Riot Grrrl | Anatomy of a Revolutionary Movement

Early 1990s, Washington State: armed with their instruments and their big mouths, young musicians give birth to the feminist punk movement Riot Grrrl. By digging their own furrow, far from machismo and the diktats of industry, they claim a “girls’ revolution”. More than 30 years later, Bikini Kill, one of the emblematic groups of this uprising, is preparing to tread the boards of the MTelus, this April 12. And his message still resonates.

It was an accumulation of frustrations and a thirst for speaking out that motivated, in the early 1990s, groups of girls to come together to make music and denounce many injustices. Their goal: “to make feminism more punk, and punk more feminist”. And, by the way, to prove that this musical genre has nothing to do with men.

“What is interesting with Riot Grrrl is that it is a protest movement that has come to life within a musical genre,” explains musicologist Catherine Harrison-Boisvert. “The Riot Grrrls said, ‘It’s all well and good, punk and its revolutionary aspirations, but there are blind spots and one of those blind spots is sexism.’ »

“Music has the capacity to articulate discourse effectively and to focus and catalyze strong collective emotions. This allows him to facilitate the circulation of protest ideas. It echoes feelings of revolt and militant energy and contributes to the creation and consolidation of a community,” continues Catherine Harrison-Boiverst, doctoral student at the Université de Montréal.

At the time of the Riot Grrrls, women described the punk scene as “violent” and multiplied the unpleasant experiences during concerts. Through the zines, small craft publications (manifestos) and self-published, tongues are loosened and activists rally. They tell how they are relegated to the back of performance halls and never taken seriously by means of texts and committed collages, sometimes with irony. One of the first zines Riot Grrrl to see the light of day is called Bikini Kill.

It was during the first shows organized by Kathleen Hanna and her band in Washington that we heard the slogan “girls in the front” for the first time. “The fact that women are the heart of the mosh pitit’s in the very DNA of the movement”, explains Manon Labry, doctor in North American civilization and author of Riot Grrrls: chronicle of a feminist punk revolution.

Extract of Rebel Girlfrom Bikini Kill

Feminine punk from here

With more than 20 years of experience in the music industry underground Québécois, Rox Arcand recognizes in these claims what animated him in his beginnings and still animates him.

The musician from the Old Capital formed her first band exclusively female… thanks to an ad on the LesPacs website!

When she began to play with teammates, at the turn of the 2000s in a room rented from Laval University, the looks were heavy with meaning. “We saw the guys who practiced in the other premises looking at us askance. They wondered who we were, what were we doing there. It was striking, ”recalls the one who was part of the groups Molly’s Decline and Machinegun Suzie, among others.

Same story with Catherine Jeanne-D’Arc, who leads the feminist group Charôgne. “I still dress sexy in my shows. Let’s say we’re at the Quai des Mists, dudes will see me from behind through the window and it will pique their curiosity so they will go home. But they don’t suspect that I’m yelling at them in my tunes, ”says the queer artist, with a smirk.

Excerpt from the music video Frustrated feministfrom Charogne

The group formed in Montreal nearly 10 years ago started out playing covers of iconic songs from the Riot Grrrl movement, then eventually diverged into original pieces. THE bands like Bikini Kill, L7 and Le Tigre – another Kathleen Hanna band that will be reuniting for a summer reunion tour – have greatly inspired Charôgne’s style.

Like Kathleen Hanna, Catherine Jeanne-D’Arc sometimes writes insults about her body during concerts and likes to provoke less informed audiences.

According to Lyse Ross, member of the Montreal collective Les Insoumises, the Riot Grrrls demonstrated something important: women and people of sexual diversity need to exchange together. “It can be isolating not having a megaphone to communicate your frustrations, to testify to your reality,” explains the one whose group’s mission is to put forward feminist punk culture. ” THE zines, it was exactly that, a medium to manage to reach people who live the same injustices as you, with the ultimate goal of gathering and organizing. »

“It paved the way for many contemporary female musicians. Just the fact that bands like Bikini Kill are reforming today shows that there is still relevance to that message. I think it’s going to look for something deep, way beyond nostalgia,” says Catherine Harrison-Boisvert.