Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women's Music (review)

Abstract

Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women's Music. By Eileen Hayes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. 248 pp. I was fortunate enough to have been able to take an excellent seminar on and in graduate school. At some point during segment on and festivals, I distinctly remember asking in relation to this scene. My sage professor pointed me to Eileen Hayes's informative dissertation. Based in part on that work, Hayes's Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women's Music remains only in-depth examination of the manifestations of feminist consciousness and black collective presence as performers, festival participants, and organizers in women's music (1-2). It is a richly documented and thoughtful account. The term women's music calls to mind for many guitar-dominated folk-based styles associated with early figures such as Holly Near, Chris Williamson, and Alix Dobson and, to be sure, for some, legends such as Linda Tillery, Judith Casselberry, and Sweet Honey in Rock. Hayes's book reminds us, happily, that we can also look beyond these foundational figures at a scene that is rich and diversified. Women's is less a specific genre or single musical approach and more a way of referencing a political stance (broadly configured) and a cultural network that adheres around it. The stance comes out of (largely lesbian, largely radical) feminist activism of early 1970s that believed social change would occur only to extent that capitalist patriarchy was decentered or destroyed. Musicians and activists worked to create and musical spaces that were by, for, about, and financially controlled by women (2). The network evolved and continues to evolve to include a diverse array of performers and performance approaches, related women-owned businesses such as production companies and record labels, and festivals and cultural events. Women's and its attendant festivals created opportunities in areas such as sound engineering and stage management that were previously male-dominated. As Hayes states, Neither dead nor what it used to be, changing face of is a barometer of where a movement has been and its ability to reinvent itself in aftermath (177). We cannot fully understand this history and its various trajectories without first gleaning extent and nature of participation in a cultural scene in which white are majority and examining as a site for emergence of feminist consciousness (177). Hayes's cross-sector and interdisciplinary experience is up to challenge presented by such a task. Currently associate professor of ethnomusicology and chair of Department of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology at North Texas State University, Hayes is a self-identified straight, black, ... old-school feminist activist (10) with roots in Washington, DC, around of color reproductive rights advocacy and antisterilization abuse. Her status as a veteran of festivals and her desire to capture complex, myriad ways in which issues of gender, sexuality, class, race, and other political identities or issues affect experiences of scene lead her to organize book by theme instead of chronology or festival site. The title of chapter 1, of a Mad Black Woman Festigoer, riffs on Tyler Perry's play (and later feature film) Diary of a Mad Black Woman as a frame for first-person, observational entries that make up chapter and as a way to insert consciously African American humor and signifying, both of which Hayes and her interviewees used to interpret experiences they discuss. Reference to the arrival story in this chapter as a familiar aspect of traditional ethnography simultaneously underscores her training and positionality while also poking self-conscious holes in presumed authority of Ethnographer and seeming transparency of such narrative approaches. …