Freya Jarman-Ivens’ anthology Oh Boy! Masculinities and Popular Music stands as part of the wave of research problematizing the invisible no-gender land of masculine identity that stands as the ground zero of popular music. While it is occasionally uneven, Jarman-Ivens’ collection contains a series of thoughtful, well-written articles that investigate masculine identity construction in a number of different popular music genres. If I have a complaint about this collection at all, it is that the introductory essay by Ian Biddle and Jarman-Ivens needs better editing—the dual voices of the two authors frequently clash in ways that make the essay hard to read. Within this, the authors raise the expectation that the collection will problematize masculinity itself, both ontologically and as a mode of performance, and it does deliver on this promise. Like sociologist and gender scholar Michael Kimmel, they argue for a continuum of masculine identities, setting a frame for the collection wherein understandings and positionings of masculinity can range widely, and wherein gender itself is always a political cultural construct.
This collection draws from a wide array of disciplines, from music theory to cultural studies. It covers three fundamental arenas. The first, entitled, Boys, Boys, Boys: Male Bonds, Masculine Connections, explores the cultural constructions of normative masculinity across cultural spheres and engages with normative and normalized notions of male sexuality and masculine power. Section Two, Boys Don’t Cry: Troubled/Troubling Masculinity, moves further along the masculine-identity continuum toward the boundaries with that which is perceived as feminine. This section is at the heart of the collection in terms of examining the place of popular music studies in gender scholarship. Section Three, Boys Will Be...? Other Modes of Masculinity, goes outside mainstream masculine constructions, and is unified in its exploration of constructions of masculinity by the use of queer theory as the framework of analysis and by Roland Barthes’ focus on voice as a connective theme.
Section One opens with Sheila Whiteley’s “Which Freddie? Constructions of Masculinity in Freddie Mercury and Justin Hawkins.” Whiteley builds on Barthes’ seminal “The Grain of the Voice” to identify Freddie Mercury’s use of falsetto as a positioning of glam rock singer identity, which constructed his layered identities as a masculine rock icon and as a gay masculine rock hero. She then contrasts this with Justin Hawkins’ use of falsetto, which frequently parodies Mercury, to position himself (Hawkins) in a heterosexual frame of reference. Henry Spiller’s “Negotiating Masculinity in an Indonesian Pop Song: Doel Sumbang’s ‘Ronggeng,’” problematizes power and normative masculinity in Java. Spiller culturally contextualizes the image of the female ronggeng singer in Western Java to negotiate the continuum of masculine identity as both traditional and contemporary, a balance of reason and intellect with passion and emotional desire.
Jonathan Gruzelier, in “Moshpit Menace and Masculine Mayhem,” is heavily concerned with the role of place and community in the construction of masculinity. Gruzelier’s essay focuses on homo-social masculinity through the physical and social space of the heavy metal mosh pit where the homo-social behavior of moshing is mediated as a ritualized activity by a heavily homophobic gender construction of masculinity using music and the aesthetics of heavy metal to allow for the expression of multiple sub-cultural masculine identities. In Aaron Corn’s “To See Their Fathers’ Eyes: Expressions of Ancestry through Yarra?a among Yol?u Popular Bands from Arnhem, Australia,” the author explores the integration of traditional masculine values and modern technologies through popular music and the modern rock band as enacted by an indigenous tribe in Northern Australia. Following the theme of tradition integrating with modern, technological life, Corn’s essay examines how performance traditions are utilized as a mechanism for teaching traditional values to young Yol?u men. Corn is focused on normalized masculine identities that serve as a way of integrating traditional indigenous cultural values with mainstream European-Australian cultural values.
The first article in Section Two, Richard Middleton’s “Mum’s the Word: Men’s Singing and Maternal Law,” interrogates mainstream masculinity through the examination of female masculinity with particular focus on the reaction of masculine construction to the three waves of feminism. Middleton explores boundaries of masculinity with femininity, arguing that the mother-son relationship whereby the masculine identity is constructed and stabilized has historically consistently been transformed in reaction to the different movements in feminism from the late minstrelsy of Al Jolson to contemporary hip-hop. Taking the next step, Biddle effectively links these essays to the burgeoning masculinities studies movement within the broad arena of gender scholarship. He articulates the “problem” of masculinity as one where masculinity as the universal neutral of Anglo-American society (and by extension mainstream, first-world global society) is delineated by gender, making masculinity political in its essential construction. He does this through a study of performance and songwriting, bridging concerns for private cultural construction through songwriting to the cultural production of performance. If for no other reason than to read this article, this collection would be worth the time as Biddle’s article makes important connections to the larger movement of gender scholarship.
Sarah Williams’ contribution to Section Two explores boundaries of masculinity in the emo rock subculture looking at how voice, lyrics, and musical structure illuminate the contradictions of masculine teenage culture. This essay’s goal is to highlight emo’s success as a musical genre because it allows teenage boys/men to question and challenge masculine roles and the changing nature of masculinity from the traditional hegemonic idea of the stalwart breadwinner to its more multifaceted contemporary expression. Jarman-Ivens closes out Section Two with her exploration of the different masculinities performed by Elvis Presley throughout his career. Like Biddle she clearly is connecting her analysis with larger gender studies concerns for hegemonic and normative masculine displays. In this article she focuses on the ways that the young Elvis represented a deviant or anti-normative masculine identity that was feminized through sexual display and racialized through his rockabilly vocal style and highly sexualized performance style. This early style stands in contrast to the contained, normalized, almost campy masculinity portrayed by Presley in the Vegas years of 1970 to the end of his life.
Section Three opens with Judith Halberstam’s exploration of Big Mama Thornton and Sylvester as different readings of racialized female masculinity, in the first case with gay masculine femininity using the vehicle of personal style and genre-inflected vocal style. Both genres under investigation in this entry are associated with GLBT identities. Halberstam identifies the blues as a genre associated with lesbian singers and disco, the genre in which Sylvester performed the role of black gay diva. As Halberstam notes, they “do not wear their drag, they sing it" (191). Stan Hawkins’s “[Un]Justified: Gestures of Straight-Talk in Justin Timberlake’s Songs” explores similar ground to Whiteley’s analysis at the beginning of this collection. The difference in Hawkins’ entry resides in the tools of analysis, using queer theory to explore the marketing and representation of Justin Timberlake, a straight-male pop performer, as a hetero-normative but occupying queer performance spaces. Hawkins suggests that this approach allows for an expanded notion of masculinity, particularly heterosexual masculinity.
Shana Goldin-Perschbacher uses the vehicle of Jeff Buckley’s voice to challenge gender and genre boundaries defined by 1990s white male grunge rock. Goldin-Perschbacher explores Buckley’s use of vocal range and non-normalized pronoun use in covering songs made famous by women singers, which she describes as a transgendered performance style or a queered female performance style. This article serves as a nice translation of a similar set of concerns addressed by Gruzelier earlier in the anthology. This article, however, frames homo-social relations between a straight male performer and straight male audience members through the lens of queer theory, in addition to the more hetero-normative dynamic between a straight male performer and female audience members. The last chapter in the anthology, Mark Butler’s “‘Some of Us Can Only Live in Songs of Love and Trouble’: Voice, Genre/Gender, and Sexuality in the Music of Stephin Merritt,” explores how masculinity is constructed through the musical style and voice of Stephin Merritt’s compositions. Butler analyzes textual meaning, musical structures, and gay cultural constructions to highlight the importance of private identity, particularly referring to the socially constructed closet of gay sexuality and the ways this private, gay identity has historically been policed, in Butler’s terms, through public discourse. Merritt as a singer and songwriter uses the full palette of poetic, artistic, and instrumental voices to create freedom of expression for a multitude of gay, masculine identities through popular music.
This anthology is a must for any scholar’s library that focuses on the cultural production and social positioning of masculinity in contemporary society, standing as a benchmark collection exploring masculinities in their variety of expression in the world of popular music. While it would be nice to have more non-Anglo-American representation in the collection, it would be impossible for any collected volume to be truly cross-culturally representative. Oh Boy! makes the best compromise it could, framing international constructions of masculinity from the outset and then focusing on specific cases where different parts of that construction can be fruitfully explored. Such concerns aside, this collection is well worth our time and. Oh Boy! is a collection that is accessible to a number of different audiences, though students at earlier stages may find it tough going, and it is particularly an asset if the reader can read Western music notation.
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[Review length: 1549 words • Review posted on September 7, 2011]