> (truly dissenting)
>voices as Stereolab, Fugazi, Bikini Kill, Fifth
Column etc. Many of you
>might be saying, I don't know who these people
are. And that is exactly my
>point: The stuff is out there, you just have to
look a little harder.
Hmmmm. Such an elitist conception of authentic music-as-dissent.
>The point about girls and boys listening to this
crap and its effect on
>their radicalism is, well, crap....
Yeah. Probably. But then I think that the problem is that you're searching for rebellion/resistance in the *content* of the lyrics or something. The really interesting stuff on the ways in which pop culture is resistant is done by folks who actually ask how people understand, interpret, use, make sense of and recreate the meanings of the mass media crap. Tricia Rose has argued that, while rap music certainly reproduces rather hetero/sexist ideologies, it is part of a larger struggle over access to and control over the meaning of public space. Drawing on urban political economy, Rose shows how rap music is embedded in a wider hip hop culture that takes back public spaces through block parties, concerts, the use of white music in scratching and now sampling, and graffiti on public spaces like subways. The practices of those who produce and listen/dance to rap music contest the dominant understandings of what constitutes the appropriate use of public space by posing a threat to the social order in an in-yer-face kinda way.
I see your point about focusing on music that isn't mainstream. And, yeah, I do know that there are a lot of political bands that never get heard, that are into the DIY ethos. Used to be involved in the fringes of that world. And funny, too but I always thought they weren't political enough, but compared to later convos in this thread about apolitical bands, they look good comparatively. The reason why people look at pop culture is because they are suspicious of that wonderful politics of authenticity that seems to inscribe the very elitism regarding music that rock was supposed to have undermined. So, when you say that people don't know the bands above and its probably because they haven't looked hard enough (and others would say its b/c they don't know crap about music) it doesn't sound a whole lot different from someone lecturing me about the aesthetics of Baroque as true music.
>And valuable questions they are. I think you
admit to a level of unknowing
>and open-mindeness a lot of people would not
reveal. That's brave.
I think you underestimate the meaning of "SnitgrrRl" ;-)