Feminists’ Rock Camp 2011 – Save the date!
Feminist Rock Camp 2011! Save the dates JULY 15, 16, 17. For more information, contact Soumya at 250-483-5454 or Feminists.Rock.Camp@gmail.com.
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Cynthia Enloe: War and Feminism
I am what I call a practising feminist. I identify as one and try to act as one. I have never taken a class in feminist theory, or for that matter, more than two social studies classes post secondary school (No, I am not proud of this, ignorance is never good, have the rest of my life to change that). Much of everything I know about feminism, I owe to my intelligent and incisive partner. So when I go to lectures by feminist theory giants like Cynthia Enloe, I never know what to expect, or what I will learn. I am glad I went to the University of Victoria last night for their Landsdowne lecture because Prof. Enloe’s talk – “How Can You Tell if We Are Living in a ‘Post-war’ Era? Some Feminist Warnings” gave me quite a bit to think about. Her books, especially Bananas, Peaches and Bases, and The Curious Feminist are widely read and quoted, and the reverence and respect the audience had for her was apparent. The idea that gender roles are very distinct in war time is not revolutionary. Enloe was very particular to emphasise that a government’s successful conduct of a war depends very heavily on all the unpaid work done by the mothers and wives of the “warriors” (my word). Women’s patriotism is invoked in this endeavour to keep the war going. In that sense, the two most common genders remember war very differently.
Enloe had some interesting things to say about how wars never end in people’s minds, how “post-war” is a gross simplification, and that this memory is sometimes a problem. Enloe talked extensively about what happens when women push past their assigned war gender roles and start to organise and advocate. Cindy Sheehan came up frequently. Widowhood, a powerful war symbol which is supposed to be suffered in silence, can be a powerful unifying influence for collective organizing. Enloe talked about how ‘war widows’ in Iraq had organised to try and make conditions better for them after huge income and job losses in addition to partner loss (link is her book about it). Enloe talked quite a bit about how army systems actively discourage this kind of organising and public advocacy by the women of war, even using the spouses of army superiors and the army’s natural hierarchy to keep women in place. Enloe also, in the middle of telling the audience how army “spouses” are now discouraged from writing break-up letters to their active army mates, broke into an impromptu rendition of Dear John, gotta love that!
I had an issue that was half forming in my head during questions, so I did not ask it, and chatting with my lecture-mate on our walk back clarified my thoughts a little better. It is clear that war’s effects on people vary widely by nation, gender and class (three big ones, I’m sure there are many). So, it would have been interesting to hear a bit more about why gender identity and class identity rarely cross national boundaries to affect the conduct of wars, let alone end them quickly. Yes, people routinely bring up the suffering of fellow identity groups, whether they be women, or poor, or professor, or journalist, but gender is a really big deal as far as raw numbers go. Wars could not be waged successfully without the participation of many parts of a population that may have more in common with their identity groups across the “border” than with their fellow citizens. It is really important to think about the primacy of nationalism, and nation-state identity in actively subsuming other identities in a war’s cause. This is part, and design of the patriarchy of a war-based nation state. Few words are more incendiary than “traitor”. Of course, I am sure whole books have been written about this (side effect of knowing no theory, the tendency to assume that your thoughts are original and unique), that I might have to hunt down.
While Enloe exhorted the audience to think beyond borders at the beginning of her talk, describing the “Vietnam” war as the US-Vietnam war and how war casualties of the other war participants are rarely mentioned, she still could not shake her nationhood and American centricity off during the talk as successfully as she may have done in her books and theory. She had this interesting and useful device of writing some numbers on the board at the beginning of the talk and repeatedly referred to them through the talk. Most of these numbers were North American war casualties, which I found to be a bit limiting, considering her talk was delivering the opposite message on casualties. She exhorted us to refer to war titles by more location-neutral descriptors, like the US-Vietnam war instead of the Vietnam war, but she did not take the next step of habituating her audience to do that, repeatedly referring to the Iraq War (which one?), or the Gulf War (Which gulf, which war?). As she said, war titling is political, I would not be happy to go to a lecture and have to listen constantly to “the Indian mutiny” (or worse, the Sepoy Mutiny).
Prof. Enloe’s take away message on war was “Ask feminist questions, be realistic”. Yes I will, and not just for war.
Old-School Music Snobbery
(Warning, fact-free reminiscences, no policy, science or anything resembling analysis, possibly of interest only to my indulgent friends)
Obscure knowledge was once a kind of currency. To get it, you had to be in the loop. You had to know the right people to learn about the right bands. You had to know the right record stores to hear those bands.
via Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter – NYTimes.com.
This article took me back to my 15 year old self. I grew up in pre-cable, pre-“liberalized” India where access to “Western” popular music was very limited, and class and income segregated. The top 40 stuff of the time was available as cassette tapes. Finding albums was almost impossible, most of the time, you got “Now this is what I call music” type compilations. The music popular and available as LPs was a mix of big names like The Beatles, ABBA, and an eclectic mix of Boney M, Osibisa, The Ventures, Uriah Heep? (don’t even ask). The popularity of these more off-the-wall choices was probably linked to their willingness to tour India and bring their records.
My mom was a huge Beatles and Cliff Richard fan growing up, catching it on Indian and Sri Lankan radio in the early to mid 1960s. As I cast my mind back to my parents’ collection, I see a bunch of Beatles LPs (The Red, Blue and Rock’n’Roll Double LP compilations), some ABBA, Boney M, Uriah Heep, The Ventures 🙂 I didn’t have money to buy my own, and we didn’t really have too much money to spend on records anyway.
Which brings me to 15, my music tastes have stagnated, I’m occasionally listening to random mixes of music, done with ABBA, still liking the Beatles (I still like the Beatles!), but need more. Where can I find music that will move me? Well, there’s no internet, and no radio/TV playing anything other than Top 40 stuff (very rarely) or the Beatles. I don’t have rich relatives in the US to send me music either. In hindsight, I guess I could have tried short wave radio (which we definitely used a lot for sports), but how do you know what’s cool?
I was “rescued” by a friend, with whom I listened to a very scratchy recording one day. This friend was lucky enough to have an older brother who had access to music. The first minute of Black Dog changed my life! I “discovered” Led Zeppelin in 1988(9), and all the usual suspects soon after. I can’t even begin to express how I felt the first time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody. I know, right, what a lot of my friends from when I was older and living in the US and Canada think of as the most clichéd over-exposed, un-cool songs set the cool kids of Madras apart from the rest.
Finding full albums of music of decent audio quality was another matter. We soon heard through word of mouth (probably the brother) of this magical small store in Anna Nagar, on the other side of the city. So, we took the bus out one day. Anna Nagar was a gridded sub-division, which for some reason confused people like me who lived in older parts of the city. We had an address, which led us to a house on a mundanely residential street, with a small sign board for the “shop”, only open evenings. We walk in, and, magic, it was many rows of LPs stacked and arranged alphabetically by band. You told the guy at the store what albums you wanted, gave him blank cassettes and money, and a week later (a long week later), you went back and picked up your magical tape. A 90 minute cassette could fit two albums, of course, so I always associate Led Zeppelin II with The Best of Cream (back to back).
Wow, clear LP transfers of music, I still remember all those little discoveries like the bass pedal response of Mitch Mitchell to Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze riff, and scratching “Excuse me, while I kiss the sky” on every desk I sat in for a couple of years.
I was also part of a crack school quiz team at a time when these quizzes were basically wank fests for people like us. We got quiz “masters” asking us obscure music trivia and playing songs from the 60s and 70s for us to identify and win the quiz shows. Looking back, our smug superiority was probably unwarranted 🙂 This period was the peak of musical snobbery, limited access meet obscure knowledge! I hoarded, I judged, I laughed at people who listened to the wrong music, not a very nice 19 year old at all. We had no internet, but I had “discovered” that libraries were a great source of music books and my obscure minutiae quotient was off the charts. That strange intersection of my “discovery” of music and its scarcity was a magical and intense place.
Things changed. MTV hit India in 1993, and grunge showed up in Madras at about the same time it took over the US. I could also hit up my US based sister for music, band shirts, merch. Stores started bringing tapes in (and CDs, though those were some shiny unaffordable jewels). But there was still that class-based division, and access was limited, though every year made the music more accessible.
Moving to North Carolina hipster heaven brought the rather unwelcome news that classic rock (oh, so my music has a genre?) was associated with middle aged white folk, and as uncool as it got. Oh well, it didn’t stop me from listening, but parties became a bit less fun. My music tastes expanded into the roots of all that rock, into blues, jazz, and funk.
As I understood the politics of appropriation and where all that music really came from, my attitudes changed, and I listen less. But those riffs still have a direct connection to a very emotional part of my brain. I will always be that uncool kid who knows every Jimmy Page solo in my head even as I cringe at the misogyny and racism of the lyrics and laugh at the bombast and obvious masculine posturing.
I am very glad that the internet has mostly erased the boundaries. The ability to listen to a song just by searching for it is life-changing. Yes, people will still judge, but it is harder and harder to hoard, and use scarcity as a filter. I love it. My relationship with the music has not changed. When I hear something I like, it is still such an intense emotional experience, especially when it links back to memories, the people I first heard it with, the things I did when the music was playing in the background, it’s lovely.
To end, another quote from the article…
Populism is the new model of cool; elitists, rather than teeny-boppers or bandwagon-jumpers, are the new squares. There are now artists who sell out concerts while rarely getting played on commercial radio
Triangle Bloggers Meetups
Echoing Anton and Bora, join the intrepid Triangle bloggers as we socialize, brainstorm and plot our takeover of the world (Bwaahaha!). We will meet every 2nd Wednesday at Tyler’s in Durham, and every 4th Wednesday in Chapel Hill at the Milltown Restaurant and Bar (I call it Milhouse, of course!). Both these places have excellent beer selections and the best company money can’t buy, so join us and meet some cool people doing interesting things and writing and talking about them. Picture of Milhouse courtesy Wikipedia. It’s apparently really hard to find a royalty free picture of Milhouse!
- Immigration | local | policy
Who is Local?
“Ahmadi is still months away from getting permanent resident status, putting him in the unlucky group of middle-class British Columbians who have found themselves targeted by a tax purportedly imposed to crack down on rich real estate speculators from overseas”
I would not call Hamed Ahmadi unlucky, he’s a victim of the all too common policy apparatus that confuses residency with visa status. The BC non-resident tax of 15% on properties is supposed to target “foreign” (read Chinese) investors buying in Vancouver with no intentions of living there. I presume there are multiple other ways to determine residency and “localness” for the purpose of determining who lives here and who does not. The BC government, in its haste to demonstrate it was doing something, took the easy route and used visa status as a proxy.
Hamed lives and works in BC, which meets my definition of local. While a speculation tax on non-residents is a reasonable approach, using visa status to determine residency, and providing no sensible exceptions for locals with alternative paper work is lazy and thoughtless policy making, so is not providing exceptions for people with home buying applications already in process. It’s almost as if someone looked at the polls and press and wrote the law in a day.
In many ways, this is personal for me because I lived in the US for 10+ years under various non-permanent visas that left me vulnerable to these poorly designed, thoughtless policy measures. I lived in the same town for 10 years, was very much a local by the time I’d left, with a stable set of friends, family, work, places I shopped in, hiked to, causes I supported, volunteer work I did, and more. So, Hamed’s story could have been mine, and in some smaller ways, was mine for other parts of my life.
“CTV News spoke with BC Liberal cabinet minister Andrew Wilkinson on Wednesday and asked several times for comment on Ahmadi’s situation. Wilkinson responded by repeating a piece of blanket advice for the people impacted. “Those who find themselves affected by the tax should seek legal advice because individual circumstances vary,” Wilkinson said.
This is typical of policy makers who are so removed from the day to day lives of the people whose behaviour they seek to regulate. The casual assumption that regular people can afford professionals who bill at multiple hundreds of dollars an hour speaks more about the types of people these ministers hang out with than anything else. But this sounds familiar too, I needed to consult lawyers multiple times to help me with immigration paper work.
As someone with a high level of institutional trust, and who thinks governments can affect our lives for the better with sound and thoughtful policy interventions, these types of hasty policy making are deeply disappointing. There are multiple other policy measures to make housing more affordable. The CCPA just released a comprehensive document of policies, focusing on the actual problem, the lack of affordable housing. Investment in affordable housing with a focus on cohousing and social housing, and zoning changes that reduce the protections afforded to affluent property owners would go a long way.
Suzanne Vega
I was lucky enough to win two fantastic tickets to a show by Suzanne Vega at the McPherson Playhouse on Sunday, the 30th of January. Thanks CFUV for holding the draw and picking my number 🙂 It was not a show I would have gone to otherwise Also on the billet were finalists from the Victoria Idol competition (music as a competitive sport, my favourite kind) and Jon Baglo.
The Entree
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGjXxthWbc8&feature=fvst
I have not listened to much of Suzanne Vega’s music before, except of course, Luka and Tom’s Diner, which I guess everyone has heard (yes, she did play those songs, thanks for asking). I also have 99.9F somewhere in my digital music collection, it’s good! Her current incarnation as an artist involves her recording and touring behind stripped down and reinvented versions of her back catalogue. Why?
“I don’t own those other recordings,” she told the (Wall Street) Journal. “I don’t own the masters. Those are owned by A&M Records and Blue Note, and I’m not with them anymore. I wanted to own a physical copy of my own back catalogue. In this economy, it’s important to own what you make. If I tour for the next 20 years, I have recordings I can sell at concerts and people can buy them directly.
She has released Parts 1 and 2 of Close-Up, a four part set of recordings. Victoria was her only gig in Canada, and am I glad I was there, twitterific enough to enter CFUV’s draw for free tickets, and lucky enough to actually win, thanks @CFUV! Vega has a down to earth style of singing that brings out the essential emotions of whatever she is singing about. Her lyrics are smart, witty, self referential and always engaging. Her voice sounded natural, her singing seemingly effortless, yet soulful, funny when she needed to be, sad when she needed to be, it was a very good performance. I have not listened to her music much, so I don’t know how different these productions are from the way she’s done them in the past. It worked very well in a live setting and now, I would love to listen to the new studio versions! As an assured performer, her storytelling between songs was quite funny, she rambled for quite a bit about a song she wrote when she was 16 about a brief fling at summer camp, a story that involved the secret society of Leonard Cohen listeners, the differences between Canadians, Americans and Brits, and lots of other asides! She poked a bit of fun at herself for only writing sad songs about depressing places (Liverpool, Newark, NJ) and not about beautiful places like Victoria, she very easily laughed off a glitch on her second song.
Vega was on stage with an acoustic guitar, and Gerry Leonard (aka Spookyghost) on electric guitar. Though to just call it electric guitar is a bit limiting. He had a whole set of floor pedals, and a stack of rack mounted effects to his right as well. He was playing a beautiful pearly white double cutaway semi-hollowbody with stereo output (Paul Reed Smith?). The production was sophisticated, restrained, thoughtful, and really fleshed out Suzanne Vega’s voice and skilled finger pick acoustic style guitar. It was great accompaniment, always complementary, never overwhelming, but capable of quickly breaking out of the restraint for an excellent solo or three. He was able to produce a wall of sound at times with the effective use of looping and tonal layering. He’s also geeky enough to detail his gear setup, check it out! Anyway, a lot of music was produced by two people and you did not miss the lack of percussion one bit
She came back for an encore and did a very funny song about writers from her upcoming off-Broadway musical Carson McKellars sings about love, makes me want to see it.
If she is ever in your neighbourhood, do go and catch her show, you’ll definitely enjoy it a lot. I was not a big fan before the show, I will listen to more of her music for sure after the show, which I guess is the best compliment for a live performance!
The Side
Jon Baglo rounded out the opening set with a virtuoso guitar performance. He, held me (and I suspect the rest of the audience) with an indescribable technique, a mixture of percussion and touch play/tapping on acoustic guitar. The right hand keeps moving, sometimes playing a beat, sometimes strumming very close to the left hand, sometimes just tapping the strings, it was quite a show, a pity he only played one song. He’s a skilled musician.
The appetizer
It takes a combination of courage, skill, presence and experience to open successfully for a famous performer at the McPherson Playhouse with just an acoustic guitar in your hand, let alone a capella. The Victoria Idol performers all showed courage in spades, vocal skills, some presence, and some even hinted at emerging individuality in instrument playing. They also mostly featured original compositions. But, they are currently not capable of holding an audience with such a minimalist production. This is not an open mic, or an intimate coffee shop, it’s a big hall that needs to be filled. In fact, some of the better performances featured more accompaniment, like an upright bass and violin, and some very nicely done harmonies on backing vocals. Overall, the production was too stripped down and they could not quite pull it off.
What I would have done is brought together a few experienced musicians to back them and bulk their sound up, so their yet growing skills on instruments and vocals could melt into the music and enable us to pay more attention to the songs they had written. It would also have given them some experience with building songs, production, etc. Their performances lacked punch (hard to sound punchy without percussion!), and their singing sounded a bit strained and derivative, their natural singing voices did not come through. I don’t fault them, it’s the enormity of the task they were faced with, having to open for Suzanne Vega with just a guitar in your hand. One performer actually sang a song a capella, which I found a bit ambitious. Yes, you have a decent singing voice, but no, it is not yet good enough to carry a room bigger than a coffee shop, sorry! There’s no reason it needs to be, music is about collaboration, music is about making the whole more than the sum of the parts.
