Since the 1990s there has been a rise in feminist activist strategies used by girls and women to challenge inequalities felt in cultural, social and political spheres. This includes the Riot Grrrl movement, with a twenty year history; Ladyfest, which celebrated its tenth birthday in 2010; and Rock Camp for Girls, which marked a decade of empowering girls though music in the summer of 2011. All three movements adhere to do-it-yourself (DIY) punk sensibilities and prioritise music, with other cultural activities playing supporting roles, as a way to engage a wider audience with feminist aims and objectives and as a means of women and girls creating their own culture.

Popular discourse in various blogs, zines, articles and recent popular histories, show that certain individuals have played or continue to play important roles in each of these three movements and are frequently cited as important by others, as individuals in their own right or as members of influential bands. For example, Allison Wolfe and her friend Molly Neuman, both members of the band Bratmobile, were associated with the beginnings of the Riot Grrrl movement in the early 1990s. Allison then helped establish the first ever Ladyfest in Olympia, Washington in 2000 and has since been involved with coaching and tutoring at Rock Camp for Girls and is currently documenting an oral history of Riot Grrrl. So rather than referring to Riot Grrrl, Ladyfest and Rock Camp for Girls as three distinct movements rooted in specific time periods they can be seen within a broader context of networked feminist music worlds. This is important because fitting contemporary feminist cultural activism into neat time specific periods perpetuates a popular discourse that all too quickly relegates feminist acts of cultural resistance during periods of seeming inactivity to, at best, the history books and, at worst, something to be appropriated by capitalist structures and sold back in bite sized watered down versions to the very girls and women these DIY activities are meant to empower.

Riot Grrrl is not dead

“Not once did they (The Slits) fail to excite or inspire me, to make me a worshipper of rhythm, chaos and of attitude [...] I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Cut sat there in the record collections - of both musicians and fans - as the dynamic, the sound and the uniqueness for which to strive.” – Carrie Brownstein (1)

 

Riot Grrrl was born out of a desire to counter male dominance in the music scene, in particular the punk music scene, and to help a new generation of young feminists find their voices and fight for their rights. It had its origins in the United States in the early 1990s and consisted of a pre-internet underground cultural revolution by and for women and girls, but this is a movement that would reach much farther than its original roots. Riot Grrrl emerged at a time when women’s hard-earned rights to bodily autonomy and access to safe and timely abortions were under threat in America with high profile court cases being fought by world-weary feminists worn down by a media-fuelled feminist backlash. In many ways Riot Grrrl filled a gap left by the second-wave women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It brought the personal back to the political because it was a movement created by young angry women with stories to share and a desire to change the cultural landscape. In many ways the Riot Grrrl movement is very much tied into the notion of third-wave feminism and was a solid attempt to challenge patriarchy. Although the wave concept is undergoing critical challenges in contemporary feminism the ideology behind taking back the means of production and creating your own culture remains strong and can only benefit from a critical reworking that takes into account some of its original shortcomings such as its early tendency to omit class and race concerns.

The origin of the term can be traced to the Mount Pleasant Race Riots in Washington D.C. in 1991 and it is referred to in letters between Jen Smith an early Bratmobile member and Allison Wolfe. In these letters Jen calls for a summer of girl riots. Allison Wolfe along with Molly Neuman went on to create the influential zine Girl Germs which was to provide the material for the Riot Grrrl manifesto. This was followed by the creation of other zines by Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail such as Riot Grrrl, Jigsaw and Bikini Kill, subsequently forming a band of the same name. Zines often dealt with difficult issues such as child abuse, rape, and eating disorders, as well as ‘how to’ sections on starting your own band and self-publishing. Through zine-making and letter writing, an activity which was once deemed a radical act for women to engage in, in the days before women’s emancipation and suffrage, girls were provided with a support network to deal with such issues and to build skills and confidence. Hanna has since gone on to become one of the most widely known contemporary feminists associated with Riot Grrrl and cultural activism, even inspiring a documentary to be funded by her fans through the Kickstarter creative funding platform. The documentary is by Sini Anderson and called The Punk Singer.

Musically riot grrrls took their inspiration from women of the 1970s and 1980s punk scene. For example, Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex, The Raincoats, Joan Jett, Patti Smith, Fifth Column and The Slits, many of whom have until recently been written out of rock culture and are still neglected in contemporary music magazines. Even Viv Albertine, despite her role as guitarist with The Slits, struggled with issues of self-esteem and the confidence to call herself an artist openly until she turned 50 recently and she also failed to benefit financially from the early successes of the band. In keeping with the DIY ethos, and due to a lack of options, Viv is currently embarking on her first solo musical project without record label backing or financial investment other than from her small loyal fan base though Pledge Music subscriptions.

However, the punk-inspired Riot Grrrl movement appeared to be relatively short-lived when media interest in feisty young feminists created negative pastiches that ultimately led to the packaging of the movement into marketable versions of the Spice Girls’ and their somewhat hollow cries of ‘Girl Power’. This was far removed from the original call for ‘revolution girl style now’ and led to a self-imposed media blackout. It went back underground, but it was not dead, merely hibernating. The networks associated with Riot Grrrl have lasted well beyond this short period of initial activity.  The actors in the original Riot Grrrl network have played and continue to play important roles in Rock Camp and Ladyfest activities. For example, bands such as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy and Huggy Bear, often described at quintessential Riot Grrrl bands, have had an enormous influence on other Riot Grrrl associated bands. The individuals associated with these bands have influenced the development of Riot Grrrl chapters and music scenes in particular cities and countries predominantly in the UK and the USA, although this geographical profile is changing.

The network image below shows the relationship between Riot Grrrl associated bands and cities. This may be simplistic, but it provides a good starting point for understanding network structure and highlighting important and influential positions occupied by bands, individuals and even cites as sites for cultivating political music scenes. No doubt if the current resurgence of interest in Riot Grrrl activities are taken into account in the near future we will see a much denser and geographically active network. 

The data source used for creating the network of Riot Grrrl associated bands – 120 at the time of writing – is taken from a well-maintained Wikipedia list (2). The squares represent cities and the circles are bands associated with those cities. From the graph it is possible to see there are links between London and Bristol; two regions in Italy; Portland and Washington D.C.; and Manchester and Leeds. The purple diamonds represent cities with the highest concentrations of Riot Grrrl associated band activity. These cities; London, New York, Portland, Washington D.C. and Olympia; are also associated with wider music movements including the first Rock Camp for Girls in Portland, and in Washington D.C and Olympia, a well-documented punk music scene dating back to the late 1970s with Olympia being home to the first Ladyfest in 2000 and to Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana .

There is a renewed interest in Riot Grrrl as a contemporary feminist music world with a series of books, oral histories, music compilations and films being released daily. Much of this material is available free. One of the most exciting contemporary projects is being hosted by Riot Grrrl Berlin. On Monday, December 19, they released their first music compilation called Riot Grrrl is Not Dead.(3). They received 53 music submissions from bands in countries all around the world resulting in over 2.5 hours worth of new Riot Grrrl associated sounds free to download. This is the first of several download projects as they are inundated with requests by bands to be involved. Watch out for more news and information on the Riot Grrrl Berlin blog.

Ladyfest

“It just seemed like more and more by the late 90s, music, the music scene was just getting so, I don‘t know, um blown out in this um corporate way, um really sexist, really mediocre, really a backlash against politics, really depoliticised. And I thought, Hey, instead of complaining about this we need to do something about it. We need to be involved in our own entertainment, we need to participate in our own cultural activities and in our own cultural communities and be active creators of that, um and we can shape it in the way we want, and that suits our communities needs.” - Allison Wolfe (4)

 

This is an extract from a video interview conducted for Ladyfest Ten (London, 2010), to help celebrate a decade of women creating music and culture through DIY Ladyfest events. Allison was referring to being the instigator of the first ever Ladyfest in Olympia, Washington in 2000. This event sprang up out of a desire to create a space more open to the creative activities of women and was rooted in an already tightly knit creative community and music scene, as witnessed though the proliferation of Riot Grrrl associated music and activities a decade earlier.

Ladyfest can be loosely defined as an umbrella term for a not-for-profit woman-centred music festival and a signifier for an expanding transnational, music and cultural feminist social movement. Both the movement, as a process, and the festival, as one of the tangible outcomes, aim to create a safe space for women to take ownership of, and participate in, music, creative activities, political debate and gender based activism.

Ladyfest, as a social, music and cultural movement has an explicit feminist and community activist agenda providing space for political and policy education and debate. It also has close ties with Queer politics. Some authors, such as Leonard (2007) have suggested that historically, women have been alienated or marginalised from the means of musical production and public performance within the alternative and indie genres and assigned very specific roles within the music industry in general (7). Ladyfest is an attempt to subvert this norm with an ethos that stems from punk DIY movements and the Riot Grrrl Movement. However, the remit of Ladyfest has grown substantially to cover all forms of creative activity including film, art, theatre, dance, poetry and spoken word. Ladyfest is not-for-profit which means local and international women‘s charities and charities aiming to improve the lives of those affected by gender based discrimination are likely beneficiaries of any money raised above the amount required to cover the costs of running a festival. To date there have been more than 150 Ladyfest groups forming a transnational network in more than 50 cities worldwide. Grassroots Feminism (8), a feminist media and live history web archive project, aims to document the strong transnational community of young women as creators of new media and a feature of this has been the development of an archive for Ladyfest related material. The creators of this site are also undertaking an extensive survey of Ladyfest organisers and participants worldwide.

For many women, and men, Ladyfest may act as a first point of contact with feminism and an opportunity to make friends and meet like minded people while expressing identities through alternative music and cultural collective experiences. It is important to understand how Ladyfest may be a catalyst for the development of other creative networks, collaborative ties and friendships for organisers, performers/musicians and participants.  As Alison Wolf says,

“A big part of the legacy is really the unions and connections and networking, the connections and communities that are formed as part of organising Ladyfest. And a lot of these people have gone on to do amazing things and to continue with new projects that spun off of Ladyfest...When I look at the legacy of Ladyfest I see all of these connections that were made and whether the activities that people continue to work on together are called Ladyfest or not, I think that they’ve made awesome progressive movements of their own” - Allison Wolfe (4)

Rock Camp for Girls

Rock Camp for Girls aims to empower young girls and instil confidence to enable them to learn instruments and form bands from an early age and participate actively in music. Its approach is less DIY and overtly feminist but perhaps in other ways more inclusive and practical, and potentially less prone to the class and race-blind criticisms levied at Riot Grrrl and Ladyfest from time to time. However, the ethos behind Rock Camp for Girls is very much rooted in Riot Grrrl and Ladyfest ideology. As Carrie Brownstein declares “because rock music has become so watered down and homogenized, we forget that music is still a medium for social change and personal transformation” (7), and this is very much a goal of Rock Camp.

One of the main motivations behind setting up the camp idea, which began in Portland, Oregon in 2001, was the continuing lack of visibility of women in prominent rock bands or on the cover of music magazines, despite evidence that more women were playing instruments than ever before and faced less structural barriers that ten or twenty years previously. STS; a camp programme director and drum instructor, zine maker and former member of Cadallaca, amongst other bands; says “the story of Rock Camp must be told as just a part of the larger story of the roles girls and women have played in the music industry and how those roles have changed over time” (7). STS goes on to say that “girls discover that they draw their own boundaries, that they can push those boundaries through art, that they can be heard” (7). Most rock camps teach music alongside things like zine writing, self-expression through self-publication, lyric-writing, self-defence as well as teaching the basics of sound lighting and even DJ skills workshops. These elements tie together with learning an instrument, playing in a band, writing a song and performing on stage all within a week. As the movement grows and gathers momentum more and more high profile women musicians are getting involved, some of whom have never been involved with Ladyfest or Riot Grrrl, many of whom have. There are almost 40 Rock Camp groups with an online presence on Facebook or Twitter and while they are predominantly a North American phenomenon, there have been rock camps in Paris, and plans to have them in London and Spain. In many ways, like Ladyfest the demand and interest is growing. Portland Rock Camp for Girls was the first to emerge in 2001.

Double Dare Ya

Critical to understanding the success or failures of each of these movements as feminist music worlds is how they have been represented within mainstream media and music press. For example, it is well documented that the Riot Grrrl movement imposed a self-inflicted media ban that led to a perceived premature demise although it was not in fact the case. There was much myth-making around Riot Grrrl musicians as incapable of playing their instruments and their supposed man-hating version of feminism. On the other hand Ladyfest has lasted a decade without any indication of its popularity or influence fading and through the use of multi-media technologies such as mailing lists, Facebook and Twitter, has spread its reach to in excess of 150 different cities world-wide. However, Ladyfest communities are often subject to internal and generational conflicts, like many other feminist movements, and these tensions require careful negotiation. Ladyfest activities may positively influence women’s musical collaboration and participation by creating and renewing network ties between performers and making use of the personal and social networks of the organisers. However, the converse could also be true where negative experiences alienate individuals and detract from commonly understood feminist aims, one of the most frequent causes of tension between organisers and musicians lies in the payment of participating bands. This is tricky in the context of a not-for-profit event while at the same time not wanting to further ghettoise women's bands by not recognising their legitimacy through payment. Riot Grrrl and Ladyfest have been subject to attempted corporate co-option and criticised from those within and outside the movements of being class- and race-blind, perhaps unfairly so, perhaps not, but these are issues that need addressing. But perhaps Rock Camp for Girls is managing to challenge the status quo from a very early stage by getting young girls involved in positive creative activities and helping to build confidence and self-worth. Understanding the social networks of feminist music worlds can help minimise stress and improve the collaborative activist experience benefiting the local participants and a wider transnational audience by sharing lessons learned by organisers, participants and performers within a wider music based community.

“Dare ya to do what you want
Dare ya to be who you will”
(Double Dare Ya by Bikini Kill)

Author’s note: Susan is completing a PhD at the University of Manchester on the social networks of UK Ladyfest organisers. As an additional project and with the help of Riot Grrrl Berlin she is currently creating a database of musicians and bands associated with Riot Grrrl. If this describes you then please get in touch with your details: susan.oshea@yahoo.co.uk

1. Brownstein, Carrie (2010) Remembering Ari Up of The Slits. NPR music blog. Accessed July 1, 2011. http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2010/10/21/130720266/remembering-ari-up-of-the-slits
2. List of Riot Grrrl bands. Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riot_grrrl_bands
3. http://riotgrrrlberlin.tumblr.com/compilation01
4. Video interview by Susan O’Shea with Allison Wolfe for Ladyfest Ten (London 2010), November 2010.
5. Leonard, Marion. Gender in the Music Industry: Rock, Discourse, and Girl Power, Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series. Aldershot, Hampshire, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.
6. http://www.grassrootsfeminism.net
7. Anderson, Marisa. Rock 'N' Roll Camp for Girls: How to Start a Band, Write Songs, Record an Album, and Rock Out!! San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2008.