We always need to label things.
To find a definition, stick a card to it.
Teen pop, post rock, glam rock, shoegaze, new wave, punk kittens.
A lifetime spent finding the right words for defining this or that musical genre.
And we do the same thing to indicate those who play these music genre, sings them, performs them on a stage.
Call it comfort.
Call it the need to find a place in the world for anything that comes out of the record companies, of torrents, and of iPods.
Call it that giving it a name or a definition is a way to bring along with it a sense of security and comfort. I will never understand.
This is all fully legitimate, linear, extremely logical and rational.
But then we run into what is the magical musical world, the feminine one.
And there, that perverse need for having to draw a line takes an important turn.
As in a drastic process of extreme synthesis we are faced with two macro alternatives: the how dreamy one that sing in playback and the ugly but good one.
Probably this very simply subdivision in which all, let’s face it, at least once we have fallen for, is due also, and above all, to the growing media exposure of public figures and an obsession for one’s image, the emblem of our times, from which we obtusely continue to be seduced by.
Today with a click you know everything, see everything, anyone can make music and spread it, photographs are a communication vehicle that is even too powerful, and if you are also good looking then it’s clear that it will be easier for you appear on a front cover before the one that has an amazing voice but just doesn’t cut it, so she will always be the one with the powerful voice, but ugly.
The rules of marketing, of commerce.
We know them.
In all this, however, she is also there.
The hot one.
But also good.
And also an exhibitionist.
In the sense of exhibiting, showing off, coming on stage with a killer look.
With her own character.
Like any musician does once having climbed the three steps.
One in all, PJ Harvey.
Born in 1969, Polly Jane Harvey is an English singer-songwriter with a twenty-year career and collaborations with famous artists such as Thom Yorke, Mark Lineman and Nick Cave.
She is beautiful, extremely talented and magically magnetic.
A musician, a character, an artist.
A refined and raw sound.
The sombre and poignant lyrics.
The charm of a woman who bring along all her femininity and her uneasiness.
The texts which she refuses to talk about are about bleeding hearts, eroticism, passion.
And they exude gut feelings.
She can play more than one instrument.
She takes care of the production of her music herself.
She has collaborated with a number of male musicians that look up to her and that have nothing but great things to say about her.
How can one insert her in the macro areas defined above?
There would be and there was a list of adjectives that could be used to describe her, but as soon as you turn on the lights for her success, one of the first things that is done is to point at her as a feminist icon and associate it her the riot groups.
So totally misrepresenting the meaning of the word feminism, linking the concept only to that of independence, resourcefulness, femininity, empowerment, charisma.
Probably the best way to be able to frame a character is to give him or her a strong connotation, certainly one of the best moves to stereotype him or her.
Moreover, although she’s defined as a symbol of female rock and her way of being and her success in the music world have nothing to envy that of her fellow men, there is no trace in her lyrics and in her public appearances or statements, a desire to take a stand or a discussion regarding all those emblematic themes of the feminist movement.
Then it happens that in 1992, the NME publishes a picture of her topless, and therefore people start asking why, a feminist icon, was to portray herself this way.
And she had actually distanced herself from feminism, because she says that she probably doesn’t understand the term or the burden that the word is associated with; she should go back and study its history to really associate it with it, but she doesn’t feel the need to do so: she prefers to keep doing things the way she always has.
In the following years she then says that she doesn’t think of neither feminism nor in terms of gender when writing songs, adding that she had never had problems overcoming the fact of being a woman.
We always like this need to frame and rename everything that comes through our hands, that often while freezing what we bought at the butcher we find ourselves sticking the chicken label to the cured ham.
There are words that have a specific meaning, a story, an inherent depth, such that can not be used as a synonym, to emphasize a concept or even define an artist.
And feminism is one of them.
Which has created and continues to create confusion, being used inappropriately.
There are female artists who over the decades have made this movement a way of life, giving each of their own artistic expression a feminism touch or by using their works to support this movement.
PJ Harvey is an outstanding chameleon musician, bold and deep in her lyrics, competitive and successful in a field where men usually prevail.
But she has nothing to do and doesn’t want anything to do with the movement.
Although, there is no denying, to this day she is a symbol in rock music, how those famous ones just as well as the ones we usually talk about do actually exist.
And of this she is aware too.
Who last December 18 announced the release of jer next album coming out in April 2016.
She did it with a teaser on her Facebook page where one can admire her at work on the disc which ‘documents a unique artistic journey that has taken her to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington’, recorded, in public, at Somerset House in London.
We are waiting for her new songs.
And maybe to see it with all her elegance, soon, live in Italy.
