Hearing Sexism
Gender in the Sound of Popular Music. A Feminist Approach
Autor*in: Müller, Lena Jade
Reihe: Studien zur Popularmusik
Jahr: 2022
Sprache: Englisch
Umfang: 208 S.
Verfügbar
- Inhalt:
- If pictures can be sexist, can analyzing sound reveal sexism, too? Where is the language to discuss sexism in music? LJ Müller tackles these important questions in their 2018 German book titled Sound und Sexismus, which was awarded the IASPM 2019 book prize. Analyzing the voices of Kurt Cobain, Kate Bush, Björk and others, Müller demonstrates how gender is performed vocally and interacts with gendered aspects of embodiment and affect. The book is written from a strongly positioned and personal feminist perspective and is appealing to readers from various backgrounds – singers, producers, music lovers, as well as academics and anyone with an interest in feminist takes on pop culture. 1. Why did you choose this topic?I suppose that's like asking a dolphin why it is swimming.I am a feminist, and I am a musicologist. The question how music reproduces sexism poses itself. And it poses itself most urgently in the face of popular music, as the type of music listened to by most people. Still, there is a huge blind spot in musicological research on this topic and there are almost no tools for such analysis.2. What new perspectives does your book offer?My aim is to understand how individual songs as well as music culture as a whole partake in the reproduction of gendered inequality. Therefore, I develop a feminist toolbox for music analysis and then apply it to six songs. My tools focus on distinguishing different listening relations to pop voices as screens for identification, as objects of desire or as embracing extensions. I then show how heteronormative desire and a privileged male listening perspective are reproduced in my examples.3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?Music theory and musicology currently search for new methods and approaches and are changing in the face of a globalized world. My book in this debate can be seen as a radical intervention arguing for far-reaching changes in how we understand music and how we approach it analytically. Current musicology I see as suffering from huge hermeneutical injustices, that make it close to impossible to analyze and discuss inequalities in sound. My approach offers new ways of how to counter this problem.4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!I would really like to talk to Danielle Sofer.She is working on similar topics, and I can't wait to read her current book on sex sounds.She is also fighting for a fundamental change in musicology and music theory at present and is questioning the methods, approaches, and questions, the implicit agenda, of those disciplines. I would love to get in touch.5. Your book summary in one sentence:If you ever had a bad feeling about gender representations in pop-sound but couldn't really name it – that's what this book is about.
LJ Müller (they/them) studied musicology and cultural studies at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and works on their Phd. Their first book »Sound und Sexismus« published in 2018 by Marta Press was awarded the 2019 book prize of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). Müller works on topics of voices, gender, sound, popular music and affect.
Titelinformationen
Titel: Hearing Sexism
Reihe: Studien zur Popularmusik
Autor*in: Müller, Lena Jade
Verlag: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 9783839458518
Kategorie: Sachmedien & Ratgeber, Musik, Nachschlagewerke
Dateigröße: 434 KB
Format: PDF
Max. Ausleihdauer: 21 Tage