwriting, but with the bass and drums
“it’s harder to compose songs” (Rita Barreto). That is also why guitar and bass
playing, as well as singing, are activities mentioned as pleasurable on their own
–many mention to practice/rehearsal, alone at home; and guitars and bass
playing can be a pleasurable solitary, domestic, musicking activity (Killick,
2006).
Instruments, including the voice, also configure musicians’ bodily actions and
conduct. The shape, weight, size, playing conventions and gender stereotypes
of each instrument configures bodily action, gestures, corporeal action, and the
range of body movement (eg: standing up, sitting down, hitting, running,
jumping, opening the mouth, closing your eyes). For instance, while one can
quietly pluck the strings of a guitar, “you can’t play the drums in a quiet/steady
manner/quietly” (Zélia).
In this sense, different instruments enable ‘multiple body’ enactments (Mol,
2002) and bodies are musically composed (DeNora, 2000; Frith, 1996) and
instruments are sensually experienced.
On-stage rock music performance implies an ideal or authentic body type for the
musicians: the moving, flamboyant, interactive, body. As with popular musicians
interviewed by Green (2001), these interviewees value feel, expression and
passion over technique. Musicians’ on-stage feel and expressiveness is
accomplished through emotional labour (Hochschild, 1979), that is embodied,
referred to as embodied emotional labour by Pettinger (2015).
Musicians’ embodied emotional labour is also related to their instrumental role.
Successful narratives of musicianship are about achieving “corporeal mastery”
(Sanders, Clinton, 2006, p. 207) and embodied competences (Driver & Bennett,
2015; Pettinger, 2015), by controlling specific parts of the body (the voice, the
fingers, the hands) according to each instrumental role – and achieving bodily
coordination. This is especially true for drummers.
Narratives of musicianship are both about bodily pleasure (the embodied,
physical pleasure of just playing) and bodily pain (bleeding fingers, back pain).
In fact, the same bodily state, such as bleeding fingers, can be framed as
musical failure (Luisa) or as a sign of musical improvement (Teresa) and
musical competence: “It was a hardcore band, and I would just use the fingers,
not the pick. I finished the rehearsals with my fingers bleeding. It was brutal, but
felt good.” (Shelley Barradas). Different body signs, such as calluses, are
representative of skill or incompetence, depending on the instruments:
If you have a bad technique in the drums, you get calluses and blisters. If
you play the drums and have calluses it’s not a good sign, drummers are
not supposed to have those. But if you’re a bassist it’s ok, in fact, you
need calluses. (Shelley Barradas)
Musicians’ bodies are enacted within an instrumental ecology. Methods of
learning, playing conventions and body techniques, are appropriated by women
users of voice, guitars, strings and drum kits. As with the ballet dancers studied
by Wainwright (as cited in DeNora, 2014, p. 54), beyond the individual
embodied habitus, there is an embodied musical-instrumental habitus (being
able to play a specific instrument or singing) and a band habitus (being a
member of a specific rock band).
I consider how and in what specific occasions playing and gender mutually
shape each other, how and when the use of each specific instrument is a
musical material against which gender is constructed and acted upon.
10: The rock voice pathways
The voice is a (biologically embodied) instrument (Frith, 2008; Oakland,
MacDonald, & Flowers, 2013). I consider the voice’s parameters, such as pitch,
register, intensity (loudness) and timbre. These are not musicological givens,
but are considered in their performativity (Eidsheim, 2009), as they are learned
and performed, experienced differently across genres and bands. These
vocalists’ voice pathways are, at the same time, pathways to the performance of
gender identity.
Rock music scholarship has primarily been concerned with lyric writing rather
than the voice itself, with some notable exceptions (A. Bennett, 2012). Walser
argues that “before any lyrics can be comprehended, before harmonic or
rhythmic patterns are established, timbre instantly signals genre and affect”
(Walser, 1993). Shepherd (1991, p. 171) has compared vocal timbres of “cock
rock” (rasping timbres) with those of “soft rock”. Timbre is a fundamental voice
parameter when analysing singing, as rock vocal style is conventionally heard
by its “harsh, abrasive timbres” (Leonard, 2007, p. 96). When rock’s female
voices are described as “rasping female rock vocals”, it imply that either women
became one of the boys (as for Shepherd), or that it is an expression of female
anger (Leonard, 2007, p. 97).
Following empirically the participants’ voices’ pathways, I consider the
implications this has for the performance of vocalists’ and their singing voices, in
terms of gender and genre. Vocal identity plays an important role in the sense of
self, including a gendered sense of self (Monks, 2003; Rolvsjord & Halstead,
2013; Stras, 2010). Singers assessed their voices critically and saw themselves
as active agents in shaping it; their voices were acted upon, reflexively. Voice
pathways are built by mobilizing musical genres and specific vocal techniques
of each genre, role model voices, and gender identities and expectations –
vocalists use their voices to do and undo genre-specific femininities and
masculinities.
Voices’ across genres
Alice was eighteen years old and already a long history in music making. At the
age of seven, she started singing in a children’s choir, singing classical and
religious music. At the age of ten, she took piano lessons (a classical music
repertoire and Disney songs). At the age of twelve, she joined her friends’ punk
rock band, as a vocalist. This was the moment when Alice gave up on piano and
started learning electric guitar. One year after she joined the band, she decided
to take voice lessons at a music academy and at a jazz school, to improve her
vocal performance and to push further band’s capabilities. As Alice became
involved in formal voice lessons, her voice was reevaluated and experienced
again:
Alice: My first singing teacher told me: “you have a nightingale’s voice” –
because my voice can reach really high notes – and she said I should go
classical, because at the Music Academy/Conservatory they lacked
female singers above soprano. And that’s where my voice fits. She
convinced me: “you will stand out!” […] so I went to the Music
Academy/Conservatory, and I really liked to sing classical, I felt good,
because… it’s a vocal range that I feel comfortable with. But… it’s boring!
It demands a lot of technical training, and to be honest, rehearsing so
many hours for something that I won’t be needing in my future, as I don’t
want to become an opera or a classical singer! (laughs)… So, I got sick
of it… Then I went to the Jazz School, and my teacher convinced me that
my voice was perfect for jazz, so I kept trying singing jazz. My voice is
soft, is not aggressive. And she told me: “you can’t sing that loud! You
can’t sing rock!” So I started convincing myself that I wouldn’t sing rock.
But what I love the most is to sing rock. (laughs) that’s why I feel
frustrated. Because what keeps me going is to sing rock – it’s where I
can reach those low-pitched, gritty notes! But many people told me: “you
don’t have a rock voice!”
Rita: but when you were in the band, how was the feedback [towards
your voice]?
Alice: that’s why I liked it! Before I start having classes, my bandmates
used to say I was doing well.
Alice’s voice emerged over time, in different ways (soft, high, grit). Alice’s voice
emerged according to where (music genre) her voice was performed, and for
whom it was performed (rock band mates, classical voice teacher, jazz teacher).
Having a soft or high voice is not incompatible with singing rock. She kept
singing in the punk band. This is instead a specific form of enacting a kind of
voice, it is a specific mode of knowing a voice. These experts’ opinions actively
constructed her voice as proper for jazz and classical, and, as a sideeffect, they
simultaneously construct it as an unsuitable rock voice. This classificatory
activity enabled and constrained Alice’s opportunities for action across different
musical genres. There is a voice classified as in/proper for some musical genres
and not others. The voice is multiple. There is no coherent voice, but a voice
made from a set of tensions. These classificatory operations impact her voice
and her life: she does not want to be a classical singer, nor a jazz singer. As her
voice was externally acted upon, she used this set of tensions (that were
derived from expert opinions, bandmates’ opinions and her own feelings), to
reassess her voice in her own terms:
Alice: The diversity [of musical genres] sometimes is negative, because I
can never find my ground, so I’m always a bit lost between one style and
another, and I can’t settle down seriously in one style. R: but do you see
that as negative?
M: yes, maybe… It’s something I like, and it gives me security, but at the
same time… well, maybe it’s laziness, but I don’t want to find that
musical style to which I could really connect to.
Alice finds sticking to only one musical genre limiting, and therefore, she feels
“secure” by passing through different musical genres. Instead of selecting one
genre, she chooses to register her voice as fleeting, and develops a vocal
identity that is made of these heterogeneous perspectives. Alice opts to
embrace her voice multiplicity, her nomadic voice. Detachment from an
exclusive musical genre or repertoire afforded her (socio)musical mobility.
Teresa Bento (Terroreza) is in her early forties. She has a low voice. People
usually expect her to have “another type of voice, a more feminine voice
(laughs)”. Teresa does not see herself as unfeminine. She is very happy with
her voice because she does not “sound like a Barbie”, Teresa Bento sounds like
the woman she wants to be: “a rocker has to ‘ter feeling’ and has to be tough”.
Also, Terroreza’s voice is extremely valued in her band and its musical style:
What describes my voice? The “cognac” voice! [Laughs] yeah baby! It fits
the band, and it fits the musical style we play, my voice is dirty, deep and
un-tuned. (…) Of course, I’ll never hit those high-pitch notes like they do
with heavy metal! But I’m not worried about that.
The “dirty, deep and un-tuned” voice has vocal authenticity in her “Necro Metal
Punk” band, and is valued within heavy metal: Teresa Bento is listed in the
“Encyclopaedia Metallum”. This is an example of a female musician using her
“vocality and the role of singer as part of an active challenging and disruption of
gender “ (Rolvsjord & Halstead, 2013, p. 424).
Aligning the voice with the self
Christina Quest is a professional musician (singer and guitarist) in her early
forties. Christina described her personal vocal development as starting with
classical music and a church choir, and moved towards rock and jazz. Christina
explained to me her “quest” for aligning her voice to her personality:
Rita: how would you describe now your voice, your style…
Christina Quest: my voice used to be an attempt to meet my
personality. And nowadays, my voice equals my personality. Rita:
when you sing
Christina Quest: It’s me. Before it was… my personality was of
someone really strong, strong, and my voice and my body were of
someone fragile. I was a “wanna be”! (Laughs)
The voice is part of an identity, and the voice is usually taken to be the actual
person as an index of vocal authenticity. Unlike Teresa Bento, Christina Quest
sensed the mismatch of her thin, fragile and high-pitched voice with her “strong
personality”. Her voice was not “herself”. Her (hight pitched) voice was
incongruent with her rockness. This is an example of “how the voice is
implicated in the ‘production of the body’, the person and their identity”
(Rolvsjord & Halstead, 2013, p. 422).
This mismatch was overcome by deepening her voice and increasing the
raspiness. Timbre was the tool for reconstructing her vocal identity.
Rita: was there any female voice that inspired you, or that you use
for rehearsal?
Christina Quest: Many! In the beginning, it was Tina Turner, then
Janis Joplin, then my voice was gone! I had surgery. I had to start
from scratch. Because, as you can see, I used as references
voices that were really hard! It’s like you do it on purpose so that
your vocal cords get in a bad position and your voice immediately
gets deep/hoarse. And I knew the technique, I knew I shouldn’t do
that, but I wanted my voice to sound like that. So I pushed it. (…)
The deepening process was made by emulating two female rock voices: Tina
Turner and Joplin (who idolized Bessie Smith). Not just Christina, but other
participants imitated black women’s vocal styles, considered authentic powerful
voices (racial mimicry), but not always acknowledged (neither its racial origins)
in their contributes to rock culture and history (Fast, 2011; Mahon, 2011).
Throughout the process, she used a bad vocal technique. She developed a
voice problem (papillomatosis) and had to have surgery. It was thanks to the
voice rehabilitation classes with a specific teacher that a musical “awakening”
was produced, which she compared to a spiritual one. The final outcome of her
voice pathway was to achieve an alignment of her voice to her strong
personality. Christina Quest’s female masculinity and rock persona was
musically mediatiated by her voice, that she “made it sound like” Tina Turner or
Janis Joplin’s.
A unique vocal identity
A non-musical element that alters women’s voices are media discourses on
female singers. Rute Fevereiro complained that her voices were often described
in terms of comparisons with other female voices/women artists:
The vocalist [of Nightwish] started singing opera within the heavy metal
genre. All the poor ones that came after her, the unfortunates that, like
me, have one or two songs where you will use your operatic voice, you’re
doomed: you’re imitating her! It’s a bit stupid. Can’t we do something
because someone else already did it? We’re not imitating/copying, we’re
using several of the techniques at hand. I also like to sing opera! But
people tend to catalogue/classify women in what concerns their voice.
But not for men! Men can sing like Bruce Dickinson, and that will be all
right. (…) We, women, in what concerns voice, when we’re the
leadsinger, we have to come up with such an exceptional product, such a
different thing, that when they compare you [to other women] they must
say: “this one has a personal style”. And for men, I don’t see that
happening. For instance… the falsetto… how many men do you know
singing falsetto?
This is a trend in rock music journalism that has been widely studied and
criticized (H. Davies, 2001; Feigenbaum, 2005; Leonard, 2007, pp. 65–88).
Because singers have no control of these external classificatory operations,
they work on their own voices, struggling to create a unique vocal and musical
identity. Rute Fevereiro developed a new vocal technique, as I will describe
bellow.
Growling in heavy metal
Rute Fevereiro explained her innovative technique: she performed a quick
switch between the lyrical and operatic voice and the growls. It is such an
innovative technique that the press reviews of the band sometimes had made
the mistake of assuming that the band had two vocalists: one female that
performs the lyrical and operatic voice, and a male vocalist that would perform
the growls. As she explains me, the difficulty lies not in delivering both voices,
but in managing both voices. For instance: she must warm up her voice before
singing to get prepared to use her operatic voice, but she must not warm up too
much, as her growling will not work if the voice gets too warmed up. She also
has to manage the use of the microphone and the mixer. This is why the sound
technician has to prepare the check sound for both voices, the operatic and the
growling. Due to her innovative technique, she cannot rely so easily on the
muffled microphone technique, that is how usually one improves growling:
When you growl, you can equalize the microphone to perform distortion.
It’s not to add distortion! But the equalization itself reinforces the voice
distortion [upon which growls are based]. (…) Equalization it’s like
makeup: it will reinforce your strengths and disguises your weakness.
The equalization of the mixer can reinforce and make your voice look
much more powerful.
Carina Domingues is a twenty-year old heavy metal vocalist. She started to sing
“clean” and in order to learn how to growl, she watched a DVD tutorial from
Melissa Cross, who taught Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy). She explains how
she can “sing clean” (a cappella, melodic) and “sing dirty” (screaming, growling),
and how she feels a “different person” according to each different vocal style. In
order to “sing dirty” or “clean”, she needs to focus. Before she sings, she has to
“summon that little demon inside me”, to switch between singing modes. Her
vocal ability/skills are not in her throat, but in her head.
Growling is an embodied performance, and it involves experiential change
through ritualized play (“summoning” a demon). Carina is able to articulate two
different singing voices by tuning-in to two different states of affect and emotion:
“clean” and “dirty”.
Carina alters her voice capacity by turning her voice into an object of reflexive
awareness ("warm consciousness", as DeNora (2013) puts it). Carina is
harnessing her mind for extending embodied capacity, producing a
dramaturgical growling body, thus performing growling embodied work.
To scream or not to scream
Screaming is a particular rock vocal style. Gottlieb and Wald describe the
“strategic use” of the scream by female performers within different musical
traditions, from punk to R&B, which is “a radical polysemous nonverbal
articulation which can simultaneously and ambiguously evoke rage, terror,
pleasure and/or primal self-assertion” (Gottlieb & Wald, 1994, pp. 261–262).
In the Anglo-Saxon context, female screaming vocals have been equated with
feminist resistance or an expression of personal female anger, or, on the
contrary, as becoming one of the boys. As Leonard (2007, p. 97) points, such a
perspective ignores genre conventions, denies the agency of vocalists and
marginalizes women as musicians: “Their [vocal] delivery is understood as a
channelling of internal rage rather than as the adoption of a rock convention”.
Considering themselves the Portuguese representatives of the riot grrrl
movement, the (male-centred) band Dead By Pregnancy points out that the
band is distinctive insofar as they are always fronted by a female vocalist. As
Dead By Pregnancy state, this vocalist is “a girl who screams. Whatever she
feels like. That´s what we want to pass on. That’s rock’s toughness”. They
musically label themselves “Angry Grrrl”. However, what the band frames as
female empowerment, might be dismissed by audiences, as Dead By
Pregnancy have overheard: “oh, a chick screaming, even I could do that!”.
Carina Frazão, vocalist for eight years in a hardcore/nu metal band, explains
that one of her characteristics as a hardcore vocalist, is that she sang “in a
melodic way”. Her band was composed of three vocalists and it was the male
vocalist that performed the screams. She explained that she had no formal
musical training, and she used to practice her voice, at home, by listening to
Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. She equates screaming with a (vocal)
masculine trait, therefore, she claims that women can have a “powerful voice”
with no need to scream.
Rita: Is there a proper “hardcore voice”? What makes a voice
hardcoreappropriate?
Carina: it has to be a powerful voice! It can be… I don’t like hardcore
female vocalists that scream like boys do. Because I think that’s not part
of the feminine thing/stuff/way of being.
Rita: ok…
Carina: I think a woman can be powerful on stage and be powerful when
you listen to her on the radio, whatever, when you’re listening to her
without seeing her, or when you’re watching and listening to a concert…
a woman can get there [powerfulness] with no screaming. I don’t like to
watch women acting as men.
Rita: ok
Carina: because I think screaming is a masculine trait/feature/property.
Screaming is not part of the feminine vocal device/equipment. It’s not, I’m
sorry. Unless that, naturally, you have a husky voice. There you go:
hoarseness.
Despite screaming being part of the vocal repertoire of this genre, is framed by
Carina Frazão as un-feminine, as “women acting out as men”. Hence, she
chooses not to scream. Instead, she sings melodic. Carina Frazão affirms
femininity (Green, 1997) through her (melodic) singing voice. We have
previously seen how Carina Frazão described herself as both “tough” and “soft”
(female masculinity): she balances acting tough (masculine), with her
(feminine) voice. For Carina, femininity is musically mediated and her singing
voice becames a template for gender-appropriate behaviour.
Backing vocals to the front
Andreia Ferreira, a drummer, expanded her musical role and became a backing
vocalist as well. She framed her new musical role as “helping out” the male
singer and the band. As a woman, she claims, her voice sounded different from
the male vocalist’s, thereby contributing to the band’s sonority in a unique
manner:
It’s something I could do [backing vocals] and it makes easier the
vocalist’s job/work/task. Because I, as a girl, I can reach higher pitch
notes than he does – and he can reach high notes already! But me, as a
girl – there you go, the advantage of being a girl – my voice is the more
high-pitched voice than his, so I can reach the notes we have to reach,
and I can sing in tune.
What is usually considered a supportive role in relation to the lead singer (Fast,
2009; Frith, 1996, p. 187) was now appreciated as a detail that makes the
difference, hence, as an important musical role, improving the song as a whole.
10.1: Vocalists’ embodied and emotional work
Interviewees claim that a vocalist is much “more than a voice”. The vocalist has
two musical roles: as a singer and as a front person. The vocalist is expected to
be personally expressive, to convey emotion and is required to show attitude, as
well as interacting with the audience and have a leadership role. Vocalists might
become “the face of the band”, which might, to some extent, threat the band’s
egalitarian ideology (Weinstein, 2004a, 2004b). Therefore, many women
vocalists reassured the egalitarian character of their participation:
We’re really a band in that sense: the voice is not the main band’s
feature. And if a song can stand without voice, it does. So voice is more
of an instrument, more of a melodic line, a small add-on (Clara)
I don’t agree that the band is the singer, the band is the whole! When I
look at the band, I look at the whole! (Carina Frazão)
Only vocalists did this kind of “remedial work” (Goffman, 1971, pp. 108–118) by
stating the vocalists’ allegiance to the band; the vocalist can be praised by its
singing, but not standing out, avoiding the potential disruption of the band’s
egalitarian ethos. The act of step on the stage is not an everyday experience,
but a necessary moment in the musicians’ career. It can be frightening, as
musicians will be exposed and scrutinized. Stepping onstage often goes against
the grain of people who self-identify as shy or introvert. The historical and
gendered specificity of shyness (S. Scott, 2006) also integrates the repertoire of
rock music subjectivities and performance conventions by distancing from it, as
in heavy metal, or by embracing it, as in indie (Bannister, 2006). Shyness can
be a threat to the dynamics of stage interaction. It disrupts the expectation that
musicians will display a certain level of interactional competence. After all,
musicians do interactive service work (Pettinger, 2015). Being on stage can be
a harsh experience , especially for vocalists, the frontperson, who are expected
to assume the leadership role. The shy vocalists interviewed found strategies to
cope with shyness, such as not looking directly at the audience or delegating
the inter-song chat to other bandmates. Others developed, little by little, onstage
confidence. Sara is an interesting case of how the incorporation of the
microphone and amplification worked to help her develop this confidence:
When I’m in my daily life, I’m really shy and retracted. But when I’m on
stage, people don’t recognize me, I feel differently, I have the microphone
in front of me, and it’s like if the microphone would give us power! The
power to speak up, it gives us vocal power. (Laughs) If you tell me to sing
without a microphone, like a capella, I would probably be a bit shy and I
couldn’t sing. If you give me a microphone, I can sing. (…)
The microphone gives me security, I don’t know why (laughs), It’s just my
voice amplified, but it would immediately give me security.
The microphone afforded Sara to detach her voice from her self, by amplifying
that same voice. Sara’s voice became loud and ubiquitous. At the same time,
Sara conceals the rest of her (female) body. She does not like to draw the
attentions, so she tones down her appearance. Sara’s body is enacted in
multiple ways: she goes loud and unnoticed. She is made visible through
amplification and made invisible through clothing.
Other ways of dealing with shyness are negative for women’s rock careers.
Patrícia refused to gig with the band. Instead, she just recorded the voice that
would be played at the gigs. And the band soon broke-up, without a performing
vocalist. Sofia Silva quit singing for a period in her life:
I put it all behind now. But back then I was really criticized. And I end up
quitting because of that. Back then I was really shy. And I had almost no
female role models, except Rute Fevereiro, which was my role model,
but she sang and held a guitar!
Criticism, as part of rock music organisational culture, has been reframed as the
individual problem of shyness. Shyness is lived as an undesirable personal
feature, associated with vulnerability, which puts shy in disadvantage (especially
in rock worlds). When shyness is not overcome is seen as a personal failing.
What Scott found, does apply here. A tacit moral order is being breached by the
shy , for they appear to others not to be capable of taking criticism (S. Scott,
2004, p. 128), in this case, not being able to deal with audience and fellow
musicians’ scrutiny. This reassures that the stage is a space where
assertiveness, toughness and self-confidence are rewarded as
“emotional capital” (S. Scott, 2004, p. 123).
Overcoming shyness is accomplished by keeping on-stage, being exposed to
criticism and resisting it. Shyness can be overcome by individual resilience,
selfdetermination and by building a “shield” (Zélia). This can also have non-
musical consequences offstage:
I’m not so afraid of… stepping into a confrontational situation. It’s not that
I’m aggressive or violent. But now, in those everyday situations… maybe
before I would shy away from conflicts.
When musicians overcome shyness, the stage is reconfigured as a route out of
shyness, as a practice of the assertiveness of the self. The stage becomes a
“regime of self-improvement” (Lupton as cited in Scott, 2004, p. 123). The stage
becomes a technology of the assertive self.
Singers are usually responsible for writing the lyrics (Green, 2001, p. 80;
Weinstein, 2004a), but lyric writing can also be a pathway for becoming a
vocalist. For the lead vocalists I interviewed, lyric writing is seen not just as part
of the job, but mostly as a way of achieving an authentic and emotional singing
performance. As Rute Fevereiro claims: “to feel what I sing, I have to write my
own lyrics”. Therefore, singing is not an expression of emotions. Singing
involves pre-stage activities such as writing the lyrics, and is a resource in the
construction of the “emotionality of singing” (Clawson, 1993, p. 245). The most
common creative process regarding lyric writing was to put the lyrics on top of
the song, a process timely separated from the rest of the musicmaking process.
Therefore, the vocalists’ bandmates do not know the lyrics, and they usually
“don’t give a damn!”, as vocalists complain. Rute Fevereiro regards this attitude
as lack of recognition, but on the other hand, she feels the freedom to write
whatever she likes without any scrutiny.
Clara, on the other hand, gets upset when her bandmates make suggestions
over her singing choices that do not resemble her lyric intentionality, showing
their ignorance of the lyrical content:
For me, it’s the music that suggests the lyrics. And if I’m singing, I know
what I’m singing! I know how I made the link [between the song and the
words]. And sometimes they go: “oh, you could do this here”, and I’m like:
“no!” For instance, there’s a song whose lyrics are about love. It’s kind of
light, but in the end, it kills. The song has a crescendo, and they
[bandmates] say: “you should sing with more intensity here!”, but it
makes no sense! I’m being sweet in that part of the song. And I go “if you
´d read the lyrics you wouldn’t suggest that!” And I don’t do it as they say.
By refusing to sing songs the way her bandmates wanted her to, Clara was able
to assert her power over the authorship of the lyrics, and sing her own way. It
was previously noted how Christina Quest was refused the role of lead guitarist
and encapsulated as a singer. However, as a singer, she gained some power in
the male band: “I was the vocalist, and I had a saying… but only when it comes
to singing! Because when it came to playing, we would do it their way…”.
Women string players that became solely vocalists, such as Carolina, Sílvia and
Carla, also described their different instrumental roles as a different bodily
experience:
I could walk around on stage, having fun, dancing, I love to dance, I’ve
always done. (…) Despite it took me some time to get used to sing
without the guitar, which was like a crutch... but then it was really
rewarding, to be able to sing without the guitar, having another kind of
freedom… (…) I would dance, I would try to impersonate what I was
singing …. I would feel everything on each part of myself…. (Sílvia)
Being pushed out from the strings to singing means losing a musical opportunity
of engaging with the guitar, but it means gaining a new body, the performing
singing and dancing body.
Summary
The answer to “what is a rock voice” is not in the voice’s ontology, but in the
voice’s performativity. There is no pure, unmediated voice. Voice is mediated by
gender, media and its classificatory schemes and other social discourses,
situated contexts (a good voice for this band); vocal techniques and genre
conventions (deepenning, growling, screaming), female role model’s voices
(black women), technologies (the microphone). Vocalists are active agents in
the construction of their voices’ pathways.
11: Gendering the strings
Electric guitar and bass are two different instruments with different features and
gendered socio-musical discourses around them: the iconic electric guitar in its
male leadership role of the guitar hero and guitar God versus the feminised
bass as a “resort of failed guitarists” (Clawson, 1999b). How do women navigate
these discourses as they engage with these string instruments?
11.1: Latching on to the power of the electric guitar
The great divide between the soft acoustic and the loud electric guitar has
marked the history of the instrument (Waksman, 1999), and is re-enacted in
interviewees’ discourses. Turning electric is an important embodied experience
for female guitarists. Getting an electric guitar and playing it is seen as an
empowering, physical experience. The transition from acoustic to electric guitar,
almost twenty years ago, is described by Carolina very vividly:
I was eleven when I bought my first electric guitar, in Continente, it costed
me thirty contos. I was saving up my pocket money. All I wanted was rock’n’roll!
And I quit the acoustic guitar. That’s when I joined a small band. (...) Bruce
Springsteen was a guitarist, that was rock!, And I wanted to play rock.
Doing rock’n’roll is to play the guitar and join a band; the electric guitar conveys
rock itself. Even interviewees who did not owned or played the electric guitar
described how they played air guitar, usually at home, alone, to feel empowered
and/or to vent. For one of the oldest interviewees, a fan, to be a rocker is to
enjoy herself at the concerts, to the point of playing air guitar alone, but in the
crowd (refusing femininity ideals of dancing with a partner).
When the interview with Christina Quest commenced, Christina said “I‘m going
to fetch my [electric] guitar now, I never give interviews or talk without my
guitar”. Christina Quest wants her (visual) identity attached to the electric guitar.
Despite she started to learn and play acoustic guitar, she currently refuses to
show in public with her acoustic guitar, in order to differentiate herself from
women who play “soft” instruments. This is part of her branded self as a rock
musician, and also a preventive strategy against some strands of music
journalism who focus on women’s appearance instead of musical skil.
Rute Fevereiro also claims distinctiveness as a woman musician. Rute
Fevereiro distinctive musical identity consists in merging the roles of lead singer
and lead guitarist also performing solos.
Guitarists that were interviewed were concerned with developing their own
instrumental identity. That meant working hard, practising and developing
technical ability.
Guitarists pointed to a gender distinctiveness regarding guitar playing. Rute
Fevereiro claimed that men tend to play faster to prove themselves as
“badasses”. She felt the pressure to play faster, with complex musical passages,
in order to be recognized as a good guitarist. Christina Quest also claimed that
although every guitarist is concerned about technical issues, men tend to be
“obsessed” with technique, speed and competition over technique.
Christina Quest also explained that in the “quest” for her sound, she had to
achieve the balance between technical issues and expression.
Despite Christina sings and plays other instruments, it is the guitar with which
she identifies the most. Christina claims that she finds the “aggressiveness” of
her “personality” mirrored in the guitar’s flamboyant playing performances and
distortion possibilities. Different from her phenomenological relation with her
voice, the electric guitar affirms Christina Quest female masculinity. Rock “is
attitude” and guitar playing is the “rock thing”: Rita: But what is that “rock thing”?
Christina: the thing about rock, it’s an attitude. It’s to use a controlled
aggressiveness. Technically, for example: the palm mutes. (…) In the
guitar, it’s all about the right hand and the distortions you use. You almost
can imagine the distortion. If I play this [plays] you can tell is aggressive.
And I’m not even using the foot pedal distortion. Look: the hand is always
moving, all your body, and if I do this [stands up] even more
We can see how rock and guitar’s “aggressiveness” is musically mediated by
techniques such as palm mutes and distortion. In the electric world of rock, the
development of a personal sound is not separated neither from technique, nor
from the music technology guitarists’ use. The latter is illustrated by Beatriz
Rodrigues:
I have the combo [amp] and my guitar… I would never swap them! (…) I
love the way valves sound. My amp is a blues fender junior, red, it’s a
valve amp, it has a warm sound, very peculiar, and I get the distortion by
saturation. I play [around] with the master and the volume, and I get
different kinds of saturation. Also, it has reverb. Awesome! (...) From the
moment I found this “valve sound” I never wanted to work with anything
else. It’s really my sound!
The valve amp is the Beatriz’s particular way of shaping “her sound”. The
“warm”, “organic” sound from the valve amp is what perfectly balances the “too
[much] electric” sound of her beloved twelve-year old guitar.
11.2: Claiming value for the bass
Women are relegated to the role of bassists when joining bands. However, this
is not experienced as downgrading in any way. Rita Barreto illustrated how the
change from the electric guitar to the bass can be framed as a vocation:
I volunteered to play the bass [in the band] as long as it was necessary.
But then I fell in love with it! And I never quit playing. I was really made for it!
Playing the bass is experienced not only as musical participation in a band, but
as a vocation, a passion. We have seen how Teresa was relegated to the bass,
and here is how she appropriated the instrument:
I already had in mind [playing] the bass, because I really love the deep
tones. The sound’s pitch … for me, the deep tones are the prettiest notes
of all, the ones I love to listen to the most.
The “deep tones” are the most valuable bass’ feature among all the bass
players interviewed. It is by foregrounding timbre – its low range – at the
expenses of other musical parameters that these women circulate
counterdiscourses of the bass as the easy-to-play and unattractive instrument.
Female masculinity is musically mediated by bass timbre (deep tones) and its
size (bigger than the guitar). The feminization of the bass works to relegate the
instruments’ musical value. Resisting the bass’ depreciation, women employ
value parameters that are gender delineated with masculinity: "The bass can be
read here as a “masculine” instrument in terms of its production of noise in the
lower registers” (Halberstam, 2006, p.14). As Clawson also noted “if placed
within the cultural sphere of orchestra and band instruments, the bass would be
defined as masculine” (Clawson, 1999b, p. 203).
Another valued characteristic is the bass’ musical role within the band andits
supportive role. I like to acompany. I like to set up the ground. It’s part of my
personality. Because you carry a bit of yourself into the instrument you play. I
like to set up the ground, so that other people can explore and be at ease. I like
to go along, accompany people. I never wanted to be the singer of a band. I
don’t have the voice, but even if I did, it’s not part of the role that I like to play,
that I want to play, in music. (Teresa)
This musical supportive role is also enhanced when the bass connects with the
drums – achieving the song’s structure. By highlighting the structural role of
timekeeping, the star status of the guitar in the band becomes relativised: “The
guitar is at the top everything, like an accessory, while the bass and the drums
are building up all the rhythmic structure and the most basic melodic structure”
(Patrícia).
Bass’ rhythmic and melodic features combined, make it the best of both worlds,
a complete instrument, also in composition:
Because the bass marks/keeps the time, and it also has a melody, I can
imagine the drum’s contra-tempo, and also the melody and the solo of
the guitar… to play the bass has that magic! (Rita Barreto)
What is valued here is not the leadership role of the guitar with its individual
character and solos features, but the relational, intermediary and supportive
character of the bass.
In their joint interview, the bassist Teresa, and the drummer Zélia, highlight how
the cooperation between the two timekeeping instruments allow for band’s
creativity to flourish, allows for the “musical flow” that is the song structure,
“setting up the ground” for the band. The fit between the drums and the bass
affords musical and ontological security for the other band members, providing
the conditions for group creativity. It is bass’ relational role that is valued for
being able to connect with the drums and keep the time, structuring the songs.
The domininant discourse suggests that the bass is as an easy-to-play
instrument with a faster learning curve (Clawson, 1999b, p. 199). Despite some
women claiming that they moved from guitar to bass because they felt it was
easier to play, women have also made musical claims for the complexity of bass
playing. For instance, Joana Longobardi, bass player of the popular band Mão
Morta, and a classicaly trained musician, claimed that every instrument is
demanding if one wants to play it well.
Ana Mateus, who briefly played in the female band Les Baton Rouge, explained
that their bass lines “were some of the most elaborate musical elements”. This
is especially important for bass players who were relegated to an unwanted
instrument that required less skill, and were not encouraged to develop
proficiency. This reproduced the role of the bass in the band as the low-skill
instrument for low skilled instrumentalists. It is mostly all-female bands that were
reported to push the envelope of what a bass can do, enabling new roles for the
bass itself and new identities for bassists.
11.3: The strings that enact the body
Playing guitar or bass enact the body in different ways, but also the gendered
playing conventions pose a challenge to string players.
In the case of the bass, the player’s body is constructed in relation to the
instrument size. When talking about bass playing, it is the size of the player’s
body that is measured against the size of the instrument. Sofia Cruz claims that
she was “born for the bass”, because she is tall and has big hands, so “the bass
perfectly fits me”. As she adds, “of course, there are small women and men
playing the bass”. JD, guitarist, is praising a female bass player that she
admires:
She’s very petite, she wears glasses/speckles, but she holds a giant
bass! And she plays like hell!! The gig ended up with her playing almost
laying down on the floor!
When referring to the bassist’s instrumental abilities, JD also sets the big
sizedbass against the small-sized player’s body. This incongruence is a
parameter for value claiming (the aesthetic of dissonant juxtaposition).
The way one chooses to hold the guitar is important for guitarists, and this is
especially true for female guitarists. Rock’s masculinist discourses established
holding the guitar low down,in front of genitals, at the pelvic level, as a
convention (Bayton, 1997, p. 43). Playing conventions and techniques are
shaped by rock’s masculinist discourse, but also by instrument design (H. S.
Bennett, 1980; Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2017; Waksman, 1999).
If guitar solos feature in virtually every heavy metal song (Walser, 1993, p. 50),
three-chord songs prevail in punk. If one does solos, “they have to have the
guitar a bit upper. The ones who just play chords they can lower it down”,
explains Christina Quest. Beatriz Rodrigues describes how her guitar
performance changes according to the different bands which play different
musical styles – rock and punk:
With my own band I use a lot fingering techniques. So it’s harder. But in
the other band, it’s a garage punk band, I use more attack chords, so it’s
easier – I don’t have to look [to the fingerboard] so often
Being able to take physical movement for granted allows for the “flow” of playing
and performance (Pettinger, 2015, pp. 287–288). To achieve an effortless
lefthand reaching the fingerboard is easier when playing punk: “every musical
style as the creation of human bodies entails correspondingly constituted tactile
facilities for its performers” (Sudnow, 1978, p. 13).
Compared to the guitar, the bass is heavier, its strings are thicker and less
flexible, demanding greater strength, but less dexterity (Clawson, 1999b, p.
204). The bass enacts a specific body part – the hand – as skilled. Unlike the
guitar, that is experience as affording unskilled hands. Different instruments,
construct different body parts: “my hand is dumb when I play the guitar”, says
Clara. Failed fingers on the guitar, become agile fingers in the bass. The bass is
seen as an opportunity for developing a sense of embodied musical
accomplishment.
Also instrument design affords different capabilities for the playing body. I asked
Sara to show me and describe each of her guitars. Sara explained that the
length and size of the fretboard can make it easier or harder to play. Sara
bought her guitar as a “learning guitar”. It is a “guitar with a smaller scale” and
she can play many notes.
Another important element of guitar and bass designs are the frets and the
marker dots on the face of the fretboard. Shelley Barradas explained that she
started playing a fretless bass, “like a violin”, so she would play by “sensing the
strings” – which makes it harder to play. Sara explains that not only the fretted
fingerboard, but the “white squares” allow her to “guide” her “hands” –visual
embodied knowledge. However, to look at the fingerboard is also about “feeling
more secure” (Sara). For instance, even Shelley Barradas, who learned to play
on a fretless bass, likes to look at the fingerboard to avoid contact with
audiences. Here, again, we see how shyness gets musically mediated onstage.
I like the audience, but sometimes I like to look at what I’m doing and not
looking for what’s going on in front of me, and I rather focus on what I’m doing.
But I can play with and without looking [at the fingerboard], it’s really just a
personal choice… because I can be really shy…
Rock’s masculinist convention of playing the guitar down can be framed as
“playing with style.”As Anarchicks discussed it:
Rita: I’ve heard critiques about women who play the guitars hunched
forward…
Katari: well, it’s really rare to see a girl playing with style Synthetique:
But Ana plays with style!
JD: (laughs) Thank you…
Katari: it’s true! Ana plays in a really cool way
By the time of this interview, I did not really understand what it meant to “play
with style”. But it became clear in due course. Christina Quest told me: “if they
play punk, they’ll lower the guitar. Do you know Anarchicks? Their guitarist, Ana
Moreira [JD], plays with the guitar really down low”. Participants talk about the
dilemma referred by other women guitarists (Bayton, 1998, pp. 115–122;
Carson et al., 2004, p. 4) either following the convention of the low, and look
cool, or play it higher up and not stylishly. However, what some string players
referred to as “playing with style”, others, mostly the ones who defined
themselves as shy, reframed it as “showing off”. Some interviewees even
mocked the “guy’s way of playing”: “as if they’re masturbating” (Patrícia). Or the
sexually suggestive posture, with legs spread wide apart can be ridiculed to “as
if they’re pooping”, said Sara, commenting that such way of playing was a
unwomanly position. Most women favour reaching a playing position not
according to style or aesthetics, but according to comfort (“handiness”), as
Teresa and Zélia discuss it: Teresa: Rock folks tend to play it really down low.
But that’s terrible! Because you’re curving your hand, you’re harming yourself. I
play it a bit upper, and that’s how I avoid it [tendinitis, RSI].
Zélia: it’s about finding what’s more comfortable, like Teresa said. And it’s
like… her way of holding the bass might not be “rock’n’roll”, but it was the
position that she felt comfortable with. And I think that’s the most
important: to be comfortable.
Chosing “an instrument that is ergonomically comfortable for the proportions of
the individual player, is an issue for all guitarists, regardless of their gender”
(Halstead & Rolvsjord, 2017, p. 12). However, playing guitar conventions are
narrativised in a gendered way: style versus comfort. Comfort is advised over
style, because is the best way to avoiding Repetitive Strain Injury. Comfort can
be framed within the discourse of girls having fun while still being responsible (in
this case, for their health status).
11.4: Gendering the strings
In this study, women string players described their instruments using gender
references. Guitars or basses with big bodies are considered “masculine”, and
the ones that are smaller or with curves are considered “feminine”.
These classifications are made based on “assumed polarities of masculine and
feminine bodies-large versus small, low pitched versus high, strong versus
weak” (Clawson, 1999b, p. 204). Guitar makers, advertisers and players have
always compared the guitar’s body to a woman’s (A. Bennett & Dawe, 2001, p.
76; Doubleday, 2008, p. 10).
Sara prefers curvy guitars and dislikes very “pointy” guitars, like the
Stratocaster, her first guitar, which she finds “aggressive”. However, the choice
of the guitar is also related to the musical style she is playing – because she
plays soft rock she can use a “Kay”, but if she was to play heavy metal or hard
rock, then she would play another guitar.
Alice owns a black SG guitar, which she claims to be a “macho guitar” based on
their shape, colour and brand.
However, what interviewees considered a “feminine” guitar, more than the
shape of the guitar or bass’ body, was the colour. Black is “masculine” as
opposed to the “feminine” pink, red, light blue and white or pearl – “not that men
cannot play blue guitars!”, as Alice added. As Christina Quest complained, she
is said to play a “male guitar”, just because is black and has seven strings.
Moreover, the concern with the guitar’s aesthetic (which in this context meant
colour) was considered feminine in itself, either by women who claimed to pay
attention to aesthetics, as Beatriz Rodrigues, or by women who distance
themselves from femininity. That was the case with Patrícia who bought a bass
that was “black and white, that’s what they had in the shop. It was the most
sober. I never liked those fag-ish things (laughs)”. Pascoe's (2007) findings in
her high school ethnography apply here, too: the label of “fag” has less to do
with sexuality than to the performance of masculinity, and a distance from
effeminacy. Part of Patrícia’s dis-identification with an emphasized femininity
strategy also includes marking out her bass choice as functional, as opposed to
'fashionable'. Patrícia is undoing emphasized femininity by sacrificing (feminine)
aesthetic concerns for masculine technical performance (Keightley, 1996, p.
159).
Summary
The electric guitar is discursively constructed synonym for rock music by
repeating the association of acoustic guitar to “soft” music and associating the
electric guitar with “hard” music, authentic rock’n’roll. Also the bass has been
delineated feminine, due to women’s overrepresentation in bass playing.
Women bass players use different parameters to claim bass’ value. On one
hand, they use a paramater delineated as masculine: bass’ deep tones. On the
other hand, bassists un-feminise bass’ supportive role, by claiming that its
relational role is structuring the songs. By using both this parameters to value
bass, they are enabling the circulation of counter-discourses. Sharing the same
early acoustic musical origins, and due to the resemblances of the instruments,
string players share concerns on appropriating playing conventions. Also, string
instruments are gendered based mostly on their colour and size, (re)producing
gender binaries.
12: The sight of rhythm: women playing the drum kit
Drummers interviewed displayed “drummer pride” for playing one of the most
“masculine” instruments.
The drums are related to a great sense of physicality, and the drum kit also
configures a specific female body. The idea that the “body is less on show”,
when is “behind a drum kit” (Bayton, 1998, p. 117) – as opposed to the
foregrounded body of the vocalist – should be revised. Female drummers’
bodies are not hidden nor absent, they are just as much on display.
The existing studies on drums in popular music point to a very complex,
sometimes paradoxical, relationship between the drummer’s body and presence
and the drum’s sound in the context of the musical performance. The sonic
dimension and the performance dimension are both in the foreground and in the
background, generally speaking. The drum’s musical role as a timekeeper
allows for those simultaneous musical movements. On the one hand, drumming
goes unnoticed, unless something goes wrong “drumming is the backdrop, or
part of the accompaniment, to the “figure” of the vocalist/soloist”(Curran, 1996,
p. 39). On the other hand, in live performances, “even if the drummer is not the
acknowledged “leader” of the group, he or she is often the “field general” on
stage” (Curran, 1996, p. 40).
Studies emphasize the role of drummers as timekeepers of the band or
ensemble in different musical genres, from jazz (Dempsey, 2008) to rock and
heavy metal (Berger, 1997; Curran, 1996; G. D. Smith, 2013), and so do these
interviewees. A drummer, in cooperation with the bassist, should keep the time
and structure the song.
As Zélia became more experienced playing the drums, she started playing
faster (from 100 to 150 bpm), which changed the entire band’s performance and
it affected the audience:
Teresa: our drummer -- this one here – played faster and faster over the
time. But that was great because it afforded an incredible energy at the
concerts
Q: why did you speed up?
Zélia: well, if when I started playing I would play at 150 bpm I think I
would have collapsed!
“Energy” in a concert, as an emotional collective state, is materially afforded by
speeding up (velocity) and it gave Zélia a strong sense of musical agency.
Beatriz Rodrigues started playing the drums at her thirties, when setting up a
band with her partner. Playing the drums was an opportunity to happily find
oneself to be a “good timekeeper”, adding a new dimension to one’s musical
agile self, expanding one’s skills as a musician with the ability to play several
instruments.
Rhythm can also be a way of experiencing the passage of time and one’s body.
Andreia Ferreira tells me she is always banging on her body and around it as if
she was actually playing the drums. This bodily movement and air drumming
changes the ways she experiences time. Andreia does it when she is at the
doctor’s waiting room, watching TV, and all sorts of mundane activities. Instead
of being bored, by air drumming, she feels time flies. Her bodily and time
experience become musically entrained with the drums. When the body is
realigned with music (rhythm and the imaginary drums), there is a synchronous
connection between the two. This mundane rythmicking (glossing Small’s
musicking) is part of drummers’ experience and skills210.
12.1: Strong(er) and loud(er): bodies musically composed
Being a “good” drummer is more than rhythmic skills and technique. Inês
Clemente explains she plays “with the whole body”:
[a well-known musician] used to say that I played “com raça” [very well,
and in a distinctive way]. But I never felt that I had another option. This
means that to do this [she plays air drums very steady/standing straight]
it’s not just doing this; doing this is to do this [plays by moving her body
more, and not just the arms]: with the whole body. Less than this it is not
enough”
To play “with the whole body” is to perform embodied emotional work. Bending
the body during the concert is not part of the “right posture” for playing the
drums. However, the drummers’ “bendiness” becomes part of the musical
performance: the drummer’s body is being “bent” by the songs, is being affected
by the music, as several drummers explained.
Different drum kits afford different bodily postures. The Anarchick’s concert in
the underground station required the use of an electronic drum kit. When Katari
watched the after-concert videos, she commented she disliked seeing herself
playing that drum kit, because she performed with a very “rigid” bodily posture.
This bodily posture contrasts with her personal performing style, where she
presents a musical feeling body, a drummer’s “suffering” body (see figure 5).
The body becomes a site for enacting rock music authenticity. As opposed to
ideas of “body as mechanical machine”, the body has to be aligned with ideas of
(rock) music as (strong) emotion, as power.
Figure 5 - Katari "suffering the most” (photo from Anarchick’s Facebook, commented by Katari herself)
Playing the drums “with whole body” can lead to fatigue/exhaustion after a
concert. Katari is improving the management of her bodily state during the
concerts: “I feel I’m managing my energy much better. I think I’m getting less
fatigued. Before, when I got to the end of the concert, it was like dying!”.
Managing fatigue is achieved with the help of a simple material device: the set
list. Anarchicks explain they alternate between faster and slower songs during
the concert. This line-up is built so the drummer (and the audience) can “take a
break” (slower songs do not require so much effort from the drummer).
Discourses on drums construct them as physical instruments, demanding
hyperactivity and physical strain (G. D. Smith, 2013) that is associated with
masculinity. The interviewees, too, describe the drums as a “physically
demanding” instrument.
When interviewees highlight drum’s physicality they contrast it with their
(unphysical) body. They highlight their body size (being short) and/or body
volume (being thin) when talking about their accomplished identities as female
drummers. These bodies are “musically composed” by the drum kit as
strong(er) bodies.
The discourses around thin and short bodies position them as fragile. These
interviewees, however, present their bodies as agile, coordinated, capable and
skilled, musically competent bodies by playing the drums. For instance, Zélia is
thin, but by playing the drums, she gained physical strength. Helena Fagundes
is another example of co-construction between the body and the drums.
Because the drums are physically demanding (makes you “breathless”), Helena
gave up smoking to improve her musical performance. Also, during a period
when she was depressed to the point she developed a “pre-anorexia”, she
forced herself to eat, in order to have bodily strength to play the drums: “the
drums saved me. But I only thought about it much later”.
Thus, specific biologic bodily features are reformulated in and through the use
of the drums, which become a "prosthetic technology of the body”, heightening
and extending bodily capacities” (DeNora, 2000), expanding the material and
discursive possibilities of “what bodies can do” (Stacey & Suchman, 2012, p. 2).
Drumming narratives are also about physical pleasure. Many interviewees point
to the embodied pleasure and enjoyment of playing the drums, which they
consider “liberating”, “fun” “therapeutic”, “distressful”.
Then it’s just fun! It’s a feeling of freedom. And it’s great to de-stress. You
arrive home, you sit there, and… men, it’s great to release all your
energy! (Zélia)
It’s good so you can feel the music, and, at the same time, you release
your energy and adrenaline (Diana Peste)
It’s a good way of relaxing, I must tell you, it’s a good therapy to play the
drums. If I’m stressed, and I play the drums, even if I play it really badly, I
feel very relaxed afterwards! (Penélope)
The affordances of playing the drums resemble the findings from the use of
drums in music therapy with patients of psychiatric hospitals (D. J. Hargreaves,
Miell, & MacDonald, 2012, p. 5). Drummers derive pleasure from the physical
vibrations.
Playing with the legs spread out
In the social history of the drum kit, what are considered the most important
technological developments were the development of the modern bass drum
pedal in around 1910 and the hit-hat during the 1920s. These developments
transformed the drum kit into an instrument that could be played with both the
feet and hands (G. D. Smith, 2013, p. 3). These technologies afforded, both
then and nowadays, a specific way of playing the drum kit: playing with the legs
spread out.
This body position required to play the drums is not compatible with certain
displays of femininity, as many interviewees experienced. The physical effort of
playing an instrument – not just the drums – is incompatible with a quiet,
effortless body. For instance, Sofia Cruz, a bass player, tells me about an
“embarrassing” situation: “I don’t wear miniskirts [in concerts], because
sometimes I also play the drums, just those basic beats, but the only time I wore
a miniskirt my underwear was in everyone’s sight … I had to put a jacket on my
lap!”.
If this is just a “practical issue”, as Sofia Cruz adds, it also says much about all
the bodily arrangements and disclosure management implied in drummer’s
performance – the female drummer’s body must be disciplined to be
accountable for the audience. Because “a display of competence is at the same
time a refutation of their own femininity” (Green, 1997, p. 186), drummers have
to maintain notions of “feminine bodily decorum”211.
Bodily decorum is materially achieved by not wearing miniskirts. Katari tells me
proudly that she invented a strategy to be able to play with a skirt without her
underwear being seen: she cut tights so they can be worn as shorts under the
skirt. With the legs open only the shorts will be seen, not the underwear.
The high body temperature is another bodily feature at stake when playing the
drums. Because of the physical effort required, playing makes drummers sweat
and therefore ruins the make-up. Katari bought waterproof mascara in order to
mix “beauty and the practicalities of things”.
12.2: The visual-sonic performing female body
Smith (2013, p. 7) refers to an “optical conspicuousness of drumming”, that I
argue is heightened in what concerns women’s experiences in the context of
live performances.
The following excerpt from Filipa voiced a common experience regarding being
a female drummer:
Q: what do you like the most about the drums?
A: to be completely honest, the status. A chick on the drums it’s a totally
different thing. It has its pros and cons. The pros are the status, the “hey,
you play the drums? Really? That’s awesome!” (laughs). It feels good.
Especially for someone like me that has been invisible for so long. On the
other hand, it has cons: I was so used to be invisible that drawing
people’s attention to myself it’s not very handy (laughs). And to know that
when the band plays live much of the audience’s attention will be on me,
because: hey, a chick drummer? Let’s see that!” so it was really stressful!
There is a “female drummer pride” which crosscuts the discourses of the
drummers interviewed. Being a female drummer affords a “status”, in and
outside the music realm. Filipa becomes visible, she becomes “different”. Also,
Katari claims “I like to be a female drummer! I feel privileged! Because there are
very few, and I won’t be a hypocrite and saying that I don’t”.
The “cons” are related to the audience assessment of the musical value of the
gender differences; the visibility of gender becomes a sonic feature. Although
211 Some “problems” regarding the exclusion/inclusion of some users in playing the drums in the
21st century has similarities with piano and cello performance in the 19th century (DeNora, 2002).
However, the main difference between these two centuries apart, might be in the greater
flexibility in clothes’ usage.
playing the drums is a sonic activity, gender is visible before it is audible.
Concerts are the ‘‘performing of performance’’ (DeNora, 2002), where “the sight
of sound” matters –in rock music as in other genres (Leppert, 1993; McCormick,
2009).
When concerts take place, gender is the “visual filter”, as Inês Clemente says,
that makes people stop listening to the drums and start listening to (and looking
at) the female drummer:
People notice ‘This drummer is a chick’. And then we can take advantage
of that because it works as a good and as a bad stuff. Things like: “she’s
a really good drummer, and she’s a chick!” as if she was impaired from
the beginning and as if she had… this is unfair too, I don’t like it. I get
annoyed when I think that I’m worse or better than I am, just because I’m
a chick. When people say: wow, you’re incredible! And I’m like: no, I’m
not that good, there are many guys that do exactly the same as I do, and
they don’t get this
Inês Clemente, as well as the other interviewees, dislikes being assessed and
classified as “female drummer”: she does not want her musical skills to be
assessed based on a gender difference.
“Who’s the drummer?” is what Helena Fagundes is frequently asked when she
arrives to a venue where she is will have a gig.
It’s not on purpose, but people always think that a drummer is a male
drummer. And then I have a laugh because I start playing and I look at
people’s faces, and only then, they believe that I do play! I have a laugh
because I don’t need to prove anything to no one. Playing the drums it’
what I want to do, and I have fun with people’s reaction. Once this
happened: I played in a small village and there were some heavy metal
guys that were kind of ignoring me, and in the end, they end up paying
me a beer”.
Gender renders these women both visible and invisible. The initial experience of
invisibility of being a female drummer (absence) turns into a hyper-presence.
These drummers get comments all the time, from venue owners, audience,
other bands’ members and other drummers. Zélia tells me that after a gig she
overheard other male musicians mocking with their own male drummer, by
comparing his musical performance to hers: “even she plays better than you!”.
The “maleness” of the drums is enacted by these comments, which might be
“not on purpose”, but has bodily and musical effects. When people deploy these
interpretive strategies they are shrinking a discursive space for women as
drummers with material consequences. When people engage in this
classificatory activity when people express ideas about what seems musically
“correct” or “normal” they are simultaneously reinforcing particular social
relations and establishing hierarchies (DeNora, 2003b, p. 174).
The strategies used to cope with these comments that undervalue or are
suspicious of their musical performances is to ignore them and keep playing.
Zélia frames these comments as men feeling threatened and she ignores: “I
don’t give a damn!”.
Smith’s interviewees express a willingness to develop “a female way of
drumming”, although they could not specify the ways this would take shape. The
drummers in this study express some ideas about playing the drums in a
gender-specific way.
Shelley describes her personal drumming playing style in a gendered way: “I
always try to play with a lot of strength. I think it’s sort of a statement, especially
for girls…” (Shelley Barradas). However, in order to achieve a hard strike, one
does not need to “have strength,” which is considered to be a masculine trait. As
Shelley explains, strength comes from technique: using the wrists, not the arms,
when hitting the drum kit (see figures 6 and 7, shots taken from the video
recorded interview with Shelley Barradas, at her home).
Figure 6 - Playing with the wrists
Figure 7 - Not arms
Musical practice takes shape in relation to gender. Playing the drums takes
shape in relation to being a female drummer. This, in turn, shapes the
perception of musical value. Being a female drummer has to be being a good
female drummer. In the interview with Anarchicks, they all agree that Katari
plays well, she is a “really good drummer”. Inês Clemente wishes to become
“the best Portuguese female drummer”. Female drummers, in their condition of
tokens, are pushing the standards for how well women are seen to play the
drums.
12.3: Drum kits articulating gender performances
The drum kit is composed of different pieces. It is a highly flexible instrument
since the player can add as many parts as she likes. These are two examples of
different drum kits, which articulate not just different rock sub-genres, different
musical performances, but also different gender performances.
Sara: re-constructing appearance and feeling well
Figure 8 - Sara’s drum kit onstage, after a concert
Sara is thirty-three years old. During the first stage of my summer fieldwork, I
interviewed Sara as the lead guitarist and singer in a rock-pop band. Two
months after the interview, she wrote me saying: “There are so few women
drummers, that I was invited to play the drums in a band”.
A male lead-guitarist was looking specifically for a female drummer to join his
surf rock band. Sara was auditioned and chosen among other girls because she
had a “good sense of timing”.
Sara learned how to play a specific drum kit: floor tom, snare drum and the
hithats, in a specific way: “primitive beats”, basic beats, with strength, using a
maraca instead of a drumstick. She also changed aspects of her
selfpresentation to emphasize her femininity within the band’s genre, surf rock,
responding to the lead-guitarist’s request. Before she did not wear makeup,
skirts, neither on or offstage. Sara enjoyed this change in appearance that got
into other musical realms and she also changed her image as a guitar player in
her other band. This has affected non-musical realms as well since she now
dresses up when going out, and she has her nails polished.
The two different musical roles attributed to the two different instruments she
plays afford her different musical experiences. She describes herself, mainly, as
a proper guitarist, and the guitar as the “melody instrument”, that allows her to
compose music, and enjoy the creativity afforded by the guitar. She “warned”
me that she might not be a proper representative of drummers because her
drum kit “it’s an incomplete set. But it gets the job done”. Despite the drum kit
she uses is appropriate for the band’s musical sub-genre, she does not feel a
proper drummer. The drums are the “rhythm” instrument, she cannot compose
songs, but she participates in the creation of the beats of the songs.
On stage, she enjoys playing both instruments and has fun with both bands, but
she feels much less pressure, she feels more relaxed when drumming and
doing back vocals more than when she plays as a lead guitarist and singer. The
drum’s “primitive beats” make her feel liberated and energized.
Her new embodied self takes shape into things outside herself: using the drum
kit she trained her body to “be affected” (Latour, 2004). Her body is affected by
drum parts, by a new musical role (the beat), by a new musical sub-genre and
its aesthetics (surf rock), by her bandmates, by the rock industry (that makes
conventional “femininity” an asset).
When I attended her concert, I hung around with her afterwards. She was alone,
while her bandmates were chatting with their friends that came to see them
playing. Her two friends could not attend this gig. We were sitting and chatting
while the instruments were still set up on stage. She explained to me that she
was sad because it was the band’s last concert, the other band was not going
that well, and her out-of-work benefit was about to end. Then, she looked at the
drums on stage and said: “I feel really good when I’m over there”.
For Sara, making music, playing music (whether the drums or the guitar), and
performing music, helps her to suspend some life spheres where she does not
feel integrated. Becoming musically engaged affords her a temporal structure to
latch on and feel well.
Andreia Ferreira: self-esteem and musical skills
Andreia Ferreira is twenty-five years old. She started playing percussion at the
age of fifteen in a local philharmonic band and, simultaneously, set up a
hardcore band with her school friends.
As she improved as a drummer, her self-confidence and self-esteem improved,
too: “Before I was just a little girl, I was the girl with a lazy-eye that no one would
care for. Then I become a drummer”.
She tells me proudly how she learned to use the “double kick”, a technique used
especially in heavy metal and hard rock. The first times she almost fell, but with
practice, she learned to get her balance.
Because she uses the pedal, she leans forward with her torso – to reach the
pedal more effectively (see figure 9). This technique affords her to perform
embodied emotional work required in musical performance:
It brings expression to the music I play. I think it gives more intensity to
what I’m playing, and I feel I can enjoy it, I can head bang, I can feel what
I’m playing. If you sit very straight, you restrain yourself: “oh no, I have to
sit straight otherwise I’ll get back pain” you’re restraining yourself and
you’re blocking something that might be good [the leaning] because it’s
your posture, it’s your way of playing, it’s your way of being on stage, and
it’s your way of exploring the drum kit. (Andreia Ferreira)
Figure 9 - interview with Andreia Ferreira at her rehearsal studio, she’s explaining how she leans
her body forward to reach the pedal
Andreia tells me that there is not a masculine nor a feminine way of playing, it is
a matter of personal style:
I was always a tomboy, and people think I started playing the drums
because of that, but it has nothing to do with that. I was always a tomboy
because the other girls didn’t play the way I liked to play: running, playing
with the ball, playing Legos, PlayMobile… they liked to play with Barbies I
didn’t. So I was considered a tomboy because I didn’t like to play with
dolls, (…). Meanwhile, I started to get along with people that thought like
me, that were like me, and the stigma of being a tomboy disappeared… I
don’t need to be called a tomboy just because I have an attitude that it’s
not that feminine! I don’t need to be wearing a lot of make-up to be a girl!
So I don’t understand it… now I just don’t care, people can call me
whatever they want to… but I don’t think that my way of being and my
way of playing the drums it’s a masculine thing, or that I’m doing it
because I’m a tomboy.
The normative femininity that frames Andreia as a tomboy is resisted against, as
Andreia becomes a drummer and constructs alternative ways of presenting
herself as a girl.
When she started playing in an all-female band, Andreia changed her hairstyle:
she dyes her hair red and wears two pigtail braids when playing the drums.
Scholars have shown the importance of hairstyle management for gender
displays (S. Holland, 2004; Weitz, 2004) and this is no exception. This hair
change is especially important for Andreia who describes her “natural” hair as a
site of non-alignment with white heterosexual femininity standards: she has a
“wild”, “afro” hair (Weitz, 2004, p. 29). With the hairstyle change, she is
presenting herself onstage “as a girl drummer”, she is affirming white femininity,
but an alternative white femininity.
Summary
Musical practice (playing the drums) takes shape in relation to non-musical
things: gender. Which, on the other hand, is constructed through the pull of the
sound itself (loudness), through the “sight of sound” (revealed in the
appearance and body image) and through the use of aesthetic value (being a
good female drummer).
To become a drummer is to become a skilled, coordinated, strength, musical
body, which, especially for women, might be a new bodily experience, with
nonmusical impacts (uncontrolled, natural body vs. Self-mastery of the body).
The use of a drum kit is an active ingredient in the remaking of embodied
gendered identities, as well as a source of well-being and musical pleasure.
IV – Amateurs’ musical transmissions
Amateurs’ attachments to rock can take many pathways. Following the feminist
techno-science tradition, these chapters intend to reappraise what music
instruments or technologies are. A mixer, fabrics and other materials, as well as
mothers’ record collections and tastes become “instruments in the hands of
rock(h)ers” too. Djing, crafting and rock music mothering are the three case
studies of rock musicking practices – the three case studies of musical
transmissions that have been overlooked.
This section expands debates on fandom, looking at these other forms of
musical engagement and at other practices of rock musicking. The way
amateurs craft rock worlds in unusual “channels of distribution” and through
artefacts, services and social relations blurs traditional dichotomies between
public and private, individual and collective.
I take the work of DJs and crafters as both a form of music love and an
odd job. It can also be seen as a form of moonlighting. This reinforces
Hennion's (1999) claim that music lovers do not exist outside the markets –
whether it is the night-time leisure economy or fashion (A. Bennett, 2005b;
McRobbie, 1999).
A lot of activities are part of the (underground) musical life, marked by a
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos that diminishes the distance between producers and
consumers. Some imply an exchange of money, which has not always been
recognised by academics (Hebdige, 1979) and which has been distrusted by
rock culture’s anti-commercial ideology (Frith, 2001). However, activities within
the informal rock “creative and cultural economy” are of growing importance.
Many not strictly musical activities related to setting up a music scene have
proven to constitute fields of micro-economic and entrepreneurial production,
which impact youngsters’ transitions to adulthood (Peters & Bloustien, 2011; K.
Robson, 2009; R. Smith & Maughan, 1997; Thornton, 1995).
The entrepreneurial (often informal) dynamic of subcultures also follows
a gender division of labour, as McRobbie argued in the 1980s and this still holds
true today (McRobbie, 2013). In her landmark study on the ragmarkets and
second-hand dresses developed by young women, she writes;: “It is still much
easier for girls to develop skills in those fields which are less contested by men
than it is in those already occupied by them. Selling clothes, stage-managing at
concerts, handing out publicity leaflets, or simply looking the part, are spheres in
which a female presence somehow seems natural” (McRobbie, 1989a, p. 37).
In documenting Djing and crafting practices, I hope to retrieve the
specificities of musically-derived activities from their dispersal into the general
idea of ‘creative work’ – how artefacts and “services” are inspired by rock music
aesthetics and what the affordances of rock music are for crafting and Djing.
Other activities that have been neglected by rock music scholars do not imply
an exchange of money, but take place in the private spaces (e.g. bedroom
cultures). Rock music can be a technology of mothering, affording different
musical mothering styles. Children are reframed as musical peers and fans with
whom adults share music, but also to whom adults pass on (class) values. Rock
music and its socio-material practices also engender more empowering ways of
being a mother.
All these socio-material activities undertaken by amateurs distribute rock
music in a way that holds them together in the times and spaces of everyday
life.
13: “I just play the song”: women DJs rockin’ the house
There is now a growing literature on DJs in Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and
‘mix cultures’ (Attias, Gavanas, & Rietveld, 2013). Hip-hop DJs have also been
studied in terms of their links to the materiality of turntables and ethnicity
(Fouché, 2012; Katz, 2012; Miyakawa, 2007).
In these male-dominated DJ techno-worlds, female DJs have specific
career pathways, as the scarce literature on female DJs has shown, with studies
on EDM (Bloustien, 2016; Farrugia, 2012; Gadir, 2016; Reitsamer & Gavanas,
2013; Rodgers, 2010) and hip-hop DJs (Katz, 2007; T. Rose, 1994).
Academic literature on women’s participation in club cultures has followed
clubgoers more often than DJs (Bradby, 1993; McRobbie, 1993; Pini, 2001;
Thornton, 1995).
Rock music DJs -- mostly radio DJs but also club DJs – are best known
for their role in the legitimisation of rock as an artistic form, as cultural
intermediaries and gatekeepers (Frith, 2001; Regev, 1994; Straw, 2001).
However, DJs’ practices themselves remain an understudied topic across DJ
cultures (Elafros, 2013, p. 2), with a few exceptions (Bakker &Bakker, 2006;
Elafros, 2013; Farrugia & Swiss, 2008; Gadir, 2016; Katz, 2007; Stirling, 2016).
As a result little is known about specific rock music DJ practices and the genre
affordances of rock music in a set, which I detail here.
Little attention has been paid to women rock music DJs, beyond the
acknowledgement of DJing and skill-sharing workshops covering DJing as an
important practice for queer feminists and riot grrrl (for an exception and a more
detailed account, see Downes, 2010, pp. 220–222; Halberstam, 2007). To
address that gap, I follow the pathways of twelve participants into DJing (see
Appendix 7). Through their voices and participation, I enter the rock DJ set, a
privileged observational site for rock music meaning-making in action, shaped
by a DJ’s gender identity and genre-based gendered representations.
13.1: Rock technocultures’ affordances in the set
The genre, rock music, affords specific ways of DJing in terms of identity, roles
and practices.
A DJ set is a real-time performance, where recorded music is played live.
The musical material artefacts that are used in this performance are the mixer
(see Figure 10), the headphones and DJ’s audio libraries (see Figure 11).
Figure 10 - Rockin’ the DJ mixer by DJ's ' way of the hands'
Figure 11 - A music selector: personal discography annotated for the set
Most of these rock DJs do not own a mixer. The different places where
these DJs play music – clubs, pubs, bars, restaurants, outdoors – provide DJ
equipment.
In contrast, record collections on the set are the DJ’s personal
audio=library, mostly consisting of CDs, although some have vinyl and others
have MP3 files.
The headphones are also an instrument of DJing, an object between
aesthetics (colour, shape), technique (isolating the noise) and affect (a gift from
partners or friends).
DJs explained how they learnt gradually from male figures – friends,
boyfriends, brothers – by hanging out with them and watching them using the
mixer. As with Portuguese musicians and Berliner EDM DJs (Reitsamer, 2011,
p. 34), membership in a male network is of the utmost importance.
However, these DJs claim there is not much to learn. Using the mixer is
perceived as an easy task because they do not practise “scratch”. As opposed
to EDM and hip-hop genres, which focus on “scratch” (accelerating or
decelerating a record with one’s hand, to create pitching effects, as explained by
(B. Zimmermann, 2007, p. 30), rock music DJs focus instead on the practice of
(in their own words), “selecting” and “playing” songs.
This way of appropriating the mixer is an example of how these rock DJs
are deinscripting224 mixers. For some rock DJs, rock music should not be
“scratchable”, mixed or distorted/changed:
If this was Electronic Music, I would have to do things differently. But this
is Rock. In fact, (...) I get annoyed with João [a male DJ friend], because
he increases the pitch, he raises/increases the music spin/rotations so
they can fit together perfectly. But I know the songs he plays by heart and
I think: “this does not sound good!” And I go there [to the DJ cabin] and I
complain to him: “how can you mess around with the song? I can’t dance
to it! This is not in the right tempo. It doesn’t make sense!” And I get
angry with him! I’m listening to The Cramps spinning so fast. I’ve been
dancing to this song for so long, and I can’t dance to it now! ‘Are you
insane? How can you do that? So they can fit well?’ (laughs). So I don’t
do it. But there are people doing it. João is really good, technically really
good and he can ‘play around’ with the songs. But I complain to him
when he does that because for me it ruins the songs.(Aurora)
The fact that scratching cannot easily be done with rock music becomes
a contested site for meaning-making within a politics of value. For Aurora, as for
all the participants, the way that rock does not lend itself to scratching is at the
heart of its authenticity, and of her identity as a rock DJ.
Some rock DJs feel uneasy at being called a DJ and resist the term,
because they do not use a turntable or scratching or (re)mixing techniques.
These are highly respected technical skills that differentiate DJs among
themselves. Unlike EDM DJs who claim that their practice “is not just pressing
the Play button” (V. S. Ferreira, 2017). These rock DJs claim: “I just play the
song” or “I don’t like being called a DJ, I see myself as a music selector”
(Swinging Sisters). Another reason for resisting the name DJ is the amateur
nature of the activity and the fact they “have fun” doing it.
13.2: The night’s musical pathways
The set is a musical journey: “I like to trace a path that I want the night to have,
or the music [set-list] to have. (…) there is a sequence with a specific
logic/rationale” (Trebaruna).
It will usually start with “quiet music” which works as “warm up” music –
“not too fast, but with some rhythm, for instance, Nina Simone mixed” (Bitch
Set). From there it “develops”, it “grows”, into a crescendo, from genre to genre,
from track to track, “pulling” the audience, until the DJs “grab” the audience-
“using well-known music but not too aggressive” (Bitch Set).
I used to start with reggae then move to rock by using songs that have
both reggae and rock or songs that mix both, because they’re both from
the same time period. So I usually move from genre to genre, although
sometimes I play a song that would radically break with the previous
ones, but it is because it makes sense. But usually you make… you try
them to make sense of the songs, somehow, one after another. So I
could start with reggae and ska, then go to punk and rock, then to soul,
then to rock’n’roll… always within these genres. (Aurora)
Rock DJ sets are not about scratching, but about “passages” that build
the night’s musical journey. These passages are curated by the DJs: from their
audio-library to the set, from song track to song track, from genre/style to
genre/style.
It is by mastering their music collection – spending time and money
creating it, diversifying it, knowing it/ordering it, annotating it, (pre)selecting it,
and managing it on the spot – that DJs construct the night’s musical pathway in
the set. At the same time, there is also an improvised and intuitive component of
action in a DJ set.
None of these DJs uses a predetermined set-list, although Twisted
Sisters initially tried: “(…) found the list we used in our first set. It’s so ridiculous!
We wrote the song’s titles and then we had fade in, fade out, and a little-fade
out (…)”. That did not work as planned because the night’s musical journey is
an unpredictable event, as Twisted Sisters explain: “Even in the exact same
bar, each night [and set] is different. We are not prepared for anything! I mean,
we have to be prepared for everything!”. This is why these DJs usually carry all
their records with them.
The set is an event that blurs the boundaries between recorded and live,
private and public music: “I love that moment on my own, being there playing
my music and realising that it is arousing emotion in those people. Somehow.
It’s a really personal moment at the same time (…)” (Miss Bonnie Parker).
DJs’ record collections are boundary objects that allow for that blurring. If
the personal record collection goes public in the set, the opposite also takes
place: Trebaruna listens to the set-lists/compilations she does for her set as a
soundtrack on car journeys with her husband (with whom she splits the set).
Trebaruna, like others for that matter, also mentioned that when they are buying
CDs (or downloading files), they are already thinking of it as material for the next
set.
There are specific moments that DJs frame as “personal”. Usually when
the night starts, when there are very few or no people on the dance floor or
when the audience’s attention is not focused on the music, then DJs feel they
are playing music for themselves – the set becomes DJ-oriented. The (public)
set becomes a place for (private) constructing mood through the use of music:
When I arrive, and the dance floor is a bit empty, it can go both ways: I
might start playing melancholy songs like the Rolling Stones’ Wild
Horses, or the opposite. I can start playing “garage” stuff, even The
Cramps, because there’s no one there, so I won’t bother anyone. I can
play what I feel like. It depends on how I feel, on what I feel like. (Miss
Bonnie Parker)
The first two hours, there are not many people there. I love playing
music, because no one complains, no one bothers me. They don’t like it
or dislike it either! They mind their own business, and I’m there dancing,
enjoying it! (Aurora)
In the summer, I attended an outdoors DJ set in a street cafe. It was a
quiet set, where people were sitting, having their drinks. There was no dance
floor. Then I asked the DJ: “don’t you ever feel bored here alone?” and she
replied: “No, because I’m not alone. I’m with my music” (Ed). This episode
shows the agency of non-human actors, and particularly, music. It also shows
the blurring of private/public soundscapes.
Often DJs split sets with friends (male or female) and/or
boyfriends/partners only, because sets are “a moment of intimacy” (Trebaruna),
as music is personal and the person is the music. If alone, the DJ can play
whatever she likes, split sets are negotiated in different ways.
Miss Bonnie Parker prefers the “ping-pong rationale”: one song for each
DJ alternately. This turns the set into a dynamic sequence of unexpected
moments, not just for the audience but for the DJs themselves:
It’s a challenge, it’s more dynamic, you don’t know what’s next. It’s better,
it’s like a dialogue, and you’re creating something with another person.
You don’t know what’s coming next, and you have to answer. She starts a
challenge, and then you can’t break the rhythm, you can’t let it fade
away…
Twisted Sisters split the set into slots, and the musical journey is
negotiated between these two friends:
Cherry: I’m always: ‘let’s play rock, let’s play rock’. And she’s like
‘noooooo’. And that’s good, because we make a good match, we
complete each other. Because she knows how to adapt very well to the
places where we’re DJing. I’m very partial…
Bunny: And it’s good she’s partial because if she wasn’t, I would only play
shitty music (laughs). So we make a good match. Most of all, we respect
each other. That’s why we get along. We’re totally different even in our
musical preferences, and we’re DJs, but there’s a lot of respect so…
sometimes we have to compromise [on what to play]
Personal differences are expressed and constituted through music,
simultaneously co-producing each other. A “good match” in the set is made out
of “respect” towards difference by negotiating it between themselves.
As for Swinging Sisters, the three swing between the three genres each
represents: soul, punk and electro. They commented that sometimes they were
afraid their set was “too schizophrenic” – implying there is a night’s musical
journey where passages matter.
13.3: Bodies “musically composed” in the set
The literature points to a DJ’s role in creating and sustaining the audience’s
mood (Straw, 2001) but it often leaves unexplored the embodied aspect to it.
According to the participants, to be a good DJ is to be able to create moving
bodies in the set, to create bodies “musically composed” via their
setlist/songs/music. Also the volume is a sonic dimension that has bodily effects
–
“energy” is materially afforded by raising the volume.
Different genres and subgenres afford specific modes of embodiment,
with consequences for bodily and social interaction.
DJs and other (fans) interviewees highlight the “easiness” of some rock
styles to make people dance. Danceability is an affordance of rockabilly and
rock’n’roll, as opposed to other rock subgenres, such as heavy metal,
considered a “dashing” subgenre, not easy to dance to. A heavy metal fan
explained to me that she had to learn and practise headbanging, a type of
bodily conduct associated with heavy metal: “It takes a lot of balance, otherwise
you get dizzy” (Ana, fan).
Rock, heavy metal, and EDM’s modes of embodiment are compared by
some of the interviewees that have musically migrated to EDM: rock is more
about jumping, more difficult to dance to, EDM is more about dancing.
How can I dance to this? Because I feel like dancing! But moving your
hips while listening to rock doesn’t make sense. That’s why during rock
concerts, people jump! Because you really want to dance, but you don’t
know how, because it’s too aggressive or strong to be just shaking, then
I’ll jump!” (…) when I started to go out [during University], I used to go to
a place (…) [where] there were two areas, the bar that had some tables
and the dance floor. We used to sit and talk. If a song I really liked was
playing, I would say: “I have to go and dance to this one! I walked to the
dance floor, I would shake my head [headbanging], and then I would sit
down again. When I started to go to electronic music parties, then I
started to dance. (Joana, fan)
Messy rock bodies are orientated towards other bodies whereas EDM tends to
controlled, individually-oriented bodies. If we have been looking at sound that
moves bodies, there is also sound that moves heads and hearts according to
the folk categorisation that Cláudia Duarte created for her personal audio-library
but also applies to her DJ sets. She has “music for the head” (EDM), “music for
the heart” (Chanson Française, music with melody, emotional music) and
“music for the body” (punk, rock).
From a DJ’s personal/private music collection, there is music that should
not go public because it has undesirable, potentially dangerous effects:
There is a lot of music that I love, things like Cat Power or Fiona Apple,
which I can’t play. It’s contemplative music. It has an effect on people…
or at least I expect it has, because for me it does have that effect. (…) I
don’t want to play music that makes people start reflecting about their
lives! You can’t do that, that’s something people can do at home if they
want to. It’s up to them if they want that. (Bitch Set)
Here we can see how notions of “public music” as opposed to “private
music” are constructions based on the (expected/assumed) effects of music on
consciousness and embodiment. The wrong music for a set is the music
considered to create a depressive mood, a “cold consciousness” (DeNora,
2011c, p. 314), which is translated into a form of bodily conduct: standing,
isolated, individually-oriented bodies.
As we have seen with the notions of public/private music, these DJs are
creating new meanings for rock music: unknown, noisy, slow, but also
aggressive, accelerated, uncontemplative, reflexive,
hits/wellknown/familiar/cliché/A-side, set the mood song, quiet, quiet and
danceable (romantic music), background vs. foreground, danceable vs.
unplayable, good music, underground music, Portuguese music, music for the
heart vs. music for the head.
These “folk categories” are being constructed in the situated
sociomusical spaces of the rock set.
Record collections become a DJ’s “prosthetic devices”, the material stuff
that enable DJs to perform the set and to achieve their main goal: to enable
others’ public and collective emotional states and bodily conduct.
A DJ set is framed by these DJs as a participatory event, where both the DJ
and the audience are having fun, enjoying the music, all in it together as bodies
musically composed. DJs perform different forms of embodied emotional work
to turn the set into a participatory event.
Trebaruna entitles her heavy metal sets “Headbangers ballroom” saying:
“Those people there in my sets, they’re united by a cause. It’s really ‘in metal we
trust’. The slogan I write in the flyers is really how I feel”. Trebaruna also does
headbanging (see figure 12). And Swinging Sisters take turns to perform a non-
stop dance.
Figure 12 - Headbangers Ballroom V5, Porto © SóniaMonteiro, 2012
That is why the passages from the DJs’ cabin to the dance floor are good
passages, they afford togetherness. And also the other way around when the
audience approaches the DJ: “I always leave the door open” (Luisa).
In fact, both the emotional work and the audience-reading skills are
afforded by specific spatial and temporal arrangements: no stages, low DJ
cabins, small to medium sized bars, having thematic parties, crafting the set
with objects (playing with a ball, having a tambourine, showing mute Tarantino
movies on the wall), that afford the feeling of closeness required to perform the
attachment to the collective, to perform rock music as a holding form for those
moving, joyful bodies, including the DJ’s own body.
Space and action are linked, first because “spaces may foster the use of
particular cultural repertoires through the materials, atmosphere, objects, scenic
features that allow user-occupants to make ‘appropriate’ behavioural responses
within those spaces, and second spaces may afford less rational forms of
adaptive action through the ways they appeal to memory, the body and the
senses (cf. DeNora, 2003a, p. 129).
Miss Bonnie Parker had just moved to Morocco when I interviewed her in
2012. She was DJing in a French restaurant-bar. She starts her sets earlier than
in Portugal (at 6 pm), and she “can’t really use the Cramps”, so she explained
how she chooses and plays the music:
I started with Bossa Nova [Brazilian music], more suitable for people who
are having dinner, and then I build from there. My sets are not prepared
in advance, I choose the songs on the spot according to how things are
going.I played blues and r&b and it developed until I got the chance to
play some rock’n’roll more rockabilly-like. (…) the musical style I use in
Morroco or in Portugal is the same, but the portions are different.
But even if you never leave the country but you move from city to city, it
will make a difference. Even in one’s hometown, DJing in different bars is a very
different experience. DJs’ opportunities for musical action as well as a DJ’s
identity and social status are embedded in the geographical locations where
they play - rock DJs are often local ‘celebrities’.
Another way of doing embodied emotional work is by drinking with the
audience: “We’ve never played music sober – which helps. We are like the
audience is, we’re all the same, so it’s easy, it’s natural” (Twisted Sisters).
There are other ways of accomplishing a participatory set. Usually, if music
stops in a DJ set, that is a “bad passage” (“having a blank”). But in the set I
attended, Luisa turns off the volume when a specific Portuguese song [Ornatos
Violeta] is reaching the chorus. Instead of the original song, what is heard is the
audience’s voices singing the chorus. After the chorus, Luisa turns on the
volume again and people keep singing along with the song. In this case, the
performance of a discontinuity (in the volume, in the song, in the sequence)
might be a “good passage”: the music becomes embodied; the audience’s
voices are all together in the foreground, participating, being together in the
song.
We can see how rock DJs are different from EDM DJs, who “are taken
over by their buttons, and they’re just there, not passing on any emotion”, like a
machine/robot (Swinging Sisters). A rock DJ’s performance implies “having fun”,
by dancing and interacting with the audience, showing they are also “feeling the
music”.
This is a genre-based discourse (rock as opposed to EDM). However, I
believe there is a strongly gendered aspect to it. Participants do not use the
word DJ in their stage names as often as EDM DJs (which might be considered
to be taking the position of technological incompetence); as they construct their
DJ’s performance through dancing – a typically female activity.
13.4: DJs musical roles and identity
DJs see their music (materialised in the set-list) as a resource for being together
with the audience, where they not only always find friends and familiar faces,
but also often strangers.
For these DJs their record collection, the source of the music played in a
set, is who they are, is a resource for identity work both as DJs – as able
musical agents – and as music lovers. As Miss Honey White says: “When
you’re playing music, you’re spilling your heart out”. Because they are music
lovers they want to share the music they love with other people.
All the good passages afford the ability of these women as DJs, good
passages afford these women DJs a strong sense of musical agency and
empowerment. From the “freedom to guide the night” (Miss Bonnie Parker) to
feeling “the most powerful woman” while “being able to entertain with my music
taste” (Luisa). These are the pleasures and powers of Djing.
These DJs see themselves as musical educators, framing the DJ set as a
site for (informal) learning. Through a DJ’s record collection and music
selection, DJs understand they have the ability to widen an audience’s musical
repertoire, expanding both their musical knowledge and musical enjoyment.
Simultaneously, “selecting” and “playing” their records affords new roles and
identities for the DJ – not just an entertainer or a musical connoisseur, but an
educator too. DJs have pleasure and power in creating opportunities for the
audience’s musical agency.
All the DJs, even if they try to be educators by playing unknown music,
must at same point allow musical moments for the “familiar music”, the “A side”,
the “cliché”. There must be a balance in the set between playing ”their music”,
and pleasing the audience:
When it goes wrong... is when you think: “what an obvious song I’m
playing! How boring!” because it’s much easier when you’re playing for a
lot of people to play well-known songs. For instance: the Rolling Stones.
‘Oh no! Why am I playing the Rolling Stones? How did I end up here?’
but it happens. (...) you’re thinking that people will like it, you’re giving up
on your other choices… and that does not make me feel good (Aurora)
A set is a temporal, contingent journey, where the DJ tries to achieve a
balance between well-known music, even hits,“radio music” or mainstream
music and risking playing new, unknown, underground music.
A good DJ is not someone who knows (and lists) the album’s titles, year
of release, recording company – not the male rock connoisseur (Straw, 1997).
Instead, a good DJ “adapts” (her record collection) to audiences, in specific
places (venues) and times (summer party, after-gig set, and so forth): “It’s
important [place] but what is determinant is the audience, what kind of people
you have in your sets” (Miss Honey White).
A DJ has to know “what works” in each set, “what fits”, improvising the
night’s musical journey according to the audience present at a set: “It can’t be
something you plan, it’s a spontaneous thing! (…) I know what records I have,
and I’m playing what I consider fits, depending on people’s reactions, and what
they ask me” (Trebaruna). DJs develop (non-cognitive) skills such as “reading
the audience”:
I started noticing that my sets were going well, people liked them, and I
could KEEP them there, and I realised when I started to deviate/move
away from the style [they wanted], and I started to see that I could be
aware of that just by looking at people!” (Miss Honey White)
When I realise I’m not getting any audience reaction, I try to find another
musical style. Or I try to play a “sing along” song, one that gets into the
ear to see if people react (Miss Bonnie Parker)
Most of these DJs aim to establish a reflexive, dialogic, musical
relationship with audiences, which is why it rests on improvisation, immediacy
and unpredictability. This is similar to community music therapy, which is based
on a client-centered approach, which rests on “specific and unique ways in
which musical (as opposed to verbal) sense is made and how the spontaneity of
music can flow from ‘the ways of the hand’ and its patterns of order” (Ansdell,
1995, p. 22).
By pleasing their clients/audiences using music “adaptive” strategies and
by being able to affect the audience (which takes not only musical work as we
will see), DJs feel a strong sense of accomplishment and recognition. They “feel
good”:
You feel you’re contributing somehow to those little moments of people’s
happiness (Miss Bonnie Parker)
I like DJing. And I like people liking what I am doing. (…) you have a full
room and manage to play music so that people keep having fun… this is
what gives me the most pleasure: playing a song and listening to the
people ‘ooooh’, as if saying ‘This is really the song I wanted to listen to!’
(Miss Honey White)
Despite being a participatory event, in the DJ set the symmetry between
the DJ and the audience is not totally achieved. This becomes clear when
musical authority over the music being played is considered. The most
important task in a set is to achieve a balance between pleasing the audience
and keeping the DJ’s identity.
Requests for music from the audience become a site for negotiating the
DJ’s musical identity and authority. These DJs answer to the audience’s musical
request if the request fits certain conditions: 1) the DJ must have the requested
song; 2) the DJ considers it fits at a specific time in the musical path proposed;
3) the DJ considers the request was made politely. The first condition is the
most important because if someone from the audience asks for a song that fits
the DJ’s repertoire and music collection, the DJ feels that her work has been
achieved: the audience understands her musical identity, and this is also a form
of the audience’s musical participation.
Lady Brighton: I have had pertinent and meaningful requests. Like in
Chapito [a venue], I’ve been asked to play Nancy Sinatra Twiggy:
That makes sense!
Lady Brighton: Yes! We like that, it’s like people understand the spirit! It’s
like they understand what the set is about
Twiggy: But when they ask for Beyonce or Jennifer Lopez…
As we can see, if these conditions are not fulfilled, then the “musical
request” becomes a (bad) passage, an imposed “musical order”, and the set as
a participatory event is disrupted.
The second condition also matters. Even within the genre “heavy metal”
the sequence of what is being played matters, as Trebaruna explains:
I cannot play a doom metal song, a totally dragged song, and then play a
black metal song. There must be a sequence in the passages, there’s a
way to go until one gets there. And sometimes people do not understand
this very well: they ask for a song and they want it immediately. And I
have to say… if it fits, it’s ok, if not, they have to wait and hold on until we
get there!”
Not accepting an audience request or delaying it is a way of performing
continuity in a DJ’s musical identity.
13.5: The gender in the set
All these DJs present different musical and gender performances, strategies
and identities as DJs. A DJ’s identity needs self-branding. In the era of EDM
DJs’ commodification (Farrugia, 2012), these rock DJs also brand themselves
(their sex, gender, sexuality). However, the degree to which they do it depends
on their musical affiliation and its socio-musical community (from punk to EDM,
from Lisbon to smaller towns) and their professional aspirations.
Gender identity is mediated in DJs’ personas, which are strongly
gendered from the choice of their DJ names to the music selection (set-list) to
their image (dressing/clothing styles) as well as visual identity and
representations (in posters, flyers, stage decoration) (see Figure 13).
Becoming a DJ might be a gendered event. Two of the interviewees
started DJing because of their ‘novelty value’ as women. Luisa’s brother is in a
rock band, and after their first concert they wanted to have an after-gig rock
music set with a woman DJ, to “have something different”: “If it hadn’t been me,
it would have been some other girl”.
The other two started Djing out of feminist activism – Aurora, in the punk
tradition of DIY, and the Bitch Set. The Bitch Set started on a specific occasion:
the promoters of a (left wing) blog’s party wanted women DJs for that specific
party, because “they were bragging about being inclusive, but they only had
male DJs”.
Trebaruna (Sónia Monteiro) set up an all-female set “Rock On”, for which
she did advertising leaflets with skulls with headbands and big eyelashes. She
decided to perform an all-female set because:
For years I’d been going to bars and I’d watched only men playing music.
That annoyed me! I was sure women were also capable, they also know
music. So the next step was: do you know any women to play with me? I
wouldn’t invite strangers. But I knew two women and I invited them.
DJs’ stage names present an identity gendered female: “Miss” or, when
DJing with other women DJs, “Sisters” or Rucquettes – aligning playfully, tacitly
with the second-wave motto “sisterhood is powerful”, but also a tribute to black
soul music and girl groups (Mahon, 2011; Wald, 2004, 2005; Warwick, 2007).
Another DJ has a word-play “Dona de Casa aos Pratos” [Housewife taking the
plates] and her set name is “Casa Cláudia” (a women’s magazine title),
ironically playing with traditional femininities, aligning with a more postmodern
feminist stance (see Figure 14). “Trebaruna” is a female Lusitanian deity about
whom Moonspell (a famous Portuguese heavy metal band) sing – presenting
her genre-based and female identity as a DJ. Only Ed, the only self-identified
lesbian DJ, has a gender neutral stage name and wears street art clothing,
which is also often gender neutral.
Figure 13 - DJs Twisted Sisters
Figure 14 - Casa Cláudia
Another way of “doing gender” in the set is by playing songs from female,
feminist and/or riot grrrl bands, bands with female voices or female
instrumentalists. For some of these interviewees, it is only by playing “women’s
music”, music created/played by women that they feel like women DJs. Gender
is “listenable” in the songs and the gender identity of these DJs is mediated by
music: “When I play those women’s music in my set, that’s when I’m proud,
when I feel I’m a woman DJ” (Luisa).
The Bitch Set, having in mind “those silly feminist things”, are two women
playing “chick’s music” only.
Aurora always chooses female “versions” of well-known 1960s songs
(which are rare as she explains to me because when women started singing
they mainly did versions (covers), not original songs). This is her tribute to
women creators. However, women’s music can afford bad passages. Aurora
also reports that female garage music usually “kicks out” the people from the
dance floor. And the same happens in the Bitch Set when they play riot grrrl
music. For Aurora, these discontinuities afforded by bad passages are also
performed as part of her gender identity; playing women’s music even if it does
not work is part of who she is, so she keeps playing it.
Unlike a feminist set, Twisted Sisters tell me proudly they have a more
“male set” than many male rock DJs. This means the set consists of a lot of rock
and heavy metal music, music they call “rock with balls” or “dirty rock”, as
opposed to “danceable” music (the rock’n’roll, the rock from the 1950s and
1960s). But they also like this danceable music (when they go to parties) and
they also use this music in specific contexts (at weddings, for instance).
Twisted Sisters strategically use their (hetero)sexuality to promote
themselves: they use their (“female hot”) bodies for advertising themselves as
DJs, as they state. In fact, as opposed to the other DJs who report being
uncomfortable with the “male gaze” of some man in the audience, Twisted
Sisters reconfigure that male gaze as a musical advantage: “people go there to
see our boobs and maybe for the music, but what makes them stay is the music
and the atmosphere we create in each set”.
All the other interviewees explain how they manage bodily disclosure
through their clothes, accessories, and make-up. They want to feel “feminine”
and “pretty”, but most of all “comfortable”. They manage bodily disclosure as a
way to put music in the “foreground” and gender in the “background”.
Luisa explains she has to develop self-control in order to manage her
bodily conduct so as not to perform “excess”. She explains that she really gets
carried away by the music in her sets, and dances wildly on the dance floor too.
Because of that, she feels she has to watch her behavior: “I have to repress
myself once in a while. People must go to my sets for the music not because of
me showing off, although people like to see my energy” (Luisa). Luisa does a lot
of bodily and emotional work so as not to perform the uncontrolled/wild body.
Twisted Sisters do the opposite bodily work: they develop uncontrolled and
sexualised bodies. Which is a risk they say. However, as they hypersexualise
their bodies, Twisted Sisters frame their DJ performances as carried out by their
alter-egos, who they claim are real, even outside the set:
Sometimes I go shopping for clothes and I think: “Bunny” would wear
this. But not me [Inês]. This is scary, but it’s cool, because everything I do
wrong, I blame Bunny. And sometimes in the sets, people ask me: ‘who
am I talking to? Am I talking to Bunny or to Inês?’
An “apologetic model of resistance” is taking place (Ezzell, 2009;
Messner & Bozada-Deas, 2009). As with female athletes, Twisted Sisters
“apologise” for their gendered transgression by emphasising other conventional
aspects of gender presentation. Here the apologetic gender transgression has a
dissonant juxtaposition aesthetics: the “rock-with-balls-set” is combined with
sexualised bodies. This also shows that a post-feminist sensibility whereby
women sexualise their bodies by choice and towards empowerment is much
more nuanced in practice.
The empirical fieldwork also confirms how (global/mainstream) music
meaning is appropriated locally and differently by different audiences. When
Robin Thicke’s song came out in 2013, it was accused of being misogynistic 237.
I was attending Ed’s set in a gay-friendly small venue. To my surprise, Ed
played it. I asked Ed if she did not find the song sexist. She answered “I don’t
care about the lyrics, I like the music, and look, they love it.” In fact, the
audience was dancing and even singing along (and to each other in a sexually
inviting manner). This resembles Farrugia's (2013, pp. 58–59) findings: DJ
“dykes” and their fan base like mainstream (hip hop) music despite its overt
misogyny, because they did not see themselves as implicated in heterosexism
as they are gay.
Summary
A DJ set is a real-time performance that emerges from “the pull of music”
(Hennion & Gomart, 1999), but also from the pull of other things and people,
which emerge from a network of heterogeneous human and non-human
elements (the DJ, the audience, mixers, headphones, clothes, moods, alcohol,
bodies, and so forth) in a specific context.
A Rock DJ set affords specific socio-musical practices and DJ’s identity.
Instead of “scratching”, rock sets are about good “passages” over the night’s
musical pathway: from the DJ’s personal audio-library to the public set, from
song track to song track, from genre/style to genre/style, from high to low
volume, from the DJs’ cabin to the dance floor.
Although the participants often refer to their activity of DJing as “I just
play the song”, the music in itself does not cause any action in a set. It is
through the negotiation of a temporal, contingent, improvised musical sequence
between the DJ – her “personal” recorded music and her “personal” taste
becoming public, her moods, her tacit skills – and (different) audiences in a
specific time and place (specific bars, night clubs, outdoors, specific cities,
countries, that night, the Summer, a party) that rock music affords collective
action, sociability, bodily conduct, states of feeling: moving bodies (arms, legs,
jumps, mosh pit, screams), dancing bodies, moments of happiness, fun,
euphoria, adrenaline.
Pathways into Djing are gendered. As with musicians, there is homogamy
and novelty value as well as a feminist sensibility and a sense of tokenism. At
the same time, the rock set becomes a site for doing gender – afforded by the
set list (music itself), the DJ’s visual cultures and by the embodied presentation
of the gendered self, a sexual/ised self.
14: A label of her own: the crafting of rock
Participants produce and sell artefacts (clothes, accessories and food) that are
inspired by rock music aesthetics and DIY ethos.
What are traditionally considered women’s activities in the private
domestic space (baking, sewing and decoration) become public and invested
with a new (economic) value. Those activities are recontextualised within a
discourse of talent and creativity, where artefacts are “handmade” by authentic
craftswomen rockers. These discourses are informed by what Angela McRobbie
calls a neo-artisanal frame, an ethical, grass-roots ‘subcultural
entrepreneurialism’ (McRobbie, 1989b, 1998, 1999, 2011). (Sub)cultural
production is mostly an odd job, done in conjunction with other (inter-sectorial)
activities that provide different sources of income/wage for participants. These
rock artefacts are produced and branded with profit in mind. These subcultural
producers actively construct a (niche) market and consumers for their artefacts.
In this process, producers, consumers and goods become gendered.
These micro-scale labels rely on subcultural channels of distribution and
informal economies. Online platforms (mostly Facebook) enable the
development of product branding. The online presentation of the products is
framed by a polished image, part of a narrative of an alternative, sustainable,
youthful, cultural production. Online platforms make online sales easier, which,
in addition to artefacts’ sales in seasonal markets, flea markets, at special
events and in some local shops, enables the construction of extensive
semientrepreneurial networks.
14.1: ‘My name is Muerte’
Twisted Sisters combine their DJ activities with their labels. Twisted Sisters are
Inês and Cátia, two friends in their late twenties who created their own labels
‘Psicose’ and ‘My Name is Muerte’. In terms of previous experiences and
background, one of the “sisters” co-owned a record shop dedicated to
underground Portuguese music where she also sold hers and other’s DIY ‘stuff’,
as she puts it.
‘Psicose’ is mostly related to the promo shoots for their DJ sets, but they
also offered the services of image consulting and fashion styling. Later on, this
label was put aside, but the spirit was kept and widened as the new label ‘My
Name Is Muerte’ was born. They quit their day jobs and started their own
business, opening a shop in an abandoned shopping mall as part of a collective
attempt at creating an underground/subcultural business to revitalise a part of
Lisbon. ‘My name is Muerte’ produces and sells new and second-hand clothes,
accessories (jewellery, head ornaments) and decorative items which were
mostly produced and/or customised by them, using low-cost materials, which
they usually pick up in the garbage or which are unwanted by friends. Inês and
Cátia explain that ‘My name is Muerte’ is inspired by the idea of death and
skeletons in Mexican culture but is not to be taken too seriously. ‘My Name Is
Muerte’ intends to explore the idea of giving a new life to death, metaphorically,
a new life to dead clothes and to dead materials by treating, reusing, painting
and recombining/remixing them.
They established partnerships and used to sell (distribute) other local
labels of handcrafted products. Less than a year later, Twisted Sisters closed
down the shop but not the label. They work from their shared flat (home-based
work), which they call their studio, where they produce the artefacts and they
now sell online and in other local shops. They also expanded the services
provided by the label, such as styling, doing interior design, offering
needlecraft/stitchery workshops. They became more visible to the media when
they dressed a woman TV presenter, Ana Markl, and after appearing as guests
in an alternative TV talk show. The second-hand clothes they sell are “cheap
and corny”, as they advertise. They also have a menswear line, mostly shirts
and t-shirts, whose motto is “second-hand for manly men”. The decorative items
for sale are varied, such as small statues (see figure 15), candle holders that
are skulls with Barbie heads (see Figure 16), glittery swallows, embroidery
kitchen gloves, to name a few.
Figure 15 - “Heretic” and “profane” wall-statues “Oh Deer God!” © My Name is Muerte
Figure 16 - Rock artefact © My Name is Muerte
The artefacts produced by ‘My Name is Muerte’ are irreverent and
playful, using kitsch, humour and the bizarre. Inês warns that some of the
artefacts may be a bit shocking. Subverting the romantic and masculinist
notions of “muse”, they claim their muse to be Cicciolina, an iconic porn star and
politician, and it is Cicciolina’s picture in the background of their website.
They reclaim the attitude of Cicciolina, when she publicly showed her breasts in
the Portuguese Parliament in the late 1980s, as their own attitude to the “crisis”,
exposing the performativity of crisis discourses. The production ideology in ‘My
Name is Muerte’ is highly political from its production to the targeted audience.
Not just the materials used, but also the prices “accessible to people like us”,
and the politics of distributing other labels, “helping each other out because the
State/Government won’t support young creatives”. They can count on family
and friends to support the business (mostly informally, but also financially, as
they are potential clients too). But they are active in creating “cooperation”,
appealing to potential clients to buy something “original, customised, and to
contribute to small business”. They appeal to the active participation of potential
clients by asking volunteers to model for their clothes as well as to promote
contests among their followers, with their artefacts as the prizes. With current
clients, they also foster closeness by naming-showing-thanking interactions. On
‘My Name is Muerte’ Facebook, the clients who have placed orders are named
(and tagged), they show the final artefact produced/service accomplished and
thank their clients. Then the clients (either individual clients or small, young
companies) thank their producers/providers in return, complimenting the
production (either artwork or service) and posting pictures of the artefact they
bought in its new ‘home’ or themselves posting pictures of the service delivered.
14.2: ‘Tupelo shirts’
Beatriz Rodrigues, guitarist and drummer, highlighted several non-musical DIY
practices related to her musical life. Since she was a teenager, she has had a
passion for on-stage clothing and decorating. She painted T-shirts which she
sold at a local record shop. She did her band’s artwork. Beatriz has professional
training in tattooing. She does not just tattoo herself, she also tattoos friends
and acquaintances as an odd job.
Beatriz holds a degree in the field of visual arts and education. When I
first interviewed her in the summer of 2012 in the middle of the austerity crisis,
she was afraid of losing her job as a visual arts teacher in a state school. She
told me she would have to be prepared for coming life changes: “I think I get it
from rock, it gives me a lot of strength”. This scenario became real. In her new
unemployed condition, Beatriz keeps playing in bands and making tattoos as
well as other odd jobs (e.g. wardrobe for a theatre play). But Beatriz also
decided to create her own label: Tupelo Shirts, which as we can read on its
Facebook page, produces handmade “men and women’s clothing inspired by
Rock and Roll, Art and Nature. Tupelo is a town in the United States, but from
now on, it is also a starting point: music, clothing and self-expression.” Tupelo
shirts also accept orders for custom-made shirts or dresses. The fabrics used
are 100% made of cotton or recyclable materials. Beatriz is herself responsible
for the entire production process. She manages the label’s Facebook page,
posting photos of the backstage and of her products – photos that she takes
and edits, photos where she and her partner pose as models (see Figures 17
and 18), usually with a bright natural landscape or natural elements as a
background. Uniqueness and being handmade, naturalness/simplicity and
sustainability are the core of this label.
Figure 17 - Fabrics: serge and cambric with David Bowie print © Beatriz Rodrigues
Figure 18 - David Bowie Shirt © Beatriz Rodrigues
Underlying this project is a commitment to social issues, such as
environmental justice in regard to the use of fabrics and sustainable/green
practices such as recycling and reusing.
14.3: ‘Blue bullet’
Isabel Newton is in her early fifties. Her professional life has been varied but
close to music and fashion. Her most cherished job was as a bar manager –
where she decorated the bar passionately.
Her partner is a musician in a well-known, established punk band and
she is the band manager and roadie. Despite her life being coordinated with her
partner’s (cohabitation, lifestyle), she makes an important disclaimer:
I’m not the kind of woman that likes to live in the shadow of a
great/famous man. I have my own stuff, and I try to do different stuff, so I
won’t become… you know, the little woman behind the great man! Like:
“hey, look, so cool, it is Miguel Newton over there!! And who’s that one?
Oh, it’s just his little wife” (laughs)
Isabel Newton claims an identity of her own by distancing herself from
being a musician. Instead, she describes enthusiastically the other range of
activities she enjoys doing (in a self-taught way as Isabel higlights), which are
related to decoration, jewellery making, fashion, and photography.These
apparently non-musical activities are driven by rock and punk music aesthetics.
She created her own label, ‘Blue Bullet’ to sell her handmade “women’s and
home accessories”:
In my productions I don’t use my name. I use the label. My productions…
it’s not a big deal! I don’t have any make-up training or any training, but I
do it: I make-up the girls, I do their hair, get the clothes, and all the
jewellery is made by me. Then I go to unexpected places, I craft/arrange
the scenario, and I do the shooting sessions with those pretty chicks. I
love to do these things related to decorations, productions… to get that
rock’n’roll image!
Blue Bullet pieces are inspired by rock’n’roll – some jewellery pieces
have song names, such as Broken Bones (see Figure 19). Blue Bullet is also
inspired by the mod scene, the pin-up aesthetics, the kitsch, the bizarre, the
pop, the low-brow art. In the production of these artefacts, the aesthetic is also
changed: actualised, reconfigured, and expanded. The material used is varied:
plastic, gum/resin, pearls, fabrics, small toys, flowers, kitchen ornaments.
Glamour and the bizarre are at the core of this label. Blue Bullet as a brand,
also has a signature: “Kiss Kiss Pow Pow”. Reminiscent of the trope Kiss Kiss
Bang Bang, this word-play can also be seen to encapsulate the aesthetics of
dissonant juxtaposition.
The artefacts are targeted at women only, more specifically as we can
read in the label Facebook, at “impish girls” and the “glammed up rocker chick”.
Figure 19 - Footage of the video tour through one of the Blue Bullet catalogues. The piece is
“Broken bones”
14.4: ‘Trufa trufa’
Two old friends, one a musician, the other an ex-musician, are in their early
forties.They get together at each other’s homes to bake sophisticated chocolate
bonbons and other luxury food items. This small-scale business is seasonal
(depending on the availability of the special chocolate they use) and it is a
secondary activity, a peripheral source of income, as they never quit their
fulltime jobs.
The cooks bake “with love”, and they decorate, and advertise and sell
their products online, on a blog named “Trufa-Trufa”. The bloggers’ nicknames
leave readers a clue about their female identity: RR and cristinasousa and they
call themselves Trufettes.
The content of the blog is made up of posts with texts and pictures. The
bloggers update the blog with posts on their baking plans – “what we’re
doing/preparing” and “what’s next”. They use the first-person plural (we) to
narrate their activities in a colloquial and playful language that speaks directly to
the imagined audience of readers who are equated with potential customers.
The photos are high-quality and very artistic, and sometimes they are signed by
an author.
The products are targeted not at any specific consumer, but at special,
social occasions of consuming (e.g. weddings, anniversaries, social events,
etc.). These cakes are not designed for ordinary, everyday life eating, but for the
extraordinary (special) eating; not just because of the quality of the ingredients
and the decorations, but also the size of the cakes. These cakes are not
designed to “pig out” on , but to eat in small portions: “cake size doesn’t matter”,
they post.
French cuisine is used as a historical and contemporary reference to the
authentic, luxurious and even lusty chocolate cakes, and that authenticity is
staged in the blog – the bloggers’ apprenticeship journeys to France to learn
from the authentic chocolatier masters are shared on the blog.
The blog aesthetics is inspired by rockabilly aesthetics, and also the
items are inspired by rock. For example, this birthday cake:
Figure 20 - Punk Anniversary Cake © Trufa-Trufa
But there are other aesthetics, according to different occasions and
demands (such as a wedding cake for a gay wedding:
Figure 21 - Gay Wedding Cake © Trufa-Trufa
The pictures show only the final products, the glamorous cakes,
decorated mostly in red, black and white. In the discursive space of the blog, the
space of the kitchen is absent: no reference to where, how or when they cook it.
The cakes are handmade, but there is never any (visual, textual) reference to
the ‘real’ hands that make it. The invisibility of the messiness associated with
baking foregrounds cooking as a clean activity, and therefore, an enjoyable,
pleasurable experience – it is not just about the pleasure of baking, but also
about the skills. The authorial voice is not revealed in the (dirty, long, messy)
process of baking, but by the self-evident presentation of the glamorous, perfect
final product, usually accompanied by a text describing the product and an
authorial, positive comment – “we are proud of our cake”.
When I attended a gig, where one of these women was featuring as an
invited musician, the band’s leader (and her friend), when presenting her to the
audience, complimented her not only on her attributes as a musician, but he
also thanked her publicly for the great dinner she had prepared for them that
night before the gig. Given the pre-gig dinner importance for Portuguese
musicians, this can be understood within a gift economy. The stage becomes a
site where private and public blur, as the otherwise domestic task of cooking
becomes publicly acknowledged and valued in a non-domestic, non-traditional
site: the rock music stage.
Summary
Amateurs co-produce subcultural markets, articulating and deriving
(socioeconomic) value from their love for music and from their status as
‘authentic’ women rockers.
Amateurs draw together rock music aesthetics and ethos, gender
representations (specific types of femininities), personal networks, skills, to
produce rock crafts, including clothing items, accessories and even food items
and create channels of distribution (online, small markets). Amateurs find
innovative ways to accommodate the circumstances of (economic)
uncertainty/risk but to keep leading a meaningful life. Crossing the (artificial)
lines between musical and non-musical, formal and informal, domestic/private
and public, women move into the (subcultural) music-driven precarious labour
market and take part in a gendered, subcultural economy.
Women’s engagement in the production of crafts within (gendered)
narratives of production is not just artistic, but highly political, creating new
meanings for rock music, furnishing rock’s material culture and reconfiguring
gender representations and traditional female roles.
15: Rockin’ the cradle: the rock chick guide to mothering
In this chapter254 I show how rock music is used as a childrearing technique and
part of musical mothering styles and practices. I describe how mothers
reconfigure maternal subjectivity – from a “sacrificial” ethos to a more
empowering one, and then how mothers, through creative re-arrangements of
social scenarios and places, use rock as “music asylums” (DeNora, 2013), both
for (temporary) “removal” and “refurnishing” from mothering roles.
Women rockers who become mothers use rock music as an active ingredient
(DeNora, 2000) in mothering. The mothers described how they either intuitively
or consciously use music on specific occasions, times or life stages, to bond,
care for, interact with and teach their children and for being together – in other
words, music is used as a child-rearing technique and a “technology of”
mothering – in the Foucauldian sense of a technology of the self, as worked by
DeNora (1999). Different elements configure these methods and the ways in
which music is used in the mother-child relationship, namely the age of the
children (since a toddler is not a teenager), the number of children, the mother’s
musical role (fan, musician or DJ), and the personal musical maps of each
family member, as well as the intergenerational family culture.
In western societies motherhood is represented as a child-centered experience
performed by selfless mothers who, guided by experts, are the central
caregivers, and invest emotionally and financially in their children – in what
Hays (1998) has termed “intensive mothering” grounded in an ethos of
“sacrificial motherhood” (O’Reilly, Andrea, 2004). Rosa Monteiro (2005) study of
Portuguese (salaried) working mothers analyzed the ways in which these
mothers negotiate this model. Monteiro found that the work-family dualism does
not have to be mutually exclusive, as women value both work and family life,
refusing strategies that confine them exclusively to the traditional roles of
(house)wives and mothers. A difference was also found between working-class
and middle-class mothers: the former tend to identify with a discourse of good
mothering as being a “caring mother” who provides total care for her children
and the latter with a “mentoring mother” discourse that posits motherhood as
crucial, but just one of the realms in which women must be successful. This
caring/mentoring dynamic pervades different musical mothering styles and
practices in nuanced ways, reflecting the different “attitudes, values, beliefs, and
behaviors that parents [mothers] bring to [musical] settings in which they
interact [musically] with their child or children” (Alwin, 2004, p. 152). Musical
mothering styles and practices are forms of active engagement with children’s
education, and social boundary-making practices.
15.1: Musical Mothering Styles and Practices
The mothers are fully supportive in promoting music-making practices – they
expressed a desire for their children to learn musical skills and actively try to
engage their children in formal musical learning. However, they have different
ideas about what a child should be ‘allowed to’ listen to. Attentiveness and
mediation in children’s (shifting) musical tastes is part of the mother’s care work
and determining what constitutes child-appropriate music genres is also part of
musical mothering. They are more concerned about (and exercise greater
control over) musical genres than ways of listening to music and the
technologies associated with this – e.g. music played too loud, the use of
earbuds. Mothering styles range from encouraging musical (self-) exploration
associated with promoting the child’s autonomy, to controlling children’s musical
tastes and practices, and from influence and interference to banning (restrictive
mediation).
Most of the mothers follow an ‘exposing/showing, not imposing/forcing’ ethos as
a practical mothering guideline to deal with children’s musical preferences,
which starts at an early age. The music in the domestic environment for
newborns and toddlers is something mothers can control. Moreover, the
mothers who had rock music at the core of their personal musical maps all
refused to play “children’s music”. Instead, they played “their music” for “their
children”, renegotiating the dominant discourses on “appropriate” music-
forchildren and reformulating the rock and heavy metal genres as (their)
“children’s music” genre. Catarina highlights her musical choices as part of her
family rock music tradition: her father never played “children’s music” for her, so
she had no intention of doing so either.
As the children grow up, there is a growing concern to provide them with the
space for (musical) exploration, in which colleagues and friends are also
acknowledged as potential musical peers. Although exposure is important, the
mothers also believe they should not hold their children back and confine them
to their own musical tastes. They expressed a concern for the child’s
individuality and autonomy that can be articulated musically and recognized that
children need to establish themselves as autonomous (musical) subjects.
Lúcia adopts the strategy of giving her children the chance to “taste a bit of
everything” – promoting “omnivorous” cultural practices (Peterson & Kern,
1996). Providing her children with a wide range of musical genres and styles –
from classical music and opera to Iron Maiden – is seen as part of their broader
cultural education, intellectual and cognitive development and a way of
enriching their lives. This is a mothering style in which her professional role as a
teacher merges with her role as a mother.
Musical self-exploration (usually with friends and peers) might result in a child’s
own musical preferences clashing with those of their parents and tensions may
arise over musical differences.
Elvira, a 48-year old married mother of two girls (aged 18 and 15), illustrates this
tension, and how she deals with it:
I think the more you antagonize them, the worse it becomes… They have
to be the ones to discover things, to judge those things, otherwise they
can’t tell the good from the bad. And don’t forbid anything: “you’re not
listening to this!” I wouldn’t do that. Of course… there are those periods
when they’re really influenced by their friends… but it’s also a part of their
world, because it’s theirs and their friends’… (Elvira, musician and DJ)
When her children’s tastes clash with hers, Elvira adopts ‘guidance’ as a
musical mothering style – “But then, we guide them!” In order to guide, mothers
have to monitor their children’s tastes, so they can respond to them:
the youngest likes the band “One Direction”, what can I do? [shrugs her
shoulders and laughs]. And I had to explain to them: ‘Are you listening to
this song? This is a cover of a Blondie song!’ And she goes: ‘Ahhh! I
thought I knew it… Now I remember, we used to listen to it in the car’. Of
course! We used to listen to Blondie! (Elvira, musician and DJ)
Musical guidance in this case is accomplished through conversation. “Talking
about music” in informal settings has been studied as part of musical
communication and as a tool for social action, both among musicians and music
fans (MacDonald, Miell, & Wilson, 2005) but it is equally important for mothers,
who use it as a form of musical mothering and an educational tool.
Lúcia explained how she teaches her children to pay attention to music, namely
to the lyrics: “I always tell them it is very important to listen to what’s being
said!”. Lúcia is an Iron Maiden fan and tries to teach her children that listening to
songs also involves learning about history, English and life:
I try to pass on that message. And every time I find out something new, I
talk to them. Well… I don’t have many people to talk to about this, so I
talk to them, I pour it out to my children [laughs]. And they get used to
that and listen to me, and listen to the songs. (Lúcia, fan)
Here children are also reframed as musical peers: the mother-child relationship
is reconfigured in terms of musical fandom. Talking about music and sharing
music involves interaction between one music lover and another. It is a
dynamic, dialogic relationship in which they learn from each other. Catarina
explained how her children’s musical remarks opened up new aspects of music
for her that she had never thought of – even though she has been a long-time
rock music fan.
The apprentice becomes an expert too, as Clarice also experienced. Clarice is a
divorced 40-year old mother of a 13-year old boy and an 8-year old daughter.
She tells me that she and her older son shared the same musical tastes, but
then he evolved into “heavier stuff”, and because of that she become the
“softer” one:
He started off listening those Disney Channel songs. Then he started
listening to System of a Down, and from there he rushed into heavier
stuff, he ran faster than I did! Now he listens to things that I can’t, and he
can tell the screams from the growls, all those different types of sounds.
And I stick to the softer stuff. (Clarice, fan)
The “heavy versus soft” opposition is relational. Clarice’s musical preferences –
such as mathcore – might be considered heavy by some, but within her family
musical maps she has become the “soft(er)” one.
Having seen how mothers view talking about music as important, there are also
other ways of providing musical guidance. Sometimes it may materialize as an
unforeseen outcome of the most mundane of actions, as Elizabete, a punk rock
fan and 30-year old single mother of a 12-year old daughter, describes:
I started noticing that my daughter liked Regina Spektor, because I would
play it as my alarm clock song. Then I was surprised when I checked the
browsing history and found searches on Regina Spektor: it was my
daughter! And then she asked me the name of the song on the alarm
clock because she liked it. And I really liked that she was liking it! So I
think it’s bit by bit…we can’t impose things on our children. That thing
about the alarm clock: I didn’t do it on purpose, but it worked: I made her
like an artist I love. (Elizabete, fan)
However, this “bit by bit” exposure ethos can change into a ban when it comes
to pop music, for example the male pop idol Justin Bieber:
Q: Why don’t you want your daughter to listen to Justin Bieber? Is it the
lyrics, the music itself…?
A: The songs are stupid, and people who like those songs are not very smart,
and I want my daughter to be smart. I always associate rock music with good
lyrics, rock is something that not everyone can understand. And I have never
met anyone who likes rock and is dumb. So, I would like my daughter to like
rock, because that increases the chances that she won’t turn out dumb. Q:
Yes. I’m asking what it is about rock that makes people like this music genre
so much.
A: It’s the lyrics because it has to do with a kind of philosophy of life, with
political things that you have to understand. It’s not just about having a pretty
face and boobs, or whatever. And also because of the sound, the sound is
strong, especially combined with the lyrics. It makes you think and take
action. (Elizabete, fan)
These narratives about rock are common among rock fans – the construction of
pop and its fans as the inauthentic, trivial, feminine ‘Other’, and the stigma of
“teenyboppers” as a derided type of fandom (Duffett, 2013). Due to these
delineated musical meanings (Green, 1997), Elizabete contrasts the content of
pop and rock music (pop’s lightness and stupid lyrics as opposed to rock’s
profound lyrics and strong sound), through which she establishes classed social
types (dumb, shallow vs. critical mind) and femininities (criticism of
hypersexualized “girlie” femininity, body vs mind). Classed gender inequalities
are reproduced and transmitted by enacting gendered and classed musical
stereotypes. The mainstream vision of the child as not-yet-adult and therefore
the desire and authority to shape children’s pathways through life – within the
boundaries of white middle class respectability (Skeggs, 1997) – and the belief
that music provides templates for (un)desirable ways of being and lifestyles,
leads this mother to resort to extreme parental control.
Clarice deals with her daughter’s taste for pop music in a different way. She
contrasts her two children’s music tastes: her older son started by listening to
‘Disney Channel music’, but evolved to rock and heavy metal, while her
daughter “is still in the Disney Channel stage”. This means her daughter listens
to Miley Cyrus, Shakira, and all the “light pop, with dancing chicks”. Although
Clarice states she would prefer her daughter to listen to music she identifies
with, she is resigned to this and adopts a different mothering style. Instead of
forbidding, she tries to be flexible and considers musically “downgrading” to pop
and/or electronic.
Having examined how mothers build up their relationship with their children and
provide musical care – not without some tensions – configuring classed and
gendered musical identities for their children, we turn next to how mothers
reconfigure maternal subjectivity – transforming it from a sacrificial ethos into a
more empowering one.
15.2: From “Sacrificial Motherhood” to Other Forms of Maternal Subjectivity
Lúcia and Catarina voiced the experience of a radical shift in the way they
experienced being a mother, which was articulated in and through music. Both
Lúcia and Catarina explained that when their children were born they dedicated
themselves to child care and domestic issues and were confined to the space
within the house. It was aesthetic material – rock music and heavy metal – that
provided the temporal and cultural workspace for the transition from an ethos of
sacrificial motherhood to more empowering versions of maternal subjectivity.
Conceptualizing music as a “cultural workspace” highlights the ways in which
people render music habitable as a space and place for the work – in the
ethnomethodological sense – of world-making (DeNora, 2011b).
The two following excerpts describe this transition to a woman-centered
experience, constituted in and through musical identities and practices: Five
years ago I was just going home, I had the kids, I wouldn’t leave the house and I
was confined to one idea… then, it hit me, boom! “I don’t want to do this!”… And
to be a bit more specific, I can tell you that at the age of 28, after a long period
without DJing, I started DJing again. And I decided at the age of 28 that I
wanted to have a band and to make music… and maybe that’s the greatest
inspiration that came from rock… It awakened me to the kind of life I wanted to
live. (Catarina, musician and DJ)
The most important thing that music gave me was learning how to be by
myself. […] I can spend an entire day on my own. I don’t rely on someone
else’s opinion or how they feel, in order to feel good. Which gave me a new
balance. And that balance came through music, from everything that music
enabled… and from the way I experience music. (Lúcia, fan)
We can see that the transition between these two experiences of mothering was
mediated by music and its socio-material practices, but also the way in which it
was experienced – music lovers are self-reflexive individuals. Going back to a
positive self in the past, for instance – “I used to be a very active and lively
person” (Lúcia) – and bringing it forward was a strategy used in both interviews.
These women know they are shaping their mothering practices in ways that
conflict with images, representations and discourses of the child-centered
caregiver - and they report being criticized by family and friends. In order to
counteract the dangers of being stigmatized as ‘bad mothers’ these women
establish new criteria for good mothering – criteria which they fit – by reaffirming
their unconditional love for their children, claiming that they are responsible
mothers (no maternal responsibilities and duties are neglected), that they have
achieved a balance between motherhood and womanhood, and that being a
‘happy person’ and having time for oneself means being a better mother, which
benefits both the mother and her children:
I realized I can do everything [work-life balance], I can keep an optimal
balance, I can pay attention to my children, they deserve all my attention, but
I can also pay attention to myself, because I also deserve it. And I found out
that when you’re doing things that make you happy, that influences your
children’s happiness, because you can be more patient with them, you’re
much happier, self-fulfilled… (Catarina)
Nowadays, please don’t get me wrong, I love my children! They’re the most
important thing in my life. But I learned to have moments for myself. (Lúcia)
Time to oneself is a vital when moving on from sacrificial motherhood. It is then
that socio-musical practices – DJing, listening to music at home and in the car,
and going to concerts - provide a time and a cultural workspace for ‘removal’
from their role as mothers-only.
DeNora uses the concept of ‘asylum’ to describe both phenomenological
experiences and environmental constructs: “asylum can be defined as a space,
either physical or conceptual, that either offers protection from hostility (a
refuge) or, more positively, a space within which to play on/with one’s
environment, whether alone or in a concert with others” (DeNora, 2013, p. 47).
In other words, music asylums can be workspaces for removal (individual,
private) or refurnishing (public, collective) activities and experiences, and the
two forms are not mutually exclusive. These mothers use rock as a ‘music
asylum’ in the sense it offers both a respite from sacrificial motherhood, but also
helps them to bond with their children. Music becomes a resource for self-care
and care work. Through creative re-arrangements of social scenarios and
places, rock music asylums are musically crafted for (temporary) removal from
the normative expectations, discourses and practices associated with
motherhood. These women become rock moms and moms who rock, a valued
musical identity beyond the family circle.
The In-car Musicking Asylum
The way in which mothers and children listen to music together in the car
configures it as a music asylum. Michael Bull (2004) identified the automobile as
a “listening chamber”, as a mobile existential space where mobile sound
technologies (radio, sound systems, mobile phones) combine, given that “car
habitation” is part of an ecology of media uses and everyday routines. Bull
points out that drivers use the car as a free space and a refuge. For the mothers
who feature in these interviews, a car journey can be both a solitary and a
family moment (taking kids to school, picking them up), and this continuous
movement is part of their everyday routine. In the confined space of the vehicle,
parents are responsible both for their children’s safety and their wellbeing,
which includes managing the musical environment in the car.
For Clarice and her children, the car is the place where they all listen to music
together (as opposed to the privatized home space). The car becomes more
than a listening chamber, as the practice of listening to music in the car includes
singing along. In-car singing can also be a way of controlling both the sonic
environment and disruptive behavior, as Laurinda, a mother of three preschool
children, vividly describes: “It is a way of stabilizing the environment. Sometimes
things are about to go wrong (tantrums, fights…) and you start: ‘ok kids, let’s
sing a song! All together now’!” Through joint attention, and mutual “tuning-in”, in
the virtual space of a shared song, through mother’s instructions, Laurinda also
gains control over the unruly children’s bodies that get entrained by singing
along. The bodies are regulated through music, and bodily order is re-
established – even if temporarily.
The way mothers and children listen to music together in the car tells us much
about the configurations of car as a music asylum, and its dependent of the
children’s age, as well as on specific occasions. Some mothers allow their
children to choose the car soundtrack, especially when they’re very young, or in
special occasions, such as long journeys (holydays).
For Lúcia, when driving alone, the car and the soundtrack she carefully chooses
become the privileged ‘listening chamber’ for removal. When accompanied by
her children, the mother’s car is a space for “mom’s music”. Although Lúcia
plays the music she likes, she opens up a space for negotiation and uses music
to teach her children to respect different musical tastes. In-car musicking
becomes a template for modelling cooperative, prosocial musical and
extramusical behavior, as Lúcia explains:
At first, when they asked me to change the song, I would. But then… they
have to understand that even if they don’t like a song, someone else might!
And if we’re in the car, if we’re 3 or 4 people in the car, we must reach an
agreement. Sometimes we have to give up what we want to play or listen to.
But that was easy to change. Now, before they ask me to change the song,
they first ask me ‘do you like this song?’ If I say “yes”, they won’t say
anything. If I say “I don’t like it that much”, then they ask “could you please
change it?”, and I do.
When mothers give up listening to their music, it is common practice to use the
radio as the car soundtrack to create a neutral musical atmosphere. The radio is
a common choice when mothers abdicate from listening to “their” music and try
to promote a more consensual musical atmosphere.
Carla is a heavy metal musician. Since she wants her two teen and pre-teen
boys to find their own musical tastes, she listens to the radio in the car and/or
plays her children’s musical choices – which she finds beneficial as she can
also expand her musical knowledge as a musician. However, there are
exceptions to the music routine in the car that are related to Carla’s role as a
musician. When the new album by Carla’s band came out, they all listened to it
in the car and the children would comment on it: “I like this song better” or “play
the other one”. On another occasion Carla was unexpectedly invited to play in a
band. As she had very little time to rehearse, she listened repeatedly to the
songs in the car to memorize them. The car became her rehearsal space and
her children the spectators – although not passively, as Carla reported, since
they would express their discontent with the situation. When Carla’s role as a
mother overlaps with her role as a musician, the former is relegated to the
background, and the latter comes to the fore.
Concerts and the dancefloor
Attending concerts and DJing can be both a space for removal and refurnishing.
Nazaré Pinela and her husband are regular concert goers and their holidays
have always revolve around going to concerts abroad. And she explains that
she always brought her two sons to the concerts, and she frames that as part of
family life.
For other mothers, attending to concerts, either alone or with friends and/or
partners, constitutes important activities for removal. Not having to take care of
their children means they feel more relaxed and enjoy the music in a more
attentive way. But it is not just about the listening itself, it is about the
experience of participating in the activity of concert-going, it is about being able
to step back from the mother role for that moment, which is described as a
moment of freedom. Elvira illustrates this position:
Children have to know that their parents, in this case, me, the mother, I
also have my own life, beyond family life and professional life. There are
occasions when I take my daughters with me, either to concerts or
events where my friends are. I don’t exclude them from those occasions.
However, it’s important that they know that their mother has a life of her
own.
Although these mothers describe how they use the occasions as musicians or
DJs to remove from mothering, the boundaries are fluid. For instance, Carla has
written about her children in her lyrics, which she sings in concerts. When
Catarina is DJing she plays songs in her set that are her “children’s songs”.
Also, whenever she takes a break, she also (not exclusively) talks about her
children shows their smartphone pictures, to her friends that went to her set.
Summary
For women rock fans who became mothers, rock musicking practices are
integrated into their everyday lives and mundane child-rearing and childcare
practices. As music stages an “object lesson” (DeNora, 2011b) not just about
aesthetics, but also about morality, competences and social types, these
mothers negotiate how children listen to music and which genres they explore,
thus configuring specific musical childhoods, crafting classed and gendered
subjectivities for their children. They also use rock music to negotiate their own
roles as mothers, musically staging more empowering ways of being mothers –
as “rock moms”.
Rock musicking becomes an “active ingredient” in the making of family life and
relationships, creating memories and nostalgia, supporting mundane
interactions and offering musical opportunities for family members. In fact, it
becomes a socio-material practice that holds together rock families.
CONCLUSIONS
The studies on gender and rock have largely focused on popular individual
musicians, rock stars, and solo vocal artists, as well as rock bands. Studies also
analysed specific feminist movements within rock history, mainly punk, riot grrrl,
grunge and, more recently, 1960s girl groups. The production of culture
approach in these studies focused on the social construction of artistic careers
and (media) representations of artists.
My research, instead, focused on women rockers and their music practices. My
research documented the actual musical engagements of women in everyday
life and onstage. In this sense, my work is indebted to ethnographies of local
music practice (H. S. Bennett, 1980; Sara Cohen, 1991; Finnegan, 2007), but
most importantly, to the study of music in everyday life (Bull, 2000; DeNora,
2000). In this vein, my work used a music-in-action approach, which explored
music as socio-material practice and performative action (N. Cook, 2014;
DeNora, 2011b; Frith, 1996; McCormick, 2015). This research is also indebted
to the mutual shaping approach pursued in feminist technoscience (MacKenzie
& Wajcman, 1999). Understanding how gender and rock music mutually shape
and co-produce each other meant investigating how gender shaped musical
practice and, at the same time, how rock music was an active ingredient in the
formation of gender identities. By considering how music itself is a mediator of
gender identities, my approach built upon and expanded the classic
ethnographies of female rockers (Bayton, 1998; Leblanc, 1999; Schippers,
2002). In all of these sources, music itself was discussed.
This approach allowed me to see how women’s experiences are complex and
varied, and how discourses on the masculinity of rock music and gendered
subjectivities may be negotiated in diverse and often unpredictable ways. To
refer to women rockers I borrowed the term amateurs from Hennion (2001),
which captured the double meaning of amateur: non-professional and music
lover. Referring to women rockers - that might be fans, musicians and/or DJs -
as amateurs, helped me to capture the blurring of the boundaries between
producers and consumers that has been analytically unexplored in the accounts
of rock music and gender.
I followed these amateurs in the rock music practice context and in their daily
life. Participants in this study were aged between late twenties and early forties.
This age cohort expanded the usual focus on young punk rockers (youth
cultures and subcultures) or, more recently, the turn to ageing punk rockers (A.
Bennett & Hodkinson, 2012).
To account for the wider constellations of musical practices, and to account for
music in its relational, collective and performative sense, I borrowed the term
“musicking” (Small, 1998). I followed amateurs from the bedroom to the band,
from home listening to the DJ set, from playing music to the craft of rock
artefacts, without making a priori assumptions about what is or is not a rocker.
Following the lead of authors who expanded the way we understand cultural
participation and cultural practice (DeNora, 2013; D. J. Hargreaves et al., 2012;
Pitts, 2005; S. Young, 2012), I believe this thesis has contributed to a more
dynamic understanding of “rock users” by opening up a whole set of rock music
experiences for analysis, including dancing, DJing, crafting, mothering, or in-car
musicking practices.
My research was conducted in Portugal. The thesis of cultural imperialism has
proven to be reductionist (T. Rose, 1994), and my research complicates those
abstracts theorizations. Instead, it documents, empirically, how cultural forms
and music genres are appropriated by specific users, in specific locations. My
research extends the traditional focus within popular music scholarship on
Anglo-American rock culture, feminist mo(ve)ments, and subcultures (Kearney,
2017, p. xvii), to place emphasis instead on a place and a age group (late
twenties to early forties) that have otherwise been overlooked.
The gendering of musical practice at the amateur level
In the organisational culture of the rock world, the band is the most important
unit of music-making, oriented to live performance. The empirical work
confirmed that the Portuguese rock music world is shaped by vertical and
horizontal gender segregation dynamics. There are gendered pathways into
rock musicking practices that share resemblances with pathways of women
entering other male-dominated organizational fields of practice, such as the
arts, sports and the labour market.
In line with other socio-music studies, this study confirmed that family plays an
important role in participants’ musical engagement from an early age
regardless of the genre (Sara Cohen, 1991; Finnegan, 2007; Green, 2001;
Reeves, 2015). Parental encouragement and financial support, mainly from
fathers and siblings, played a crucial role in how girls accessed and owned
electronic instruments and engaged in musical tuition. At the same time, parents
participated in defining what genres and instruments were considered to be
suitable for girls. Singing, playing the piano or keyboards and playing acoustic
guitar were encouraged, but playing the drums or being in a band, was
sometimes even forbidden. Girls, on the other hand, worked to display musical
commitment (“taking music seriously”). In exchange for their musical
participation, girls were expected to be good students, an identity that girls
invested in and of which they were proud. The good student discourse (school
achievement) regulated girls’ musical activities and identities.
Another enabling factor of girls’ and women’s musical participation was their
access to male networks (not just fathers and brothers, but also male friends
and boyfriends/partners and brothers-in-law). Belonging to a male network is a
form of social capital and, in this case, it provided access to electronic
instruments, musical skill acquisition in a positive learning environment,
engagement in non-traditional female instruments, as well as participation in
bands. It is mostly through heterosexual dyads that girls and women
participated in bands (homogamy), and musicking together (at home and/or in
the band) was an active ingredient of these couples’ shared culture. If male
networks enabled musical participation, they also configured women’s musical
participation in specific and often precarious ways. Instead of instrument
specialization, the participants played several instruments, and were dependent
upon the needs of their partners and their partner’s bands.
Girls and women accessed male networks through specific gendered
performances, combined with the good student discourse. It was the gendered
performance of a rock, heterosexual female masculinity (Halberstam, 2002) that
regulated access to rock worlds and especially to rock musicianship
(instrumental practice and band membership). Female masculinity granted
respectability for girls and women in the male-dominated rock world, allowing
them to negotiate gender norms, as well as to safely access an otherwise
male-only space. If other studies have accounted for tomboys and gender
rebels in rock worlds, they left unexplored how social actors tap into cultural
resources to achieve specific gender performances throughout their life course
and in specific contexts. Female masculinity, which had different expressions
throughout participants’life course (from tomboys to women with balls or tough
women) is achieved by reflexively mobilizing material culture (clothing, props)
and gender-stereotyped and embodied behaviour (posture, voice tone). Female
rockers were assembled by an “aesthetics of dissonant juxtaposition” that
allowed a presentation of a rock self that was not too feminine (rejecting
emphasized femininity), but also, not too masculine (avoiding the lesbian
threat). To avoid jeopardizing the heteronormative matrix, girls and women
worked to display heteronormative bodies (“I am feminine”) and/or behaviour
(being in long-term monogamist heterosexual relationships). Female masculinity
is played out as a socially acceptable form of gender transgression, within the
confinements of white, middle-class heteronormativity. Female masculinity for
post-school woman was combined with a discourse of responsibility, which
replaceed the good student discourse. Women can still have fun and keep their
responsibilities, such as keeping a job, adulthood commitments or a stable
heterosexual relationship. This can be seen as part of what McRobbie has
termed the “new gender regime” in the post-feminist and post-girl-power era,
based on an “ethic of freedom” (Nikolas Rose), whereby young women can
choose to do what they want if they act as self-responsible subjects (McRobbie,
2009, p. 21).
Participation in bands, a space with specific musical and non-musical
organizational features, was considered by participants to be a “natural” and
rewarding form of musical engagement in rock. In Portugal, most girls and
women rockers participated in male-centred bands through homogamic
trajectories of band membership. Female bands were scarce in Portugal. This is
not surprising, given that women were underrepresented as rock musicians, but
also because there was not a Portuguese riot grrrl scene, as described by the
Anglo-Saxon literature or as experienced by two participants who had formerly
been part of a riot grrrl scene outside Portugal. As such, the girls and women
who belonged to a female band displayed pride and a sense of “making history”
in what they saw as the typical Portuguese underdeveloped socio-musical
landscape.
Band membership in a male or female band (which was not mutually exclusive)
configured musical participation in different ways. In male bands, girls and
women were relegated to the traditional roles of singers, sometimes bass
players, or, at best, second guitar. This phenomenon termed instrument
segregation was based on what participants’ male bandmates defined for them
as musical skills and roles (male skill ascription). If female rockers were
excluded from bands’ decision-making and creative processes, they were called
upon to be “the girl in the band”, to take non-musical “female roles” in the band’s
life such as nurturing. These rockers had to prove themselves to join the bands’
boys’ club. Once they did it, by fitting in, accordingly, to the band’s needs, they
are welcomed in the band. Once in the band, rockers can rely on
“male protection” (for example, from audiences’ sexual harassment). In
exchange for band membership and male protection, the girl in the band is
implicitly expected to display rock sexiness onstage.
This type of marketing strategy potentially attracting audiences (femaleness as
a commodity) was used in both male and female bands, but with different
caveats and consequences. Whereas in male bands musicians “selling sex”
posed no risk for the band’s musical reputation and authenticity, in female
bands sexiness became an aesthetic of risk.
In the context of the female band, women became more vulnerable because
gender is highly visible. There was an intentional female gendering of the
female band, from bands’ naming practices to the lyrical content to onstage
clothing. To cope with an aesthetic of risk, female bands’ onstage presentation
was subjected to collective decisions in the physical or imagined backstage.
Female bands could only “sell sex” without “selling out” when accompanied with
the display of high musical quality (unless it was a beginners’ band, punk band
or both).
Female bands were also more vulnerable to breakups, as there were fewer
women musicians to replace leaving members. Band membership in the female
band demanded not just musical ability (in fact, female bands were more open
to accommodate heterogenous levels of musical proficiency), but also
interpersonal skills and commitment to the band. The female band was not
usually based on pre-existing friendships. The female band was created by
female homosocial bonds, built through repeated musical practice, but also
through talking about (even “bitching”) and sharing both musical and
nonmusical topics. The rehearsal space resembled the atmosphere of bedroom
cultures, but it was also a socio-musical space for “venting” together. The band
became a “protected” context for music-making for girls and women, because it
was based on female homosocial bonds, where allegiance to the group was
displayed fiercely which allowed its survival.
Women rockers (not just those in female bands) tried to compensate their
femaleness as otherness by engaging in discourses and practices to be “taken
seriously.” This implied that there was a sensed lack of recognition. Achieving
high standards of musicianship (with resemblances of a military discourses of
effort and sacrifice), and displaying commitment were strategies mobilized by
female rockers to achieve worthiness and recognition in their rock worlds. Part
of this strategy implied othering other women (non-musicians and non-rockers);
but also naming and praising other women as inspiring musicians (both their
local music peers, but also popular Anglo-American musicians).
Participation in male bands was restrictive in terms of an unequal distribution of
musical opportunities and expertise for “the girl in the band”. On the other hand,
participation in male bands, despite being restrictive, still opened up musical
avenues for these women such as opportunities to practice, develop musical
skills, make emergent new aspects of their musical selves on which they can
act upon or even to play a non-traditional female musical role.
Despite inequalities in musical participation, interviewees’ discourses positively
highlighted the role of men’s support and mentorship. My findings are in line
with those of other researchers regarding Portuguese artists: the representation
of practice is one of equality, although practices are gender segregated (Conde
et al., 2003; Guerra et al., 2017; J. A. Simões, 2013).
Most interviewees identified the female band as a site of “girl power”, claiming
that female bands were assembled to prove that “girls can do it”. These
Portuguese bands did not grow out of feminist activism or a connection to
translocal riot grrrl networks (only Les Baton Rouge and Dead By Preganancy
were integrated in those networks). Hence the conflicting positions among
participants in female bands on who was or was not worthy of being labelled
“riot grrrl.”
Portuguese female bands were closer to a commodified version of “girl power”
discourse (paragon to Spice Girls) as discussed by the Anglo-Saxon literature,
and set against an “authentic” riot grrrl version of girl power. The commodified
girl power discourse undercut feminist principles by reducing feminist rhetoric,
ideas and icons to individual consumer choices in the capitalist market (Gill &
Scharff, 2012; Harris, 2004; Kearney, 2006; Taft, 2004). I subscribe, however, to
claims that a commodified version of “girl power” can generate innovative
cultural and feminist outcomes and social change (Hains, 2012, 2014). Hains
(2014) shows how fans of Spice Girls - “the commodified version” of grrrl power-
experience their love for music. Considering the girls’ and women’s personal
chronology of listening, the author shows that girls who encounter Spice Girls in
the first place (before they meet riot grrrl) – as it was mainstream music, it was
easier to access – became sensitized to feminist issues, which they pursue as
they become young women.
Female bands reframed feminism as a musical performance and the band as a
lesson on gender and rock. The female band was a socio-musical
“womanfriendly” space, welcoming both heterosexual and homosexual women
and nonbinary musicians. Underpinned by an aesthetic cosmopolitanism, new
ways of being a Portuguese rocker were registered onstage. Female bands
expanded the available musical and non-musical roles for women, highlighting
female musical ability, autonomy and identity as creative producers.
An active ingredient in gendered and musical everyday life performances
Despite the restrictions and inequalities, participation in rock was meaningful
and consequential in the lives of these women. Rock music was a social
ordering device of participants’ pathways, from the choice of a partner to
mundane activities like dressing and home decoration; from leisure and amateur
activities like being in a band, concert going and meeting people that are music-
alike to semi-professional activities like making rock crafts, aspiring to be
professional musicians or keeping “rock friendly” jobs. Participants used rock
music as an aesthetic material for world-making and building a creative,
meaningful life. Rock’s material and visual culture (not just clothes and
embodied behaviour, but also musical instruments) were also used as active
ingredients in the performance of gender identities.
Musical practice (instrument playing and singing) took shape in relation to
gender. Each rock instrument (voice, electric guitars, electric bass and drum
kits) configured bodily action and embodied gender performances with its
shape, weight, size, playing conventions, gender stereotypes and gender
delineations.
Vocalists’ gender identity was musically mediated through their voices. Their
voices, were not biological givens, however, since they were mediated by
gender issues, media and other social discourses, situated contexts, vocal
techniques and genre conventions and technologies such as the microphone.
Vocalists also actively constructed the pathways of their voices by deepening,
growling, screaming or not screaming. Women may have sometimes lost a
musical opportunity when they were pushed out from the guitar to the role of
vocalists or bassists (instrument segregation), new musical outcomes arose.
Singers gained a new performing singing body and gained power in the rock
band, due to their traditional musical role as singers.
Resisting the under-appreciation of the bass, due to its feminization (Clawson,
1993), women employed alternative value parameters. These value criteria
were gender-delineated with masculinity such as deep bass tones and a large
size. Bassists also highlighted the role of the bass in structuring the songs (not
mere supportive role to the songs), and how, in female bands, the bass line is a
key element. These were counter-discourses resisting the under-appreciation of
the feminised bass.
Interviewees associated the electric guitar with “hard” music, authentic
rock’n’roll, which relied on othering the acoustic guitar as soft music. However,
gendered playing conventions were challenged. The flamboyant guitar hero
ideal was dismissed as showing off or a sign of immaturity in favour of playing
with comfort. However, the two most experienced semi-professional guitarists
had to keep the “male standards” of the technical virtuosity to be accepted
among peers.
The experience of playing an electric guitar was described as a powerful
embodied experience. Despite the delineations of guitar with masculinity, it was
especially the drum kit that was discursively constructed as a male instrument.
Female drummers displayed “female drummer pride”, and made their gender
identity relevant against the discourses on the drum kit as a masculine
instrument. Playing the drums and gender were co-constructed through the pull
of the sound itself (loudness) and through the claim of gendered musical value
(being a good female drummer). To become a drummer was to become a
skilled, coordinated, strong, musical body. This might be a new bodily
experience, especially for women. The use of a drum kit was an active
ingredient in the remaking of embodied gendered identities as well as a source
of wellbeing and physical pleasure.
The DJ mixer can also be conceptualized as a rock instrument, and the DJ set
as a real-time music performance. In fact, playing an instrument or being in a
band were just some of the forms of musical participation. Following rock
amateurs broadened up the scope of “musical production” and new practices
opened up for analysis. Djing,mothering and crafting, were the ethnographic
examples I brought here in order to document how amateurs pass on their love
of rock through artefacts, services and social relations that have been
overlooked in rock scholarship.
The figure of DJ and the DJ set blur distinctions between producer and
consumer, live and recorded music, private and public space. These DJs
reframe the masculinist music connoisseur paradigm: it is not about
namedropping of bands and albums but rather rock music connoisseurship is
about mastering their own audio-libraries and “reading the audience.”In other
words, knowing “what music works” in each DJ set. DJ’s tacit skills are not
about scratching (as in EDM) but selecting a repertoire of music from their
personal audio-library, to build the sequences and the “good passages” that
enable a successful rock musical pathway, in specific times and places (specific
bars, nightclubs or outdoors; specific cities, countries; summertime, a friend’s
party). The rock DJ set is an improvised, contingent, negotiated and
participatory musical journey. Rock music as a genre and its resistance to
scratching acts as a prosthetic device in the socio-musical space of a set,
affording specific forms of collective action, sociability, bodily conduct (jumps,
mosh pit, screams), and states of feeling (“moments of happiness”, fun,
euphoria, adrenaline). At the same time, this heterogeneous network of DJs and
its audio-libraries, audiences, spatial arrangements and alcohol, affords new
meanings (folksonomies) for rock music songs in local contexts (eg: the same
song becomes danceable or unplayable, romantic or depressing, background or
foreground music, familiar or B-side either its played in the DJ’s home or in the
set, either its played in summer or in a specific city).
The pathways to DJing are also gendered, with similarities to the pathways into
rock bands. Many women started DJing either because they were women
(femaleness as commodity, novelty value or the claim to girl power) or because
they DJ with their (male) partners (homogamic pathways into DJing). In the set,
female DJs revealed how they carefully managed their bodily display and
played with their gender in the set, from avoiding performing to excessive
dancing to display sexiness. The set is actively gendered female through DJ
naming and visual culture (in posters, flyers and Facebook pages), through the
choice of music (eg: riot grrrl music, blues women singers or having a “dirty
rock” set) and/or through their clothing practices, DJ set decoration and use of
props. The act of DJing was referred to as “empowering” by all of the
participants, which they contrasted with other non-empowering spheres of their
social lives.
DJing can also be an odd job for women rockers that is often not exclusive, but
rather done in combination with other inter-sectorial activities. From performing
as musician to making and selling rock crafts, all these activities provided
different sources of (odd) income. They also provided ways of making money
that are not of menial nature, but are linked to identities that are positively
valued, a source of a pleasure and reward, beyond financial gains.
Handcrafted rock artefacts, from clothing items, accessories and even food
items, were produced and sold through the creation of a label and relied on the
ease of sales through online platforms [mostly Facebook], which enabled the
development of extensive semi-entrepreneurial networks. What are considered
traditional female activities and skills, such as sewing, knitting, decorating and
baking, were re-contextualized within an artistic discourse of talent and
creativity. These activities become independent cultural and artistic practices,
performed by “authentic” rockers, who are involved right through from the start
to the finish of a single garment or item. These women’s production narratives
are informed by a neo-artisanal frame, an ethical, grass-roots ‘subcultural
entrepreneurialism’ (McRobbie, 1989a, 2013). Beyond micro-scale business,
these rock crafts furnish the material culture of rock. Rock aesthetics and
gender practices and ideologies, in the context of rock music worlds, its DIY
ethos and networks, generated opportunities for young and not so young
woman. It allowed participants to cope with contexts of precarious working
situations and/or in to search for more meaningful livelihoods. Musicians and
amateurs co-produce informal markets, articulating and deriving socioeconomic
value from their love for music and from their status as women rockers. Hence,
creating new meanings for rock music and reconfiguring gender ideologies and
roles. And, at the same time, blurring the lines between musical and non-
musical, paid and unpaid, formal and informal, domestic/private and public.
DJing can be also conceptualized in the context of home, where mothers often
regulate the home soundscape. Drawing on ethnographic examples of a dyadic
family relationship (mother-children), I have documented how family and
domestic spaces are relevant when analysing everyday rock musicking. Music
is the medium which constitutes the domestic and affective soundscapes of the
home, family life and family relationships.
For women rock fans who became mothers, rock musicking practices were
integrated into their everyday lives and mundane child-rearing and childcare
practices. As music stages an “object lesson” (DeNora, 2011b) not just about
aesthetics, but also about morality, competences and social types, these
mothers negotiate how children listen to music and which genres they explore,
thus configuring specific musical childhoods, crafting classed and gendered
subjectivities for their children. They also use rock music to negotiate their own
roles as mothers, musically staging more empowering ways of being mothers –
as rock moms.
Rock musicking became an “active ingredient” in the making of family life and
relationships, creating memories and nostalgia, supporting mundane
interactions and offering musical opportunities for family members. In fact, it
became a socio-material practice that “holds together” rock families. Employing
an ‘in action’ approach, within the pragmatist tradition (T. E. McDonnell et al.,
2017), allowed me to delve deeper in participants’ actual engagements with rock
musicking.
The gender and sexual politics of socio-musical participation
Portugal is characterized as possessing a weak civil society with low degree of
collective social movements, including feminism (Amâncio & Santos, 2012; V.
Ferreira, 1999; B. D. S. Santos, 1993). However, political participation can be
conceptualized in non-traditional ways which is beyond unions, associations
and social movements.
Musicking is already a form of socio-musical-political participation. Embodied
musical participation affords world-building, togetherness and offers “object
lessons” of gender roles. This can be an unintentional act of resistance and
more of an ”unintended consequence” of human agency (S. Scott, 2004, p.
131).
Portuguese women have used rock music to solve the ‘problems’ of women’s
underrepresentation in music-making, the lack of Portuguese role models and
hegemonic masculinity. They work through these problems as they encounter
situations by employing rock, its practice, material culture and counterculture
discourse in situated contexts. For some participants, it was also the ‘solution’
that retroactively defined the problem (Whitford as cited in McDonnell et al.
2017), as participants only felt confined and/or privileged as “female” as they
engaged in rock worlds.
Rock musicking configured embodied social action and aesthetic agency.
Musical agency enabled individual empowerment through rock, but it also
escalated and spread into the public sphere, even if it was a micro public sphere
(DeNora, 2013), or a nano public sphere. From the interaction of the
Portuguese women with rock (as a cultural object, technologically mediated), in
situated contexts, emerged social change and cultural innovation.
These women are registering in the public musical sphere alternative
femininities and different forms of ageing and adulthood. Either by retaining in
adult life the hedonistic ethos of bohemian cultures (against traditional
discourses, being a rocker “is not a phase”, as participants kept repeating), or
by using rock music as a technology of mothering.
These rockers’ gender performances added to the ‘inventory’ of gender
(Connell, 1987) locally available in Portugal. By “keeping at it” [rock culture],
women rockers challenged musical gendered representations and stereotypes.
Socio-musical spaces (on-stage, but also off-stage and everyday life) worked
here as “cultural workspaces”, capable of social change, potentially leading to
new attitudes, or at least questioning the available traditional roles for women
and changing heteronormative cultural scripts of gender.
International feminist debates point to a post-feminist sensibility that undoes
feminism, rendering it unnecessary and old fashioned. This is pervasive in the
media and has led young women to repudiate feminism (Gill, 2007; McRobbie,
2009; Scharff, 2013).
There might be signs of change. After I finished the fieldwork, new bands who
self-identified as queer emerged, as well as venues which were more
welcoming to queer musicians and their audiences (such as Galeria Zé dos
Bois or venue Damas). Not to mention the 2016 Lady Fest Lisbon [Rama em
Flor] and in 2017 the music festival FEM FEST . Also, if in 2012 Anarchicks
claimed to be “apolitical”, in 2015 they released an album “We Claim the Right”
in response to the popular media feminist campaign #weclaimtheright. There
might be emerging new trends in the relationship between music, feminist
activism and popular culture in Portugal.
Finally, in the matter of gender equality politics, the Portuguese State and local
government should be called to play a part in pushing for gender equality in
music worlds. My empirical work showed how local government and
youthoriented policies and institutions have helped in the formation and
maintenance of female bands. Even if those policies were not directly aimed at
girls or young women, they ended up benefiting them. In fact, the literature that
shows how women’s careers (artistic or not) were at a disadvantage when
dependent upon informal networks. As such, girls and women’s artistic careers
were favoured by formal education, institutional initiatives and public
intervention (Buscatto, 2007b, 2014). An example of “good practices” came
from the French music world. Ortiz (as cited in Buscatto, 2014) found that
French boys were more likely to play in private spaces, “with pals”, than their
female counterparts.
French girls and women rock musicians benefited from publicly funded studios.
In Portugal, to my knowledge, there is no such public infra-structures. An
investment in making rehearsals spaces and electronic instruments available in
state schools could possibly benefit girls’ rock musicianship.
Future work
Despite I take an intersectional perspective on gender, I have dealt relatively
little with race and ethnicity issues. Given Portugal’s colonial past and heritage,
and given the growing population of Portuguese Afro-descendants, a new
perspective on rock music should be articulated by the voices of the black
Portuguese, even if they are studied as “non-users” of rock). This is of utmost
importance, given the role of black culture in the history of rock. Black
Portuguese are usually more represented in studies on hip-hop, despite it still
being largely a white-dominated field, or on studies on African music.
Given that the study of masculinities is such a recent topic of scholarly work, the
study of the gendered Portuguese rock culture, would benefit from exploring
men’s gender performances and gender relations. For instance, what is the role
of material culture in men’s gender performances in rock worlds? Are there
“male femininities” in rock worlds? Do men play pink guitars? I was still referring
to men and women, despite the non-binary take on gender.
Couple’s culture in rock worlds, beyond the muse or homogamy frame, could be
deepened through observational analysis of rock couples in their everyday life -
in the vein of media studies and home ethnographies (Morley, 1986; Pink,
2003). Also the exploration of homosexual couple’s musical cultures could open
up new lines of inquiry.
In my fieldwork, self-identified non-binary people doing rock were a minority.
However, the above mentioned emergent changes will open up empirical
avenues to pursue.
Other topics of enquiry include the use of rock music in the recent Portuguese
field of music therapy and the construction of gender and (dis)ability through
rock music. Although they are beyond the scope of this research, they are an
open door to explore.
Longitudinal work on intergenerational rock culture, through the lens of family
dyads, should be pursued, this time taking into perspective the growing and
grown children of the rock moms interviewed.
The sustainability of small rock business and entrepreneurial rock careers in a
long-term perspective should also be explored. Likewise, the clients and
consumers of the rock crafters, as well as the links and gaps between the
amateur world and music industry world should be studied. This could
contribute to the repertoire of good and bad practices of grass-roots artistic
entrepreneurialism in a southern European country.
The Portuguese reception of “female rock literature”, given the recent
translations to Portuguese of Patti Smith’s and Kim Gordon’s autobiographies,
could be another interesting topic to explore deeper the role of rock music and
its discourses on the construction of experiences of Portuguese rockers and
literature lovers.
Finally, given the lack of studies on reception and use of music in Portuguese
music sociology, more empirical work needs to be done in terms of personal
listening and other prosumer practices, accounting for all the mediations opened
by amateurs as they musick together.
