Category Archives: Music magazines

Riot grrrl zines: Translating experience into expertise

The rise of the riot grrrl movement can be traced to musicians and zine creators Tobi Vail, Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman, and Kathleen Hanna–founders of the bands Bratmobile and Bikini Kill, respectively. From its inception, riot grrrl was ideologically rooted in the concept of a girl-led collective and actively resisted the elevation of individual figureheads. Instead, its founders encouraged young women to create their own music, art, writing, and forms of protest. This DIY ethos empowered those who had never played an instrument or written creatively to pick up guitars or pens and express themselves. Women punk enthusiasts crafted fanzines that quickly evolved into interactive platforms for radical political dialogue and genre-defying creative expression by self-identified riot grrrls, fostering a vibrant culture of subversion and solidarity.

Through their music and textual productions, riot grrrls launched a pointed critique of capitalism and consumer culture while foregrounding feminist issues such as rape, assault, and the physical and psychological abuse of women. Riot grrrl zines frequently featured confessional autofiction, satirical graphic art, exchanges between creators and readers, and discussions of gender and emerging queer theory. This loosely connected, nomadic community, typically composed of individuals between the ages of 13 and 25, often experienced marginalization and alienation from the mainstream cultures in which they lived. Zines played a critical mediating role, facilitating consciousness-raising encounters between writers and readers that transcended regional and national boundaries. These exchanges fostered a sense of intimate solidarity–or, in riot grrrl terms, “girl love”–among participants. The movement’s emphasis on revealing lived, personal experience as a marker of authenticity echoes strands of second-wave feminism, particularly those that championed realistic and autobiographical writing as key tools for feminist consciousness-raising.

As Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna explains,

“In writing [zines], I have had to think a lot about how to share information without acting all bossy or being condescending. … Just cuz I’m an addict/alcoholic (what-fuckin-evah) doesn’t mean I think I can speak for everyone in terms of addiction. It seems to me that each addict functions within his/her own context in terms of race, gender, location, class, personality, access, etc. . . . So it would be ridiculous for me to try and write a ‘manifesto’ or a ‘universal account’ of how addiction works.”

Here, Hanna anticipates and pre-empts external critique that she speaks from a privileged, universalist position as a white woman. Crucially, however, this acknowledgement follows her revelation of personal experience—and indeed, her claimed expertise—regarding addiction. The culture of privilege-checking cultivated in riot grrrl zines, while rooted in a desire for accountability and inclusivity, gives rise to what Mimi Thi Nguyen (2012) describes as a “troubling politics”. In this framework, traumatic experience—when reframed as the product of systemic oppression—serves to bolster claims of authentic marginality, effectively translating lived experience into a form of expertise. This dynamic complicates the relationship between personal narrative, political authority, and identity within the riot grrrl movement.

This according to “Killing ourselves is not subversive: Riot grrrl from zine to screen and the commodification of female transgression” by Emily Spiers (Women: A cultural review 26/1-2 [2015] 1–21; RILM Abstracts with Full Text, 2015-83472).

In the video below, zine publishers and artists describe riot grrrl (and zines in particular) as their entry point to different forms of activism and expression in the 1990s–the video was part of the Alien she exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Related Bibliolore post:

https://bibliolore.org/2019/06/10/riot-grrrl-and-feminism/

https://bibliolore.org/2018/05/17/queercore-and-all-girl-bands/

https://bibliolore.org/2024/05/07/laura-jane-grace-sings-the-gender-dysphoria-blues/

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Filed under Gender and sexuality, Music magazines, Performers, Politics, Popular music, Visual art, Women's studies

The Old-Time Herald turns 30

October 2017 marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of The old-time herald!

Since the fall of 1987, when Alice Gerrard created, laid out, and hand-mailed the first issue, the magazine’s articles and interviews, news and reviews, festival guides, and discussions have become part of the glue that holds the old-time music community together.

Above, a cover from 1990; below, Ms. Gerrard performs in 2014.

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Filed under Music magazines, North America

RoJaRo

Established by Kjetil Maria Aase in 1990, RoJaRo is a continuously updated index of jazz and popular music magazines. This resource is intended to be inclusive, indexing little-known fanzines as well as well-known publications; it also presents hyperlinked lists of relevant magazines and record labels.

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Filed under Jazz and blues, Music magazines, Popular music, Resources

Listen: Life with classical music

Launched by ArkivMusic in 2009, Listen: Life with classical music (ISSN 1947-4431) is a lifestyle publication covering all the ways that people’s lives are touched by Western art music, including profiles of people, places, and events and recommendations of recordings, books, and films. Edited by Ben Finane, the magazine was named one of the top 10 in Library journal’s “Best of magazines 2009”.

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Filed under Music magazines, New periodicals

JazzTimes

In 1970 Ira Sabin, a Washington, D.C., record store owner, started a newsletter called Radio free jazz to update customers on new jazz releases and provide a liaison between local radio programmers and the music industry. Over the following decade the newsletter grew substantially, becoming an international publication; in 1980 these developments prompted a change to the name JazzTimes.

Today the magazine is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading jazz periodicals, featuring state-of-the-art graphics and extensive coverage of jazz news, along with performer interviews and reviews of recordings, videos, instruments, books, and performances.

Related article: John Abbott, jazz photographer

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Filed under Jazz and blues, Music magazines

English dance & song

Published by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, English dance & song has appeared at least four times a year since it was launched in 1936. The magazine presents festival listings and other news, interviews with current English traditional and neotraditional performers, and reviews of current publications, as well as brief research-based articles that explore historical documents and current practices.

The Society, which was formed in 1932 by the merger of the Folk-Song Society (founded in 1898) and the English Folk Dance Society (founded in 1911), also publishes a scholarly periodical, Folk music journal.

Related articles:

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Filed under Dance, Europe, Music magazines, World music

Musicworks

Thanks to funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Magazine Fund, the SOCAN Foundation Publications Assistance Program, and the Canada Periodical FundMusicworks has been issuing articles, reviews, and scores focusing on Canadian music since 1978; since 1983, issues have included sound recordings as well. While Canadian composers and performers are most often featured, the magazine also covers Canadian traditional music in both native and non-native cultures.

Recently Musicworks sent us a full run of their back issues; now we are confident that all of their articles are fully covered by RILM.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Music magazines, RILM news

Signal to noise


Established in 1997, Signal to noise is a quarterly magazine devoted to improvised and experimental music, focusing on “the confluence of avant-garde jazz, electro-acoustic improvisation, and left-of-center modern rock, with an emphasis on independent production and promotion.” Recent issues have featured the saxophonist Marshall Allen, the groups Sonic Youth and Cheer-Accident, and the duo Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Jazz and blues, Music magazines, Popular music

Blues magazines

 

Blues magazines like Living blues, Real blues, and Blues revue attest to the continuing vitality of a genre that dates at least back to the 1910s, when the first blues songs were published. Unlike the recording companies that capitalized on the “blues craze” of the Roaring Twenties, these magazines are interested in all forms of African American roots music—including sacred and other secular traditions—and their modern counterparts, including zydeco, gospel, and so on, fostering a thriving community of enthusiasts.

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Filed under Ethnomusicology, Jazz and blues, Music magazines

Etnoumlje: Srpski world music magazine

Etnoumlje: Srpski world music magazine (ISSN 1452-9920) has been published quarterly by the World Music Asocijacija Srbije since the summer of 2007.

The magazine provides insight into the Serbian world music scene through interviews and profiles of members of Serbian bands and reviews of recordings, events, and publications, as well as regular features on Serbian traditional music.

Its editor, Oliver Đorđević, defines it as a periodical for “theory, history, aesthetics, and criticism of world music, with the aim of promoting and advancing Serbian world music.” Etnoumlje also collects information for a future Web-based register of Serbian world music bands and artists.

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Filed under Europe, Music magazines, Popular music, World music