After a summer that seemed like nothing but bad news, fall finally brings tidings of activist feminist, postcolonial joy from Brazil! Salvador's own feminist punk collective and distro, Na Lâmina da Faca, wants YOU to help them plan their upcoming feminist women's festival! Here, look at the flier they e-mailed me:
My Portuguese is limited, but from what I can tell the flier says, "You girls who: play in bands (or are learning to play an instrument), and who are zinestresses, performers, DJs, urban artists, video makers, and workshop facilitators.... Get in touch and plan an independent, counter-cultural festival for women with us!"
"Convocatória abierta de 20/08 à 20/10/2010" means "Open call from August 20 to October 20, 2010". Which means that the collective is accepting submissions right now! So diy and independent feminist artists, send your music, art work, zines, writing, links, and also your festival ideas to nalaminadafaca@gmail.com.
No art or links to send? No worries, just send your love and support! Do your part to support your sisters in Na Lâmina da Faca by reposting the flier, reading and recommending their blog, and listening to and supporting the Brazilian punk bands they write about and the Brazilian zines they distribute. Help spread the love, and help put the international in International Girl Gang Underground!
Readers, I'm pleased to help spread the word about these two upcoming projects: not one, but TWO zines pertaining to the Riot Grrrl legacy are being planned as we speak!
Fellow zinestress and blogger Amber is working on a perzine on the all important and all but ignored issue of jealousy, awkwardness, and self-consciousness amongst scene girls, and how girls can deal with it. The zine will include "reading recommendations, distro listings, perzine-y stuff and a brief outline of riot grrrl (and why I think that riot grrrl ideas are still relevant today)". Amber is interested in people's opinions, so go check out her blog post to find out more (and to also check out a sweet picture of a rad RG tattoo)!
Sisters in the struggle Stacy Konkiel of Soul Ponies and Kate Wadkins have just put out a call for submissions for their International Girl Gang Underground Zine. Check out the sweet flyer:
I want to point out that both of these zines are open to a wide range of opinions on Riot Grrrl as a sociopolitical movement. As Amber says, her zine "won't necessarily be all "rah rah rah! riot grrrl rules!" If you're against the revival, feel free to share that opinion." In a special statement, Stacy and Kate disavow that "Riot grrrl, while being a vital movement within punk rock for many people, has a reputation for exclusion."
Amber, Stacy, and Kate aren't on some sort of nostalgia trip. They're committed to addressing the movement's failures and problems, and to adapting and creating a more inclusive punk feminist art culture. "I'm of the belief that we can talk about these things and try to improve upon them," writes Amber. Stacy and Kate are upfront about encouraging POC, trans/queer/genderqueer/ally folks, "including transguys and cisguys," to send in submissions.
In other words: these zines are the perfect place to start asking questions around big issues, and problems like the ones I was just blogging about earlier this week! If you have concerns about punk politics and activism, about building community across racial, class, sex, gender, and other social lines, about how to have productive discussions about these and other difficult topics, this is where you should start! So get out your Big Chief tablet, your Moleskine, your marble notebook, your word processor of choice and your favorite pen and get writing already. The movement needs your voice!
So, I wrote last week about how Women's History Month is useful because it provides with an opportunity to talk about women's history, and it gives us a time frame that we can organize around. Women's History Month gives us a chance to put together events to heighten our own, and others' awareness of women's history and how it's constructed.
This past Saturday, I attended a good example of this: The Sarah Lawrence Women's History Conference.
The theme of this year's conference happened to be sex, gender, and feminism within music (I'm still a bit shocked at just how perfect it was for me, personally). Not only did I get to attend, but I had also had the honor and privilege of presenting; I was a member of the Riot Grrrl History panel (Check out the full schedule). I spoke for twenty minutes about bodily images and experience in Corin Tucker's songwriting, and I was really thrilled at the questions I received afterward from the participants. Our entire panel was really interesting, and went very well, and I think everyone enjoyed it; or, I know that I certainly did.
But I don't want to talk so much about my panel and the knowledge that I am relatively comfortable with. No, today I want to focus on the questions that were on my mind after the conference. Because that's the point of this sort of event: yes, you share what you've learned and what you've worked on, and you chat with other people who are doing similar projects, and you nibble on delicious finger foods, and you feel all fancy for a single day out of your grubby grad school existence. But I think you're supposed to leave with more questions than answers.
After participating in my panel and attending the fantastic Womyn Song panel, and after spending a day in the company of feminist musicians and serious critical thinkers, I found myself thinking a lot about issues within Riot Grrrl and other '90s music made by women. I found myself thinking about issues I've already considered, but that I think I might have forgotten about in my excitement over the recent revival of feminist punk and art going on in my hometown. Here are a few of them.
1. Riot Grrrl and inclusivity. One of the greatest things about this conference was how inclusive it was. Theory and practice, history and present day issues, pop, folk, hip hop, Latin, and rock music, and especially issues of race and class in all these genres -- the conference covered all of this and more. But I, myself, picked a panel on Liz Phair, Lilith Fair, and the woman-born-woman policy at the Michigan Womyn's Festival. Both this panel, and the one I presented at, were attended largely by fair-skinned young women. This made me think about my attention to race within punk. I used to be much more concerned with the Latino presence in rock, and punk especially, but I haven't written about this in a long time. Lately, I've been focused on my own herstory with Riot Grrrl, but I haven't written about my experience as a fair-skinned Latina who listens to rock music and participates in other aspects of 'gringo' culture.
2. Rock and Imperialism. Listening to the delightful Julia Downes talk about her experience with Riot Grrrl in the UK reminded me that the movement did, in fact, cross many borders, and have an impact in many countries in Europe, and in several Latin American nations as well. I've done some reading on how Latin American governments felt the rock explosion of the 1960s was a colonialist threat to their cultures, and I'm working on a project about these issues as they pertain to Emo culture in Mexico City. So why haven't I questioned Riot Grrrl in this way? Why aren't we having conversations about punk, feminism, and the so-called 'Third World' -- both the 'Third World' outside of the US, and the 'Third World' that exists right here within our borders, within my city?
3. Only one way to deal with it. While hanging out by the For the Birds table later in the afternoon, I had a chat with tabler Jessy about some of these issues around Riot Grrrl and the difficulties it encountered in handling racism and classism. I think there's some opposition to the revival of Riot Grrrl on the grounds that it was a failure in this way, and we talked about bringing back this particular feminist punk movement as a way to question and maybe even solve these problems, rather than gloss over them. Writing a movement off because it wasn't perfect doesn't accomplish very much. But facing it head on, and finding other people who are willing to ask these questions and deal with these issues can be productive.
And after you find people to have these conversations with, you confront the futher difficulty of learning how to talk and express your opinions respectfully. You learn, or hopefully anyway, how to participate in meaningful dialogue that enriches everyone involved.
These are only some of the issues I hope to be more cognizant of in the coming weeks here at Rock and the Single Girl. I hope that I won't be alone in all of this, and I hope that readers out there will share your thoughts and concerns!
