Ani Difranco and Rust Belt Pride

"It's just incredible how interconnected all those dynamics are, so Subdivision was almost like a little testament... for all this work that Righteous Babe has been doing in the Buffalo community." -Ani Difranco



I have a complicated relationship with Ani Difranco's music. On the one hand, I love her anti-capitalism, I love her attempts at community building in Buffalo (one of her big projects was renovating an old church into a performance space), I love her Rust Belt pride. In a time when people talk dismissively of places like Detroit and Buffalo as dying cities, I view growing up in a "post-industrial wasteland" of Buffalo as a badge of honor. I have intense Rust Belt pride, which I didn't realize until I left. There is a wonderful friendliness about Buffalo; there is a sense that the illusion of capitalism and the American Dream has failed so spectacularly that like Detroit, the way forward was not to embrace the failures of capitalism and "getting ahead," but being nice to other folks. But it's also a super painful kind of love of Buffalo, which Ani gets at in "Subdivision"-- this song tugs at my heartstrings in such deep ways. There is something about folk-inspired music like this, the storytelling of the Ani Difrancos and the working class aesthetics of the Bruce Springsteens and such that hit so close to home. If you went to a public school in Buffalo, you could not ignore the privileges of race and class. And if you listen to an Ani song, you cannot ignore the privileges of gender and sexuality and the interconnectedness. Even if it's from a different angle-- I remember a friend of mine in high school remarking that Ani was the only "female guitarist" he really knew who could play as well as he thought the "male guitarists" he admired could play.

"white people are so scared of black people/ they bulldoze out to the country / and put up houses on little loop-de-loop streets / and while america gets its heart cut right out of its chest/ the berlin wall still runs down main street / separating east side from west"

White flight to the suburbs, segregation in the heart of the city (Buffalo is one of those places where you can be in a super upper class neighborhood on one block, then just a few blocks that way on Main St, you're in the hood)-- these are all painful descriptions of Buffalo, but lovingly depicted. Or lovingly interpreted. Her descriptions of the "boarded up houses" and "empty parking lots" are super evocative of the urban landscape of Buffalo, ones that I walked up and down and drove past on public transportation throughout my years in public school, and her decrying of the "colorful banners" refer to the many beautification projects the city undertook that cover up with a cheerful veneer the main issues of super high poverty levels, super high unemployment, segregation/racism, etc...

On the other hand, I'm not so sure I always like her fan base. Her fan base has included a number of imperial feminists; a number of cisgender white women that prescribe a particular way of being and interacting with the world that fails to include my reality. And it often includes people who see the way forward in Buffalo as investing in a nonprofit industrial complex that has largely failed real movement-building.

"and i'm wondering what it will take, for my city to rise..."

I think Ani's efforts in the community to increase community-driven responses to the failures of capitalism and neoliberalism in Buffalo provide some of a basis for what kind of response we need in Buffalo for our city to rise. And her storytelling and evocative lyrics are a reminder to transplants like me that it's hard to forget where you come from, and that there is a certain solidarity to be found in the sharing of storytelling from different parts of the country hit with neoliberal policies, from the Rust Belt to the South.

Riot Grrrls

Before the Spice Girls days of "girl power," there was riot grrrls. Arguably at the forefront of this movement was the all-riot grrrl band, Bikini Kill, though they had an uneasy relationship with mainstream media as being seen as the "leaders" of the riot grrrl movement and called for a media blackout at one point.

The above video is heavy into third wave feminist language and anger about sexuality, gender, revolution-- "when she talks, I hear the revolution, in her walk, a revolution's coming, in her hips, there's revolutions, in her kiss, I taste the revolution." However, it draws upon a number of more established, "traditional" elements, including punk culture, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, traditional rock, and previous all-girl/women bands in the United States.

The 1920s and 1930s saw an emergence of a number of all-female vocalist and musician bands such as the all-girl jazz band The Ingenues. The emergence of musical trends that would be called "rock n roll" saw the introduction of rock bands like The Runaways, whom Bikini Kill explicitly hold as a major influence. The Runaways were an all-teenage girl band in the 1970s, who eventually split over creative differences (amongst them that Joan Jett wanted to shift to a "punk rock" influence/aesthetic/genre, while other band members wanted to stay a hard rock band). Joan Jett of The Runaways produced the above song, "Rebel Girl," for Bikini Kill.

Perhaps one of the biggest influences of the emergence of a number of all-girl bands with a third wave aesthetic and politics was punk rock's Do-It-Yourself culture (influences in turn by trends from the 1960s and 70s regarding renovating affordable housing, saving money, and having a smaller impact on the environment). Rather than rely on a consumer culture to get goods and services, DIY culture sought to use and develop the implicit abilities of everyday people. That meant that certain aspects of "high art" wasn't reserved for elite musicians, or even "professionals" with training. Large elements of punk culture was proud in a kind of lack of knowledge of the mastery of different instruments; that anyone could play; that the art and the music and the message were too important to be reserved for an elite class of music.

Punk rock developed as an outgrowth of DIY culture and garage bands; riot grrrl and third wave feminist punk rock nonetheless had a great deal of similarity to its punk and rock origins, though it sought to make it a more women-friendly space by, for example, insisting that the boys stay out of the mosh pit and the girls come in front at Bikini Kill performances. The anger and the raw emotion was still there; just intentionally regulated by musicians attempting to shape and fuse gender to the political lens of punk rock. Though people have been self-publishing for years, the resources and technology to mass-produce "zines", or DIY "magazines" was available to this growing movement and remains a social justice staple today in discussions of "making our own media."

The continuity of these politics and music influences can be seen in the "post-punk" group Le Tigre that Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna formed, as well as a number of other groups. I was surprised but excited when I saw "Rebel Girl" on a playlist for the popular game Rock Band (of course, they bleeped out the "dyke" part). Riot grrrl was an intentionally "underground" pop music phenomenon (not unlike the grunge scene that spawned Nirvana, with whom they had personal and musical ties), so it is interesting to see the ways in which it is constructed by mainstream media and current popular games like Rock Band.

The boundaries of neo-soul and hip hop

I was struck by this assignment on genre and my own misgivings on not only what counted as "genre" but what was defensible and could be critically analyzed. I was reminded of a quote by The Mars Volta frontman, Cedric Bixler-Zavala about how there are no more genres, that they've all blended together. (Try putting The Mars Volta in a genre. Yeah.) Latin pop explosion, hip hop, pop-- no, I said, how were Ricky Martin and Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in the same category when the first two were wildly popular in their own right before they were popular in the U.S., we just did our assignment on hip hop, and this entire course is about critically engaging with the idea of the "popular".

This conflict exemplifies the sticky nature of genre-- who defines it, how comfortable the artists are with the label, and what kinds of marketing and identity politics play into the labels. I find I've been attracted more and more lately to artists that seem to often publicly chafe at their genre labels. Erykah Badu and Santigold immediately came to mind.

"neo-soul is dead"

The label "neo-soul" was coined by Kedar Massenburg, the president of the label that signed Badu, to market herself and D'Angelo. Since then, tons of artists have been slapped with a "neo-soul" label, seemingly characterized by smooth-ish vocals and some kind of deeper storytelling at play. Erykah Badu's On and On even explicitly opens its video with "a story by Erykah Badu", her "Bag Lady" video intentionally evokes Ntozake Shange's chorepoem (another defiance/ redefinition of genre) "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" down to having a lady in red, etc. There's a deeper story and a deeper emotion in these songs and videos, even the more mainstream break-up songs like Maxwell's Pretty Wings.

It almost seems a bit elitist, this definition of neo-soul-- here is the *real* music, the real black pop music that is deeper, tells a story, takes care with its production, etc-- as opposed to that poppy, mainstream, watery R&B. It seems this definition of neo-soul is born of a yearning for creativity and innovation in the landscape of popular black music. In 2001, Mark Anthony Neal's album review of Res illustrates this frustration:

"Though neo-soul and its various incarnations has helped to redefine the boundaries and contours of black pop, often the most popular of these recordings like Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, India.Arie's Acoustic Soul and Musiq Soulchild's Aijuswanaseing exist comfortably alongside the trite blah, blah, blah of the 112s and Destiny Childs of the world. Just a small reminder that "difference" is often only valued when it smells, taste and sounds like the same old same old. And even when artists break the mold, as Maxwell did with Urban Hang Suite and D'Angelo with Brown Sugar, they are expected to remain true to that formula lest they risk the critical backlash that both faced in the aftermath of artistically compelling projects like Embrya and Voodoo, respectively. The bottom line is that contemporary R&B and the radio and video programmers responsible for making that music available to listeners and viewers remain trapped in a small black box largely informed by hip-hop bottoms and Blige-like histrionics with traces of Luther and Whitney and enough tone deafness to have Clara Ward, Mahailia Jackson, and Sam Cooke turn twice in their graves about every four and a half minutes. With such a small margin to work with the seminal hybrid-soul of Lenny Kravitz, The Family Stand, Seal, Corey Glover, Me'Shell N'degeocello, Dionne Farris, Michael Franti (both the Disposable Heroes and Spearhead), and even Wyclef Jean has been consistently marginalized save an occasional MTV buzz clip and the hordes of "pomo-bomos" like myself who continue to crave great "black" music even if it don't sound like Marvin Gaye or Aretha Franklin. Shareese Renee Ballard (Res) refuses to be placed in that "black little box" as evidenced by her genre-bounding, eclectic debut How I Do."

The ways in which the R&B label itself is racialized (think of the exceptionalism of Robin Thicke and his brand of "blue-eyed soul") is critiqued by Res: "I'm a black chick and I'm cute. I mean I'm not busted or anything, you know?. I could sing R&B if I wanted to and it would be kinda nice, I think, but that's not me. I mean it's music, you know? F*ck R&B. F*ck alternative. F*ck the rock and roll world. Just do what makes you feel good."

The review by Mark Anthony Neal simultaneously praises innovation and genre-bending music by Res and even those who would fit the neo-soul label, and then gently mocks Res' collaborator, Santi White for her own genre-bending: "On the lyrical tip, Res was largely assisted by her Philly homie Santi White who is currently lead vocalist of the alternative-soul band (whatever the hell that means) Stiffed." Santi White would go on to become Santigold (first Santogold, then to avoid a copyright lawsuit, Santigold), still a black girl who chafed at the R&B label. She suggested that labeling her music as "just" hip hop was racist in a number of interviews, going on to state in 2008 that "People are really quick to throw me in that 'soul singer–hip-hop' category. I grew up hugely influenced by hip-hop but I was not drawing on any hip-hop directly on this record, just my whole musical development was based on a hip-hop aesthetic."

The complexity of influence and genre is really interesting to unpack in this quote. What is the hip hop aesthetic? Is it a kind of swagger, an attitude? Is it the feel of her work? I can't say that I understand what she means by it, though I understand her claiming multiple influences-- "dub, punk, new wave, and electronic" in particular. People have compared Santigold's music to The Pixies, whom she holds as an influence. Her funky, electronica sounds in L.E.S. Artistes and Creator have been compared to M.I.A., while her track Shove It was sampled by Jay-Z. Santigold claims an influence of the "hip hop aesthetic" but chafes at being defined within the genre. Erykah Badu likes the term neo-soul, but doesn't like fitting into its box.

Maybe the application of these genre terms goes back to what both of these artists talk about--marketing and selling their album. Erykah Badu attributes the marketing of herself and D'Angelo as neo-soul to the president of her label, while Santigold states: "I don’t wanna be a salesperson for my album. I think people should only buy my record if they like my record...So many people are bullied by A&R people and restrictions within the industry and genres and fitting into these neat boxes. I didn’t want to do it [music] unless it was on my own terms."

Shakira - Ojos Así (Eyes Like That/ Yours)

Embedding disabled on this video - Shakira performing Ojos Así on MTV Unplugged


Note: Translations based on my understanding of Spanish. The Modern Standard Arabic translation is from a graduate student at UNC, confirmed by the translations on the internet. Of particular note, I think, is the gender of the Arabic translation-- there are some translations that say "in *his* eyes", but the gendered pronoun ending in Arabic is clearly saying "in *her* eyes."

MTV Unplugged is often set up as a somewhat intimate venue with a small audience; the tv audience is invited to feel as though they have an opportunity to spend some time with their favorite artists. I have in mind iconic performances of Nirvana and Lauryn Hill-- somehow semi-last performances with tons of emotions stick in my mind the most. While those artists seemed stripped down to their bare emotion, Shakira seems-- not precisely subdued, but certainly a bit more contemplative. She is typically a woman who somehow exudes strength -- particularly physical prowess, but for some reason she conveys a certain level of competence and poise in her public appearances. Her IQ is rumored to be high (140, so state the media rumors), and while I don't place much importance on questionably structured standardized tests, she conveys a level of depth in her performance I think is rare for an artist that produces such wildly popular music.

Ojos Así is an extraordinarily poetic song that Shakira has remixed in several different versions. While there is a certain level of poetry in wildly popular music, I do think layers of meaning are rarer in a music culture that has gradually fought to redefine "obscenity" and socially acceptable directness, sometimes resulting in cruder constructions of human emotion and relationships. Sweet bubblegummy ballads sometimes lack a level of subtlety, but this song starts off with a metaphor:
"Ayer conocí un cielo sin sol / y un hombre sin suelo -- Yesterday I met a sky without sun / and a man without shame " -- That second line, "and a man without shame", could literally be translated as "a man without a floor," to contrast with the sky-- "el cielo"-- which could also be translated as a ceiling. The double entendres continue throughout the song, which intermixes Spanish with a short Arabic bit in the middle, presumably sung by the man whose eyes she has fallen in love with: "Lord of the sky, I'm calling you / In her eyes I see my life / I come to you from this universe / Oh God, please answer my call." The Arabic, while sometimes misunderstood in some fan circles as Lebanese colloquial / aamiyah, is actually Modern Standard Arabic / fusHa, a form that is often almost poetic by default.

In other live performances of this song, Shakira is much more flashy-- on her Fijacion Oral tour in 2007-2008, she performed in front of huge crowds. She prefaced this song with a "veil dance" to the song Enta Omri by the famed Arab singer Umm Kulthum. However, in accordance to this more intimate setting, she is far more laid back in this performance. She is performing an entire set in the same casual chic outfit (leather pants, boots, and a long-sleeved t-shirt), rather than multiple flashy costume changes befitting a worldwide tour. Accordingly, her dance moves are less flashy. Her bellydancing skills are no less impressive, but her repertoire of "crowd-pleasing" moves is not used in this performance. While I am no expert on belly dancing, I have enough of a familiarity with it to understand some degree of the technical skill required for some of her moves in this MTV Unplugged video, and am more impressed by some of her dancing than I am by her veil performance. Props and flashy clothing can often make up for lack of technical skill, though this is of course by no means true in Shakira's case as she lives up to her fame as an excellent dancer. In general, however, her moves remind me less of a highly choreographed set and more of friends hanging out at a party and dancing.

The tempo is even slowed down a bit for this version. Shakira seems not to have choreographed her opening dance moves, she seems to just flow with the music, as if she is hanging out with her friends. Her intensity as she focuses her vibratto on the lyrics seems more filled with emotion than when she is performing this song to bigger crowds, or even in the scripted music video. While it is not her flashiest, stagiest performance, I really appreciate the emotional resonance of this version, and I can feel the story and poetry of her infatuation / love / longing for this man, a man that seems to represent something so much larger that he somehow has a background chorus substituting for his voice (the background Arabic bit at 1:46).

Love the Way You Lie: Eminem and Rihanna

The rhythm and blues (R&B) /rap/hip hop collaboration has a history at least a few decades old. One of Rihanna's idols is Mariah Carey-- folks who edited Mariah Carey's Wikipedia article claim her Fantasy remix with ODB was the first commercially viable mix of R&B/rap, but I doubt it's so clear cut. Like sweet and sour mixes, the sultry juxtaposition of smooth R&B vocals with a harder driving rap has captured the mainstream so much that it's almost atypical to hear one without the other. This song has been characterized as being from the male perspective-- that Eminem's perspective dominates the song, so much so that they released a sequel, from the "woman's perspective." This song struck a chord with the popular imagination-- it was number 1 on the Billboard's Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks. Its position at the top was punctuated by heavy criticism lobbed by various corners that both the song and the music video "glamorized" domestic violence; that it excused Eminem's violent fantasies; that it encouraged gendered violence.

Why did this song strike such a chord? Is the appeal of this song as simple as the critics would have it; are the audiences for this song simply agency-less consumers that eat up "irresponsible" depictions of a relationship rife with destructive tendencies? The song provoked a firestorm on the portion of the blogosphere I frequent, with bloggers who had nuanced views of how this song and video frames and constructs violence within intimate relationships were swarmed and criticized for promoting/ "glamorizing" domestic violence. How can any piece of pop culture in and of itself "glamorize" violence? Even if the original intent of the song was to promote violence, there is room to create alternate meanings and contest hegemonic institutions and meanings. I agree that products of pop culture can collude to differing degrees with hegemonic oppressions, but I think there are more complicated things going on with this particular song.

I first heard this song on a road trip with a person that I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with; bordering on physical abuse. I had never seen the video. I didn't recognize Rihanna's voice at first, and so I made no connection to her relationship with Chris Brown. Eminem's voice is much more distinctive, and I am much more ambivalent about consuming his art, but there was something about this track that compelled me. There was something that resonated with me from the beginning, a kind of wrenching emotion that left residuals at the end of the radio play.

The track (and music video) leads with Rihanna's smoky vocals. The mellow piano timbre that starts shortly after she begins singing sets a melancholy tone, as the camera pans from a close-up of Rihanna's face against a backdrop of fire, to a sleeping couple (Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan) spooning in bed, then to Megan Fox holding a ball of fire in her hand. Fox's position of her body as she sits with her hands outstretched reminds me of when Muslims make du'a (perform a specific kind of prayer), or of a meditation pose. Rihanna's vocals, the sleeping couple, and Fox on fire all combine to present an appearance of peace that is churning with conflict underneath the surface. Rihanna's gaze is initially downcast as she accusingly sings "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn"; she raises her gaze as she confronts-- her partner? the audience? communities that allow structural and intimate violence to continue through collusion with oppression?-- the camera with a defiant "Well that's alright because I like the way it hurts."

The accompaniment falls, Fox's eyes open, and Eminem starts rapping against a background of syncopated beats and a layering of guitars. Fox sees a number written in marker on Monaghan's hand, and she confronts her partner in a rage. The rest of the video shows their violent confrontations punctuated with sex scenes and Fox's withdrawal and statements that she is going to leave, Monaghan's increasingly violent attempts to bring her back into their relationship, shoplifting at the local liquor store and making out in lawn chairs drinking the stolen cheap vodka. The lyrics begin with Eminem making the disclaimer that he "can't tell you what it really is, [he can] only tell you what it feels like"-- a position that implicitly problematizes concepts like academic objectivity.

In a country where class is rarely addressed head-on, it is clear that this couple is not affluent. Their environment and clothes code them as working class/ lower middle-class. As blogger Brownfemipower pointed out (in a series of internet posts that are not currently available to be linked to), the structural violence that Eminem and his former partner Kimberley Scott/Mathers faced as poor/working class people is important to address when talking about intimate violence. Eminem was also famously abused by his mother. The wrenching love between two people who are working class/poor, who face structural violence from the state and the sheer desperation of surviving, not only often mirrors that violence within the relationship but it also becomes one of the few sources of support and love, however flawed that love and relationship may be. While Eminem is white and his status as a white rapper has been hotly contested as purely a source of privilege, the intersections of his whiteness/maleness and class background produce a more complicated understanding of his internalization and externalization of violence. Rihanna's own background with a troubled relationship with her parents (particularly her father) and her abusive relationship with Chris Brown makes the video that much more complicated. While Eminem's voice might dominate the track, the lingering camera shots on Rihanna and Megan Fox center the women in a way that isn't really explored in simplistic condemnations of the video as glamorizing male violence against women. It is also clearly more complicated than oppressive readings that might state that Rihanna/ Megan Fox provoked violence-- there is an imbalance of power that the audience implicitly understands in a society build off the intersections of gendered oppression with capitalism, heteropatriarchy, racism, etc. The tender moments of the video (Fox and Monaghan sharing a sweet moment sketching in the air) are brought into stark relief against the slow motion violence and literal burning of the characters.

The song and the video are a musically and visually compelling collaboration between two people involved in abusive relationships, both of whom come from variously marginalized backgrounds (Eminem as Usian white working class man with a mother with a mental illness; and Rihanna the middle-class woman from Barbados with divorced parents and a father with a substance abuse problem).