CHAPTER 22 | ROCK, ROOTS, AND REBELLION 539
Whatever the balance of power between males and females today, since the
1990s the popular media have tended to portray young modern women as inde-
pendent, even untamable, rejecting the view that their identity revolves around
duty. Tro u b l e G i rl s: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock (1997), written and edited
entirely by women, touts the need for women to speak their mind and to confront
misogyny. In the preface, a prominent female rock critic of the 1960s endorses
truth telling, wherever it leads: “Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what
the singer wanted, loved, hated—as good rock & roll did—challenged me to do the
same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman... the form encouraged
my str uggle for liberation.” A round the same time that Trouble Girls appeared, the
punk-inspired riot grrrl movement was at its height, with groups like Bikini Kill
and Sleater-Kinney proving that women could rock just as hard as men.
Following in the footsteps of rock, folk, and country songwriters like Carole
King, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton, women singer-
song writers since 1990 have continued to explore new aspects of feminine iden-
tity, one facet of the late-century phenomenon of third-wave feminism (the fi rst
wave being the pre-1920 suffrage movement and the second wave being the
1970s women’s movement). The third wave’s more fl uid concepts of gender roles
and sexuality are evident in the songs of Tori Amos, Liz Phair, and the Canadians
Alanis Morrisette and Sarah McLachlan. Two artists whose careers began in the
1980s, Suzanne Vega and Michelle Shocked, are representative of the anti-folk
movement, a category that embraces singer-song writers whose sound is too
edgy or punk to be considered part of the folk tradition.
Another anti-folk musician is Ani DiFranco, who projects a vibrant feminism
on albums such as Not a Pretty Girl (1995). Resisting corporate inauthenticity,
DiFranco turned down major label contracts, instead forming her own record
company, Righteous Babe. DiFranco’s label distributes not only her own records
but also those of other hard-to-classify singer-songwriters, such as Anaïs Mitchell,
whose Hadestown (2010) is a concept album (Mitchell calls it a “folk opera,” the
same term Gershwin applied to Porg y and Bess) that retells the Greek myth of
Orpheus and Eurydice in a postapocalyptic setting that resembles the 1930s
Great Depression.
Just as rock spawned alternative rock and folk gave rise to anti-folk, coun-
try music encountered its own oppositional movement in the 1990s: alternative
country, or alt.country. Inspired by an older generation of country rockers like
Gram Parsons and Texas “outlaw” musicians Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore,
alt.country blends traditional country elements with roots rock and punk,
whose oppositional stance and do-it-yourself aesthetic it emulates. Sometimes
alt.country is referred to as No Depression, the name of a magazine devoted to
the music since its inception in 1995, and which in turn takes its name from the
Carter Family song “No Depression in Heaven.” Because of its wide range of sty-
listic resources, from honky-tonk to bluegrass and rockabilly, alt.country is also
known by the label Americana.
The one element studiously avoided by alt.country musicians is the sound of
contemporary mainstream country, as produced by the country music establish-
ment in Nashville. The Nashville scene, from an alt.country perspective, represents
all that is false, slick, and deracinated in our present-day music culture. Alt.country
musicians seek to restore authenticity by reconnecting with traditionalist roots, fi l-
tered through an ironic, postmodernist sensibility.alt.countryK The riot grrrl movement took
its name from a zine: a small-
circulation publication, usually
reproduced on photocopiers. Like
the music, zines were important
in creating and supporting a
subcultural identity for their
readership.172028_22_531-558_r3_sd.indd 539 23/01/13 11:20 AM