kusama pyjamas
Titled for Yayoi Kusama, who is the cat's pyjamas.
Queercore shows became more than just entertainment — they became places to cruise, to network, to take self-defense lessons. (via Queer to the Core )
Queercore artists oral history/interview at OUT mag. Bruce La Bruce, Kaia Wilson, Vaginal Davis, Tribe 8 etc.
The formation of Pussy Riot in Moscow last September was not a culmination of long-harboured musical ambition, songcraft or that strange alchemy of notes, lyrics, personalities and desire that sometimes spawns a rock ‘n’ roll band; rather it was reactionary – a furious two-fingered salute to Vladimir Putin’s decision to return to the presidency, a protest writ large in music and femininity.
Pussy Riot are an all-female punk band. More, they are part of an increasingly vocal young-and-disgruntled generation in Russia, railing against political corruption, the state’s monopoly on the media and the culture of illegal protest (to name but three sizeable gripes) and finding novel ways to display their dissent: the Blue Buckets group have run over official cars while wearing buckets on their heads; the art collective Voina painted a 65-metre phallus on the drawbridge opposite the Federal Security Service headquarters in St Petersburg, and activists in the Siberian city of Barnaul circumnavigated the protest laws by assembling a crowd of small placard-wielding toys.
via Pussy Riot’s Kremlin protest owes much to riot grrrl. guardian.co.uk
No idea how accurate, but the article does cover Pussy Riot and their riot grrrl influence in way that’s not patronizing to the notion of women’s protest music. Awesome that they’re gaining attention after homophobic and racist Russian artists have been given state art prizes.
I’d LOVE to know what their views of Putin are, beyond the western riot grrrl comparisons, but being monolingual in English with a bit of Spanish = unable to translate any of their interviews on You Tube.
Imagine a dream.
Eyes closed, Mouths open, as if in a dream. Standing facing us with their backs to the darkness, they sing, soundless; they have been standing here, singing for themselves for a long time, imagining us, hearing. Standing, facing days of tedium, facing a world that has adorned them with a false crown.
Standing, waiting.For ‘Listen’, a project inspired by Newsha Tavakolian’s childhood dream to become a singer, she made six studio portraits of professional women singers, who are not allowed to sing solo, perform in public or produce CD’s in Iran because of Islamic tenets.
Inspired by her feelings about her society, she made six extra images, which are also imaginary album covers with titles for the singers. As a statement, the CD cases are left empty.
The works are accompanied by a video installation with silent clips of the women singers performing.
(Source: , via globalvoices)
Singer Aretha Franklin said, “I just can’t talk about it now. It’s so stunning and unbelievable. I couldn’t believe what I was reading coming across the TV screen. My heart goes out to Cissy (Houston’s mother), her daughter Bobbi Kris, her family and Bobby (Brown).”
Dolly Parton, who wrote “I Will Always Love You,” said, “mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston. I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‘Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.’”
Another entertainment legend, Quincy Jones, said he was “absolutely heartbroken” by the news. “She was a true original and a talent beyond compare,” he said.
Oh god, i just heard, she was so young! An artist who can really sing like her could have been performing for decades yet :(
ETA: with so many iconic singers/artists of her generation passing, who are the next ones gonna be? Where does a WOC artist like her, who starts young, who’s really talented and doesn’t put up with being completely appeasing and trend based marketed in their work, get any support/sustain their career now?
The first time I was in a recording studio was in 1989 when my band Viva Knievel recorded 4 songs in Minneapolis while we were on tour. It was almost the 90’ s, and, being ahead of the curve, we were all freaked out about being documented, plus digital cameras didn’t exist, so I would’ve never thought to photograph the recording process back then.
Why would you? There was no Facebook or Tumblr or band websites back then. Maybe you’d want to document being in the studio for personal reasons, so you could remember, but it seemed like such a pain to me. Buying the film, bringing the camera into the studio, dealing with grouchy hungover bandmates who didn’t feel like having their pictures taken.
Also I was 19 and totally freaked out about being in the studio. It was horrifying when the engineer would solo my voice and force everyone to listen to me shrieking acapella. It’s still hillarious to me remembering that in the 90’s I routinely demanded to not have anyone put reverb or “any other shit” on my voice because I felt it was the equivalent of airbrushing and I wanted to sound like a real girl, not a girl dipped in honey. It’s funny because I was so nervous back then about what people would think of my lyrics and how weird my voice sounded that I can’t believe I refused any attempt at making myself sound more appealing. I just had to let it be painful.
So on Saturday I was walking to the studio to record with my new band, after not having recorded for like 6 years and I was thinking of everything that’s changed. I use reverb now. I’m not as obsessed with “realness” anymore and I am way more excited about recording than I am nervous. I was walking to the studio on cloud nine actually. I wasn’t worried about not sounding good or impressing everyone with my vocals. I was more excited to do my best to inspire the band while they were recording their parts, and just really happy about our songs.
I was also thinking about this thing my Mom told me once about how everyone thinks you are staring at their pimple when really they are worried about their own pimple AKA we are all insecure and once you realize that it, is so much easier to stop caring and just move on, into the moment.
So I brought my camera to the session and didn’t really know what to do with it. I didn’t wanna kill the vibe by taking pictures of Kenny and Carmine and Sara and Kathi while they were playing so I took some self portraits of me fake singing and waiting around, which is a lot of what happens in the studio.
Nowadays everyone in bands records everything. Here we are eating sandwiches, putting new strings on our guitars, holding a koala up in Sydney. I’ve written tour diaries and posted snapshots myself a zillion times now but still it’s hard for me to get used to.
I think I’m gonna try and take more pictures though and stop being so weird about it. I am so excited about our record and I know someday I’ll be happy if I took a couple pictures of the whole thing. Who knows I may even put some of them on Tumblr!!!Kathleen
Poly Styrene interview 1978 (by chatham43)
i cant believe the interviewer asks her about wearing braces and compares her negatively to Linda Ronstadt. OTOH discusses her approach to style and punk being as derivative as any other genre, which was a big part of her appeal re: not being sidetracked by the more insular ‘uniform anti-conformism’ aspects of punk.
Fatima Al Qadiri was born in Dakar, raised in Kuwait City and is now based in Brooklyn. Working across a bunch of mediums, Al Qadiri is both a visual artist and a producer. With regards to visual art, she takes photographs and collaborates with other artists (she’s a member of the K48 Kontinuum collective) on site-specific installations to which- if we’re not mistaken- she contributes sound designs. With regards to music, she has released several electro albums that are eclectic and feature music that, according to Pitchfork has, centered around the “spectral chanting of traditional Islamic songs in Arabic.” Al Qadiri has created soundtracks for several films and created scores for collaborations with fashion designers. Having exhibited her work around the world, Al Qadiri often uses Middle Eastern customs and rituals as the basis of her work yet reconstructs them with altogether different meanings- both subverting them while simultaneously celebrating them. Make sure to check out her amazing website here (it has awesome Mac-like functionality) and read her great column on global music here.
Marla Glen German based queer jazz, blues, singer : http://www.marlaglen.net/
kndr:
Valerie June—Work’n Woman Blues.
she’s such a great modern folk artist. her career has really been taking off lately, she was recently featured on jay z’s blog, i hear.
“I been work’n like a man, I been work’n all my life.”
i <3 her so.
(via Gladys Bentley) a better pic.
Courtney Gillette (via The real lives of celesbians | AfterEllen.com)
Way before Janelle Monae made cute suits her signature, or Lady Gaga was flaunting her alter ego Jo Calderone, there was Gladys Bentley, flirting and singing the blues in men’s clothing during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance.
Why no one has paid Betley homage with a proper documentary or biography is baffling to me. She wasn’t just into women (gossip columns were all a twitter when Bentley married a white woman in Atlantic City), she was an openly lesbian performer, who sang the blues not only at rent parties and speakeasies but at well known gay establishments. As for her style and preference for suits (and top hats! Homegirl rocks a top hat like nobody’s business!), she later told Ebony magazine, “It seems I was born different. At least, I always thought so….From the time I can remember anything, even as I was toddling, I never wanted a man to touch me…Soon I began to feel more comfortable in boys clothes than in dresses.”
The sad ending, though, came when Betley caved to the conservative pressures of the McCarthy era and “reformed,” marrying a dude, donning dresses, and saying she’d been cured. She also denounced her former ways as an effort to gain a mainstream audience, but that flopped. Gossip, style, blues, speakeasies, love affairs: Gladys Bentley’s life has the makings of some killer nonfiction. Who’s game?
Legendary 1930s blues singer Gladys Bentley. Openly lesbian, Bentley was the headliner at the Clam House, a gay and lesbian club on 133rd street in Harlem where she performed popular songs with double-entendre lyrics in top hat and tuxedo.
I’ve wondered why she hasn’t received better recognition and queer homage to. Even allowing for the combined erasure of specifically lesbians, butch/bulldagger women and WOC in queer media, Bentley was just such an innovator socially and creatively, through such influential periods in queer history. Her story would appeal to just about any audience that aren’t far right haters.
*though she had accepted conservative public norms by the time of her death, so I dunno about the implications for intellectual property.
(via heyfatchick)
