GWSS 241 Blog Post 1

Winter Roberts
April 22, 2020
GWSS 241
Blog Post 1

Memory is an important aspect in the development of music. While style is continuously being developed, development itself wholly depends on what came before. Much like the altars described by chief curator at Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art, Cesareo Moreno, in a Chicago Tribune article discussing the day of the dead, we should “‘welcome back the memory and the souls of those people who are still… …an important part of our family’,” or more to-the-point, of our musical history (Chicago Tribune).

The unfortunate truth of the development of most music is the white profiteers’ refusal to acknowledge accurate history, especially that which celebrates female and ethnic contributions to the craft. University of Washington Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Professor Michelle Habell-Pallán explains that Alice Bag felt that “the East L.A. punk scene,” of which she is recognized here to be an early influence on, “developed once the Hollywood scene became closed and unwelcoming” (Pallán). Resistance to this reframing of the leading Hollywood narrative of the development of punk rock is based in the neo-liberal notion of false mutual-exclusivity between any racial tincture, regardless of its source and intention, and progressive idealism.

After Hollywood pseudo-extortionists excluded and usurped the musical employment of ethnic and female innovators, they persisted to strike their memory from the record. They forget in the interest of renouncing culpability for and to themselves and the wider public. This averse to their memory conflicts with the emphasis of its importance to day of the dead celebrations and altars. Hollywood, and many other institutional and individual bodies which have abused minorities to bolster their own privilege, ought to amend their wrongdoings, acknowledge, and celebrate those they’ve previously helped to minimize. Until then oral histories and other formats like those found in the Women Who Rock archive, seek to do what many of the privileged, even today, fail to; to remember.

DJ Selection:

• “The House that Built Me” by Miranda Lambert analyzes the importance of memory to who an artist and her art are now.
• “1 SIDED LOVE” by blackbear is about a relationship where his girlfriend (Hollywood) is self-obsessed and fails to love him (East L.A.’s early punk rockers) with the same effort she has received.

Readings:

Rumore, Kori, et al. “How Day of the Dead Is Celebrated (Explained in English and Spanish).” Chicagotribune.com, Chicago Tribune, 16 Sept. 2019, www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-day-of-the-dead-altar-diagram-spanish-english-20151029-htmlstory.html.

Habell-Pallán, Michelle. “‘Death to Racism and Punk Rock Revisionism’ in Alice Bag’s Vexing Voice and the Unspeakable Influence of Canción Ranchera on Hollywood Punk.” Pop When the World Falls Apart. 2012.