Rocking the Revolution
The Chicago Women's Liberation Rock Band and the Politics of Feminist Rock and Roll
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2227830 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kate Grover (The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 489-512 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/710813 |
| OpenAlex | W3111991809 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
In the early 1970s, a group of activists sought to transform rock culture from the inside out. Their name? The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band (CWLRB). Founded by Naomi Weisstein as a work group of the socialist-feminist Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, the CWLRB was a feminist collective that performed nationwide from 1970 to 1973. By writing songs about women’s experiences; recording an album with their sister group, the New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band; and adopting sonic techniques and performance styles that they felt would not alienate their audiences, the CWLRB pushed back against the misogyny of 1970s rock culture and positioned rock music as a tool for feminist activism. Despite their unique experiment in rock-and-roll feminism, the band remains largely absent from public memory. This study recovers the CWLRB’s story to complicate scholarly and popular understandings of “women’s music” and cultural feminism in the 1970s by revealing a feminist band that was not separatist and that aimed to reach a wide audience. Furthermore, this study considers how the CWLRB’s lyrics, sound, performance, and paratexts, while rooted in the concerns and aesthetics of the American women’s liberation movement, are also connected to the riot grrrl punk rock feminism of the 1990s. The CWLRB challenges the categorical constructions of second- and third-wave feminism by highlighting how multiple generations have resisted the sexism of rock culture, allowing scholars to move toward an understanding of rock-and-roll feminism as a historical form of public feminist practice
Art · Feminism · Literature · Lyrics · Political science · Politics · Popular music · Rock music · Sociology · Diverse Music Education Insights · Gender Studies · Law · Music History and Culture · Theater, Performance, and Music History
| Highly cited | No |
|---|