June 23, 2018 • 42 mins
Punk rock is often thought of as a 'white thing' even though it has roots in Black communities. Self-proclaimed riot girl Bridget explores the erasure of black women in punk. A & B revisit this favorite episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening the stuff Bomb Never told you. And today we
want to revisit one of my favorite Sminty episodes that
we've done here on the show, and that is the
(00:27):
topic of black women of Riot Curl. Um. This is
a topic that is near and dear to my heart
as a black woman punk rocker myself. Um, I love
riot curl music, punk music, all music, really, but punk
music has a a special place in my heart. And
this episode does too. Yeah, and it happens to coincide
(00:49):
with another project that, um, you've been working on, Bridget,
and one that I'm very excited about and I think
that our listeners would be very excited about, I hope.
So I'm really excited to share it with y'all. So
you've ever listened to Sminty and thought, gee, I'd love
to hear Bridget talk more about activism and music and
art and culture. Well, now's your chance. I am so
(01:10):
happy to announce a partnership between How Stuff Works and
Afro Punk called Afro Punk Solution Sessions podcast hosted by
yours truly and my good friend Eve's Jeff Cote. Um. Really,
what we want to do with afro punk is do
a deep dive in cultural and social and political identity
through things like activism and art and politics and dance
(01:33):
and all of that. And yeah, if you if you
know anything about afro punk, you know it's a huge,
vibrant global movement that has culture and arts festivals in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Paris,
Johannes Brooks, South Africa. Um. It really started from a
documentary called Afro Punk about black identity in punk spaces
(01:54):
and sort of what it's like being kind of double marginalized.
Um as many people of color who are involved in
these kinds of spaces find themselves, and from there it
really spun out into a cultural movement. Yeah. And I've
had the pleasure of working on some of them and
also hearing it come together, and it's it's really beautiful
and powerful. I'm super proud and super pumped. And uh,
(02:18):
you did fantastic working on a bridge. Well, Anny, you
also did fantastic work on it. Because our gal Annie,
before I was ever even really in the mix. Spent
how long in Johannesburg, Um, I think seven days, about
eight days. Spent eight days in Johannesburg, South Africa. She
went with almost no notice to gather footage of Afro
(02:42):
punc Johannesburg and Solution Sessions Johannisburg, and it came out masterfully.
So it's really kind of a it's an interesting bedfellows
kind of project. If you listen to some of the
other House Stuff Works podcasts, it's there's a lot of
familiar voices involved, both in front of the scenes and
behind the scenes. If you listen to Question booth Um
(03:03):
Our Own, Dylan Fagin is a producer on Afropunk. Annie
has her hands in the pot an afropunk Um. If
you listen to Stuff of Life, Julie Douglas is involved
in Afro Punk. So it's really kind of a fun
collaborative project from some folks some of y'all might know
if you listen to other shows on the network. Absolutely
and if that hasn't gotten you excited enough, we have
(03:25):
a little, a little taste of a bit of a
trailer for you right here. Are you tired of politicians
who make a lot of promises but don't get anything done,
fed up with white people constantly threatening to take away
your rights, Exhausted by being treated like you're less than human,
done with it being underestimated, sick and tired of being
sick and tired. Well, here at Afro Punk, we've got
(03:47):
the solutions be time. The American dream is being able
to walk out, work hard on your own and meet
(04:09):
the world on your own terms, and be celebrated for
being black and walking in that trip. It's very important
to me. It's important to have any kind of space
affirms that they are not exclusionary, be an alternative to
what is wrong represented as this sort of monolithic, singular
idea of black identity and popular culture. Because I've education
(04:44):
has always been a tool for our collective liberation. We
have to teach our kids to build networks and build coalition.
So we educate our kids in this collective consciousness across
multiple intersections of identity, then we can start to build
our own institutions in our community. And you know, that's
really to me the answer m M. That is the
(05:13):
point of today's conversation to understand how it is that
we need to really band together, to come together, to
have our coalition, to have our community life is not
just divisive, it's actually people are coming together overcoming racism
operates on the belief that we can continue to address
the symptoms of educational and equity, or we can finally
(05:37):
address the cause, which is systemic racism. I think it's
so important that we begin to shape the shame, the guilt,
to stand up for ourselves, to reclaim our bodies, reclaim
our minds, reclaim our souls, and reclaim the the the
things that belong to us. To be proud of who
(05:59):
you are and know that your story is powerful. The
solution sessions, it's where real world problems meet fearless solutions.
So yeah, if you are listening to that and you thought, gee,
my issue in life is that I'm not hearing bridget
Taut enough. I mean, I hate to say that, Like
(06:19):
if you know me, you know, like I'm I hate
self promotion, and even this feels very like, oh I
hate this. But it would be really awesome if you
could subscribe, if you could rate and review us, because
that really does help um folks find the show and
their feeds. And honestly, this is this is the kind
of show that I've always wanted to make. I'm dating
myself quite a bit here, but I remember when Apropunk
(06:41):
was first put on my radar I was in college,
was a sophomore in college, and people were sort of
passing the DVD of the documentary around to the dorms,
and you know, people were gathering in small groups to
watch it. And for me, as a as a woman
of color who was interested in music and culture, it
was like seeing myself reflected on screen. And you know,
(07:01):
I often felt like a bit of an odd duck
in a lot of ways, and watching the Appropunk documentary
that was one of the first times I thought, oh
my god, there's so many of us. It's not just
me who feels out of place all the time and
never feels like they quite fit in and is interested
in sort of what those conversations mean. So that sounds
like you, or if that sounds like a conversation that
(07:22):
you would be interested to have with us, please check
it out. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please listen, rate, subscribe,
review all of that, and yeah, please enjoy this collaborative
dream project of mine. Yes, your new Bridget. When you're
a college sophomore and you're watching the documentary, look at
(07:45):
you now, Oh my god, College Bridget will be figger
pants right now. Maybe I did my pants out of happiness.
Maybe maybe you did. Um. Yeah, so please check that out,
and in the meantime, check out this. Uh. This the
old favorite of ours. If you've listened to Kristen and
Caroline tackle this topic. UM, We're gonna be doing it
(08:06):
a little bit different, so you can think of this
as really a companion piece to the really great episode
they put out um called Women and Punk Um. I
have been a long term love lover of all things punk,
really all things in music. In college, I was actually
a radio DJ at my local college radio station, w
(08:27):
u z m B, Greenville, North Carolina. Oh my god,
you've been behind the mic for a while. No wonder
you look such sat for the podcast. Yes, I was DJ.
Cole Slaw was my handle, and that is a reference
to Enan Cole Slaw from the comic book ghost World.
And I DJ a radio show only punk music. So
(08:47):
I've been a big punk fan for a long time.
I've always loved to Riot Girl, and today I am
so thrilled to talk through some of the ways that
black women have kind of sadly been erased in the
history of punk music and the history of retail. Um,
the story behind what you might think of as riot
girl and why that is. Yeah, and punk rock, I
think is typically thought of as a white thing. It is, right,
(09:11):
or at least it's predominantly even like punk rock of
the eighties and nineties. We think of a lot of
British bands that come to mind, like the Clash what
is It, the Sex Pistols, and even into the sort
of nineties grunge, which I know is not technically the
same exact thing as punk. I'm no punk expert, but
(09:32):
I think of a lot of angry white people totally
and I think I think that perception does persist. And
I think that's fair because punk definitely has roots in
this hyper masculine um response to sort of white working
class frustration, particularly in the UK. So it's totally fair.
But that doesn't mean that there wasn't a place for
(09:52):
black musicians, particularly black women, in these movements. Um. There's
this great quote from Day's magazine. There's no denying that
the UK ay punk scene was in part driven by
the anger and isolation felt by white working class But
punk music is not the sole property of whiteness. Even
though too many people of my generation. It may appear
that way at first glance. Like many fests of pop culture,
(10:13):
its historical image has been whitewashed. When you think about
punk's history, its bands like the Class, the sex Pistols,
the Ramones that immediately come to mind, and so I
think it's important that even though yes, it may have
these roots in white frustrations of the working class, punk
music has the same kind of roots in black communities. Yeah,
(10:34):
and in so many ways, as we've talked about music
and cultural appropriation the past, o'mley comes to mind. But
what I find really interesting about punk here is that
that article goes on to say that in many ways
black people were the original counterculture figures, and in so
many ways like rock and roll, has its roots in
(10:56):
black culture completely. I mean, if you've taken you know
class us is on on a cultural anthropology and where
punk and rock and roll come from. It really undeniably
does have roots in black musicians, going back to folks
like Chuck Berry and Bou Didley. These are folks who
were really improvising, really trying a lot of new things,
and a lot of why things like rock and roll
(11:17):
and then later punk, why they stuck around so so firmently. So,
for instance, there's always been this really obvious connection between
punk music and you know, musical genres like reggae. I
think that you can definitely hear their influence in there.
And it's just like this journalist Charlie Birken Hursts notes,
the spirit of punk is present and always has been
in music made by black people. So really, when you're
(11:39):
thinking of punk, is this white art form, it can
just as easily be said to be a black art
form as well. Yeah, so that is interesting how when
you think of punk rock in particular, it has been whitewashed,
even though the roots of punk rock came from a
lot of black artists. If you think about rock and
roll writ large, there's a lot of whiteness associated with
(12:02):
rock and roll and with its spinoff of punk rock.
But in reality, a lot of that cultural appropriation started
way back in the fifties. So n y Use cultural
anthropologist Professor Maureen Mahn explains in this book what Are
You Doing Here? A Black Woman's Life and Liberation in
Heavy Metal. She says that it you know this, as
(12:23):
more white people started to be attracted to rock and roll,
black people started to think this is for them, not
for us. There were always black people participating and present,
but they had started to be outnumbered. So beyond the
sheer out numbering, white rock musicians often had more success
performing songs originally recorded by black blues, R and B
and rock musicians. I'm thinking Elvis, right, Elvis became he
(12:47):
was the original Miley right, like, he became controversial, and
he became known for the ways in which that white
Southern dude was basically embracing artistry that had originally really
been a black thing. Right. And if you've ever seen
the movie dream Girls, which by the way, if you
haven't seen it, it's so good. Um. They illustrate this
(13:07):
so nicely with the idea of they have this soulful
song that this majority that this black girl group you know, sings,
and that when that song is re recorded by white
teenagers that sound very bubbly, it becomes an instant smash hit. Um.
And so I think, you know, there are so many
illustrations of that throughout culture, but really it's it's just
(13:28):
like Marine Mahomes says, this idea that it becomes something
that you then associate with whiteness, whether it actually has
roots in whiteness alone, in regardless of that, it just
becomes something that you think of as white. And I think,
as someone who has been a long, you know, lover
of all kinds of music, but specifically punk, that certainly
(13:49):
jibs with my personal experience. You know, I grew up
feeling very isolated being like a black punk fan, particularly
a black, a black female punk fan. But I grew
up feeling really self conscious for liking something that was
quote unquote for white kids. Um I grew up. I
wouldn't say I was teased for it, but I was
never very open about my my love of punk. And
(14:11):
I like all all different kinds of music, but particularly
I really like punk, but I never felt comfortable talking
about it. When I would buy CDs at the record store,
I always remember feeling this kind of weird sense of
shame or I would sometimes, this is so embarrassing, but
I would sometimes ask, um. I remember I was buying
a Wheezer CD, and I asked, do you guys offer
gift wrapping? Because I didn't want the teller to be like, oh,
(14:35):
why is this black girl buying a Wheezer CD? Has
that really been part of my and I think from
the research, you actually see a lot of black kids
who grew up feeling this way. Um, there's been an
entire movement started called the afro punk movement that started
as a collection of message boards online or other black
punk fans to find each other and connect and swap
(14:57):
stories and swap zines and swap CDs out. That whole
movement has grown into an international phenomenon. They have they
have a global festival, They have festivals in South Africa
and New York, Atlanta, Brooklyn, and it's really taken off
as this cultural thing now it's sort of it started
as sort of this thing that a lot of black
kids felt kind of anxiety around, but now it's sort
(15:19):
of the who's who, like the black glam glam folks
you see lots of You know, there was a spread
and Vogue magazine of the various fashions that afro punk
and performs there, and it's now it's this like very hip,
cool thing. But in the beginning, it definitely did not
feel that way. So would you say afro punk is
it different genre or is it a reclaiming of a
(15:41):
genre that had been whitewashed. I think it's a reclaiming,
and I think it's sort of carving out space for
these black punk fans who have long felt isolated, ignored, erased,
or just felt kind of weird about liking something that
has been associated so heavily with whiteness. It's a reclaiming
and a way of opening up space for those folks
to connect and meet each other and feel good about it.
(16:03):
So basically, what it comes down to is that black
folks aren't the people that we talk about when we
talk about punk music. And we're gonna talk about why
that's such a big problem after this quick break and
we're back. So the erasure of people of color from
depictions of the punk movement really came to a head
(16:25):
pretty recently, and it's criticism that the recent Riot Girl
collection at n y U s Fail Library and a
recent book of the same name chronicling the movement that
all but erased black women. Now, Christen and Caroline again,
they have this great episode all about the Riot Girl
movement and they mentioned this collection, this n y U collection,
in that episode. So wait, can you back up and
(16:46):
explain to me? Because I had not really heard the
term riot girl before today's episode, So what what is
Riot Girl all about? Yeah, So, according to Race and
Riot Girl, from a journal out of the University of
Washington's Department of Gender Studies, quote iyot Girls an international
underground feminist movement, mainly youth oriented, that initially emerged from
the West Coast American alternative and punk music scene. Um,
(17:08):
you could think of that as bands like The Slits,
the Raincoats, Heavens. To Betsy, this was really and Carol
Christen and Caroline shout out to them because they break
this down so nicely. This was really a movement about
young women getting to college feeling a little bit frustrated
with the lack of ability to talk about things they
were dealing with, things like sexual assault, things like sexism,
(17:30):
and expressing those frustrations through music. And in this case,
riot Girl is spelled with a bunch of rs in there, right,
so it's like a growl girl. Yeah. So these are
like angry young women screaming, slash shouting, slash singing there
their feels, which I think is a really cool artistic
expression of uh, totally understandable and righteous anchor. Yeah. I mean,
(17:56):
i I'm just to be clear, I love Riot Girl.
I think a lot of we're gonna talk about in
today's episode, critiques and pushes back on the whiteness of
the spaces that Riot Girl presented. But I really found
my voice through a lot of these screaming young women,
through folks like Kathleen Hannah was one of my idols,
through bands like Latigra. These were groups that that really
(18:18):
were seminal in my development. So I don't want to
come off like I'm trashing them, because I'm definitely not.
But I think it's important that we sort of I
think back to the criticisms of the movement and why
certain women maybe didn't feel as involved as they maybe
could have or should have, and it actually really reflects
the fractions within the feminist space more broadly. Right. I
(18:40):
think we've talked on this and this show, and by
the way, I think we're screaming angry women on the
podcast Variety on occasion too. So I fully identify with
this artistry and this art form. But you know, we've
talked on this show before about the friction when it
comes to movements to end racism and movements to end
(19:02):
sexism and the importance of intersectionality, and this is really
taking that intersectional feminist lens and bringing it to the
punk music scene. Totally basically the same arguments that black
feminists and white feminists are having today and online spaces
and academia. Those same arguments were happening on the mosh pit,
you might say, during the riot girl movement, things like yeah,
I mean, oh my god, I forgot about that. Have
(19:27):
you ever been in a mosh pit? I've yeah, I've like,
not always consensually like I've been. I've born witness to
a mash but I've been on the outer ring of
a mosh pit. Oh man, I've been in a couple
of mosh pits. I'll never forget seeing a friend of
mine break her nose taking an elbow to the face
at a no age hard I didn't take an elbow
(19:49):
to the nose. I saw my friends, which is hardcore,
was at the end of your concert out. I think
she was like, we have to leave right now, like
gushing blood from my notes, as like wait, I want
to see I want to stay. Oh my god. It's
really these issues of intersectionality really coming to a head
in the riot cral spaces, the same things that I
(20:11):
think a lot of feminists still grapple with today, things like, um,
issues of the white middle class women being elevated over
those of women of color, things of having to choot,
feeling like you have to choose between your race and
your gender as opposed to having that be, you know,
an intersectional framework. These are the same arguments we're having today,
and they were the same arguments playing out in the
riot cral scene. That's fascinating to see how it applies
(20:32):
to totally different subsets of society, of the artistic and
musical variety. Right. And this article by Gabby bess and
broadly called alternatives to Alternatives, the Black Girls riot ignored, uh,
really underscores the experience of being let's say, a young
black punk fan like you Bridget and reading these things
(20:56):
like Newsweek article that literally to find the movement, the
riot girl movement as something that was quote young, white,
suburban and middle class, basically literally erasing black women or
women who didn't fit any of those categorizations. Um. And
it just sort of confirmed the explicit whiteness that was
(21:19):
brought to the riot girl scene by journalists who are
covering it and describing it to those who might not
have been in it exactly and a line that resonated
with me so much from that article. There were black
women who imbibe with the spirit of punk in their
bones outside the riot girl movement as well. These women
carved out their own feminist pathways into the hardcore scene
precisely because they were rendered invisible by the riot girl movement.
(21:43):
And what I think jumps out at me at that
quote is that because black women were marginalized both by
the larger punk scene, you know, with lots of white dudes,
and through the riot girl scene that emerged from that scene,
which is mostly white women. Um, they really were forced
to carve out their own pathway for expression and kind
of build these alternatives to the alternatives alternative, Right If
(22:05):
if punk is an alternative and riot Girls an alternative
to punk, these black women had to say, Okay, We're
making another alternative to all those different alternatives. It's again
existing at the intersection of being a black woman in
a space that makes all women marginalized and then further
makes women of color not feel included in that space
(22:26):
that was carved out for women in a male dominated
space exactly. Um, there's a really famous black feminist theorist
called named Pat Hill. Collins, and she has this great
theory called the matrix of domination, which basically means that
as black women are marginalized women, all of our oppression
is interconnected and sort of magnified because it's interconnected. And
in reading about you know, black punk women that just
(22:49):
I was thinking about that theory like jumping up in
my head as I was reading. One of these black
punk rockers who was interviewed for this article really sort
of hit the dail on the head. She said, the
double burden of being a black girl who has to
deal with the white girls in the scene on top
of being a girl who has to deal with the
white boys who dominated the mosh pit at punk shows.
And so again you can see how it's this double
(23:11):
bind of having to deal with the isolation from these
white guys in mosh pits who were awful, and having
to deal with these white riot girls who could also
be awful in their own ways. It sounds like, as well, yeah,
and can we explore what we mean by being awful
just a little bit here too, because it doesn't take
explicit intent to be awful in this case, what we're
(23:34):
really talking about is not being inclusive, and that is
just as awful because you're basically erasing the right of
women of color in this case to exist in a
space that doesn't even acknowledge their present exactly. UM, one
of the punk rockers interviewed in this article, really talked
about how for her this idea that a lot of female,
(23:55):
white female riot girls had that you know, I want
to do a mosh pit where it's gonna be safe,
it's just gonna be women. She'd actually talked about how
she never felt unsafe because she was a woman. She
felt unsafe because she was black, and the the conversation
that was going on around UM women in punk scenes
and how they were treated totally forced her to erase
her blackness, even though that's impossible. And so it's just
(24:16):
like what you said. When I say awful, I mean
just not keeping in mind um inclusivity and intersectionality when
you're talking about this, and then also making marginalized women
feel like they should be grateful for even being included
at all, saying, you know, oh, the fact that you
were even invited into this scene. It doesn't matter if
we overlook you or erase you or completely don't even
(24:38):
speak to your issues. You should be thankful to be
here at all. And I see that large in the
feminist movement a lot those tensions definitely, And I think
that also became such an issue when Riot Girl was
treated in a retrospective light more recently so at that
n y U collection. Looking back at Riot Girl, UM,
(24:59):
I find it really fascinating to say that, UM. Now,
with it becoming this sort of symbol that we can
look back on for punk and women in punk, the
fact that women of color being left out even in
retrospection is truly problematic. It doubles down on that experience
of ignorance, It doubles down on that exclusion of women
(25:21):
of color being invited to even look back on that
era and look back on that movement and look back
on the rise of the punk scene. And as Mimi
t Win, Professor of Gender Studies and Women Studies and
Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne
put it, quote, with Riot Girl now becoming the subject
(25:43):
of so much retrospection, I argue that how the critiques
of women of color are narrated is important to how
we remember feminisms and how we produced feminist futures. If
riot Girl fell apart because of a race riot. How
is this to be remembered as catastropefic melee, as course correction,
as a brief interruption, And how then are we to
(26:05):
face the future with certain progress having been achieved or
with violence including a ratire, deferral or annexation not having ended.
So basically, what she's saying is looking back on this movement,
how we talk about race impacts, how we can all
move forward, if in either an inclusive or not so
inclusive way. Definitely. And I struggled with this a little
(26:26):
bit because I love a lot of these Riot Girl figures,
and why I loved them is because they talked openly
about things that weren't pretty and weren't great and weren't easy.
They talked about sexual assault, they talked about, you know,
the patriarchy. They talked about things that weren't easy, and
it's I see them now, and I really wish I
had seen more artists using race and conversations around race
(26:47):
in their art in those ways. Um, but one musician
that I really want to shout out and who was
really Siminar in black punk and the Riot Girl and
alternative movements that sprang up for black women is Tamark
Lle Brown. She's an artist who has performed with bands
like Fishbone, which is another seminal mostly black punk band,
and other acts like Outcasts shout out to them because
(27:09):
we're here in Atlanta. And she even was the face
of the documentary about afro Punk, So if you if
you bought that movie that DVD, she is the woman
on the cover um And she's actually talked about how,
even though she is associated with the afro punk movement now,
back in the day, like in the nineties in New
York City, she didn't have the benefit of an online
(27:30):
message board for black punks and it was a totally
isolating experience for her. And she writes about how sort
of riot Girl at the time just wasn't speaking to
her issue. She was a black woman living in these
really intense urban environments that were infested with crime, and
she didn't feel safe. And so this idea that riot
Girl for her represented this sort of um safe, sanitized
(27:54):
version of white womanhood that just did not jibe with
what she was experiencing, which is being a aqu woman
with a shaved head having to exist in these you know,
very tough streets and sort of lived day to day.
She didn't see her own experiences being reflected in the
music that Riot Girl was putting out right, And I
love the way that she described that frustration as saying, quote,
(28:17):
riot girl felt like a bubble gum expression. You know,
she's talking about having to be out in the world
and just survive. I have to survive. I have to
defend myself, she said, not not like her counterparts, who
were sort of the white punk artists in the riot
girl scene, saying things like you just think I can't
play because I'm a girl, you know. She really described
(28:40):
it as being a really, uh, a lack of equivalence,
and in terms of the complaints that she was talking
about and sort of the frustration and anger that she
brought to her punk artist ry versus some of what
was more mainstream in the riot girl movement. Totally, and
I think we should talk more about Brown her eventual
contributions to the riot girl scene in the alternatives that
(29:01):
sprang up after this quick break and we're back, and
we were just talking about how black women feeling isolated
from the punk and riot girl scenes, we're really forced
to carve out their own spaces as an alternative to
the Riot Girl scene that did not seem very inclusive
(29:24):
to them. And what I love about this is that
it starts with a party, like most good things in life.
Um Brown met up with other rockers like Maya Glick
and Honey Child Coleman and eventually organized something called Sister
Girl Riots, a series of d i y punk shows
for black women as an alternative to the punk scene
that was dominated by white men and the Riot Girl
(29:45):
scene dominated by white women. Their first show was Valentine's
Day of and it sounds lit. I just love the
like reclaiming of the name to Sister Girl with the
hard Girl in there too, which is a great way
to sort of highlight the sisters involved in the scene
(30:06):
right like black women in the scene. And one have
good fun facts about the Sister Girl Riots is that
they made space for white ally ships, so they really
went out of their way to be inclusive Um, even
more so than I would say Riot Girl as a
movement had been for black women or for women of
color in the punk scene. So iconic feminist punk band
(30:27):
UM sort of lead the Slitzes are up. One of
your favorite musicians so much she performed as a you know,
as a white woman in the Riot Girl scene. She
performed as an opener at a Sister Girl ally. Um,
so it's it's really interesting to see that behavior of
inclusivity modeled through the Sister Girl riots. And so you
(30:50):
might be thinking, why does anyone care about this? Who cares?
No Black women in punk? Sure? Why is it an issue?
But it's an issue because of representation really doesn't matter.
If you listen to our Lisa Simpson episode, you know
that it's important for people of all kinds to see
themselves reflected in different spaces, and growing up, I never
saw myself reflected in this this scene that I loved
(31:11):
so much and that connected that I connected with so much.
And so having these conversations now and going back and
lifting up the examples of black women in the punk
scene is very, very important. And I think that someone
who noted this very well is Laurnda Davis, who is
the president of the Black Rock the Black Rock Coalition.
She argues for the necessity of more representation, not just
(31:31):
for black women in punk, but for black women in general.
She writes, I never looked at a magazine and thought
that that was what I was supposed to look like.
On the one hand, it's actually kind of liberating to
to not be the standard for what womanhood is. That
standard put a lot of women in boxes, and they
lived their lives trying to get out of that box.
Black women were never even allowed in the box. I
wasn't looking at a TV saying, oh, that represents me.
(31:54):
I wasn't listening to music telling me about my experience.
I had experiences that told me I wasn't concerned with
these things that the happy songs were about. And so
I think that quote really nails it for me. Why
it's so important to see yourself reflected, why representation really
does matter in media of all kinds, including music totally.
And I think it's any episode about the history of
(32:17):
black women and punk would be we be ever missed
and not mentioned that one of the songs that I
think of as the feminist punk battle cry is actually
we have it because of a black woman. Um you
probably know the song. It's O Bondage Up Yours by
the X ray Specs, and they had this amazing black
woman uh singer called poly Styrene, which is a pawn
(32:39):
on sort of the plastic thing that you get your
hamburgers wrapped in um. And really, what I think makes
this song such a feminist battle cry is the opening lines,
which if you know the song, you know how it
goes well, which we're going to play. Yeah, our listeners,
you should definitely put it um. It starts with her
saying really quietly, some people think that little Girl should
be seen and not heard, but I say, and then
(33:02):
it turns into this intense, intense screech oh, bondage up
yours and it's just an amazing song. You'll hear it soon.
It's so great. If you don't know it, you're gonna
love it. Some people think little Girl should be sin
and not heard, but I think bondage the ass, won't,
I say, Fay. And what I love is not only
(33:48):
the artistry that she brings to her music, but also
her background, her story um they hear. In The Independent,
they write of Polly as a dumpy, frumpy, m most
wilfully unsexual girl from Brixton with braces on her teeth.
Polly Styrene was a perfect candidate to find herself through punk,
(34:09):
turning this persona on its head into an art form.
She became one of the movement's principal female figures. Her
song Oh Bondage up yours a feminist rallying cry, I
love it so much. And even Kathleen Hannah's, who was
often cited as an early originator of riot Girl, although
she would probably push back against that title, she often
cites Polly as a major musical influence. In Polly's obituary
(34:33):
in The New York Times, Kathleen Hannah was quoted as saying, Polly,
it's the way for me as a female singer who
wanted to sing about ideas. Her lyrics influence everyone I
know who makes music, and I think that's so important
when you have this person who was often cited as
a seminal figure in punk, who went on to do
all these really important female lead projects like Latigue and
Pakimi Kill, saying, Oh it wasn't for Polly and ex respects,
(34:57):
these folks might not even be here. And let's talk
a little bit it now about some black women artists
in the punk scene now that we should all be
paying more attention to, because for me, I think the
confines of what qualifies as punk or after a punk
can be more blurry than um. I don't know, I
(35:17):
feel like for me, as I think less of an
audiophile than you be, it can be a little bit
blurry to understand exactly what punk we should be checking
out now. So what artists would you recommend our listeners? If?
If you're yeah, if you're interested in more rock music
from black ladies, there's a lot of your in luck,
it's a great time for it. Um. One band that
(35:37):
I have to sort of shout out is the Alabama Shakes.
Alabama Shakes is fronted by a black woman. Their hit
song Don't Want to Fight one Grammys for Best Rock
Song and Best Rock Performance, and when they won, it
was the first time a black woman had one or
been nominated in those categories since Tracy Chapman in It's Crazy,
And shout out to Tracy Chapman because like four speaking
(36:00):
of formative black women in my in my musical history
as punk, Tracy Chapman, she's more She's not really punk,
she's more rock. I don't know, yeah, not aren't me.
Another band to checkout is a feminist punk band from
London called Big Joanie Um. The lead singer of this
band actually has a ted X talk about being a
(36:22):
black feminist and punk of course, called O Bondage of
Yours definitely check out and you might not even think
of them as punk. But two artists that I love
that you should definitely check out if you are Beyonce
and Solange Knowles. Beyonce used to really be thought of as,
you know, just a pop musician, but with her seminal
(36:42):
album Lemonade, she was actually nominated for a Grammy for
her song Don't Hurt Yourself in the category of Best
Rock Performance and perform. Yeah. I don't think people really
know this about her, but that album really was a
big step in terms of her branching out and sort
of people opening their opening the door for other kinds
(37:02):
of music to be considered um rock. That track she
co created with Jack White from White Stripes, right, so
he or he was at least sampled on that track too,
and he is like, the White Stripes is rocket for sure. Um.
I know there was a lot of noise when Beyonce
was nominated in a rock category from people who were
(37:22):
probably super hardcore traditional rockers, but according to Recording Academy
Senior Vice president Bill Frymouth, he told Metal Injection, I
think what we found this year is that so many
artists that have that were in rock or rock adjacent
were taking more sonic risk this year than ever before,
and it made for a really exciting, dynamic landscape in
that field. That Beyonce recording has Jack White in it,
(37:44):
and it has Led Zepplin samples and in it. I
think it's Beyonce really stretching. It's an artist at the
height of her musical powers, and it's really reaching in
many different directions and we're all better for it. And
I just love it's so great sonic risk. I love
that let's all take more sonic risk. Let's all be
more like Beyonce in all ways. UM. And again, Beyonce
(38:07):
isn't the only Knowles family member who is known for
taking those kinds of risks. UM. Probably my favorite album
of the last five years is Solange Knowles as a
Seat at the Table. If you haven't listened to it,
turn off this podcast and put it on. It will
turn their life. UM. But basically, she talks about how
one of the seminal songs on that album was really
(38:28):
rooted in exactly the kind of things that we're talking about. UM,
the isolation that she felt as a black woman interested
in punk and alternative music. So in an interview, she
explained how the song fo Boo really has punk rock roots.
She says, what I think of fu Boo and the
album as a whole, I think of punk music and
how white kids were allowed to be completely disruptive, allowed
to be an anti establishment and express rage and anger.
(38:49):
They were allowed to have the space to do all
of that, even if it meant being violent or destroying property,
and that wasn't exactly inclusive to us. If we created
the groundwork for rock and roll, if we were inclusive
and we were violent and a string property and able
to express that kind of rage, that it would not
be allowed in the same way. And so even though
Fubu is not a song that you might think of
a traditionally punk, it really is rooted in exactly what
(39:11):
we're talking about today, this feeling of isolation that a
lot of black kids grew up feeling looking at their
white punk counterparts. And Fu Boo stands for something for us,
by us, And it reminds me of the way that
we talk about protests a little bit, like I've seen
that mirrored in Oh this is such a peaceful, non
violent protests full of white women on on the women's strike,
(39:36):
contrary to Black Lives Matter protests that we've gotten violent
in the past, and it's like, well, violence is not
seen as threatening all the time when it comes from
a white kid setting up trash can on fire, whereas
at a predominantly black demonstration, like the same kinds of
(39:57):
behaviors are framed really differently and seen as more threatening.
And think about I've always I think that's a great example,
and I've always thought, you know, threatening behavior gets threatening behavior.
And so when I was at the Women's march, I
didn't see things like tanks, I didn't see an oversized
police presence. And so if you go to a Black
Lives Matter march or rally, the fact that those things
(40:17):
are already there before it even starts, I think, kind
of becomes an indicator for what kind of climate they're
already preparing for. It's like a ratcheting up that happened exactly.
Both interesting. Well, I think that's such a great point
about punk, because punk is violent and it's undertones, right,
it's about expressions of anger and outbursts, and so creating
(40:38):
a space for black women in particular to buck gender
norms and to buck racial norms of what's expected and
what's tolerated in a really angry artistry. Um is important. Yeah,
I mean, what's more punk rock than growing up in
a situation where you are dealing with microaggressions all day along.
(41:00):
I think back to myself coming home in junior high
and turning on my stereo and just rocking the f
out some some punk music and just getting that out
at the end of the day. And I think it's
important for black kids to be able to do that
and have that space the same as their white counterparts. Yes,
so's minty listeners, We want to hear from you. What
is your favorite way to rock out, to punk rock
(41:23):
or to let loose and lets let your sort of
music expression, share your frustration with the patriarchy or with injustice.
How are you musically uh letting your punk flag fly nowadays?
So we want to hear from you black punk bands
and punk fans of all of all stripes. You can
(41:46):
hit us up on Instagram at stuff mom ever told you.
You can tweet at us at mom Stuff podcast, or
you can send us an email at mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. Two th
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening the stuff Bomb Never told you. And today we
want to revisit one of my favorite Sminty episodes that
we've done here on the show, and that is the
(00:27):
topic of black women of Riot Curl. Um. This is
a topic that is near and dear to my heart
as a black woman punk rocker myself. Um, I love
riot curl music, punk music, all music, really, but punk
music has a a special place in my heart. And
this episode does too. Yeah, and it happens to coincide
(00:49):
with another project that, um, you've been working on, Bridget,
and one that I'm very excited about and I think
that our listeners would be very excited about, I hope.
So I'm really excited to share it with y'all. So
you've ever listened to Sminty and thought, gee, I'd love
to hear Bridget talk more about activism and music and
art and culture. Well, now's your chance. I am so
(01:10):
happy to announce a partnership between How Stuff Works and
Afro Punk called Afro Punk Solution Sessions podcast hosted by
yours truly and my good friend Eve's Jeff Cote. Um. Really,
what we want to do with afro punk is do
a deep dive in cultural and social and political identity
through things like activism and art and politics and dance
(01:33):
and all of that. And yeah, if you if you
know anything about afro punk, you know it's a huge,
vibrant global movement that has culture and arts festivals in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Paris,
Johannes Brooks, South Africa. Um. It really started from a
documentary called Afro Punk about black identity in punk spaces
(01:54):
and sort of what it's like being kind of double marginalized.
Um as many people of color who are involved in
these kinds of spaces find themselves, and from there it
really spun out into a cultural movement. Yeah. And I've
had the pleasure of working on some of them and
also hearing it come together, and it's it's really beautiful
and powerful. I'm super proud and super pumped. And uh,
(02:18):
you did fantastic working on a bridge. Well, Anny, you
also did fantastic work on it. Because our gal Annie,
before I was ever even really in the mix. Spent
how long in Johannesburg, Um, I think seven days, about
eight days. Spent eight days in Johannesburg, South Africa. She
went with almost no notice to gather footage of Afro
(02:42):
punc Johannesburg and Solution Sessions Johannisburg, and it came out masterfully.
So it's really kind of a it's an interesting bedfellows
kind of project. If you listen to some of the
other House Stuff Works podcasts, it's there's a lot of
familiar voices involved, both in front of the scenes and
behind the scenes. If you listen to Question booth Um
(03:03):
Our Own, Dylan Fagin is a producer on Afropunk. Annie
has her hands in the pot an afropunk Um. If
you listen to Stuff of Life, Julie Douglas is involved
in Afro Punk. So it's really kind of a fun
collaborative project from some folks some of y'all might know
if you listen to other shows on the network. Absolutely
and if that hasn't gotten you excited enough, we have
(03:25):
a little, a little taste of a bit of a
trailer for you right here. Are you tired of politicians
who make a lot of promises but don't get anything done,
fed up with white people constantly threatening to take away
your rights, Exhausted by being treated like you're less than human,
done with it being underestimated, sick and tired of being
sick and tired. Well, here at Afro Punk, we've got
(03:47):
the solutions be time. The American dream is being able
to walk out, work hard on your own and meet
(04:09):
the world on your own terms, and be celebrated for
being black and walking in that trip. It's very important
to me. It's important to have any kind of space
affirms that they are not exclusionary, be an alternative to
what is wrong represented as this sort of monolithic, singular
idea of black identity and popular culture. Because I've education
(04:44):
has always been a tool for our collective liberation. We
have to teach our kids to build networks and build coalition.
So we educate our kids in this collective consciousness across
multiple intersections of identity, then we can start to build
our own institutions in our community. And you know, that's
really to me the answer m M. That is the
(05:13):
point of today's conversation to understand how it is that
we need to really band together, to come together, to
have our coalition, to have our community life is not
just divisive, it's actually people are coming together overcoming racism
operates on the belief that we can continue to address
the symptoms of educational and equity, or we can finally
(05:37):
address the cause, which is systemic racism. I think it's
so important that we begin to shape the shame, the guilt,
to stand up for ourselves, to reclaim our bodies, reclaim
our minds, reclaim our souls, and reclaim the the the
things that belong to us. To be proud of who
(05:59):
you are and know that your story is powerful. The
solution sessions, it's where real world problems meet fearless solutions.
So yeah, if you are listening to that and you thought, gee,
my issue in life is that I'm not hearing bridget
Taut enough. I mean, I hate to say that, Like
(06:19):
if you know me, you know, like I'm I hate
self promotion, and even this feels very like, oh I
hate this. But it would be really awesome if you
could subscribe, if you could rate and review us, because
that really does help um folks find the show and
their feeds. And honestly, this is this is the kind
of show that I've always wanted to make. I'm dating
myself quite a bit here, but I remember when Apropunk
(06:41):
was first put on my radar I was in college,
was a sophomore in college, and people were sort of
passing the DVD of the documentary around to the dorms,
and you know, people were gathering in small groups to
watch it. And for me, as a as a woman
of color who was interested in music and culture, it
was like seeing myself reflected on screen. And you know,
(07:01):
I often felt like a bit of an odd duck
in a lot of ways, and watching the Appropunk documentary
that was one of the first times I thought, oh
my god, there's so many of us. It's not just
me who feels out of place all the time and
never feels like they quite fit in and is interested
in sort of what those conversations mean. So that sounds
like you, or if that sounds like a conversation that
(07:22):
you would be interested to have with us, please check
it out. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please listen, rate, subscribe,
review all of that, and yeah, please enjoy this collaborative
dream project of mine. Yes, your new Bridget. When you're
a college sophomore and you're watching the documentary, look at
(07:45):
you now, Oh my god, College Bridget will be figger
pants right now. Maybe I did my pants out of happiness.
Maybe maybe you did. Um. Yeah, so please check that out,
and in the meantime, check out this. Uh. This the
old favorite of ours. If you've listened to Kristen and
Caroline tackle this topic. UM, We're gonna be doing it
(08:06):
a little bit different, so you can think of this
as really a companion piece to the really great episode
they put out um called Women and Punk Um. I
have been a long term love lover of all things punk,
really all things in music. In college, I was actually
a radio DJ at my local college radio station, w
(08:27):
u z m B, Greenville, North Carolina. Oh my god,
you've been behind the mic for a while. No wonder
you look such sat for the podcast. Yes, I was DJ.
Cole Slaw was my handle, and that is a reference
to Enan Cole Slaw from the comic book ghost World.
And I DJ a radio show only punk music. So
(08:47):
I've been a big punk fan for a long time.
I've always loved to Riot Girl, and today I am
so thrilled to talk through some of the ways that
black women have kind of sadly been erased in the
history of punk music and the history of retail. Um,
the story behind what you might think of as riot
girl and why that is. Yeah, and punk rock, I
think is typically thought of as a white thing. It is, right,
(09:11):
or at least it's predominantly even like punk rock of
the eighties and nineties. We think of a lot of
British bands that come to mind, like the Clash what
is It, the Sex Pistols, and even into the sort
of nineties grunge, which I know is not technically the
same exact thing as punk. I'm no punk expert, but
(09:32):
I think of a lot of angry white people totally
and I think I think that perception does persist. And
I think that's fair because punk definitely has roots in
this hyper masculine um response to sort of white working
class frustration, particularly in the UK. So it's totally fair.
But that doesn't mean that there wasn't a place for
(09:52):
black musicians, particularly black women, in these movements. Um. There's
this great quote from Day's magazine. There's no denying that
the UK ay punk scene was in part driven by
the anger and isolation felt by white working class But
punk music is not the sole property of whiteness. Even
though too many people of my generation. It may appear
that way at first glance. Like many fests of pop culture,
(10:13):
its historical image has been whitewashed. When you think about
punk's history, its bands like the Class, the sex Pistols,
the Ramones that immediately come to mind, and so I
think it's important that even though yes, it may have
these roots in white frustrations of the working class, punk
music has the same kind of roots in black communities. Yeah,
(10:34):
and in so many ways, as we've talked about music
and cultural appropriation the past, o'mley comes to mind. But
what I find really interesting about punk here is that
that article goes on to say that in many ways
black people were the original counterculture figures, and in so
many ways like rock and roll, has its roots in
(10:56):
black culture completely. I mean, if you've taken you know
class us is on on a cultural anthropology and where
punk and rock and roll come from. It really undeniably
does have roots in black musicians, going back to folks
like Chuck Berry and Bou Didley. These are folks who
were really improvising, really trying a lot of new things,
and a lot of why things like rock and roll
(11:17):
and then later punk, why they stuck around so so firmently. So,
for instance, there's always been this really obvious connection between
punk music and you know, musical genres like reggae. I
think that you can definitely hear their influence in there.
And it's just like this journalist Charlie Birken Hursts notes,
the spirit of punk is present and always has been
in music made by black people. So really, when you're
(11:39):
thinking of punk, is this white art form, it can
just as easily be said to be a black art
form as well. Yeah, so that is interesting how when
you think of punk rock in particular, it has been whitewashed,
even though the roots of punk rock came from a
lot of black artists. If you think about rock and
roll writ large, there's a lot of whiteness associated with
(12:02):
rock and roll and with its spinoff of punk rock.
But in reality, a lot of that cultural appropriation started
way back in the fifties. So n y Use cultural
anthropologist Professor Maureen Mahn explains in this book what Are
You Doing Here? A Black Woman's Life and Liberation in
Heavy Metal. She says that it you know this, as
(12:23):
more white people started to be attracted to rock and roll,
black people started to think this is for them, not
for us. There were always black people participating and present,
but they had started to be outnumbered. So beyond the
sheer out numbering, white rock musicians often had more success
performing songs originally recorded by black blues, R and B
and rock musicians. I'm thinking Elvis, right, Elvis became he
(12:47):
was the original Miley right, like, he became controversial, and
he became known for the ways in which that white
Southern dude was basically embracing artistry that had originally really
been a black thing. Right. And if you've ever seen
the movie dream Girls, which by the way, if you
haven't seen it, it's so good. Um. They illustrate this
(13:07):
so nicely with the idea of they have this soulful
song that this majority that this black girl group you know, sings,
and that when that song is re recorded by white
teenagers that sound very bubbly, it becomes an instant smash hit. Um.
And so I think, you know, there are so many
illustrations of that throughout culture, but really it's it's just
(13:28):
like Marine Mahomes says, this idea that it becomes something
that you then associate with whiteness, whether it actually has
roots in whiteness alone, in regardless of that, it just
becomes something that you think of as white. And I think,
as someone who has been a long, you know, lover
of all kinds of music, but specifically punk, that certainly
(13:49):
jibs with my personal experience. You know, I grew up
feeling very isolated being like a black punk fan, particularly
a black, a black female punk fan. But I grew
up feeling really self conscious for liking something that was
quote unquote for white kids. Um I grew up. I
wouldn't say I was teased for it, but I was
never very open about my my love of punk. And
(14:11):
I like all all different kinds of music, but particularly
I really like punk, but I never felt comfortable talking
about it. When I would buy CDs at the record store,
I always remember feeling this kind of weird sense of
shame or I would sometimes, this is so embarrassing, but
I would sometimes ask, um. I remember I was buying
a Wheezer CD, and I asked, do you guys offer
gift wrapping? Because I didn't want the teller to be like, oh,
(14:35):
why is this black girl buying a Wheezer CD? Has
that really been part of my and I think from
the research, you actually see a lot of black kids
who grew up feeling this way. Um, there's been an
entire movement started called the afro punk movement that started
as a collection of message boards online or other black
punk fans to find each other and connect and swap
(14:57):
stories and swap zines and swap CDs out. That whole
movement has grown into an international phenomenon. They have they
have a global festival, They have festivals in South Africa
and New York, Atlanta, Brooklyn, and it's really taken off
as this cultural thing now it's sort of it started
as sort of this thing that a lot of black
kids felt kind of anxiety around, but now it's sort
(15:19):
of the who's who, like the black glam glam folks
you see lots of You know, there was a spread
and Vogue magazine of the various fashions that afro punk
and performs there, and it's now it's this like very hip,
cool thing. But in the beginning, it definitely did not
feel that way. So would you say afro punk is
it different genre or is it a reclaiming of a
(15:41):
genre that had been whitewashed. I think it's a reclaiming,
and I think it's sort of carving out space for
these black punk fans who have long felt isolated, ignored, erased,
or just felt kind of weird about liking something that
has been associated so heavily with whiteness. It's a reclaiming
and a way of opening up space for those folks
to connect and meet each other and feel good about it.
(16:03):
So basically, what it comes down to is that black
folks aren't the people that we talk about when we
talk about punk music. And we're gonna talk about why
that's such a big problem after this quick break and
we're back. So the erasure of people of color from
depictions of the punk movement really came to a head
(16:25):
pretty recently, and it's criticism that the recent Riot Girl
collection at n y U s Fail Library and a
recent book of the same name chronicling the movement that
all but erased black women. Now, Christen and Caroline again,
they have this great episode all about the Riot Girl
movement and they mentioned this collection, this n y U collection,
in that episode. So wait, can you back up and
(16:46):
explain to me? Because I had not really heard the
term riot girl before today's episode, So what what is
Riot Girl all about? Yeah, So, according to Race and
Riot Girl, from a journal out of the University of
Washington's Department of Gender Studies, quote iyot Girls an international
underground feminist movement, mainly youth oriented, that initially emerged from
the West Coast American alternative and punk music scene. Um,
(17:08):
you could think of that as bands like The Slits,
the Raincoats, Heavens. To Betsy, this was really and Carol
Christen and Caroline shout out to them because they break
this down so nicely. This was really a movement about
young women getting to college feeling a little bit frustrated
with the lack of ability to talk about things they
were dealing with, things like sexual assault, things like sexism,
(17:30):
and expressing those frustrations through music. And in this case,
riot Girl is spelled with a bunch of rs in there, right,
so it's like a growl girl. Yeah. So these are
like angry young women screaming, slash shouting, slash singing there
their feels, which I think is a really cool artistic
expression of uh, totally understandable and righteous anchor. Yeah. I mean,
(17:56):
i I'm just to be clear, I love Riot Girl.
I think a lot of we're gonna talk about in
today's episode, critiques and pushes back on the whiteness of
the spaces that Riot Girl presented. But I really found
my voice through a lot of these screaming young women,
through folks like Kathleen Hannah was one of my idols,
through bands like Latigra. These were groups that that really
(18:18):
were seminal in my development. So I don't want to
come off like I'm trashing them, because I'm definitely not.
But I think it's important that we sort of I
think back to the criticisms of the movement and why
certain women maybe didn't feel as involved as they maybe
could have or should have, and it actually really reflects
the fractions within the feminist space more broadly. Right. I
(18:40):
think we've talked on this and this show, and by
the way, I think we're screaming angry women on the
podcast Variety on occasion too. So I fully identify with
this artistry and this art form. But you know, we've
talked on this show before about the friction when it
comes to movements to end racism and movements to end
(19:02):
sexism and the importance of intersectionality, and this is really
taking that intersectional feminist lens and bringing it to the
punk music scene. Totally basically the same arguments that black
feminists and white feminists are having today and online spaces
and academia. Those same arguments were happening on the mosh pit,
you might say, during the riot girl movement, things like yeah,
I mean, oh my god, I forgot about that. Have
(19:27):
you ever been in a mosh pit? I've yeah, I've like,
not always consensually like I've been. I've born witness to
a mash but I've been on the outer ring of
a mosh pit. Oh man, I've been in a couple
of mosh pits. I'll never forget seeing a friend of
mine break her nose taking an elbow to the face
at a no age hard I didn't take an elbow
(19:49):
to the nose. I saw my friends, which is hardcore,
was at the end of your concert out. I think
she was like, we have to leave right now, like
gushing blood from my notes, as like wait, I want
to see I want to stay. Oh my god. It's
really these issues of intersectionality really coming to a head
in the riot cral spaces, the same things that I
(20:11):
think a lot of feminists still grapple with today, things like, um,
issues of the white middle class women being elevated over
those of women of color, things of having to choot,
feeling like you have to choose between your race and
your gender as opposed to having that be, you know,
an intersectional framework. These are the same arguments we're having today,
and they were the same arguments playing out in the
riot cral scene. That's fascinating to see how it applies
(20:32):
to totally different subsets of society, of the artistic and
musical variety. Right. And this article by Gabby bess and
broadly called alternatives to Alternatives, the Black Girls riot ignored, uh,
really underscores the experience of being let's say, a young
black punk fan like you Bridget and reading these things
(20:56):
like Newsweek article that literally to find the movement, the
riot girl movement as something that was quote young, white,
suburban and middle class, basically literally erasing black women or
women who didn't fit any of those categorizations. Um. And
it just sort of confirmed the explicit whiteness that was
(21:19):
brought to the riot girl scene by journalists who are
covering it and describing it to those who might not
have been in it exactly and a line that resonated
with me so much from that article. There were black
women who imbibe with the spirit of punk in their
bones outside the riot girl movement as well. These women
carved out their own feminist pathways into the hardcore scene
precisely because they were rendered invisible by the riot girl movement.
(21:43):
And what I think jumps out at me at that
quote is that because black women were marginalized both by
the larger punk scene, you know, with lots of white dudes,
and through the riot girl scene that emerged from that scene,
which is mostly white women. Um, they really were forced
to carve out their own pathway for expression and kind
of build these alternatives to the alternatives alternative, Right If
(22:05):
if punk is an alternative and riot Girls an alternative
to punk, these black women had to say, Okay, We're
making another alternative to all those different alternatives. It's again
existing at the intersection of being a black woman in
a space that makes all women marginalized and then further
makes women of color not feel included in that space
(22:26):
that was carved out for women in a male dominated
space exactly. Um, there's a really famous black feminist theorist
called named Pat Hill. Collins, and she has this great
theory called the matrix of domination, which basically means that
as black women are marginalized women, all of our oppression
is interconnected and sort of magnified because it's interconnected. And
in reading about you know, black punk women that just
(22:49):
I was thinking about that theory like jumping up in
my head as I was reading. One of these black
punk rockers who was interviewed for this article really sort
of hit the dail on the head. She said, the
double burden of being a black girl who has to
deal with the white girls in the scene on top
of being a girl who has to deal with the
white boys who dominated the mosh pit at punk shows.
And so again you can see how it's this double
(23:11):
bind of having to deal with the isolation from these
white guys in mosh pits who were awful, and having
to deal with these white riot girls who could also
be awful in their own ways. It sounds like, as well, yeah,
and can we explore what we mean by being awful
just a little bit here too, because it doesn't take
explicit intent to be awful in this case, what we're
(23:34):
really talking about is not being inclusive, and that is
just as awful because you're basically erasing the right of
women of color in this case to exist in a
space that doesn't even acknowledge their present exactly. UM, one
of the punk rockers interviewed in this article, really talked
about how for her this idea that a lot of female,
(23:55):
white female riot girls had that you know, I want
to do a mosh pit where it's gonna be safe,
it's just gonna be women. She'd actually talked about how
she never felt unsafe because she was a woman. She
felt unsafe because she was black, and the the conversation
that was going on around UM women in punk scenes
and how they were treated totally forced her to erase
her blackness, even though that's impossible. And so it's just
(24:16):
like what you said. When I say awful, I mean
just not keeping in mind um inclusivity and intersectionality when
you're talking about this, and then also making marginalized women
feel like they should be grateful for even being included
at all, saying, you know, oh, the fact that you
were even invited into this scene. It doesn't matter if
we overlook you or erase you or completely don't even
(24:38):
speak to your issues. You should be thankful to be
here at all. And I see that large in the
feminist movement a lot those tensions definitely, And I think
that also became such an issue when Riot Girl was
treated in a retrospective light more recently so at that
n y U collection. Looking back at Riot Girl, UM,
(24:59):
I find it really fascinating to say that, UM. Now,
with it becoming this sort of symbol that we can
look back on for punk and women in punk, the
fact that women of color being left out even in
retrospection is truly problematic. It doubles down on that experience
of ignorance, It doubles down on that exclusion of women
(25:21):
of color being invited to even look back on that
era and look back on that movement and look back
on the rise of the punk scene. And as Mimi
t Win, Professor of Gender Studies and Women Studies and
Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne
put it, quote, with Riot Girl now becoming the subject
(25:43):
of so much retrospection, I argue that how the critiques
of women of color are narrated is important to how
we remember feminisms and how we produced feminist futures. If
riot Girl fell apart because of a race riot. How
is this to be remembered as catastropefic melee, as course correction,
as a brief interruption, And how then are we to
(26:05):
face the future with certain progress having been achieved or
with violence including a ratire, deferral or annexation not having ended.
So basically, what she's saying is looking back on this movement,
how we talk about race impacts, how we can all
move forward, if in either an inclusive or not so
inclusive way. Definitely. And I struggled with this a little
(26:26):
bit because I love a lot of these Riot Girl figures,
and why I loved them is because they talked openly
about things that weren't pretty and weren't great and weren't easy.
They talked about sexual assault, they talked about, you know,
the patriarchy. They talked about things that weren't easy, and
it's I see them now, and I really wish I
had seen more artists using race and conversations around race
(26:47):
in their art in those ways. Um, but one musician
that I really want to shout out and who was
really Siminar in black punk and the Riot Girl and
alternative movements that sprang up for black women is Tamark
Lle Brown. She's an artist who has performed with bands
like Fishbone, which is another seminal mostly black punk band,
and other acts like Outcasts shout out to them because
(27:09):
we're here in Atlanta. And she even was the face
of the documentary about afro Punk, So if you if
you bought that movie that DVD, she is the woman
on the cover um And she's actually talked about how,
even though she is associated with the afro punk movement now,
back in the day, like in the nineties in New
York City, she didn't have the benefit of an online
(27:30):
message board for black punks and it was a totally
isolating experience for her. And she writes about how sort
of riot Girl at the time just wasn't speaking to
her issue. She was a black woman living in these
really intense urban environments that were infested with crime, and
she didn't feel safe. And so this idea that riot
Girl for her represented this sort of um safe, sanitized
(27:54):
version of white womanhood that just did not jibe with
what she was experiencing, which is being a aqu woman
with a shaved head having to exist in these you know,
very tough streets and sort of lived day to day.
She didn't see her own experiences being reflected in the
music that Riot Girl was putting out right, And I
love the way that she described that frustration as saying, quote,
(28:17):
riot girl felt like a bubble gum expression. You know,
she's talking about having to be out in the world
and just survive. I have to survive. I have to
defend myself, she said, not not like her counterparts, who
were sort of the white punk artists in the riot
girl scene, saying things like you just think I can't
play because I'm a girl, you know. She really described
(28:40):
it as being a really, uh, a lack of equivalence,
and in terms of the complaints that she was talking
about and sort of the frustration and anger that she
brought to her punk artist ry versus some of what
was more mainstream in the riot girl movement. Totally, and
I think we should talk more about Brown her eventual
contributions to the riot girl scene in the alternatives that
(29:01):
sprang up after this quick break and we're back, and
we were just talking about how black women feeling isolated
from the punk and riot girl scenes, we're really forced
to carve out their own spaces as an alternative to
the Riot Girl scene that did not seem very inclusive
(29:24):
to them. And what I love about this is that
it starts with a party, like most good things in life.
Um Brown met up with other rockers like Maya Glick
and Honey Child Coleman and eventually organized something called Sister
Girl Riots, a series of d i y punk shows
for black women as an alternative to the punk scene
that was dominated by white men and the Riot Girl
(29:45):
scene dominated by white women. Their first show was Valentine's
Day of and it sounds lit. I just love the
like reclaiming of the name to Sister Girl with the
hard Girl in there too, which is a great way
to sort of highlight the sisters involved in the scene
(30:06):
right like black women in the scene. And one have
good fun facts about the Sister Girl Riots is that
they made space for white ally ships, so they really
went out of their way to be inclusive Um, even
more so than I would say Riot Girl as a
movement had been for black women or for women of
color in the punk scene. So iconic feminist punk band
(30:27):
UM sort of lead the Slitzes are up. One of
your favorite musicians so much she performed as a you know,
as a white woman in the Riot Girl scene. She
performed as an opener at a Sister Girl ally. Um,
so it's it's really interesting to see that behavior of
inclusivity modeled through the Sister Girl riots. And so you
(30:50):
might be thinking, why does anyone care about this? Who cares?
No Black women in punk? Sure? Why is it an issue?
But it's an issue because of representation really doesn't matter.
If you listen to our Lisa Simpson episode, you know
that it's important for people of all kinds to see
themselves reflected in different spaces, and growing up, I never
saw myself reflected in this this scene that I loved
(31:11):
so much and that connected that I connected with so much.
And so having these conversations now and going back and
lifting up the examples of black women in the punk
scene is very, very important. And I think that someone
who noted this very well is Laurnda Davis, who is
the president of the Black Rock the Black Rock Coalition.
She argues for the necessity of more representation, not just
(31:31):
for black women in punk, but for black women in general.
She writes, I never looked at a magazine and thought
that that was what I was supposed to look like.
On the one hand, it's actually kind of liberating to
to not be the standard for what womanhood is. That
standard put a lot of women in boxes, and they
lived their lives trying to get out of that box.
Black women were never even allowed in the box. I
wasn't looking at a TV saying, oh, that represents me.
(31:54):
I wasn't listening to music telling me about my experience.
I had experiences that told me I wasn't concerned with
these things that the happy songs were about. And so
I think that quote really nails it for me. Why
it's so important to see yourself reflected, why representation really
does matter in media of all kinds, including music totally.
And I think it's any episode about the history of
(32:17):
black women and punk would be we be ever missed
and not mentioned that one of the songs that I
think of as the feminist punk battle cry is actually
we have it because of a black woman. Um you
probably know the song. It's O Bondage Up Yours by
the X ray Specs, and they had this amazing black
woman uh singer called poly Styrene, which is a pawn
(32:39):
on sort of the plastic thing that you get your
hamburgers wrapped in um. And really, what I think makes
this song such a feminist battle cry is the opening lines,
which if you know the song, you know how it
goes well, which we're going to play. Yeah, our listeners,
you should definitely put it um. It starts with her
saying really quietly, some people think that little Girl should
be seen and not heard, but I say, and then
(33:02):
it turns into this intense, intense screech oh, bondage up
yours and it's just an amazing song. You'll hear it soon.
It's so great. If you don't know it, you're gonna
love it. Some people think little Girl should be sin
and not heard, but I think bondage the ass, won't,
I say, Fay. And what I love is not only
(33:48):
the artistry that she brings to her music, but also
her background, her story um they hear. In The Independent,
they write of Polly as a dumpy, frumpy, m most
wilfully unsexual girl from Brixton with braces on her teeth.
Polly Styrene was a perfect candidate to find herself through punk,
(34:09):
turning this persona on its head into an art form.
She became one of the movement's principal female figures. Her
song Oh Bondage up yours a feminist rallying cry, I
love it so much. And even Kathleen Hannah's, who was
often cited as an early originator of riot Girl, although
she would probably push back against that title, she often
cites Polly as a major musical influence. In Polly's obituary
(34:33):
in The New York Times, Kathleen Hannah was quoted as saying, Polly,
it's the way for me as a female singer who
wanted to sing about ideas. Her lyrics influence everyone I
know who makes music, and I think that's so important
when you have this person who was often cited as
a seminal figure in punk, who went on to do
all these really important female lead projects like Latigue and
Pakimi Kill, saying, Oh it wasn't for Polly and ex respects,
(34:57):
these folks might not even be here. And let's talk
a little bit it now about some black women artists
in the punk scene now that we should all be
paying more attention to, because for me, I think the
confines of what qualifies as punk or after a punk
can be more blurry than um. I don't know, I
(35:17):
feel like for me, as I think less of an
audiophile than you be, it can be a little bit
blurry to understand exactly what punk we should be checking
out now. So what artists would you recommend our listeners? If?
If you're yeah, if you're interested in more rock music
from black ladies, there's a lot of your in luck,
it's a great time for it. Um. One band that
(35:37):
I have to sort of shout out is the Alabama Shakes.
Alabama Shakes is fronted by a black woman. Their hit
song Don't Want to Fight one Grammys for Best Rock
Song and Best Rock Performance, and when they won, it
was the first time a black woman had one or
been nominated in those categories since Tracy Chapman in It's Crazy,
And shout out to Tracy Chapman because like four speaking
(36:00):
of formative black women in my in my musical history
as punk, Tracy Chapman, she's more She's not really punk,
she's more rock. I don't know, yeah, not aren't me.
Another band to checkout is a feminist punk band from
London called Big Joanie Um. The lead singer of this
band actually has a ted X talk about being a
(36:22):
black feminist and punk of course, called O Bondage of
Yours definitely check out and you might not even think
of them as punk. But two artists that I love
that you should definitely check out if you are Beyonce
and Solange Knowles. Beyonce used to really be thought of as,
you know, just a pop musician, but with her seminal
(36:42):
album Lemonade, she was actually nominated for a Grammy for
her song Don't Hurt Yourself in the category of Best
Rock Performance and perform. Yeah. I don't think people really
know this about her, but that album really was a
big step in terms of her branching out and sort
of people opening their opening the door for other kinds
(37:02):
of music to be considered um rock. That track she
co created with Jack White from White Stripes, right, so
he or he was at least sampled on that track too,
and he is like, the White Stripes is rocket for sure. Um.
I know there was a lot of noise when Beyonce
was nominated in a rock category from people who were
(37:22):
probably super hardcore traditional rockers, but according to Recording Academy
Senior Vice president Bill Frymouth, he told Metal Injection, I
think what we found this year is that so many
artists that have that were in rock or rock adjacent
were taking more sonic risk this year than ever before,
and it made for a really exciting, dynamic landscape in
that field. That Beyonce recording has Jack White in it,
(37:44):
and it has Led Zepplin samples and in it. I
think it's Beyonce really stretching. It's an artist at the
height of her musical powers, and it's really reaching in
many different directions and we're all better for it. And
I just love it's so great sonic risk. I love
that let's all take more sonic risk. Let's all be
more like Beyonce in all ways. UM. And again, Beyonce
(38:07):
isn't the only Knowles family member who is known for
taking those kinds of risks. UM. Probably my favorite album
of the last five years is Solange Knowles as a
Seat at the Table. If you haven't listened to it,
turn off this podcast and put it on. It will
turn their life. UM. But basically, she talks about how
one of the seminal songs on that album was really
(38:28):
rooted in exactly the kind of things that we're talking about. UM,
the isolation that she felt as a black woman interested
in punk and alternative music. So in an interview, she
explained how the song fo Boo really has punk rock roots.
She says, what I think of fu Boo and the
album as a whole, I think of punk music and
how white kids were allowed to be completely disruptive, allowed
to be an anti establishment and express rage and anger.
(38:49):
They were allowed to have the space to do all
of that, even if it meant being violent or destroying property,
and that wasn't exactly inclusive to us. If we created
the groundwork for rock and roll, if we were inclusive
and we were violent and a string property and able
to express that kind of rage, that it would not
be allowed in the same way. And so even though
Fubu is not a song that you might think of
a traditionally punk, it really is rooted in exactly what
(39:11):
we're talking about today, this feeling of isolation that a
lot of black kids grew up feeling looking at their
white punk counterparts. And Fu Boo stands for something for us,
by us, And it reminds me of the way that
we talk about protests a little bit, like I've seen
that mirrored in Oh this is such a peaceful, non
violent protests full of white women on on the women's strike,
(39:36):
contrary to Black Lives Matter protests that we've gotten violent
in the past, and it's like, well, violence is not
seen as threatening all the time when it comes from
a white kid setting up trash can on fire, whereas
at a predominantly black demonstration, like the same kinds of
(39:57):
behaviors are framed really differently and seen as more threatening.
And think about I've always I think that's a great example,
and I've always thought, you know, threatening behavior gets threatening behavior.
And so when I was at the Women's march, I
didn't see things like tanks, I didn't see an oversized
police presence. And so if you go to a Black
Lives Matter march or rally, the fact that those things
(40:17):
are already there before it even starts, I think, kind
of becomes an indicator for what kind of climate they're
already preparing for. It's like a ratcheting up that happened exactly.
Both interesting. Well, I think that's such a great point
about punk, because punk is violent and it's undertones, right,
it's about expressions of anger and outbursts, and so creating
(40:38):
a space for black women in particular to buck gender
norms and to buck racial norms of what's expected and
what's tolerated in a really angry artistry. Um is important. Yeah,
I mean, what's more punk rock than growing up in
a situation where you are dealing with microaggressions all day along.
(41:00):
I think back to myself coming home in junior high
and turning on my stereo and just rocking the f
out some some punk music and just getting that out
at the end of the day. And I think it's
important for black kids to be able to do that
and have that space the same as their white counterparts. Yes,
so's minty listeners, We want to hear from you. What
is your favorite way to rock out, to punk rock
(41:23):
or to let loose and lets let your sort of
music expression, share your frustration with the patriarchy or with injustice.
How are you musically uh letting your punk flag fly nowadays?
So we want to hear from you black punk bands
and punk fans of all of all stripes. You can
(41:46):
hit us up on Instagram at stuff mom ever told you.
You can tweet at us at mom Stuff podcast, or
you can send us an email at mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. Two th
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