Music is supposed to be about release, about freeing ourselves from something, (so the romantic’s story goes) yet as I become increasingly dedicated to my craft as a musician, more and more am I struck by its constraints.

The pathetic gender ratio of my personal iTunes library isn’t so surprising when perusing mainstream musical history of the last fifty-odd years. For instance, only since 1972 have women been allowed to play in the University of Minnesota’s marching band, and a mere 23 of the 159 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s inductees are women. There is a longstanding tradition of a male-dominated music sphere, reflected in the gender disparity of public voices disseminating our work to the public. According to this article, “among music writers with a regular byline in a major publication or radio outlet, 82% are men.”

Female artists like me suffer from a lack of role models, whom all musicians–singers especially–need to shape their talent around. If a woman sings along to too many dudes’ songs, she risks leaving the upper register of her voice underdeveloped. It has taken me hours of vocal exercises to strengthen my ability to sing higher pitches. I never sang in my upper register when I was growing up because the pop divas of the 1990s like Celine Dion and Mariah Carey just didn’t appeal to my tastes (and I have to wonder if “taste”–usually thought of as idiosyncratic–is just as implicated in upbringing and social norms as anything else.) I was raised on classic rock. As a result, my musical subconscious reverberates with the echoes of male voices, and while I will always love Jeff Mangum, I will never sound good singing like him.

My little brother got married yesterday to a wonderful woman he met while playing “The Towers of Jadri,” who is not taking his name and did not make me dress up, so I’m in a warm, expansive mood (part of that is the gloriously autumnal weather in Chapel Hill.) You have my permission and encouragement to promote your own blogs and articles and Twitter accounts in this comment section.

*

Why does The Wolf of Wall Street get a pass from the MPAA when feminist films don’t?

*

BuffButch.com

*

Yes, I will happily click on an article about the history of Fraggle Rock.

*

I’m in North Carolina for my brother’s wedding, and I almost missed my flight because my cab never came (in Utah! You can’t just FLAG ONE DOWN HERE, at 5:30am) and I was reminded that a friend of ours says the optimum number of flights to miss in your lifetime cannot be zero, or you have wasted too much time being early for flights. That friend is made of sterner stuff than I.

*

I’m obsessed with “Annotation Tuesday,” and cannot believe Elon Green got Lillian Ross ON THE PHONE to talk about her 1950 New Yorker profile of Ernest Hemingway:

You know, the first time I ever ate caviar was when Mary Hemingway served it in the hotel. That didn’t make me addicted to caviar. It was an interesting experience and I liked it. If they were drinking, I would taste it. It didn’t make a drinker out of me. I also knew Faulkner. He’d come visit me in New York and say he was going into detox. It was never very successful. If he wanted to drink, that was his business.

*

Ten great Christmas songs recorded by Jewish singers.

*

Someday we’ll be famous enough to score interviews with Baxter from Anchorman.

*

I can remember the precise moment I fell in love with hip-hop. It was 2003, and I was 14. I was mesmerized when the first notes of Nas’ “Ether” rattled the radio’s speakers. His raspy voice and aggressive cadence captivated me as he hurled insults for more than four minutes at fellow rapper Jay-Z. By the time the last notes faded off the radio, I had been transformed into a hip-hop disciple. I saved my allowance for two weeks so I could purchase Nas’ album, and I listened to it every day until I’d learned every word of every song. I purchased Nas’ entire music catalogue over the course of six months, and then I did the same with NWA, Snoop Dogg, Rakim and a host of other MCs. I fell in love with hip-hop, even as I realized the art form often excludes and degrades female bodies like mine. It is through this hyper-masculine, patriarchal and heteronormative culture that I developed a feminist politic capable of both loving and interrogating institutions like hip-hop.

According to Andreana Clay, associate professor of sociology at San Francisco State University, the kinship between feminists and hip-hop lovers is often driven by a connection between the music and their lived experiences. She pinpoints her love for hip-hop in the complex work of Meshell Ndegeocello. For Clay, Ndeogeocello’s magnetism rests in her experiences as a self-identified Black-American bisexual feminist. Finding strands of that infused DNA in Ndegeocello’s identity and music fuels Clay’s bond to a culture that often uses words and imagery to reinforce female degradation and objectification.

It is the stories that hypnotize me. Hip-hop serves as the soundtrack to my pubescent development. Certain songs connect me to specific memories. I am immediately transported to a turbulent long-term relationship I had with a drug dealer when I hear the Notorious BIG’s “10 Crack Commandments.”

Rule nombre uno: Never let no one know
How much dough you hold ‘cause you know
The cheddar breed jealousy ‘specially
if that man fucked up, get yo’ ass stuck up
Number two: never let ’em know your next move
Don’t you know Bad Boys move in silence and violence?
Take it from your highness
I done squeezed mad clips at these cats for their bricks and chips
Number three: Never trust nobody
Your moms’ll set that ass up, properly gassed up
Hoodied and masked up, shit, for that fast buck
She be laying in the bushes to light that ass up
Number four: I know you heard this before
“Never get high on your own supply”
Number five: never sell no crack where you rest at
I don’t care if they want a ounce, tell ’em “bounce!”

I see the tormented face of my former love. It is eating him up that he must bypass $100 because we’re together. He refuses to pass a cocaine sack to a student sticking a Benjamin in his face. He pretends he doesn’t hear the request because I’m standing beside him. There are things I’m not supposed to see, hear or understand. Biggie reminds me of how raw that experience was.

Yet, I recognize how problematic hip-hop is. I cringe every time a rapper easily lets the word “bitch” or “ho” fly off his tongue. He’s not rapping about me, but he’s rapping about me. I feel that and I choose not to ignore it.