They're Playing Our Songs: Women Talk about Feminist Rock Music

(Hardback)

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They're Playing Our Songs offers a unique and fascinating vehicle for women's voices to be heard on the subject of women's music and how it affects their lives. Author Ann M. Savage explores 15 women's engagements with what might be called feminist rock music, including that of such noted artists as Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, the Indigo Girls, and Melissa Etheridge. The women interviewed here tell deeply personal stories of how songs by these musicians have helped them survive and cope with turbulent life experiences such as difficult work environments, depression, and abusive relationships. As we can see, then, music can be not only pleasurable but also fiercely expressive, in ways that allow its listeners some vicarious catharsis. These accounts of personal transformation make for a book that is at once compelling and dynamically political, revealing the myriad ways in which art, polemics, and life intertwine to create a side of womanhood that few ever get to see.

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Academic libraries with a specific interest in contemporary feminist music and musicians.-Choice
"Academic libraries with a specific interest in contemporary feminist music and musicians."-Choice

Author Bio

ANN M. SAVAGE is Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunication Arts at Butler University in Indianapolis. She has also contributed entries to Women and Music in America Since 1900: An Encyclopedia.