The art of knowing how to create a need: Jolène Ruest, author, radio host and agent at Spectacles Bonzaï, launches the website on Friday www.gueuleuses.com, a digital directory of musical projects (groups, solo artists) presenting women who sing using vocal techniques sometimes as extreme as the musical genres with which they are associated: death metal, hardcore punk, noize and tutti quanti. No one before her could imagine how necessary this site was, first to highlight the contribution of women to these musical scenes, then to satisfy us with musical discoveries.
“The repertoire of singers who scream, growl, fry, from all origins, eras and musical genres,” is described on the home page. Gueuleuses is also a dangerous way of wasting hours and hours of our time without realizing it: the search tool allows us to sort by musical chapel, however obscure it may be (crust? cybergrind? l ’emoviolence? Sasscore, kawaii metal, electronicore?) or by country of origin.
The site lists more than a hundred musical projects from Canada. At first glance, only around ten names ring a (loud) bell: Deadly Pale and Despised Icon, obviously, Arch Enemy, Ratpiss, the veterans of La cage de bruits, Growlers Choir, a handful of others. The vast majority of these names attract our curiosity and our mouse cursor. Click, click: but who is this Chloé, “mouthy” from the Montreal experimental grindcore group Duplah Pootch Hanichan Gasoliiine, who launched their first mini-album in March 2023, entitled Woup Pelaye ? What does Fall of Stasis sound like, a death metal band in which Jessica Dupré has been singing since 2017? Hours and hours of decibels to discover, “and that’s precisely the purpose of the site: to make discoveries,” underlines Jolène Ruest.
“Trippy project”
“It’s such a trippy project,” she assures, emphasizing the contribution of women to these marginal musical scenes otherwise dominated by men. The genesis of the project lies in an Excel file that she fed with the musical discoveries she made to share with her listeners, for one of her radio projects broadcast at CISM. “When I showed the file to Seb [Collin, patron de Bonzaï], he simply said: “We’re making a website with this!” » sums up with candor the one who published two novels with XYZ editions, Monogamies or how a country singer fucked up my sex life (2016) and The star dancers parasitize your sky (2020, adapted for the theater).
With the webmaster, Jolène Ruest was inspired by the work of the creators of the reference site www.quebecpunkscene.netarchives of the local punk scene founded in 1999, to create Gueuleuses, a name which refers as much to the posture of the singers as to their vocal techniques which will be detailed on Friday, during the launch evening, by the metal singing teacher and member by Valfreya, Corinne Cardinal.
Like the punk repertoire that inspired her, Ruest wants to “give an overall portrait of a genre”, but by shedding light on the work of the musicians. “I feel like there are more and more loudmouths popping up with new projects — especially in the hardcore scene, which is so active. »
The site is aptly inaugurated on March 8, International Women’s Rights Day, “while we are going through an interesting social moment, that of the deconstruction of genders”, indicates Jolène Ruest.
“For my part, I started to be interested in this music when I was a teenager, in the mid-2000s. So, my relationship with the scene is different, for example, from that of [la journaliste et critique] Christine Fortier, who was already covering the metal scene in the 1990s. At the time, women in the scene were often asked if they were there because they were the blonde of one of the musicians on stage… Me, that never happened to me, I never received comments questioning my place in the industry. As for the women who perform on stage, singers or instrumentalists, they have taken their place. They get involved in this scene because they also want to make music, to be part of this world — the hardcore scene is a good example of this evolution. It expresses itself today in all its diversity. »
The launch of Gueuleuses is part of the calendar for the 12e edition of the Rock League, the gathering of “independent rock scenes”, which runs until March 30. Singer with Hands of Death and author of the next volume of The evolution of Quebec metal, Louise Girard will also be invited to talk about the female history of the punk and metal music scenes. At the end of the event, a performance by the Kapitur group, from 7 p.m., at Quai des Mignes.