James Rovira

“I Can’t Believe We Made It”: Romanticism and Afropresentism in Works of African-American Women Hip Hop and R’n’B Artists

Another problematic of Romanticism for rock (and therefore North American pop music in general) is Romanticism’s pernicious racism, which I will show instigated the very origins of rock and roll. Romantic ideologies of racial categories and hierarchies fed into the mythologies of white artists drawing from supposedly vulgar, primitive Black music for sexuality, physicality, andContinue reading ““I Can’t Believe We Made It”: Romanticism and Afropresentism in Works of African-American Women Hip Hop and R’n’B Artists”

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“Laughing with a Mouth of Blood”: St. Vincent’s Gothic Grotesque

Many of St. Vincent’s songs, videos, and stage acts use grotesque scenarios and images to examine the roles we play and the identities we create and embody as well as the anxieties associated with them. They employ “exaggeration, distortion, or unexpected combination” to construct and inhabit subjectivities that are inescapably hybrid and often monstrous: simultaneouslyContinue reading ““Laughing with a Mouth of Blood”: St. Vincent’s Gothic Grotesque”

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“Our Generation”: Gender, Regeneration and Women in Rock

The rock revolution was often connected with male performers and masculine energy; as critics of gender and rock have noted, “rock’n’roll in excelsis… [is] male ferocity, resentment, [and] virulence” …as rock was the aesthetic of masculine energy in the 1960s, the French Revolution expressed its aesthetic energy in Romanticism, which dominated art, literature, and musicContinue reading ““Our Generation”: Gender, Regeneration and Women in Rock”

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“A Woman with an Attitude”: Male and Female Gothic and Siouxsie and the Banshees

Notably, the [1976 Thames Television interview with the Sex Pistols] also showcases Siouxsie’s measured response, one that encapsulates what her life and music has always been about — a challenge to patriarchal structures through measured control mixed with playful dismissiveness. Diana Edelman, Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism, p. 123 Diana Edelman contributed chapter 6Continue reading ““A Woman with an Attitude”: Male and Female Gothic and Siouxsie and the Banshees”

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“There Is No Pure Evil, Nor Pure Good, Only Purity”: William Blake’s and Patti Smith’s Art as Opposition to Societal Boundaries

Patti Smith’s Blakean influence deviates from the infamous excess that has come to define rock; rather, Smith presents the alternative, individualized responses to Romanticism that illuminate the spirituality present in rock singers. . . This chapter investigates the connections between Smith and Blake and thus hopes to remind readers that female artists should be discussedContinue reading ““There Is No Pure Evil, Nor Pure Good, Only Purity”: William Blake’s and Patti Smith’s Art as Opposition to Societal Boundaries”