Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender

by Sheila Whiteley (Editor)

Sexing the Groove discusses these issues and many more, bringing together leading music and cultural theorists to explore the relationships between popular music, gender and sexuality. The contributors, who include Mavis Beayton, Stella Bruzzi, Sara Cohen, Sean Cubitt, Keith Negus and Will Straw, debate how popular music performers, subcultures, fans and texts construct and deconstruct `masculine' and `feminine' identities. Using a wide range of case studies, from Mick Jagger to Riot Grrrls, they demonstrate that there is nothing `natural', permanent or immovable about the regime of sexual difference which governs society and culture.
Sexing the Groove also includes a comprehensive annotated bibliography for further reading and research into gender and popular music.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, School, Feminism

390 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 1997

About the author

Sheila Whiteley has an international reputation as a feminist musicologist, writer and researcher into issues of identify and subjectivity.

She was awarded the first Chair of Popular Music in the UK in 2000 for her work in gender, sexuality and culture and she continues to influence generations of academics, researchers and musicologists.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read.
Key academic text for my PhD

[Jehnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are chapters in this edited work that are dated and don't have the same weight as they would've 20 years ago (Madonna's "Justify My Love" and Sinead O'Connor are somewhat less relevant today). But this is a good selection of essays that cross over from cultural studies to musicology and feminist theory.

[jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the chapters of this book that seemed relevant to my dissertation reading, so I was only able to read about half of it, but I would have read all of it if I'd been able to take the time. (Well, okay, except maybe for the chapter on Mick Jagger's "sexuality, style, and image" because dude skeeves me out slightly.) The selections I did read treat deceptively basic questions about gender disparity in rock and pop (i.e., why don't more women play electric guitar? why is record collecting assumed to be a guy thing? why do local 'scenes' always seem to be male-identified?) with depth and rigor. 'Gender', masculinities and femininities are treated as mutable, ever-changing, real live and lived sites of negotiation and experience, and are often considered in relation to class and various technologies. Surprisingly accessible and often even kind of fun to read, I would recommend this text to anyone interested in reading or writing about popular music and technology, regardless of their current field or background.

[Larry-bob Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of papers written by various authors about popular music and gender. The writing is academic, but not usually too jargon-laden. While there are several chapters about such boring topics as Jagger and Springsteen, there are also chapters on women guitarists and riot grrrl. Most importantly for our concerns is the article "The Missing Links: Riot grrrl -- feminism -- lesbian culture" by Marion Leonard, which explores connections between riot grrrl and earlier womyn's music, and also points out some of the ways that past writing about riot grrrl has heterosexualized it.

[Joseph Sverker]

It's interesting how one can see things with new eyes when youread books. Ihave of course realised that, for example, guitarists (electric) are mainly male, but it becomes more than mere facts when it is put into a analysis about gender. Very enlightening.

[ariane · Rating 3 out of 5]

For some reason I can't get into this right now. Think I'll set it aside for now and revisit it later.

[Nicola ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for an essay on gender identity & music