Feminist Music
Celebrating Women's Empowerment
In my studies I recently came across
feminist musicology, the study of how music embodies
power hierarchies and how it has been used as a tool of empowerment. It
is not only about who runs the world according to Beyonce but also about
how for example women are put into the role of the consumer in the music
industry or how performed feminity is sexualised and comodified.
It might seem more complex than it is but I find it super
interesting to dig for new feminist music all over the world and
understand its background. I hope you do too. The following example is a
white feminist lens from the 90s but there are so many more movements
and voices to be heard!
Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. Riot grrrl is a subcultural movement that combines feminism, punk music, and politics. It is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement and has recently been seen in fourth-wave feminist punk music that rose in the 2010s. The genre has also been described as coming out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a movement in which women could express anger, rage, and frustration, emotions considered socially acceptable for male songwriters but less common for women. Riot grrrl songs often addressed issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, classism, anarchism, and female empowerment.
Learn more about it.