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.