Rebecca Dobre Billström: Feminist musical engagements - The struggle against gender inequalities in music-making practices

Description

Abstract: The debate around gender equality and feminist concerns in relation to
musical life are increasingly part of Swedish public discourse. Attention
directed to structural gender inequalities in various music scenes by feminist
associations, governmental intervention in these issues, and the
recent #metoo-protests against sexual harassment and violence in the
music industries, are all part of this. Based on interviews with musicians
engaging in affecting change, who start out from a gendered perspective,
this thesis explores the feminist political potential of both music-making
and organisational work to combat inequalities in relation to music, and
focuses on several features of such an engagement: the negotiating character
of relating to gendering categories as part of feminist attempts to
transform music; the relation between power structures and musical
performance by discussing embodied practices and musical material
concerned with feminist social commentary and what these do politically;
and feminist approaches to practice beyond notions of gender equality
as representation. The theoretical concept of affective dissonance is
used to shed light on musicians’ self-reflective negotiations with social
power structures and how these negotiations produce a specific potential
for collective feminist action and solidarity within and across music environments.
The musicians interviewed are active in various music
scenes, from opera, jazz and blues, visa, new music composition and
sound art to dansband, rap and folk music and they all engage in different
ways with both notions and practices of gender-related and feminist
transformation in music-making. This thesis examines the interrelated
aspects of such an engagement, of individual experiences of sexism, gender
power dynamics and social-professional relationships, musical performance
and material, and collective feminist ambitions and capacity in
music practice.

Period	2022 Mar 4
Examinee/Supervised person	Rebecca Dobre Billström
Degree of Recognition	National