AFRAM Blog Post #1

Shedding light on the women that played a huge role in rock is insanely inspiring to women, especially brown women in today's age to know that we've always been there. We've always been around and it was just a matter of lack of representation which also is no surprise of course. I love Professor Retman’s quote when she writes, “Minnie’s performance with the unsmiling white men who are in the club, ringing up sales and cash register – men who do not move in time with the music but still profit from the partial/marital inclusion of black people in the war time economy: "Memphis Minnie's music is harder than the coins that roll across the counter.” This capitalism from black culture and the white man profiting off of the creativity of black women and black people as a whole is nothing new. This concept of profiting off of black culture instead of excepting it and empathizing with it is nothing new. There will always be those who think they can take what they want from someone's culture and use it as it suits and profits them and withdraw when it does not. It's only unfortunate and reaffirming of what we already see in our world today still occurring. Lack of representation has always been an underlying issue that is the foundation for so many more issues that emerge in later times that reach even further than the musical community. Music plays such a large role in our lives and in our history and to see that from already in our time in history on this earth that black and brown women have already been so silenced and humanize and so many other ways to see that they were also silence when it came to their creativity and talent is just baffling. Because lack of representation is such a huge problem, documentation is key when it comes to anything or history. I love the quote from Alicia "Bag "Velasquez, from women who rock oral history. She says, "unless you document your work it's as though it never existed. "The relevancy of this is jarring. Without someone somewhere ever writing about these women in our history we would never have this foundation, which is already so slim, that represents the woman in history that deserves rightful credit and praise. I think this is all also relevant and still prevalent in our world today when it comes to representing them and giving them the rightful credit for their creativity and hard work. Women's work especially minority women black and brown their work is still continuously discredited and these women are still undermined constantly no matter what they do no matter what field of work or creativity they pursue this is still a huge issue.

youtube.com/watch?v=zVc-K1kKkVk 

Sza addresses the patriarchy and how she’s fed up. Love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmY8mG4_3j4

This song also reminded me of the gender fluidity we touched on in class.