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Plenary Session 1

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Feminist, Lesbian/Feminist, and Queer Music

7:30 PM – 10 PM, Thursday October 14
South Meeting Room, Newcomb Hall
Elizabe th Ladenson, chair
Free and open to the public

Maria Johnson:
“Kickin’ Ass & Takin’ Names”: Saffire and the Tradition of “Uppityness” in Women’s Blues

Elizab eth Keenan:
"'I Went to School in Olympia… Where Everyone's the Same': Space and Place in a Feminist Rock Music Festival"

Boden Sandstrom:
"Negotiation of Gender in the Women's Music Network Today: Lesbian, Queer or Women Identified?"

Rachel Devitt:
"'Talk softly and carry a big...stick!' Stealing the Spotlight and Building a Dyke Community with Seattle's All-Gr rrl Queer Cabarets"

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Plenary Session 2 with Abdulaye Diabate

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African Musicians in th e Diaspora:
Am I African Enough or Am I Too African?

1:15 PM – 2:45 PM, Saturday, October 16, 2004
Old Cabell Auditorium
Michelle Kisliuk and Heather Maxwell, moderators
Free and open to the public

Click to view summary

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Summaries

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Maria Johnson: “Kickin’ Ass & Takin’ Names”: Saffire and the Tradition of “Uppityness” in Women’s Blues

Emerging in the 1920s, vaudeville blues challenged the prevailing stereotypes of African American women, reclaiming black women’s bodies from male objectification, and celebrating black women’s sexuality through song. A contemporary interracial trio from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women consciously continue this tradition. At the same time, in some of Saffire’s music there is a level of advocacy not often found in earlier blues, which is found to some extent in the work of artists like Nina Simone, Bernice Reago n and Sweet Honey in the Rock who came out of the Civil Rights Movement.

Utilizing correspondence and interviews with Saffire and other contemporary artists, along with the recordings (music and lyrics) of artists past and present, this present ation examines the tradition of “uppityness” in women’s blues. Comparing the songs of Saffire with the “mainstream” of today’s female blues artists, as well as with past artists, I attempt to locate Saffire in relation to the tradition of wom en’s blues. To what extent do Saffire’s lesbian, feminist and politically conscious themes constitute an extension or break with the tradition of women’s blues? To what extent do their bold stances on issues of domestic violence, sexual abuse, rac ism, sexism and homophobia extend or redefine the boundaries of “uppityness” in women’s blues?

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Elizabeth Keenan: "'I Went to School in Olympia… Where Everyone's the Same': Space and Place in a Feminist Rock Music Festival"

This paper examines a women's rock music festival called "Ladyfest," where popular music intersects with a segment of middle-class, white, feminist political activism. Since the first Lady fest in Olympia, Washington, in 2000, the name of the festival has been adopted by over 30 other groups of women in cities around the world. Ladyfest Olympia has become a point of influence and contention for subsequent festivals. Participants use compa risons between their festivals and places and the first Ladyfest and Olympia to discuss, diffuse, and sometimes even increase the tensions between local and national indie and punk rock music scenes. By emphasizing place, these discussions often mask deb ates of greater concern than a local idea of musical style, such as feminist politics, gender, sexuality, race and class. Ladyfest Olympia is alternately imagined as a utopian, welcoming, egalitarian feminist community event and as an exclusive event lac king any concern for diversity of race, class, political views, or musical style. The articulation of difference from or allegiance to Ladyfest Olympia allows participants at once to create a sense of their own place and community and to place themselves in relation to a larger project.

Drawing upon practice theory, feminist theory, and cultural geography, this paper examines the ways that participants - both in Olympia and other cities - have used discourses of space and place to voice ideas about the connections between local and national music scenes, as well as the relationships between music, politics, and class.

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Boden Sandstrom: "Negotiation of Gender in the W omen's Music Network Today: Lesbian, Queer or Women Identified?"

The emergence of Women's Music coincided with one of the most dynamic periods of the women's rights movement in the United States - often referred to as the "second wave" of fe minism. The uniqueness of Women's Music is that it evolved as the expression of a distinctly lesbian cultural ethos in that it has been primarily lesbians who have written, performed, and distributed the music, and who continue to shape its contemporary expressions.

It is not appropriate to refer to all of the music of today's generation, who are active in the Women's Music circuit, as Women's Music because many are claiming new gender identities. Some are rejecting the hegemonic society's gen der labels such as "woman" or "lesbian" and are adopting a more inclusive but fluid gender identity under a broader concept of "queer." Thus queer or "trans" (transgender or transsexual) musicians refer to their music as "queer music" or "queer punk."

This paper will explore some of these artists' music such as the duo Bitch and Animal and Alix Olsen. Changes in the Women's Music network today will be explored focusing on the controversy surrounding the inclusion or exclusion of the "trans" (tr anssexual or transgender) community within this circuit. Just as Women's Music and its performance helped negotiate the identity of women yesterday, the Women's Music of today is a locus for gender identity.

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Rachel Devitt: "'Talk softly and carry a big...stick!' Stealing the Spotlight and Building a Dyke Community with Seattle's All-Grrrl Queer Cabarets"

Several times a year, Seattle dykes descend upon accommodating gay male and straight clubs, taking over these traditionally male-dominated spaces in order to attend cabaret shows targeted at queer women's communities. Beyond a basic reclaiming of physical space, these events are also in the business of reclaiming p erformative spaces (such as camp and drag) traditionally dominated by gay men, and politicizing and radicalizing conventional femininity by recontextualizing it within a now women-owned performativity. Performers such as Sheu Sheu LeHaure and Miss Indigo Blue build on vintage musics and camp aesthetics to blow an over-the-top version of femininity (the burlesque performer) up into a caricature of itself that exposes its very construction. This feminine gender-fuck undeniably references the heteropatriar chal version of conventional femininity, but at the same time is generated and owned by queer women.

Miss Indigo performs old-fashioned strip shows to lounge music, alluding to a particularly historicized femininity with both humor and sex appe al, thus reclaiming both camp and feminine sexuality for queer women. Sheu Sheu, on the other hand, is a woman who looks butch in real life but plays an ultra-femme character, often "stripping" off layers of gender construction even as she strips her clo thing to the tune of hip hop and raunchy lounge music. Both performers choose music that is humorous and/or highly sexualized, as well as evocative of a particularly gendered identity (the lounge kitten, the nudie girl, the booty girl, even the suave R&B singer). Seattle's all-grrrl queer cabarets are thus about entertainment and subversion, community and politics. Through their musical, performance, and character decisions, the cabarets expose the performativity and the construction of gender by both referencing and then genderfucking conventional femininity. In the process, they are reclaiming the power of camp and drag performance from gay men and building a safe space for queer women to explore gender.

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African Musicians in the Diaspora: Am I African Enough or Am I Too African?

In New York City, West African immigrants are among the most dynamic in terms of growing populations. Arriving musicians, dancers, and singers find themselves in a bizarre situation: finally in proximity of the summit of global power and opportunity, and expecting, even hoping, to compete and work their chops with American artists, they quickly discover that their marketability and l ivelihood as musicians in New York depends upon their “African-ness”.

This plenary opens the floor to the discovery and debate of this phenomenon with panelists Abdulaye Diabate - a Mande griot and veteran of modern music making - and select members of his band, the Super Manden - all West Africans living and working as professional musicians in NYC. How do they feel about this pressure? How do they perform it in music? In costume? In lyrics and language? Who among them resist this pres sure, and how, and at what consequences? Is there a difference between this kind of pressure and prejudice in the music industry and in academe? How is “authenticity” valued, weighted, and measured in both?

Related to these questions, the plenary also examines the star-making machinery of commercial music and how it plays out in contexts of Afropop, and the hugely popularized theme of the “roots” of the Blues in Malian and other Sahelian countries. Are Malian artists now pressured to be “Bambara Bluesmen”? How do they interpret this connection?

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