Women's Music -- Sociology 3151 Message Board

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Date Posted: 22:40:26 04/13/05 Wed
Author: Jen Stacy
Subject: Women's Music

Stacy Holman Jones struggles throughout her most of her ethnography to define and understand women's music, and it is very important to her that she creates a definition that allows for the women's performances to speak for themselves. There are so many stereotypes that go along with the phrase "women's music" such as its lesbian music, its anti-male, and angry. Which are a lot of the same stereotypes associated with feminist, but in reality there is so much more depth and complexity in women's music and in feminism. I think that Jones text did a really amazing job at trying to present the complexity within women's music, and allows the reader to feel the complexity within these different performers. Jones states, "Political, social and musical goals exist in mutable relationship...In some ways women's music performances, politics may be feature, while social and musical goals are inexplicit, opaque. In other performances, music may be the primary goal, with social and political concerns as a by-product or backdrop. Whatever the relationship, the music is concerned with women's experience, whether it celebrates, complicates, or critiques that experience. What's significant about the relationship among political, social, and musical goals and women's experiences is the way they are enacted through performance" (55). In this statement I think she is offering a good definition of the way women's music is dealing with a multitude of different issues (and forms of oppression), but that they are all being experienced in the way that these women perform their music.

It was also really interesting how the issue of racial diversity came up so much within her study of women's music. It has been a long standing critique of 2nd wave feminism that it was very exclusive of women of color, and I think that a lot of the female artist presented in the book came out of the 2nd wave women's movement. Racism is such a hard topic to discuss and when it was presented to the managers of the Club by Virginia that she was concerned about the lack of diversity she was dismissed, and eventually quit. It seems easier to just ignore racism, sexism, and classism than to address our own internalization of these types of oppressions.

In "Song Catcher" I think that it was harder to define the music as women's music within the definition offered by Jones at first, but after thinking about it for I while I could see the connection. In the song sung after the birth of Alice's baby, "I wish I was a single girl again." I could see the political and social critique of women's experiences in that song. They mentioned the loss of freedom and identity that women experience upon marriage, the abuse, and hardship that women are exposed to through marriage. In their desire to be single again they were making a political statement about the situation and state of being a women during that time. I also found the representation of gender to be quite fascinating, Lily challenged a lot of social norms for women and because of that she was a threat to male superiority, such as her not being given permeant post at her university. Lily's presents in the town (as well as her sisters and the other teacher) presented a challenge to the male superiority in the town, which I felt was seen in the scene of the preacher talking about women as temptress, and he call's the women evil and a destruction to their way of life. I feel that christian religion has been used the demonization of women as a way to control and oppress women's sexuality, intelligence, and keep them at a lower social status. (You are more than welcome to disagree with me, but these are just some of my thoughts)

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Replies:

Re: Women's Music -- Adam Crabtree, 02:51:49 04/18/05 Mon
Re: Women's Music -- Kendra, 11:46:27 04/18/05 Mon
Re: Women's Music -- Pam C., 23:23:14 04/18/05 Mon
Re: Women's Music -- Trinidad Silva, 21:15:47 04/26/05 Tue
Re: Women's Music -- Heather Riedel, 23:59:28 04/26/05 Tue