WHAT THAT’S NOT ABOUT
I think that tUnE-yArDs/Klosterman, “mansplaining”/pazz & jop controversy is just about out of my dashboard/twitter feed, which I guess would make the following somewhat inexcusable but there’s something about the whole mess I thought was unfortunate. Mainly, the conversation seemed to move past tune-yards as a female artist to tune-yards as a forward-thinking icon of modern femininity at the expense of other female artists doing similar things. For me, Garbus is the Gaga of gender-bending indie divas in that her mish-mash of exotic signifiers and pop-cultural deconstruction are fairly facile once you get past the shock of the presentation.
Though sincere and distraught, her adoration for African culture did not need warpaint to be made explicit. Her dilemma about having amassed an ethnographic cache spanning from Swahili to knowledge that Africa is not “dancing half-naked to Paul Simon’s ‘I Know What I Know’ on the Savannah” before being white-guilted by the very-real problem of cultural appropriation is prime fodder for a SoAn undergrad’s study abroad reflection, not a more knowing redux of Graceland (or less knowing redux of Malcolm Mclaren).
It also ends up having collateral damage back on native soil when it results in lyrics like “why don’t I have more black male friends?” which is not something she should be asking her predominantly white audience. It makes her lamentation about a boy’s inability to live up to “Gangsta” mythos reminiscent of those binary-perpetuating crimethinc gender posters. And while “Bizness” is laden with the potential to be a liberating comfort to repressed and damaged listeners, there’s a bit of Gaga’s “little monsters” cult-ness to it in the way she overstresses her role in the proceedings.
I should probably be cautious, as a male, when comparing/contrasting her with other female artists, but I think it’s equally damaging to center the conversation around her misguided, way-too-old-for-this-shit antics. Still, the following, to name a few, felt sorely absent.
There’s Braids, who I saw open for Toro y Moi on the eve of Tomboy’s release. Members of the band were wearing Tomboy shirts. While on one level it was probably a bad look given that Braids sound a lot like Animal Collective’s Feels, it provides a good framing device for how their music almost directly undermines most of what makes Animal Collective obnoxious. Mainly, four white males employing tribal mysticism to make their hallucinogen-infused misadventures in Brooklyn seem more daring and adventurous than the sad-sack early 20’s rituals they actually represent.
While Merriweather Post Pavilion’s exploration of how to raise kids and look after one’s brother in the wake of your father’s death is in some ways touching, their performance at the Pitchfork Festival indicated that the prevailing AnCo m.o. is one tribal tat away from a fraternal hazing ritual. Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s lyrics are upfront about female sexuality and express anxiety and distrust over gender roles (the way “Lemonade” is cutting about a dude’s “inessential” (and only) ability to procreate, the titular Native Speaker track’s ambiguity in ranking masturbatory thoughts over actual embrace, “Plath Heart” as meditation on the overbearing legacy of both the female body’s biological use for procreation and Sylvia Plath’s malaise itself). It’s at times awesomely vulgar and more forward and mature than the boyish faux-innocence of the AnCo ouvre.
Some of the argument for Garbus’ essential contribution to deconstructing femininity is the way her vocal tics and physical spasms force us to deal with the societal constraints on the body and, like Jerry Lewis in his prime, allow for embrace of the awkward but potentially empowering reality underneath. To me it reads more like that Friends episode where Phoebe teaches Rachel how to run without shame in Central Park. Ponytail (RIP), on their last (and possibly best) album Do Whatever You Want All The Time, wrap existential dilemmas like “I know it’s not that fun” with endless alterations on ostensibly cathartic yelps, howls, and riffs. A lot of this becomes doubly fascinating when the gender reconfiguration the singer has put themselves through is taken into account. Frontperson Willy Seigel, formerly Molly, gave a fascinating interview centered around their decision to pack pants at a Village Voice Siren concert, touching on trips to a “kinda Pagan…radical fairy sanctuary” and then a lesbian separatist colony, and their current gender identity which isn’t comfortably nestled in anything easily categorized.
For a long time, I identified as a lesbian, but I don’t anymore. I think that to be queer is being open to the weirdness of your sexuality and your gender: not having a fixed identity that you’re always defending, open to having a lot of identities, and being empowered in those identities. I think that’s why people like the word “queer.” It’s misinterpreted as a slur or whatever, but it’s like, “weird or not normal.” That is exciting to people, having that identity.
I identify with a lot of gay male stuff. I’m not like, “Oh, I’m a gay man,” but I identify with a lot of it. I think it’s hot. I’d consider myself a trans person, or a person who has a pretty complicated gender identity, or not a binary gender identity. And right now my partner is sometimes male-identified, but also female from birth, so we’re trying to feel it out together: the reality of feeling that way, and all the cultural things that go along with that.
While not essential to the music’s visceral rush, the conversation it attaches to it becomes inclusive of an underrepresented demographic. On a similar note, there’s Big Freedia (who I wrote about at length here) and Jessica 6 (who I should have written about at length). Not to harp on authenticity but if you’re going to interact with certain aspects of something like black popular culture don’t assume that moving to a violent neighborhood in Oakland after a sojourn in Kenya is grounds for condescension. Freedia is interesting because she basically makes bounce music and is transgendered, calls herself a “sissy,” but there’s very little disconnect from the actual bounce scene in New Orleans in that she insists she still be referred to as a Bounce artist as opposed to, say, a more gender-studies-friendly alternative.
Nomi Ruiz, who fronts Jessica 6, and was in the original incarnation of Hercules and Love Affair (whose Blue Songs was massively slept on, easy top 10 2k11, Jessica 6’s own See The Light is amazing, too), is full on transsexual. What’s interesting here is that the embrace of the traditionally feminized identity illuminates its performativity just as much as shying away from it. I saw her open for Holy Ghost! in a short dress and high heels while her modeling reel was projected in the background. The video for “Fun Girl,” on the surface reads like a traditional female pop video, where a hot dude gets courted by the singer, until it registers that the person courting the dude used to be one herself. There’s a suggestion that liberating comfort can be found even within the the fabulous/material version of femininity that Garbus uses warpaint and physical contortions to distort.
I’m not saying that the only valid way to buck gender and deconstruct femininity is through transgendered/sexual transcendence but at the end of the day tune-yards still feels safely heterosexual and not particularly daring. Ponytail’s psych-prog excursions and detours unspool standard definitions of form and presentation in a way structurally (or unstructurally) serves to embellish Willy’s undefined sexual exploration outside the comfort zone and Big Freedia’s “Azz Everywhere” explosions of queer/female sexuality find empowerment even within the framework of hypersexualized, traditionally hetero bounce music and bypasses separation for extended community. None of these have a right answer to an ongoing question but in order for the discourse to be effective there should be probably a more variegated landscape for it to operate in.
