Intersections of Gender, Race, and Genre: Cammie Gilbert and Black Female Subjectivity in Metal Music

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article illustrates a framework for intersectional music analysis that is based on four domains of oppression understood by Patricia Hill Collins as the matrix of domination. Arising from black feminist thought, intersectionality responds to intersecting oppressions imposed upon individuals. An intersectional perspective illuminates multiple layers of identity by attending to issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and other factors. By transferring Collins’s matrix of domination to cultural contexts, we can understand how intersectionality applies to the cultural forms that arise. We might offer a critique of the music industry and its gatekeeping practices, and yet to understand the significance of systematic forces of oppression we must also look to musical genre discourse for its workings of social oppression and cultural distinction. To illustrate, I analyze a recording by Oceans of Slumber, a Texan progressive metal band that is fronted by black female vocalist, Cammie Gilbert.