Gender in the Music Industry

Rock, Discourse and Girl Power

Marion Leonard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351218245
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Why, despite the number of high profile female rock musicians, does rock continue to be understood as masculine? Why is rock generally assumed to be created and performed by men? Marion Leonard explores different representations of masculinity offered by, and performed through, rock music, and examines how female rock performers negotiate this gendering of rock as masculine. A major concern of the book is not specifically with men or with women performing rock, but with how notions of gender affect the everyday experiences of all rock musicians within the context of the music industry. Leonard addresses core issues relating to gender, rock and the music industry through a case study of 'female-centred' bands from the UK and US performing so called 'indie rock' from the 1990s to the present day. Using original interview material with both amateur and internationally renowned musicians, the book further addresses the fact that the voices of musicians have often been absent from music industry studies. Leonard's central aim is to progress from feminist scholarship that has documented and explored the experience of female musicians, to presenting an analytic discussion of gender and the music industry. In this way, the book engages directly with a number of under-researched areas: the impact of gender on the everyday life of performing musicians; gendered attitudes in music journalism, promotion and production; the responses and strategies developed by female performers; the feminist network riot grrrl and the succession of international festivals it inspired under the name of Ladyfest.

Chapter 1
Rock and masculinity

I know it's a sexist tiling to say, but women aren't as good at making music as men - like they're not as good as men at football. A girl in a dress with a guitar looks weird. Like a dog riding a bicycle. Very odd. Hard to get past it. (Julie Burchill, reply to a request to be interviewed for Never Mind The Bollocks, cited in Raphael. 1995: xi)

The purpose of this chapter is to unpack the gendered associations and definitions of rock. Rock encompasses many subgenres. such as heavy metal, punk, grunge and post-rock, each of which has particular associated codes of conduct and display, offering and encouraging separate gendered responses. Indeed, the distinctions between these categories is so marked that, as Johan Fornas states, 'rock actually seems to be more of a family of genres than a homogeneous category' (Fornas. 1995: 112). As the focus of this book is female-centred bands performing 'indie rock', there is a critical need to consider how gender is performed and negotiated within this musical style and practice.

Before discussion can move on to the subgenre of indie, however, it needs first to examine and assess the associations and presentations of the broad category of rock. The aim of this chapter is to explore the factors that prompt academics to pronounce 'rock music ... is probably the most blatantly misogynistic and aggressive form of music currently listened to' (Harding and Nett. 1984: 60) and. despite the rising number of successful female rock musicians, that 'the ongoing tradition of rock is still deeply masculinist' (Gottlieb and Wald. 1994: 252). The concern is to uncover how this gendering of rock is articulated, with particular attention to how a masculinist tradition is established, reproduced and maintained, and to highlight the implications of this tradition for female performers and music enthusiasts.

In particular, this chapter will consider how the masculinist 'tradition' of rock is, to use Foucault's (1990) phrase, 'put into discourse'. It will analyse how rock 'is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said' (Foucault. 1990: 11). Rock has variously been described as a male form, male-run, masculine and misogynist. Distinctions between these descriptions clearly need to be drawn in order to allow for a systematic analysis. However, consideration also needs to be given to whether there is overlap between these descriptions. For example, has the observation that 'rock is male-run' afforded the conclusion that it is therefore 'masculine'. or has the association of rock and masculinity been generated from other factors. This chapter will take account of the pronouncements and interpretations of rock on the part of academics, journalists, fans, musicians and listeners.

Control and production

Frith and McRobbie's article 'Rock and Sexuality' (1990), first published in 1978, is an early endeavour to understand how rock is understood as expressive of male sexuality and explain how it exerts control. They begin this exercise by stating, 'in terms of control and production, rock is a male form. The music business is male-run; popular musicians, writers, creators, technicians, engineers and producers are mostly men. Female creative roles are limited and mediated through male notions of female ability' (Frith and McRobbie, 1990: 373). Undoubtedly the predominance of men working in the industry has created problems of access and opportunity for women wishing to work in the music business. These problems have been considered by a number of critics. Sandstrom (2000) and Smaill (2005), for example, have discussed issues related to sound engineering as a gendered field, while Steward and Garratt (1985: 60-81) have documented the experiences of various women working within the music industry, including managers, sound technicians and producers, who have had to deal with sexism as part of their working lives.

However, conceding that the rock industry has historically been male dominated does not solve the core of the problem, for this explains only why rock may be thought of as a traditionally male career path. It does not distinguish rock from any other profession that has had a predominance of male workers. It does not explain why rock has been essentialised as a male form. When we talk of rock we are not only speaking of a community of musicians, engineers, producers and promoters; as Frith and McRobbie point out, 'rock' refers to a musical genre, an audience, 'a form of production and artistic ideology' (Frith and McRobbie, 1990: 373). Given this, the statement that rock is produced and controlled (mainly) by men is all the more unsatisfactory as an explanation of why rock signifies as male. The production of a cultural product by a male or female does not explain why it might be understood as intrinsically gendered. Of course, Frith and McRobbie do not propose that rock is seen as a male form simply because the music business is male-run. Instead, they argue that this fact is a natural entry point for their analysis. I, in turn, wish to use their comments as the springboard for this chapter. Their article, albeit problematic, is an important attempt to explain the masculinity of rock. In tracing the arguments put forward, and their attendant complications, I can perhaps better understand how the discourse of masculinity operates within this genre.

The gender of genre

Frith and McRobbie explore meaning within rock by examining the overtly macho subgenre 'cock rock' in comparison with the music labelled as 'teenybop', which is targeted at a young female audience. By choosing to study 'cock rock' and 'teenybop' Frith and McRobbie use two neat and polarised examples from which they can construct their arguments. Or rather, perhaps, they construct these styles as clear, identifiable opposites. Cock rock performers are defined as 'aggressive, dominating and boastful ... Women, in their eyes, are either sexually aggressive and therefore doomed and unhappy, or else sexually repressed and therefore in need of male servicing' (Frith and McRobbie, 1990: 374). One may take issue with this representation of rock. Such a clear definition rests on a cock rock archetype, thus ignoring songs by representative performers that do not fall neatly into this category (such as ballads) or rock artists who do not conform to the archetype. Moreover, by assuming that the rock performer is male they erase the history of female practitioners while also failing to acknowledge the popularity of 'cock rock' among girls and women. While Frith and McRobbie do mention that there are 'overlaps and contradictions' (Ibid.: 375) they do not work these theoretical complications into the body of their work, choosing instead to trade on easily identifiable tropes. Yet this is to do a disservice to the complexity of the 'cock rock' subgenre and, in a sense, to remake it for academic ease.

However, arguing that it is necessary to be attendant to the complexities of rock music practice and consumption does not deny the existence of the attitudes that Frith and McRobbie outline. Examination of music magazines and books produced for the 'hard rock' or 'heavy rock' market reveals that the characterisation presented by Frith and McRobbie in 1978 still has currency. A 1996 biography of Iron Maiden quotes lead singer Bruce Dickinson explaining his understanding of heavy metal. The quote appears in a section discussing Iron Maiden's 1990 album No Prayer For The Dying, which includes such titles as 'Hooks In You' and 'Bring Your Daughter ... To The Slaughter'. Dickinson states: 'Metal hasn't got the soft, round, flowing rhythms women tend to like. It's too fast, not at all smoochy. the quick release after the pent up moment. ... At the root of it. heavy metal is somehow quintessentially male, the equivalent of the female "not a dry seat in the house". What happens in the concerts is almost ceremonial' (Bowler and Dray. 1996: 118). Such gendered attitudes can be found not only in the discourse of heavy rock performers but also in the social codes of heavy metal scenes. As Krenske and McKay's (2002) ethnographic study of a heavy metal music club in Brisbane, Australia, revealed, the attitudes and behaviours of people within the club were highly gendered and women 'perpetually "did" gender on men's terms' (2002: 301). They found that women's 'access to, and experiences of, the subculture were determined by unequal relationships with men - women "participated" in male-defined terms or not at all' (Krenske and McKay. 2002: 301). Thus some aspects of rock music do replicate the macho attitudes outlined by Frith and McRobbie, and so testify to the masculinist nature of the genre. However, my concern is also to understand how rock music is perceived as masculinist even when such overtly macho statements are absent.

Frith and McRobbie's stylisation of the teenybop image as 'based on self-pity, vulnerability, and need' should also be probleinatised. One may take the example of the US indie rock band Nirvana, the proponents of 'grunge rock', whose Nevermind album sold ten million copies worldwide. The music produced by the group was loud, guitar-heavy rock with a raw vocal style often shouted over the instrumentation. However, the public image of lead singer and songwriter Kurt Cobain was of a vulnerable and sensitive individual. Rolling Stone journalist Chris Mundy has commented that. 'Cobain was notoriously quiet. He was moody and introspective, and the actions swirling around him often spoke louder than he did' (George-Warren and Dahl, 1994: 110). Cobain's public persona is an example of how the archetypes that Frith and McRobbie outline often bleed into one another. This seems to throw into question Frith and McRobbie's (1990: 376) suggestion that 'the contrast between cock rock and teenybop is clearly something general in rock, applicable to other genres'. Had they selected other subgenres within rock they would perhaps have been faced with a more difficult task for analysis.

A question of sexuality

The work carried out by so-called 'Queer Studies' scholars on popular music (Bradby, 1993; Brett et al., 1994; Gill. 1995; Smith, R., 1995; Kearney, 1997) challenges the assumption that rock should naturally be interpreted as heterosexual. While Frith and McRobbie's article discusses sexuality, it frames 'cock rock' as both presenting and appealing to an aggressive form of heterosexuality. The article explains that 'cock rock' links performers such as Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant (Frith and McRobbie, 1990: 374). Elvis is a pertinent example, for Gill argues that the period of his ascension in the 1950s was when 'rock 'n' roll acquired its reputation as a rampantly macho and masculinist art form' (Gill. 1995: 85). However, Gill points out that Elvis's status as 'the ultimate heterosexual male' was a perception promoted by 'the heterosexual males who wrote the articles and books that said he was' (1995: 85). Admittedly, a male homosexual reading would still strengthen the position that rock expresses male sexuality, although it would offer an alternative reading of how that sexuality might be characterised. Sue Wise's article (Wise. 1990: 390-8) challenges the traditional construction of Elvis by recounting how he held meaning for her as an adolescent who was developing a sense of herself as a lesbian. Her description of Elvis as 'teddy bear' rather than 'butch god' illustrates how fans produce meanings rather than consume set images. While a male performer may display a certain type of masculinity or sexual identity, the person listening to his records or attending his concert is active in making sense of that performance and may create a personal understanding of it that is at odds with the musician's original intention.

My intention is not to criticise Frith and McRobbie for any shortcomings in their article. Indeed, Frith's 'Afterthoughts' (1990: 419-24) address what he considers to be some of the confusions in the original paper. He comments, 'our account of how music carries sexual meaning now seems awfully dated. We rejected rock naturalism but we retained the suggestion that sexuality has some sort of autonomous form which is expressed or controlled by cultural practice' (Frith, 1990: 420). Frith and McRobbie's attempt to explain and analyse particular styles shows the difficulty in trying to isolate and understand musical texts and contexts. It demonstrates that meanings are not fixed but are open to negotiation. Moreover, despite the contradictions inherent within rock we are still left with the problem of understanding why rock is understood as a masculinist discourse.

Constructing histories and policing conversations

Analysis of the ways in which male rock performers are discussed and presented in music journalism and by record companies helps us to understand how the masculinity of rock is established, maintained and reinforced. In a discussion of rock and gender on the internet, Norma Coates comments, 'The gender of rock may appear stable, but it is "stabilised" through a constant process of reiteration and the performance of "masculinity", which act to keep that which is unrepresentable within it firmly outside' (Coates, 1998: 79). Like Coates, I am interested in understanding how this impression of stability is achieved and what strategies are employed to keep women musicians 'firmly outside'. The following discussion will consider how musicians are presented to fans and consumers in the written media and by the record industry, and will explore how worth and prestige are allocated to individual performers. My aim is to examine whether these processes of presentation can be said to be gendered.

Norma Coates (1998) has pointed to a rock discourse that seeks to give the impression of an archetypal (and male) rock performer. Yet, it is not only the gender of the rock performer that is in a constant process of reiteration but the very history of rock itself. Because of the commercial nature of music production, the industry continually seeks to present music product as understandable (placing all new releases within recognisable genres and categories) and accessible. The establishment of a canon of 'important' recording artists plays a part within this process, as it offers a list of performers who can be considered culturally worthy. This aids record companies in attempts to capitalise on old product, as it enables them to promote selected recordings as 'classics' or 'seminal'. Music canons act both to guide the consumer and also to help record companies to narrow the mass of old recordings into a manageable and saleable quota of back catalogue artists.¹ I do not want to suggest, however, that the process of canonisation is purely driven by a commercial imperative. Popular music canons are formed through aesthetic judgements made by musicians and critics such as biographers, journalists and historians, who are informed by. often tacitly agreed, notions of value, taste and worth. Certainly, the commercial success of recordings and their appeal to the listening public also informs this process but. as the canon includes artists whose albums were commercial failures at the time of the first release, it does not dictate the artists deemed for inclusion Through this process a large number of musical texts that have been variously promoted by record labels and music journalists over the past few decades can be given an aura of stability by the selection of particular performers as 'greats'. This process is advantageous not only to record companies but also to music journalists who can then reference these 'established' artists as points of comparison in record reviews and as antecedents to new musical movements. As Marcia Citron comments, 'the canon creates a narrative of the past and a template for the future' (Citron 1993: 1).

These rock and pop canons are produced by various sections of the music industry. Record companies, publishing houses, radio stations, music and style magazines, and music papers regularly produce lists of hallowed artists. These are sometimes presented as definitive guides to a music genre or era, or they may take the form of a detailed retrospective of a particular year or performer. Although there is a degree of variance in the artists selected for inclusion, a number of performers are regularly cited as 'important'. Once artists have become established as canonical, magazine and book publishers may focus on them to create other celebratory texts that both trade off their status and reinforce it. Collections of rock writing about these stars are an example of how this process of reiteration operates. However, artists do not become canonised through one linear process of record company promotion, chart success, music press acclaim, inclusion in rock encyclopaedias and collected editions. Rather, one can think of these as several elements of different processes, which may occur in synergy and that feed into one another and support the canonic process. The fact that rock anthologies and encyclopaedias are often compiled by journalists working for the music press is illustrative of the crossover between these processes.

Yet while these canons seek to make rock his tors intelligible, they also serve to characterise and reify it. These texts communicate a particular conception of rock history that works to 'stabilise' gender. Examination of a number of rock guides and encyclopaedias illustrates how rock lists and canons commonly privilege male performers. To ascertain the level of gender bias within these publications a sample of ten encyclopaedias and guides published between 1977 and 2001 was analysed.² The number of entries devoted to female solo artists and bands with one or more female vocalist or musician was compared with the total number of entries in each publication. It was found that between 8 and 22 per cent of entries included a female artist or band with one or more female member, while all other entries were made up of male artists or bands with exclusively male membership. A large percentage of the featured female performers were either vocalists or singer-songwriters with very few entries for female-centred bands.³ While I do not wish to denigrate the con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• General Editor's preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Rock and masculinity
• 2 Gender and indie rock music
• 3 Meaning making in the press
• 4 Strategies of performance
• 5 The riot grrrl network: grrrl power in indie rock
• 6 The development of riot grrrl: through zines, the internet and across time
• 7 Ladyfest: online and offline DIY festival promotion
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Zines
• Appendix 2: Interviews
• Select discography
• References
• Index