'Rock on' : women, ageing and popular music

187 Pages·2012·1.28 MB·English

by  Ros Jennings

‘Rock on’: Women, Ageing
And PoPulAR music
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‘Rock on’: Women, Ageing
and Popular music
edited by
Ros Jennings
Centre for Women, Ageing and Media, University of Gloucestershire
AbigAil gARdneR
Centre for Women, Ageing and Media, University of Gloucestershire
© Ros Jennings and Abigail gardner 2012
All rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Ros Jennings and Abigail gardner have asserted their right under the copyright, designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing limited Ashgate Publishing company
Wey court east suite 420
union Road 101 cherry street
Farnham burlington
surrey, gu9 7PT VT 05401-4405
england usA
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
‘Rock on’ : women, ageing and popular music. -- (Ashgate
popular and folk music series)
1. Women singers. 2. music--social aspects. 3. Aging--
social aspects.
i. series ii. Jennings, Ros. iii. gardner, Abigail.
782.42164’082-dc23
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
“Rock on” : women, ageing and popular music / edited by Ros Jennings and Abigail gardner.
pages cm. -- (Ashgate popular and folk music series)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-4094-2841-1 (hardcover) -- isbn 978-1-4094-2842-8 (ebook) 1. Women
musicians. 2. Women in music. 3. Aging. 4. Popular music--Political aspects. 5. Popular
music--social aspects. i. Jennings, Ros. ii. gardner, Abigail.
ml82.R636 2012
781.64082--dc23
isbn 9781409428411 (hbk) 2012012889
isbn 9781409428428 (ebk)
I
Printed and bound in great britain by the
mPg books group, uk.
contents
List of Contributors vii
General Editors’ Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
introduction Women, Ageing and Popular music 1
Ros Jennings and Abigail Gardner
Part I ‘renewaL, reCyCLIng anD renegotIatIon’
1 madonna:
like a crone 19
Lucy O’Brien
2 it’s All Just a little bit of History Repeating:
Pop stars, Audiences, Performance and
Ageing – exploring the Performance
strategies of shirley bassey and Petula clark 35
Ros Jennings
3 long live the Queen!:
celia cruz’s longevity as a counterpoint of
Tradition and change 53
Delia Poey
4 Framing grace:
shock and Awe at the Ageless black body 65
Abigail Gardner
Part II ‘It’s not over ...’
5 mom Rock? media Representations of
“mothers Who Rock” 87
Norma Coates
vi ‘ROCk ON’: WOMEN, AGEiNG AND POPULAR MUsiC
6 27 Forever:
kristen Pfaff and the coverage of death as
the Re-presentation of a gendered musical life 103
Paula Hearsum
7 ‘i’d stage-dive, but i’m far too elderly’:
courtney love and expectations of
Femininity and Ageing 123
Catherine strong
8 Rebel without a Pause:
The continuity of controversy in madonna’s
contemporary music Videos 139
Paul Watson and Diane Railton
Bibliography 155
index 171
list of contributors
norma Coates is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the don
Wright Faculty of music and the Faculty of information and media studies at the
university of Western ontario. she has published several articles on gender and
rock music, and about rock music on network television, and regularly presents
her research at national and international conferences, including meetings of the
society for cinema studies, console-ing Passions and iAsPm. she is working
on her first book, tentatively entitled Rocking the Wasteland: Youth Music on
American Network Television in the 1950s and 1960s, for duke university Press.
abigail gardner is Principal lecturer in media and Popular music Theory at
the university of gloucestershire. Her recent work (and her Phd on PJ Harvey)
has explored themes on ageing and memory with respect to women in popular
music and music video. Publications include between memory and masquerade:
the preclusion of age in dolly Parton’s music videos, in dolan and Tincknell
[eds], Aging Femininities (forthcoming), and she is currently a co-editor on Media
studies: The Essential Resource, london, new York: Routledge, october 2012.
Paula Hearsum was a music journalist who now lectures in popular music and
journalism at the university of brighton. Her published work also includes the
biography, Manic street Preachers: Design for Living (Virgin: 1996).
ros Jennings is director of the centre for Women, Ageing and media (WAm)
at the university of gloucestershire and a member of the steering group for the
european network in Aging studies (enAs). she was the Principal investigator
for the successful Arts and Humanities Research council (AHRc) networking
project Women, Ageing and media (2007). Her published work so far has been
concerned with gender and sexuality in the areas of film and television.
Lucy o’Brien has written the award-winning she Bop i and ii, a history of
women in popular music (1995 and 2002), and the in-depth biography Madonna:
Like an icon (2007), which was translated into 13 languages. she has also written
Dusty (1999) and Annie Lennox (1993). she has contributed to many collections,
including Punk Rock, so What? (1999), Rock and Roll is Here to stay: an
Anthology (2000), Girls, Girls, Girls! Essays on Women & Music (1995) and
Analysing Performance (A Critical Reader) (1994).
she currently teaches media & communications at goldsmith’s, university
of london, and popular music studies at southampton solent university and
viii ‘ROCk ON’: WOMEN, AGEiNG AND POPULAR MUsiC
the university of Westminster. she has been a writer/broadcaster since the early
1980s, working for a range of titles including The sunday Times, Mojo, NME, and
The Guardian, and she once played in all-girl punk band called The catholic girls.
Delia Poey is an Associate Professor of spanish at Florida state university. she
is the editor or co-editor of numerous anthologies of latino and latin American
literatures and the author of Latino American Literature in the Classroom:
the Politics of Transformation (2001). she is currently working on a book on
constructions of cuban-American femininity and has published articles on musical
performers la lupe and celia cruz.
Diane railton works in the school of Arts and media at Teesside university.
Her research interests are in the field of gender and popular culture. Her recent
work has explored the representation of femininity in/and popular music. she is
currently co-authoring a book with Paul Watson about music video which will be
published by edinburgh university Press.
Catherine strong completed her Phd at the Australian national university in
2008, and is currently a lecturer in sociology at monash university, melbourne,
Australia. Her research to date has focused on how the ways we individually and
collectively remember popular culture (specifically popular music) reinforce or
challenge power structures in society. Her other research interests include fan
cultures, everyday studies, gender studies and collective memory.
Paul watson is a Principal lecturer in the school of Arts and media at Teesside
university. His research interests are in issues of popular entertainment and
representation and the relations between them. More specifically, his recent work
examines the construction of cultural identities in and through forms of popular
film and music video. He is currently completing a book about the politics of
representation in music video with diane Railton.
general editor’s Preface
The upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the
twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music
alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. A relativistic
outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international
ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution
of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context,
reception and subject position. Together, these have conspired to eat away at the
status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. A need has
arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new
genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes
authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of
free, individual expression.
Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the
Ashgate Popular and Folk Music series presents some of the best research in the
field. Authors are concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings
in cultural context, and draw upon methodologies and theories developed
in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology.
The series focuses on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
it is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from Acid Jazz to Zydeco,
whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or
traditional.
Professor derek b. scott
Professor of critical musicology
university of leeds