fange
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Post by fange on Jun 22, 2020 9:17:16 GMT
“The division between artist and fan dissolves in the moment of impassioned listening, and with it goes the division between genders,” writes Sasha Geffen in “Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary,” a new book about music’s long history of gender nonconformity. “In music, people are not separate; they cannot be divided up into two discrete categories.”
What do you think? Does music help to break down barriers like this, in your experience?
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~ / % ? *
god
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Post by ~ / % ? * on Jun 22, 2020 13:15:08 GMT
It can, it might despite rock/pop, etc's long history of misogyny and homophobia, we aren't there yet. Maybe through the generosity of those not included forgiving and looking the other way throughout its history some of have been able to feel that way. But they were be generous, possibly.
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Post by Charlie O. on Jun 22, 2020 15:09:22 GMT
I'm not sure I really get what she's saying.
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Post by fonz on Jun 22, 2020 15:26:20 GMT
I don't buy it at all.
A lot of pop/rock music is basically 'love/lust songs', and there are some very different lyrical approaches between the two (..or more) sexes.
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Post by DarknessFish on Jun 22, 2020 15:43:19 GMT
Glitter up the Dark? Christ. Wasn't that what he was sent down for?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2020 16:40:18 GMT
For some reason this brought back the memory of me doing an uni assignment about hippity hop. I found a piece by a black female author defending tupac and the like calling woman "bitches" and "Ho's" etc. I can't really remember her rational off the top of my head. I think it was something like bravado but if you read the lyrics in other songs they're telling black women to be strong and celebrating that.
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Post by DarknessFish on Jun 22, 2020 19:14:26 GMT
I'm not convinced that music has that big an impact to be honest. I guess with the advent of glam there came quite a bit of androgony and blokes in dresses and make-up, but I don't think many people looked at Steve Priest camping it up with the Sweet, and decided that gender identity had gone out of the window. Likewise in the 80s, I think that there were many people who would happily listen to a Culture Club song, but still demand the death penalty for gays. All those old dears who loved a bit of Dale Winton. There's a separation between the reality of confronting change in the streets around you, and the stylised showmanship of celebrity, which people see differently.
If anything, people start identifying with separate tribes via music. Mods, rockers, metalheads, goths, etc.
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fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
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Post by fange on Jun 23, 2020 10:26:37 GMT
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Post by Charlie O. on Jun 23, 2020 11:57:03 GMT
Yeah, I'm not convinced that the writer of the article really thought about Geffen's argument very hard. I'm not convinced Geffen did either, but it's just two sentences quoted out of context, so who knows.
That said: "Can music really give us a better understanding of what the other gender is thinking, feeling?" Yeah, sure. Why not?
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fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
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Post by fange on Jun 23, 2020 12:19:54 GMT
I want some examples, though. When did music give YOU an insight into the other gender in a deeper, meaningful way? Has it ever changed the way you thought about the opposite gender? Has it ever been that kind of bridge for you? A bit deep, i know, but it's in my head now. I mean, does listening to and enjoying Aretha, Nina, Billie, Helen Reddy, whomever, instantly classify a guy as a man in touch with the feminine mind?
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Jun 23, 2020 15:05:55 GMT
I read, or tried to read this extract in the guardian and it's just waffle. It sounds like an attempt to rewrite pop history to suit her thesis, a non sequitur. www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/07/sasha-geffen-glitter-up-the-dark-pop-and-gender-nonconformity The fluidity of the music’s structures echoes the fluidity of Xen’s physicality. Arca explicitly closed the conceptual gap between trans bodies and trans sounds, articulating the queer embodiment that had run through the synthesiser’s history ever since Wendy Carlos powered up her Moog.Huh? Maybe if I'm listening to a girl group record I might stick the old fella between my legs and do a silence of the lambs whilst singing into a hairbrush but I would argue that music enforces the sexes more often than not. People singing as men or woman and communicating that experience. Little Richard or Marc Bolan maybe played around a bit but they were still men.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 23, 2020 19:13:07 GMT
The wider point in the OP is the power of storytelling to imagine yourself in another mind and emotional state. That wasn't a new thing that came with popular music, though. It's why literature, theatre and folk tradition were so influential. I agree with some of these comments. It reminds me of when Prince died and he was being made out by some to be this transgressive queer icon. Was I listening to another guy? He was as straight as a razor blade. Or, on the other hand, when George Michael died and there were all these comments telling us to "focus on the music, not his sexuality", despite most of his songs being based on his sexuality, despite it being utterly impossible whilst he was alive to mention his name in public without someone making a joke. People just get out of music what they want to, I guess.
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Post by sloopjohnc on Jun 23, 2020 19:44:41 GMT
The wider point in the OP is the power of storytelling to imagine yourself in another mind and emotional state. That wasn't a new thing that came with popular music, though. It's why literature, theatre and folk tradition were so influential. I remember listening to an interview with Smokey Robinson and the interviewer asked him if his mom really told him to shop around. Robinson said, "My mom died when I was very young." As you write, good songwriters and songs can take you other places.
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fange
god
Listening to long jazz tracks
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Post by fange on Jun 24, 2020 9:53:08 GMT
Art can do that, for sure. But... eh, never mind.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2020 13:20:41 GMT
I think the question to ask is what counts as "gendered" in pop music. Most of my favourite love songs could have been written or sung by either gender. Or, maybe that in itself is what the point is getting at.
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