Popular Music & Gender

In today's culture, popular music is a vital site where ideas about gender and sexuality are imagined and disseminated. Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions explores what that means with a wide-ranging collection of chapters that consider the many ways in which contemporary pop music performances of gender and sexuality are politically engaged and even radical. With analyses rooted in feminist and queer thought, contributors explore music from different genres and locations, including Beyoncé's Lemonade, A Tribe Called Red's We Are the Halluci Nation, and celebrations of Vera Lynn's 100th Birthday. At a bleak moment in global politics, this collection focuses on the concept of critical hope: the chapters consider making and consuming popular music as activities that encourage individuals to imagine and work toward a better, more just world. Addressing race, class, aging, disability, and colonialism along with gender and sexuality, the authors articulate the diverse ways popular music can contribute to the collective political projects of queerness and feminism. With voices from senior and emerging scholars, this volume offers a snapshot of today's queer and feminist scholarship on popular music that is an essential read for students and scholars of music and cultural studies.

This paper examines how three popular and independent LGBTQ+ music artists communicate their sexuality/gender identity in the 21st Century. First, I will discuss what prominent literature experts in the musical / gender studies field have theorised; writers from Jacques Attali to Michael Foucault and Judith Butler, and the works they’ve contributed to further enrich knowledge. I will then coincide their ideas to the popular music scene, through a brief history of queer music, ending on the current landscape for LGBTQ+ musicians, of all background and colour. For the main body of the thesis, I will zone in on three particular artists, and how they each communicate their queer identity/sexuality within their music. First, there will be a brief background of each artist’s career, musical works and successes. Then I will conduct an analysis of each artist’s approach to communicating their queer identity through three facets of their music - lyrics, musical production/arrangement, and performance/visual identity. I will conclude with exactly why they communicate themselves and their message and how they represent three entirely different ways of being a queer music artist in the 21st Century.

Older, the proverbial artistic rebirth of a household name, previously associated with lightweight Pop. A personal statement – his first release after a prolonged judicial battle with recording companies over the image attached to the George Michael brand, the man trapped under ice.

Amanda Howell offers a new perspective on the contemporary pop score, as the means by which masculinities not seen—or heard—before became a part of American cinema after World War II. Popular Film Music and Masculinity in Action considers an eclectic mix of film, from Elvis and Travolta star vehicles to Bruckheimer-produced blockbuster action, with a special focus on the work of musically innovative directors Melvin Van Peebles, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Gregg Araki. Of particular interest is the way these films and their representations of masculinity are shaped by generic exchanges among contemporary music, music cultures, and film, combining American cinema's longstanding investment in violence-as-spectacle with similarly body-focused pleasures of contemporary youth music. Drawing on the scholarship of popular music and the pop score, as well as feminist film and media studies, Howell addresses an often neglected area of gender representation by considering cinematic masculinity as an audiovisual construction. Through her analyses of music's role in action and other film genres that share its investment in violence, she reveals the mechanisms by which the pop score has helped to reinvent gender—and gendered fictions of male empowerment—in contemporary screen entertainment.

This Master's dissertation aims to uncover the capacity for political expression within doom metal and willingness to make such expression amongst its proponents, and to identify trends within the genre that support social critique across the political spectrum. The body of the work is comprised of readings of various bands' lyrics, artworks and interviews.
The main focus rests upon the pursuit of individual liberty, comparable to ‘negative’ liberty as described by Berlin in Two Concepts of Liberty, which has featured in doom metal throughout its history and arguably represents a strong tendency toward libertarianism amongst its musicians and fans alike. Critiques of economic and social inequality and exclusion form another theme. A third section focuses on environmental concern, which has manifested in both overt and subtle critiques from doom metal groups, often in utopian terms, contrasted by a nihilistic vision of apocalypse and environmental destruction imagined by some of doom's heaviest and darkest bands. The final section explores the role of women and female empowerment within the genre.
The study then turns to examining the surrounding contexts of doom metal musicians and question the extent to which these contexts have been acknowledged or critiqued by the musicians and their works. After contextualising doom metal and its varied political expressions, the study attempts to find common ideological ground between doom metal artists overall and investigates whether the genre acts as an arena for social comment, or whether the opposite is true; that the escapist aesthetic promulgated within doom metal acts as a safe haven for its listeners, wishing to avoid political discourses in music.

和文抄訳 Japanese Abstract
(Currently there's no English abstract or Japanese translation of the paper)

様々な表象文化の中で、音楽もまた社会的、政治的な権力作用から自由ではな い。本論文は、昭和40年代日本において女性歌手によって歌われた歌謡曲から いくつかを取り上げ、主にフェミニズム理論及びクィア理論(それぞれ特に、精 神分析理論の批判的読みや現代思想の潮流を汲んでいる部分)を用いて分析し、 ジェンダー・セクシュアリティの視点から歌謡曲の新たな読みを提供する。

第一部では『フェミニン・エンディング　音楽・ジェンダー・セクシュアリテ ィ』の著者、スーザン・マクレアリの理論を参考にしながら、日本の「歌謡曲」、 特に昭和40年代に女性歌手によって歌われたものを分析する。その結果分かる ことは以下の通り。つまり、女性と主体性について、あるいは女性と他者性につ いて、この時代の女性歌手による歌謡曲は非常に雄弁であるということ。それは 曲構成上の物語装置(終結、退場など)や音楽学的な要素(和声、旋律など)に よって、女性を主人公とした物語世界がいかに女性を疎外する形で表象している かという問題に関わる。また、そのように疎外される女性の《行為体》と検閲の 関係には密接な関係があるが、ジュディス・バトラーのように検閲を「主体に対 してなされる行為」と「主体が[...]行為遂行的に生産されるためになされる行 為」(『触発する言葉　言語・権力・行為体』)に分けると、女性の疎外は正に この二つのレベルで行われていることが分かる。つまり象徴界における《女》と いう記号へと導入される女児は、そのとき「行為遂行的に」「主体」として「生 産される」。しかし《女》とは象徴界において、ペニス中心的な考え方によって 「欠如」として、「他者」として認識されるものである。また、男児がそれを見 て去勢不安に陥るような、ファルス「である」ものとしても構築され、男児がフ ァルス「を持つ」ことを強化する役割を与えられている。しかしこういった非対 称的な配置は、言語によって行為遂行的に再確認され続けなければならないほどに脆弱である。なぜなら、バトラーによれば、ファルスとペニスの関係(「ファ ルスはそれを象徴しない」と言われ続ける特権を持っているペニス、という関 係)は想像的な営みでしかなく、その関係そのものが行為遂行的に構築されてい るにすぎないからだ。であるから女性にとって象徴界における《女》という位置 を降りること、もしくは「怪物的にファルス主義にのし上がる」ことは、検閲を 受けなければならないとされる。そしてそれはまた、「主体に対してなされる行 為」としての検閲が頻繁に行われなくてはいけないほどに、「主体が[...]行為遂 行的に生産されるためになされる行為」としての検閲が「主体」とやらを徹頭徹 尾象徴界に組み込ませられていないことを意味し、その点で、ジェンダーに関す る行為遂行的な言語の引用の隙間に《行為体》を見いだせることになる。

以上を受けて第二部では、昭和40年代に急速に普及したカラオケマシーンが いかに一般女性(プロの歌手でない女性)に抵抗と交渉の機会を与えていたかを 検証する。そもそもカラオケマシーンへのアクセスが許されていた女性は、水商 売に職を持つ女性か、あるいは水商売の店に男性に連れ添って客としてその場に いた女性たちだけである。そして彼女らのほとんどがローワー・クラス及びロー ワー・ミドル・クラスの10代後半から30代、時に40代までの女性であり、 その場にいる男性たちにとって家庭的な、持続的な関係性の中の女性(母・妻・ 娘)ではなく、あくまで一時的な関係を結ぶだけの女性たちであった。しかし彼 女たちはプロの女性歌手が受ける検閲行為よりも更に厳しい慣習的な検閲を受け ており、カラオケで彼女らが歌っても差し支えなかった曲は、正に母・妻・娘の ような(男に都合のいい)愛情を持つ女の姿を描く曲ばかりであった。しかし彼 女たちの身体が実際にステージにのぼり、彼女たちの身体から発声が行われるこ とは、カラオケ歌唱には不可欠のことであった。つまり歌われる表象自体は家族 的な男女観を反映しているのだが、それが歌われるときに必ず家族的「でない」 女性の身体が現前するのである。それをパロディーと解釈できないとしたら、いったい何だろうか。これを第一部の《行為体》の解釈と合わせることで、これら の性差別的な歌謡曲を歌うことがいかに水商売で働く女性たちあるいは水商売の 店にやってくる女性たちにとって(象徴的及び経済的な)生存可能性をかけたサ バイバルの一つの手法であったかが明らかになる。それはつまり、象徴界から完 全に脱却してしまうことで自らの生存可能性を閉ざしてしまうこともなく、だか らと言って象徴界へと取り込まれてしまうことで自らの《他》性、すなわち主体 としての「I」と、その「I」に所属するということになっているイメージ(と その文化的意味)との間の差異をなかったことにしてしまうこともなく、撹乱よ りも生存に重きを置いた生き方である。このミミクリー的な手法は、常に大げさ な撹乱を狙う戦略よりも有効だろう。

Resumen
El artículo aborda la figura de la cantante argentina Ramona Galarza (1940), quien fue relevante en la difusión nacional –e internacional– del cancionero popular litoraleño durante la década de 1960. El trabajo se focaliza en la discografía grabada para el sello Odeón en Argentina entre 1958 y 1969. El análisis de las distintas materialidades de los discos (visual, sonora, discursiva) descubre la construcción deliberada de una imagen pulcra, urbana y estilizada de la artista por parte del sello grabador. Se observan así diversas estrategias comerciales concretadas bajo la lógica de la industria cultural, producidas en dos sentidos. Por un lado, un blanqueamiento de la música litoraleña y del chamamé, baile asociado a la clase humilde y vinculado a un ambiente de desorden y promiscuidad. Catalogado peyorativamente por las clases medias/altas de este período como “música de sirvientas”, se requirió una “higienización” para habilitar mayores índices de aceptación social y consumo. Por otro lado, el mecanismo del “adecentamiento” se advierte en la intención de transmitir un modelo de mujer apoyado en arraigadas estructuras de género, eliminando toda conflictividad social y reafirmando los roles tradicionales de la mujer como hija, esposa y madre.
Palabras clave: chamamé, música popular, adecentamiento, industria cultural, estudios de género. 

Abstract
This paper presents an approach to the study of Argentinean singer Ramona Galarza (1940), who was relevant for the national and international diffusion of the litoraleña popular music in the 1960s. It focuses on the Odeon records in Argentina between 1958 and 1969. From the analysis with a gender perspective of the different features of the LPs (visual, sound, cover texts) a deliberate construction of a neat, urban and stylized image of the artist by the recording company was found. Numerous “decent-making” and commercial strategies are observed under the logic of the cultural industry produced in two senses. First, the “whitening” of the litoraleña music and chamamé dance, which was associated with the working class and pejoratively categorized as "servant music" by the middle or higher classes of this period and linked to a disorder and promiscuity atmosphere. Hygienism was required to enable higher rates of social acceptance and consumption. Second, the “decent-making” strategy can be seen in the transmission of a model of women that is based on the entrenched social gender structures, disregarding social conflicts and reaffirming the traditional roles of women as daughter, wife and mother.
Keywords: chamamé, popular music, hygienism, cultural industry, gender studies.

Ensayo en torno al papel de las estrellas del canto como referentes axiales para la reconfiguración de la tradición lírica decimonónica en una nueva cultura de masas durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX en España.
(Dosier sobre "La zarzuela mecánica", coordinado por Alberto González Lapuente).

Las revistas académicas sobre música nacieron vinculadas a la música de tradición escrita, surgiendo más tarde algunas especializadas en períodos históricos y estilos particulares o en territorios específicos, a las que se sumaron revistas dedicadas a la música de tradición oral. El siguiente paso fue la aparición de revistas académicas sobre música popular o mediatizada, y sobre jazz, rock y derivados en particular. Contrapulso se suma a esta tendencia, pero juntando géneros con territorio, para enfocarse en la música popular de la vasta región de América Latina y El Caribe. Publicada en Santiago de Chile, la misma ciudad que Revista Musical Chilena, la mas antigua revista musical en lengua hispana vigente, y con Popular Music, publicada por Cambridge University Press desde 1981, como principal referente internacional en este campo de estudios, Contrapulso se suma a Música Popular em Revista, publicada por UNICAMP en Campinas, Brasil, desde 2013, para dar cuenta de un rico universo de estudios. Con una historicidad traceable hasta el siglo XVIII y antes, el baile y la canción practicadas bajo techo que conformarían lo que hoy entendemos por música popular urbana, vienen siendo estudiados por un conglomerado de investigadores provenientes de la (etno)musicología y de disciplinas de las humanidades y las ciencias sociales. Algunos de ellos también fanáticos de las músicas que estudian, rasgo particular de nuestro campo de estudios. El baile y la canción bajo techo generarán luego la venta de entradas, el pago de derechos, el comercio de objetos-partituras y discos-, en suma, el desarrollo de industrias y de formas mediatizadas de consumo. Por consiguiente, serán estudiadas considerando tanto sus trazos musicales, literarios, coreográficos y productivos como las narrativas sociales que las conforman. Contrapulso aparece en un momento en que el feminismo y los conglomerados LGTB+ participan plenamente de estas narrativas en la región. Es así como el primer número de la revista está dedicado a la escucha de la música popular latinoamericana desde estas narrativas de identidad. Interesa el modo en que la música popular reafirma, resiste o subierte las políticas sexuales hegemónicas, considerando letra, música, performance, discurso, visualidad, baile o producción. La revista se inaugura con un número especial donde colaboran investigadores de la musicología, la historia y la semiótica social de Argentina, Ecuador, España y Brasil, en su mayoría expositores del III Congreso de la Asociación Chilena de Estudios en Música Popular, ASEMPCh, "Género y sexualidades en música popular: prácticas, articulaciones, disputas" (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, enero 2019). De este modo, cinco de los seis artículos publicados son versiones extendidas de las ponencias presentadas, que fueron seleccionados por el Comité Editorial de la revista con la ayuda del referato ciego.

A ausência de quem tinha se autoconferido o status de monumento vivo é uma perda, não pelo passado, (num dos quais ele já vivia). O passado, quando da perda, é continuamente presentificado e trazido da memória para as práticas, das práticas convertido em novas tradições, dos convertidos para a historiografia do "futuro do pretérito".

A perda se dá pelo futuro.

Quem doravante motivará esse rito social - o funeral, precedido pelas elegias, epitáfios e hagiografias em tempo real - global?

ABSTRACT Many popular African performing artists use their music to create a sense of belonging in order to incorporate the largest number of listeners as audience members and therefore increase the community of listeners and fans that their music
attracts. At the same time, however, there are also strategies employed to créate cohesion through the exclusion of groups that can be identified as outsiders or even foreigners. One of the most fiercely contested aspects of this musical xenophobia has to do with interracial amorous and/or sexual relations, particularly those between African women and Afro-Asian men. What can an analysis of these popular Works of xenophobic art—together with other less confrontational, indeed ameliorative, works—tell us about the functional value of discriminatory practices in these African communities? Additionally, what can a consideration of the semiotic practices (musical, verbal and visual) presented by such works tell us about the fluid and changing nature of these discriminatory practices? And, finally, how can attention to
these works of performative art, together with literary works, illuminate the ebb and flow of such tendencies in the societies considered and the prospects for the future of interracial relations in these countries? In order to respond to these questions
Rosenberg’s essay focuses on the relations between the ‘indigenous’ African and ‘Afro-Asian’ communities of Eastern Africa.

KEYWORDS African studies, Afro-Asians, comparative literature, cultural studies, Eastern Africa, Kenya, music, performance studies, Tanzania, xenophobia, Zambia

Today we take remixing, DJ culture and dance club culture for granted. They have become an inextricable part of the modern urban scene and music’s mainstream pop-culture. However, it was only a few decades ago when early DJs broke new territory with what they were doing. Hidden away in obscure underground clubs in New York City back in the late 1960s/early 1970s, dancefloor music and the DJ were regarded nothing more but strange novelties belonging to a thriving subculture that was yet too small to be noticed.

Turn Up The Bass is a book about this new genre of dance floor music that emerged from the DJs’ turntable experimentations in underground clubs in New York City between the late 1960s and early 1980s. Exhaustively researched, the author walks us through the pioneering days of a fresh, new musical style. In the first part of the book, Klein examines the complex interaction of music, dancers and DJ, sheds light on how technical developments and new DJing techniques influenced the formation of a new, distinct style, and how the art of remixing, new recording formats and the establishment of record pools all of a sudden turned the DJ into one of the most important figures in the music industry, who had the power to shape the musical taste of millions.

In the second part of Turn Up The Bass, Klein breaks down the sound of New York City’s dance clubs into every single element and thus allows us a glimpse into how the DJ makes our bodies move. What musical characteristics define underground dance music recordings? What are the musical roots of underground dance music recordings? What instruments are used? How are they used? What is the formal musical structure of dance floor songs? How do dance floor songs of that time work with the concepts of tension-release and musical spacing? More than 50 transcribed examples of music and references to corresponding audio tracks make it easy for the reader to follow Klein’s astute observations.

The longer version of this article (written in Dutch, see attached file), focuses on punk cabaret goddess Amanda Palmer and the recent developments in her music career.

The shorter version of this article was written in English and published in Potentia 2011 (see second attached file)

This essay examines the career paths and creative work of the few women who are part of the rap music scene in Libreville (Gabon). The study focuses on questions such as the amount of masculine control that they experience, their identity strategies, and the significance of their artistic work in the broader context of evolving gender relations. The findings suggest that as they negotiate membership in Libreville’s rap circles, these women rappers invent and redefine a number of categories of feminine identity, such as the “tomboy rapper,” the “emancipated woman,” and the “African” woman. Between reproducing accepted standards and transgressing existing social orders, women rappers adopt global feminine models that interrogate gender inequalities via rap music.

Fandom is about periodization, history, just as life is. So, the tenth anniversary of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way marks a moment in her development as an artist, to be sure, but it is likewise a moment in the fan’s development, whose life is lived in proximity and relation to the object of fandom. On this anniversary of an album that defines so much, I offer not notes but memories; and in the spirit of a certain time, sins not tragedies.