The Original Pinettes and Black Feminism in New

Home , Backatown, Black Pearls, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Rebirth Brass Band, Space Brothers (manga), Stooges Brass Band

STREET QUEENS: THE ORIGINAL PINETTES AND BLACK FEMINISM IN NEW

ORLEANS BRASS BANDS

A THESIS

SUBMITTED ON THE SEVENTEENTH DAY OF JUNE 2015

TO THE DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

OF THE SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS

OF TULANE UNIVERSITY

FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF MUSICOLOGY

______Kyle DeCoste

APPROVED: ______Matt Sakakeeny, Ph.D. Director

______Daniel B. Sharp, Ph.D.

______Karissa Haugeberg, Ph.D.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………..iv

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………….1

Band History

Subject Position

Methodology

Organization

2. FROM STREETS TO STAGE……………………………………………12

A Brief Spatial History of the New Orleans Brass Band

From Silence to Speech

Coming to Voice

Creating a Space for Self-Definition

3. SONGS AS KNOWLEDGE………………………………………………49

Casanova

Baby/Valerie

Get A Life

4. THE FIELD OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION…………………………..77

You Got to Tip the Band

Branding the Band

On the Way Up

5. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………..103

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………....106

BIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………...113

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Throughout the process of writing this thesis, I was surrounded by an intelligent and loving group of friends/colleagues who not only acted as sounding boards for my ideas, but also provided diverse and insightful perspectives that have changed the way I see the world. I am hugely grateful for the communal academic life you’ve provided.

Thanks go out to the colleagues, fellow grad students, and friends who have given me valuable input throughout: Nick Benoit, William Buckingham, Susanne Hackett, Colin

Kemper, Shane Lief, Alix Riviere, Daniella Santoro, Sarah Senette, and Chris

Willoughby.

I am very grateful to everyone who took the time to sit down with me for interviews: Tylita Curtain, Veronique Dorsey, Dee Holmes, Christie Jourdain, Kendra

Robertson, and Janine Waters. Their willingness to give of their time and share their perspectives has enriched this thesis substantially. I hope that the interviews were enjoyable, or at the very least, bearable. Thank you to the crew at Bullet’s Sports Bar

(especially Kendra) for your kindness and company on many Friday nights.

Thanks are due to my thesis committee, Matt Sakakeeny, Dan Sharp, and Karissa

Haugeberg, who not only mentored me throughout this process, but also became friends somewhere along the way. I am indebted to all of you for your wise words. Matt not only laid the groundwork for my research, but also constantly challenged me, putting me in plenty of academic situations in which I felt uncomfortable. I promise I mean that in the best way. Dan encouraged me to embrace my tongue-tied abstractions and showed me

plenty of creative ways to do scholarship. Karissa encouraged me to rely on my own voice and have confidence in my ability as a scholar. I would certainly be remiss were I not to mention my second unofficial advisor, Sue Mobley, who was patient (bot not too patient!) for me to get hip to intellectual activism and black feminist concerns. She never hesitated to call me out on some of my more naïve ideas, but was also quick to congratulate me when I had some success. All four of you have mentored me and substantially influenced who I want to be as a person.

I am hugely indebted to my girlfriend, Maddie Schwartz, for her love, companionship, and for always making me feel like I was capable. She not only accompanied me on a good number of ethnographic excursions, but also took the time to read my thesis aloud so I could tighten up my prose. Microsoft Sam has nothing on her.

Thanks for always making me feel loved and capable.

Thanks especially go to my mom and dad, Kathy and Clem DeCoste, for being okay with me traveling 3,465 kilometers (2,153 miles) away, for always encouraging me to do what I love, and for the support that they’ve given me over the years. Throughout the various headaches I’ve given you, I hope I’ve at least made you proud.

Finally, this thesis would not exist were it not for the cooperation and patience of all of the Pinettes: Tylita Curtain, Veronique Dorsey, Nicole Elwood, Casandra French,

Natasha Harris, Dionne Harrison, Jazz Henry, Dee Holmes, Christie Jourdain, and Janine

Waters. I am humbled by your insight, musical ability, work ethic, and willingness to embrace this strange Canadian. While there are limits to my words, I hope I’ve at least done some justice to you and your music.

v 1

1. INTRODUCTION

The musical traditions of New Orleans are largely patriarchal. As the predominant sonic signifier of New Orleans, the brass band amplifies this gender bias more than any other musical tradition in the city. Brass band song lyrics can at times revolve around the subjugation and objectification of women, which renders the brass band canon tricky to access for female musicians. These symbolic issues become socially reified in the male control of instruments and the barriers to professionalization experienced by female musicians. Indeed, female brass band musicians are in the minority, constituting few more than ten musicians in a city with somewhere in the vicinity of fifty bands, all of which feature about ten musicians. The available literature on brass bands has thus far focused almost exclusively on black men and, mostly due to the relative absence of women in brass bands, neglects to view gender as a category of analysis, reflecting the gender bias of the scene at large.

In 2013, my advisor Matt Sakakeeny published his book on the city’s brass bands called Roll With It: Brass Band’s in the Streets of New Orleans. It became the first ethnographic study of brass bands in contemporary culture and signaled an important turning point not only in scholarship on brass bands, but New Orleans music in general.

Instead of simply celebrating the city’s music, Matt1 brings the music into its social

1 Throughout this thesis, I make reference to members of the band I study by their first names. I will refer to those whom I know personally by their first names and those whom I don’t know by last names for the sake of consistency. This equalizes authority and positions my subjects as experts in their field.

2 context in a way that is tuned to the concerns of its creators who are often subject to urban violence, poverty, and racial and economic marginalization.

With the turn in New Orleans music scholarship toward concerns of social justice, a foundation was set for me to consider gender as another category of analysis. The silence of women in his study was not something unbeknownst to him when the book went to press as he readily acknowledged that his “focus on black men perpetuates the marginalization of black women in scholarly studies.”2 Because there are so few women who play brass band instruments, the scholarship gives voice to the experiences of the majority of brass band musicians in the city. After all, hegemonic masculinity (the dominance of masculine men over more feminine gender identities) is a relational construct, dependent on something or someone outside of it to exist.3 This thesis seeks to introduce gender as a key element to brass band research by studying the only current exception to male dominance in New Orleans’ brass band community, an all-female brass band named the Original Pinettes Brass Band. Their example forces us to reconsider the domain of brass band music not only as one where brass band instruments articulate power, but where gender is a primary element in the construction and consolidation of this power.

Band History

In 1991, the Pinettes got their start at St. Mary’s Academy, an all-girls Catholic private school. Taking direction from bandleader Jeffery C. Herbert, they began playing

2 Matt Sakakeeny, Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 202. 3 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 186; R.W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

New Orleans style jazz in what Mr. Herbert at the time called a “Dixieland band.” At the school’s spring concert in 1992, the band played the Rebirth Brass Band’s “Freedom”4 and the crowd went wild, giving Herbert the idea that he could fashion the musicians to play contemporary brass band music rather than traditional New Orleans jazz.5 Some of the band members’ parents were having difficulties paying tuition to St. Mary’s, so

Herbert’s idea was to capitalize on the possible commercial success of an all-female brass band to pay for tuition to the school. He dubbed the band the Pinettes, a feminization of the name of his own band, the Original Pinstripe Brass Band.

For the 1993-‘94 school year, Herbert left St. Mary’s to direct the band at John

McDonogh High School, but he continued to manage the Pinettes, many of them having already graduated from the school. In 1998, he left New Orleans to become assistant band director at Southern University in Baton Rouge, at which point management was turned over to the band members. During this period, the Pinettes played in second lines and released a cassette tape, which garnered them very little success outside New Orleans.

As with many brass bands in the city, the Pinettes have had a lot of turnover in membership over the years. In the current ten-piece lineup, only Christie Jourdain, Dee

Holmes, and Casandra French are original members and, even then, they have not been members over the entire twenty-four-year career of the band, having left town for college and other such endeavors at various points in their careers. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005, band members were forced to relocate to other cities throughout the United States. After the storm, Christie took leadership of what was left of the band and made an effort to recruit new band members because some members,

4 Sometimes also called “Free My People,” the main line of the refrain. 5 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014.

4 greatly affected by the traumatic emotional and economic effects of the storm, were unable or unwilling to come back to New Orleans.

Subject Position

Though this thesis is about the Pinettes, I don’t hesitate to write myself into the text I’ve crafted and it should be read with an understanding of who is writing it. I write from the vantage point of a white male (an outsider in every visible way to the Pinettes’ social identities). While this presents limits in my understanding, it also means that a priority must be placed on listening. My work has been heavily influenced by the reflexive turn in anthropology that began in the 1970s and came to prominence with

James Clifford and George E. Marcus’ edited volume Writing Culture: The Poetics and

Politics of Ethnography (1986).6 Clifford and Marcus argued for writing that acknowledges the partiality and incompleteness of ethnographic truth claims and the honest recognition that creating an ethnographic text is an act of power. For all ethnographic episodes in the thesis, I’ve intentionally written in first person present to (1) bring you, the reader, into the story in a way that feels active and immediate and (2) bring attention to the situatedness of my writing.

Since its publication, Writing Culture has come under fire—particularly from feminist anthropologists—for neglecting to acknowledge the theoretical contributions of feminism to anthropology and for reproducing the same exclusions feminist anthropologists aim to critique. In their introduction to Writing Culture, Clifford and

Marcus quite controversially state that they were confronted by the “important and regrettable” fact that “[f]eminism had not contributed much to the theoretical analysis of

6 James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

5 ethnographies as texts.”7Using Clifford and Marcus’s own theoretical ammunition, black feminist anthropologist Irma McClaurin points out that their “exclusionary discourse reveals the ease with which hegemonic practices become reified through knowledge production.”8 Prominent feminist anthropologists responded to Marcus and Clifford’s claim with a hefty edited volume called Women Writing Culture (1995), edited by Ruth

Behar and Deborah A. Gordon.9 With the exception of Mary Louise Pratt, women’s voices were excluded entirely from Writing Culture.

Given this exclusion, it is sadly ironic that a black woman named Zora Neale

Hurston largely went unnoticed in anthropological circles as she mapped out the writing of reflexive and experimental ethnographies nearly fifty years prior to the publication of

Writing Culture. It has been convincingly argued by several scholars10 that Hurston, a black female anthropologist trained under Franz Boas at Columbia University, actually pioneered experimental and reflexive anthropology with the publication of Tell My Horse in 1938.11 Like the scholars of the reflexive turn that would later take the anthropological world by storm, Hurston’s colleagues criticized her personal writing style and seeming

7 Ibid, 20. 8 Irma McClaurin, “Theorizing a Black Feminist Self: Toward an Autoethnographic Approach” in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, ed. Irma McClaurin (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 50. 9 Ruth Behar and Deborah A Gordon, eds., Women Writing Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press: 1995). 10 Graciela Hernàndez, “Multiple Subjectivities and Strategic Positionality: Zora Neale Hurston’s Experimental Ethnographies” in Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography, ed. Diane Bell, Pat Caplan, & Wazir Jahan Karim (New York and London: Routledge, 1993).; Irma McClaurin, “Introduction” in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, ed. Irma McClaurin (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001).; bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1989). 11 Hurston, Zora Neale, (1938) Tell My Horse, Philadelphia: JB Lippincott (reprinted, Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation, 1982).

6 lack of objectivity.12 Hurston is best known as a novelist, but her experimentations in anthropology with subjectivity and fiction are notable. Reflecting on her career and the subjectivity with which she created her body of work, Hurston wrote “Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural. There is no single face in nature because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man’s spice-box seasons his own food.”13 Like Hurston, I have no reservations about writing myself into the story, although my social identity as a white male is very different from Hurston’s and the Pinettes’ and this presents a drastically different subject position.

Alice Walker asserts that “the truth about any subject only comes out when all sides of the story are put together, and all their different meanings make one new one. Each writer writes the missing parts to the other writer’s story.”14 As a white, straight, cisgender,

Canadian male, writing reflexively from an outsider identity can have intrinsic value in that it brings perspectives together and, in doing so, inches closer to the truth. It also hopefully opens up the door to other anthropologists whose words could be discredited by some on the sole basis of their identities. Writing in 1996, lesbian anthropologist

Esther Newton makes this case much more eloquently:

If straight men choose not to explore how their sexuality and gender may affect their perspective, privilege, and power in the field, women and gays, less credible by definition, are suspended between our urgent sense of difference and our justifiable fear of revealing it.15

12 Diane Bell, Pat Caplan, & Wazir Jahan Karim, eds., Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 5. 13 Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography, ed. Robert E. Hemenway (1942; Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 61. 14 Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Garden: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 49. Quoted in 15 Esther Newton, “My Best Informant’s Dress: The Erotic Equation in Fieldwork” in Out in the Field: Reflections of Gay and Lesbian Anthropologists, eds. Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap (Chicago: University of Illinois Press: 1996), 213.

In New Glasgow, the ten-thousand-person Canadian town where I was raised, a distinction is often made between “book smart” and practical knowledge (simply

“smart”). From a class perspective, people generally hold some disdain for the system, shaking their fists at politicians and valuing practical knowledge over “impractical” academic knowledge as a personal quality, thus placing a premium on lived experience as a form of knowledge. I believe this upbringing primed me to listen and internally validate the lived experiences of others. Because Canada is generally more socioeconomically level than the United States, I was not even aware that I was raised in a working-class family until I moved to New Orleans, where my class position (as a first-generation college student) was re-contextualized in a way that I think has given me a unique perspective on Canada and New Orleans. In that sense, this thesis is an intersubjective study of the various components of identity and their utility in provoking or instigating social change. My ability to turn off the specialized academic jargon that I use to converse in my professional life has aided my entrée into the field and, quite frankly, has felt like a very welcome relief after long weeks at the library, conferences, lectures, or presentations.

At times, my subject position has felt awkward because I can’t use my experience as a white male in a system that privileges my identity to speak directly to the lived experiences of black women. That said, “without a commitment to human solidarity,” argues black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins, “any political movement—whether nationalist, feminist or antielitist—may be doomed to ultimate failure.”16 The

16 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1991), 38.

8 particularities of my subject position should neither be glorified nor ironed out. I speak from a standpoint that reflects the partiality of my lived experience and this is something that resonates at the nexus of anthropology and black feminism. Collins champions partiality, noting that it is this partiality and not universality that is “the condition of being heard.” She argues that

Each group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own partial, situated knowledge.… [When] each group perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group becomes better able to consider other groups’ standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness of its own standpoint or suppressing other groups’ partial perspectives.17

I hope to use my privilege to give the Pinettes another stage on which to blow their horns engaging in a call-and-response dialogue with me personally as well as the body of knowledge in which my work can be situated.

My closeness with the Pinettes has not been static over the two years of research that has gone into this thesis. For the ethnographic events detailed within, my relationship with different band members has ranged from friend to fan, stranger to academic, and everything in between. These relationships continues to change and are made even more ambiguous because I am doing anthropology in the place where I live. Anthropologist

Wazir Jahan Karimit argues that “it is no longer possible to separate clearly the researcher and the native into two neat categories.”18 This and the partiality of my writing should be considered when reading my words and even the words of the Pinettes as I

17 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 270. 18 Wazir Jahan Karim, “Epilogue: The ‘nativised’ self and the ‘native’,” in Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography, Diane Bell, Pat Caplan, & Wazir Jahan Karim, (eds) (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 248.

9 have transcribed them, because transcription itself is also an act of power.19 As Hurston might have poetically claimed, “my spice box has seasoned my own food.”

Methodology

When I began graduate school, I was not yet very familiar with ethnomusicology or fieldwork and only had a vague idea of what I wanted to write about for my thesis.

When I read Matt’s book, I decided focusing on the Pinettes for my thesis could serve to benefit New Orleans music research and could also provide the Pinettes with a voice in the scholarship. I began with newspaper articles on the band and then, after some persistent emailing with Christie, scheduled an interview. All of the eight formal interviews conducted for this thesis took place in coffee shops, but informal conversations took place all around the city, usually before or after gigs, or between sets.

Over the past two years, I’ve attended dozens of the Pinettes gigs to the point where they’re likely more surprised than not when I’m absent. These gigs have taken place in bars of diverse clientele, large festivals, a school gymnasium, and even my living room for my twenty-fifth birthday.

Interviews became the starting point for my writing, but it wasn’t until I was a year into graduate school that I found a theoretical tool that resonated with what the

Pinettes had relayed to me in interviews. I was in Tulane’s library finishing up Collins’

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment when it struck me that just about everything I had read in the book supported the qualitative data the Pinettes had given to me. A strong thread of black feminism runs through this thesis, intersecting at various times with any material I thought could further

19 Mary Bucholtz, “The Politics of Transcription” in Journal of Pragmatics 32, no. 10 (2000): 1439-65.

10 illuminate the Pinettes’ words or experiences. At its heart, this thesis is a work in line with black feminist anthropology, which, according to anthropologist Irma McClaurin, has three defining objectives: to locate the experiences of black women, to study the interrelation of cultural and systemic structures of power, and the vindication of black women’s experiences.20 McClaurin claims “It is where these two approaches intersect, with their common concern for elucidating the constitution for social inequality and people’s varied responses to it, that Black feminist anthropology carves out a place.”21

Organization

In this thesis, I aim to engage in conversation about race, gender, and sexuality with the Pinettes in an exploration of how identity categories become entangled and contested in New Orleans brass band music. Building off of Matt’s work, I make gender central in my scholarship, looking at the Pinettes’ musical performances as a place where intersecting vectors of power meet and where band members work in and against prevailing ideologies of black womanhood.

The first chapter uses a spatial framework to better understand the Pinettes’ relationship to the city’s streets where New Orleans brass bands have traditionally played for over a century. It argues that the streets are male gendered22 and that the band has carved out autonomous spaces where they can voice resistant self-definitions of black womanhood that have the power to transform consciousness. To arrive at this juncture

20 Irma McClaurin, “Theorizing a Black Feminist Self: Toward an Autoethnographic Approach” in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, Irma McClaurin, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 14-15. 21 Ibid. 22 My use of “female gendered” or “male gendered” rather than “feminine” or “masculine” throughout this thesis is intentional because I hope to draw attention to the social construction of these seemingly natural gender assignations. The cumbersomeness of “male gendered” or “female gendered” strikes me as most fitting to do this.

11 whereby their resistance can be voiced, they have (1) picked up male gendered instruments (a revolutionary act in and of itself) and (2) created their own sound that subverts the gendered impositions of the genre. Aiming to describe an affect that signals a female gendering, I argue that the Pinettes have transformed the site of their weekly gig into a temporally and spatially bound public in which black feminism can be made real.

Whereas the first chapter deals with the creation of space for voicing self- definitions, the second details the ways the Pinettes use their music and the music of their peers in performance contexts. How do they deal with lyrics in the brass band canon that are misogynistic, objectifying, or hypersexualized? How do they contend with the stereotype that women who play male gendered instruments are often stereotyped as lesbians, especially given that some of the band members are lesbians? How does a song’s meaning change across different performance contexts? This chapter argues that the Pinettes’ music and the musical decisions they make are sites of black feminist knowledge where tensions of race, gender, and sexuality are negotiated and contested both in real-time performance contexts and in decisions about musical selections made in advance of performance.

Finally, the third chapter moves from theoretical to material concerns, placing the

Pinettes within a field of cultural production that is influenced by race, class, and gender.

This chapter seeks to position the Pinettes as not only musicians, but also skilled musical laborers and businesswomen who do a tremendous amount of multi-tasking as they piece together a living doing what they love, all while raising kids and working days jobs in an attempt to gain social and spatial mobility.

2. FROM STREETS TO STAGE

It’s a Friday evening. I dismount my bike, lock it to a stop sign, and head toward the scent of barbecued smoked sausages and fried fish that engulfs Bullet’s Sports Bar in the heart of New Orleans’ Seventh Ward. A neighborhood bar, I’m one of only a few patrons to visit from another locality, having biked a good forty minutes to get there.

The bar door, which faces the corner of North Dorgenois Street and AP Tureaud

Avenue, is flanked by two windows, each with beer signs that illuminate the sidewalk below. At first glance, this is the only noticeable signage, but upon further inspection, a white sign placed high on the wall to the left of the door presumably says “Bullet’s.” The lettering is faded, but the bar’s reputation is substantial enough in the neighborhood that the sign isn’t functional and no longer needs to be. The building has been the location of a neighborhood bar since the 1950s and many patrons now in their sixties have been visiting the watering hole since the days of their youth.23

Crowded outside the door, the Original Pinettes Brass Band talk amongst themselves before going inside to play their weekly Friday night gig. A ten-piece band consisting of trumpets, trombones, sax, tuba, snare, and bass drum, they are composed entirely of black women and are the only all-female brass band in the city. I’m greeted by a collective “Kyle!” I hug a couple of them and make a bit of small talk, ending with an exclamatory remark about how much I’m looking forward to their set.

23 Kendra Robertson, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 19 March 2015.

I walk through the doorway into the reddish hue of the bar’s lights and greet the

Friday night doorman, Brian, with a grasped hand and a pat on the back. I immediately think of part of Joan Scott’s definition of gender as an element of social relationships that relies on perceived differences between the sexes.24 Gender affects the way I interact with the Pinettes and with Brian. Normalized behavior for a straight man solicits a hug to greet women and a handshake, hand grasp, pat on the back, or any combination thereof to greet a man. Brian and I both greet each other warmly, but perform our heterosexuality, ensuring that no one in the bar could confuse our affability as intimacy; a quick back pat and I’m on my way. As an ethnographer, I can’t help but put my everyday experiences under the academic’s microscope, in this case seeing how gender affects social mores.

Cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in his highly influential essay “Thick

Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” argued that “social actions are comments on more than themselves.”25 He famously argued for reaching beyond simple participant observation to understand the systems of meaning that lie beyond social actions like a hand grasp or back pat.26

Inside Bullet’s, I walk over to the bar where Kendra Robertson, the Friday night bartender, greets me with a smile and offers to serve me one of my two go-to beers.

“Hey, Baby! What will it be today—a Bud Light or a Red Stripe?” Feeling spendthrift, I decide on the more expensive of the two and she hands me a bottle of Red Stripe.

“Thanks so much!” I exclaim happily, handing her a tip. Most of my Fridays start this

24 Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053-1075. 25 Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 23. 26 As Geertz put it, the difference between a “wink” and a “twitch.”

14 way and there is something both ritualistic and comforting in having this as part of my weekly routine. I enjoy chatting with the bar’s regulars and I feel far more at home here than I would at a bar where you’re required to take off your hat and the bartenders call themselves “mixologists.” The atmosphere at Bullet’s is warm and convivial and there’s a real “come as you are” feel. In an interview with Pinettes tuba player Janine Waters, she described the friendly atmosphere of Bullet’s as a “Seventh Ward thing.”27

Me and Christie [Pinettes snare drummer and bandleader] are from the Seventh Ward and we’re always like, “Well, you’re not from the Seventh Ward. You wouldn’t understand.” We walk up the street and we speak to people and we just do things different from Uptown people and they’re like, “Aw, whatever!” And, you know, it’s different.28

Bullet’s is a hub of the community and a family enterprise. The wall behind where the bands play is adorned with photographs of local Mardi Gras Indians and other

Seventh Ward residents enjoying each other’s company. The bar gets its name from its proprietor, Rollin Garcia, who goes by “Bullet.” The doorman, Brian, is Bullet’s brother and the large man with the New Orleans Saints hat usually seated with him at the door is

Bullet’s son (who, despite being much larger than his father, is known as “Lil’ Bullet”), who lives directly above the bar. In fact, the Pinettes began their weekly gig at Bullet’s on August 15, 2014 because of a family connection. When she was thirty-four, Janine discovered that she had a sister named India who bartends at Bullet’s. She went to

Bullet’s to talk to her, and upon India’s insistence, arranged for a weekly gig. Within a short period of time, the Pinettes, like many other well-known New Orleans brass bands, had acquired their weekly residency.29

27 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 5 November 2014. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid.

Every Friday when I arrive at Bullet’s, I am greeted by many of the regulars, who ritually come to their favorite watering hole as a way to unwind after a long workweek.

The audience present on a Friday night at Bullet’s constitutes a public. As defined by queer theorist Michael Warner, a public can be “a concrete audience, a crowd witnessing itself in visible space … Such a public also has a sense of totality, bounded by the event or by the shared public physical space. A performer onstage knows where her public is, how big it is, where its boundaries are, and what the time of its common existence is.”30

The Friday night public at Bullet’s is bound temporally and spatially. My provisional and voluntary membership in this public is circumscribed by my Canadian citizenship (and lack of U.S. citizenship) and the peripatetic life that comes with being a long-term student and academic. There’s no way for me to know how long I can remain a regular at the bar because my ability to stay in the country is contingent on jobs and academic programs. I also have no family ties to the Seventh Ward, or even to New Orleans, so my entrance into this public came through my own willingness to be part of it. I also differ from the bar’s clientele in race and age; I’m usually only one of a handful of white people there and I’m thirty years younger than most of the bar’s black clientele. Warner, however, contends that a public relies not on the categorical classification of its members, on objectively determined position in social structures, or on members’ material existence.

Rather, the creation of a public hinges on the activities of its members; publics “resemble the model of voluntary association that is so important to civil society.”31 A public is a self-organized group that exists outside the categorization of its members or formal

30 Michael Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” in Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 66. 31 Ibid, 88.

16 institutions. I am a member of the Friday night public at Bullet’s simply by virtue of taking part in its discourse and not because of any facet of my identity. Over my time there, I’ve made friends with a number of the regulars who frequently tell me stories and impart life lessons. We buy each other drinks, dance and eat together, talk about football, local traditions, political issues, and sing along with the Pinettes. Discourse at Bullet’s includes not only spoken communication and acts like singing along, but also bodily communication via dancing, which has often functioned for me both as a means of responding to the music and as an avenue into discussion with others. My dancing tends to garner positive attention from locals and is judged competent by many who are quick to ascertain that I enjoy attending local parades where some form of participation in the musical event is de rigeur.

While the Pinettes have garnered considerable repute in the brass band scene, they maintain only tenuous ties to the streets, preferring instead to play on stages in bars and at festivals. At first glance, this reluctance to play in the streets seems like a concession to the streets as a public and male-dominated space. Choosing to play on stage, however, allows the Pinettes to voice a collective identity that is less easily heard on the streets where singing is diffuse and lyrics are often lost. The Pinettes have used the stage (and the intelligibility of vocal lines that a staged performance provides) to create autonomous safe spaces where they voice self-definitions of black womanhood that resist dominant ideology within and without the New Orleans brass band community.

I frame this argument using not a singular account of a night at Bullet’s, but rather a composite of events and observations that, if I were to ignore the dating on my fieldnotes and recordings, seem to my mind’s eye detemporalized. I intend to use the

17 example of Bullet’s to ground theory and illustrate how the Pinettes have used the space to voice these self-definitions. There are four sections to the body of this chapter. The first, “A Brief Spatial History of the New Orleans Brass Band” provides historical background to New Orleans brass bands, placing special emphasis on the gender and spatial parameters of the tradition. I provide this history in order to provide context for the Pinettes, but also to, in a sense, set up the pins to be knocked down later. After all, as

Clifford Geertz has written, anthropology seeks “to keep the world off balance; pulling out rugs, upsetting tea tables, setting off firecrackers.”32 The next two sections (“From

Silence to Speech” and “Coming to Voice”) move through theoretical terrain, outlining first the obstacles the Pinettes have faced in playing male gendered instruments, and then showing how they have navigated these obstacles to find their own collective voice as a brass band. Finally, the fourth section, entitled “Creating a Space for Self-Definition,” brings us back to Bullet’s where the preceding sections are synthesized. Throughout these sections, I slowly move closer to polyvocality, incorporating more and more of the words of the Pinettes themselves. I seem to have inadvertently replicated the Pinettes “coming to voice” as a brass band in my own writing; their words occupy more page space as the chapter progresses.

A Brief Spatial History of the New Orleans Brass Band

Playing on instruments that are historically male gendered, the Pinettes disrupt the social order with the blasts of trumpets and the booms of the bass drum.

Ethnomusicologist Veronica Doubleday claims that one of the things that stands out when analyzing the male dominance over musical instruments is “the manipulation of

32 Geertz, Clifford. "Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism," American Anthropologist 86, no. 2 (1984): 275.

18 space as a male domain (especially public space)…”33 To say that men have disproportionately constituted New Orleans’ musical workforce is an understatement.

The tradition has taken on a male gendering as a result of the confluence of the gendering of space and musical instruments. This section will provide the historical background for the gendering of physical space in New Orleans that has worked to exclude women from playing in brass bands.

Prior to the twentieth century, the performance practices of brass bands in New

Orleans were the same as any other brass bands schooled in the Western tradition. Matt notes that brass bands, “[t]hough ethnically and racially distinct, were otherwise roughly comparable: the musicians all wore Prussian-style military uniforms, marched in close formations, and performed stock arrangements of the latest marches, European dances, and popular songs.”34 Early brass bands in New Orleans adhered quite closely to the military blueprint and this association with the military is a likely contributor to the gendering of the tradition.35

Brass bands in New Orleans were used for more than just military purposes. The music was a functional part of daily life in in the city where musical performance commonly took place in public spaces of social interaction. Music historian Thomas

Brothers notes that music in New Orleans was “a public kind of music far removed from

Eurocentric notions of a privately governed sphere of art. It was not music for the parlor

33 Veronica Doubleday, “Sounds of Power: An Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender,” Ethnomusicology Forum 17, no. 1 (2008): 18. 34 Matt Sakakeeny, Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 17. 35 Sherrie Tucker “A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazzwomen,” Study conducted for New Orleans Jazz National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/jazz/historyculture/upload/new_orleans_jazzwomen_rs-2.pdf (accessed November 12, 2014), 61.

19 but for places that invited open interaction.”36 The brass band medium, which includes transportable instruments like the sousaphone, is uniquely spatially mobile and thus perfectly suited for parades. In New Orleans, these communal parades are referred to as

“second lines.” Local anthropologist Helen Regis notes that “[t]he term second line is ambiguous, pointing to multiple dimensions of the same phenomenological reality.”37

The term simultaneously refers to dance steps, a distinctive syncopated rhythm, and the participants who follow behind the parade’s organizers and the band.

Of these parades, the one that occupies the most prominent role in popular imagination is the “jazz funeral,” also known as a “funeral with music.” During these funerals, brass bands accompany mourners to the burial site. As the procession makes its way to the burial site, the band plays a dirge, guiding the living bodies of members in a slow-tempoed, dignified walk. Upon completing the burial and “cutting loose” the body of the deceased club member, the band breaks into an up-tempo tune that encourages the still-living club members to enjoy life because, as Pinettes trombonist Dee Holmes told me, “tomorrow’s not promised.”38 Beginning in the late nineteenth century, these exuberant and funereal parades were organized by black benevolent aid societies who, during the period of Jim Crow, pooled their financial resources to provide life insurance for one another. Modern-day parades function less as a financial resource and more as a means of creating community. “Participating in funerals, in New Orleans as in many other cultures,” Helen writes, “is a profound way of strengthening and repairing the

36 Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 198. 37 Helen Regis, "Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second Line," American Ethnologist 28, no.4 (2001): 755. 38 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 August 2014.

20 social fabric, which in this city is severely weakened by poverty, joblessness, violence, class- and race-based segregation, and racism.”39 Similar to the audience at Bullet’s, the participants at community parades constitute a public; they are a self-organized body of people engaged in a musical discourse existing in time and space.

Writing about the early twentieth century, Brothers argues that “[w]omen were almost completely excluded from the scene of professional musicians. Women obviously had a place on the dance floor and as spectators who moved in time to the music of parades, funerals, and advertising wagons.” 40 These female audience members, by virtue of being in the streets, were considered “deviant” or unrespectable and were of the city’s lower class. Women have always constituted a significant portion of the audience for brass band music, although women musicians certainly haven’t played nearly as regularly in public space. Brothers argues that women who made music were typically confined to storefront churches where they used their voices rather than instruments to make music.41

Women made music by singing in the more sheltered physical space of churches, homes, and other venues removed from the open space of the streets where professional male musicians earned their living.42 Removed from the open space of the streets, these women were considered virtuous and respectable. In order to navigate the traps of the black working class and achieve social mobility, these women musicians asserted

39 Regis, "Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second Line," 755. 40 Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, 129. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

21 themselves as respectable “ladies,” negotiating the politics of respectability that governed these spaces. 43

This spatial segregation by gender, race, and class was prevalent throughout the

South. This claim is supported by Collins who notes that in the American South, "[w]hile racial segregation delimited African Americans from white physical space, gender relations within Black communities delimited female from male space. Male space included the streets, barber shops, and pool halls; female arenas consisted of households and churches."44 The music that facilitated the movement of people through the streets was made entirely by men. While women participated in neighborhood parades, men were the ones who made the music that controlled bodies at these events.

Although women instrumentalists were certainly less prevalent than men in the

New Orleans brass band scene, scholars have unearthed the stories of a number of female musicians in the city. In a study commissioned by the New Orleans Jazz National

Heritage Park, feminist jazz historian Sherrie Tucker sheds some scholarly light on many female jazz musicians who were lost in the making of the New Orleans jazz canon.45 In doing so, Tucker shows that the brass band tradition in New Orleans is patriarchal.

Although women have played in brass bands, it has happened quite infrequently. In the

1980s, Cheryl McKay, now a keyboardist with the Higher Heights Reggae Band, played

43 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York & London: Routledge, 2004), 139. 44 Patricia Hill Collins, “Work, Family, and Black Women’s Oppression,” in 2001 Race Odyssey: African Americans and Sociology, ed. Bruce R. Hare (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press: 2002), 127. 45 Tucker “A Feminist Perspective,” 8.

22 clarinet for a period of time with the Rebirth Brass Band46 and Dr. Diane Lyle-Smith also played trumpet with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band.47

Although the New Orleans brass band tradition stems from the streets, brass bands have increasingly performed onstage over the past 40 years, beginning in the ‘70s with what oral historian Mick Burns has dubbed the “brass band renaissance.”48 In 1971,

New Orleans banjoist Danny Barker established the Fairview Baptist Church Marching

Band, which became an incubator for a slew of prominent New Orleans brass band musicians.49 Barker often encouraged the creativity of his pupils, allowing them to stretch and test the limits of the musical form. Bands reached outside of the traditional repertoire into the popular music of the day. Instead of playing walking bass lines, the tuba began playing repetitive funk and bebop-influenced bass lines that appealed to a demographic that was by and large more interested in dancing to James Brown than singing a limited repertoire of hymns and jazz standards. An album by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band called

My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now, with its frantic tuba lines and carefully produced horn arrangements, introduced a much quicker tempo to the streets of New Orleans.

In the 1990s, funky bass lines became the foundation for a hip-hop/brass band hybrid. In 1991, a little known track called “Running With The Second Line” by short- lived hip-hop outfit Deff Generation provided a model for combining the genres.50 The

46 Sakakeeny, Roll With It, 40. 47 Tucker “A Feminist Perspective,” 62. 48 Mick Burns, Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2006). 49 Ibid, 6. 50 Matt Sakakeeny, “Running with the Second Line: How New Orleans Brass Band Went Hip-Hop,” Red Bull Music Academy Magazine, published October 15, 2013, accessed December 6, 2014. http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/running-with-the- second-line-how-brass-band-went-hip-hop.

23 sonic possibilities of this inter-genre sound appealed most notably to The Young

Olympians, who changed their name to the Soul Rebels and became the first brass band to fully adopt hip-hop into their sound, releasing their inaugural album, Let Your Mind Be

Free, in 1994. The Rebirth Brass Band later released Hot Venom in 2001, cementing the hip-hop brass band as the dominant paradigm.

Going hand-in-hand with these stylistic musical changes, brass bands were also modifying the way they delivered music to audiences. The Dirty Dozen, in particular, began touring extensively outside of New Orleans in the 1980s and found a wider audience outside the city’s confines. Brass bands that were accustomed to mobilizing themselves through the potholed streets of New Orleans now also found their movement and sound amplified as they navigated a staged global terrain, increasing their social and spatial mobility.51 Getting their start in the early 1990s, the Pinettes emerged into a brass band tradition that looked markedly different from the tradition that existed even ten or fifteen years prior in both style and social opportunity, although the tradition’s male gendering remained persistent. Male musicians control the music that facilitates movement through the streets and it is through this control that the instruments and the genre become male gendered. As Veronica Doubleday argues, “[s]ocial strictures about gendered divisions of space have frequently supported male instrumental musicianship, keeping women away.”52 In New Orleans, the male gendering of space and instruments feed back into each other, causing the musical tradition to take on a male gendering and excluding women from male gendered realms of musicianship that increase opportunities for social and professional mobility.

51 Sakakeeny, Roll With It. 52 Doubleday, “Sounds of Power,” 16.

From Silence to Speech

Stationary on the “stage”53 at Bullet’s, the Pinettes begin their set. Behind them, the back of the neon sign casts its glow on the brass of their instruments. The trumpets, trombones, and sax play in counterpoint to each other, the melodies weaving a dense, assertive texture that grooves over the syncopation of the snare, the pulsing thud of the bass drum, and the booming melodic motif repeated relentlessly by the tuba. Together, the sax, trumpets, and trombone make up what’s called the “front line” and the remaining triumvirate of snare, bass drum, and tuba make up the “back row.” The brass band formation leaves room for individual expression. Even while playing the same melody within a group, instrumentalists can elaborate and stray from the main melody, creating an individualistic disjuncture that is perfect for encouraging variegated dance moves in the audience that are at once personal and social. The melodic subjectivity available to brass band players is in direct opposition to the more structured performance practices of the marching band. Brass band members are often introduced to more structured music in school marching bands. Matt estimates that almost all professional brass band musicians in the city got their start in school marching bands.54

Janine “Tuba Shorty” Waters is the talkative and instantly likable tuba player for the Pinettes. Her nickname can be interpreted literally. When she plays with the band, her tuba, which rests on her shoulders, is usually the only way you can visually detect her presence as she measures in at little over five feet tall. Sonically, on the other hand, she makes her presence known, unleashing spirited blasts on her horn that lay a strong

53 Technically, it’s less a stage and more a designated plot of floor space. 54 Sakakeeny, Roll With It, 39.

25 foundation for the band. She described the difference between marching bands and brass bands not only as a departure in “feel,” but also as the agency afforded by improvisation:

With brass band, you play what you feel. You know, it’s not written down on paper. You don’t have to go note by note. In marching band, you have to pay attention. If you miss one note, you mess up the whole line or you can mess up whatever. In brass band, you can mess up one line and it might be something that fits, you know? So it’s completely different. It’s kind of like marching band is just straight up playing, you know? You can’t make any mistakes. Whereas brass band, you make all the mistakes you want because… you might discover something new making a mistake.55

Brass band musicians often experiment within the musical texture of the brass band form, learning onstage by taking improvisatory leaps of faith. Brothers describes the musical texture created by collective improvisation in New Orleans music as

“heterophony.”56 Drawing from the terms “monophony” (meaning one voice) and

“polyphony” (meaning many voices), heterophony refers to the a collective voice with variation where the melody provides the road map for the song and the instrumentalists make measured, agential deviations from playing in unison. The transition from school marching band to professional brass band is a critical step in moving from “silence into speech,” as black feminist writer bell hooks would say. It is the process by which musicians gain agency and the instrumentality through which they assert their power. bell hooks argues that

Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed… a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of “talking back,” that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice.57

55 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 5, 2014. 56 Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, 41. 57 bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 9.

For female brass band musicians, to move from object to subject through acquisition of this agency and the liberated voice necessitates the navigation of firmly held gender roles that shape the gendered landscape of musicianship. The first study into the gender stereotyping of instruments was conducted by Harold Abeles and Susan Porter and was published in 1978.58 It focused on how these gender stereotypes (the normative

“same-gendered relationship,” in Veronica Doubleday’s terms) is naturalized in schooling in the United States. Their findings indicated that, of the eight instruments they included in their study (cello, clarinet, drum, flute, saxophone, trombone, trumpet, and violin), the instruments most perceived as feminine by school children were flute, violin, and clarinet, and the most masculine were drum, trombone, and trumpet, with saxophone and cello falling right in the middle. This gendering of instruments, however, didn’t become pronounced until the third grade, suggesting that children don’t internalize gender norms until they reach this age. Subsequent studies produced strikingly similar results and instruments like tuba and bass drum were added into the fray, both settling far on the masculine side of the spectrum.59 In discussing the gendering of instruments with

Pinettes trumpet player Veronique Dorsey, she provided me with a clue as to how instruments are gendered in New Orleans: “Janine plays tuba and she’s probably one of the most feminine women I know in the band.”60 She purposefully contrasted femininity

58 Harold F. Abeles and Susan Y. Porter, “The Sex-Stereotyping of Musical Instruments,” Journal of Research in Music Education 26, no. 2 (1978): 65-75. 59 Philip A. Griswold and Denise A. Chroback. “Sex-Role Associations of Music Instruments and Occupations by Gender and Major,” Journal of Research in Music Education 29, no. 1 (1981): 57-62; Judith K. Delzell and David A. Leppla. “Gender Association of Musical Instruments and Preferences of Fourth-Grade Students for Selected Instruments,” Journal of Research in Music Education 40, no. 2 (1992): 93-103. 60 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 February 2015.

27 and the tuba, strongly suggesting that the tuba is perceived as the most masculine of instruments in New Orleans.

How do men maintain exclusive control over the instruments that allow for the expression of musical subjectivity? In a wide-ranging cross-cultural study, Doubleday argues that gendered meanings are constructed through the relationship between musical instruments and the musicians who play them and it is through these gendered meanings that one gender can maintain exclusive control over a musical tradition.61 Most frequently, musicians play same-gendered instruments; men play brass band instruments, which are male gendered. Drawing from the physical features of the trumpet and the performative gestures of its practitioners, Krin Gabbard has used psychoanalytic theory to argue that the trumpet is a phallus and that instrumentalists use it to voice phallic authority.62 This argument, though complicated by the existence of the Pinettes, holds true for most New Orleans brass bands. In these brass bands, the instrument and the musician establish a same-gendered relationship that in turn renders the brass band the exclusive domain of men.

The relationship between male gendered instruments and the women who seek to play them is often obstructed by what Doubleday terms a “negative instrument-human relationship.” 63 She notes that, “[i]n terms of traditions and conventions, it is uncommon for a woman to play an instrument that has a clearly established masculine identity.”64

This is because—at least within the confines of societal norms—the relationship

61 Doubleday, “Sounds of Power.” 62 Krin Gabbard, “Signifyin(g) the Phallus: ‘Mo’ Better Blues’ and Representations of the Jazz Trumpet,” Cinema Journal 32, no. 1 (1992): 43-62. 63 Veronica Doubleday, "Sounds of Power,” 5. 64 Doubleday, "Sounds of Power,” 14-15.

28 established between a masculine instrument and a feminine performer would place the instrument in a position of greater power than the performer. Doubleday elaborates, stating that, “…for women, the wifely role is frequently bound up with conventional notions of submission and subordination. In line with this, women would be unlikely to create such a relationship, giving an instrument power over themselves.”65 These instruments, in the hands of the Pinettes, aren’t used to display “phallic authority” as

Gabbard has argued of the trumpet, but rather are used to contest the very supremacy of masculinity, unsettling masculine and feminine assignations to instruments. In playing these instruments and rejecting convention, the Pinettes complicate the same-gender instrument-human relationship, destabilizing the notion that there is anything natural about male exclusivity of the instruments and the genre.

The Pinettes acutely feel the tensions created by their departure from societal norms. “You know, [playing the piano]’s a normal thing for a female,” Janine told me,

“but when you see females holding a bass drum and a tuba and a snare drum, all of that, they’re like, ‘Is that a girl?’ You know? And they’re just kind of stunned.”66 This possible misrecognition of gender and the sense of surprise it elicits is supported by the research of Sherrie Tucker who, while studying “all-girl” swing bands in the 1940s, noted that “women instrumentalists were also seen as freaks… especially girl musicians who played instruments thought of as masculine: drums, trumpets, saxophones, etc.”67 To my knowledge, the pejorative term “freak” isn’t used by anyone in describing the Pinettes, but the persistence and regularity of audience surprise at seeing women instrumentalists

65 Ibid, 15. 66 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 5 November 2014. 67 Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 6.

29 playing male gendered instruments shows just how frustratingly tenacious this gender stereotyping is. Janine seemed frustrated by audience surprise, noting that it prevents people from enjoying themselves: “They’re so shocked and surprised that it’s all females.

So by the time they get over that, we’re done playing. So it’s like they’re standing up looking, making sure everyone on every instrument is a female and they can’t even get into the music because they’re so busy playing attention to the female thing.”68

Children learn the gendering of instruments in grade school. In 2006, well-known

New Orleans zydeco musician Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes founded Music for All Ages, an intergenerational program to nurture the development of young brass band players in the city. Similar to the Fairview band program of the ‘70s, the program spawned a band and many of the players have since gone on to play professionally with groups around the city. Barnes, aware of the gender disparity that exists in the brass band tradition, admitted that his biggest challenge “was to have girls join and stick with it.” He continued, “A number came to the program, but they did not stay with the band, which was unfortunate because it was with the band that the students got a chance to experience playing music in the city the way that professional musicians do.”69 Despite Barnes’ best efforts, he was unable to keep girls in the program. Barnes was keen on counteracting the normative gendering of instruments, but as an instructor, he seems exceptional in this sense.70

68 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 5 November 2014. 69 Bruce Sunpie Barnes and Rachel Breunlin, Talk That Music Talk: Passing on Brass Band Music in New Orleans the Traditional Way (New Orleans: The Center for the Book at University of New Orleans, 2014), 6. 70 Barnes didn’t cite a reason for the drop off in girls’ participation. This topic in New Orleans seems primed for further research.

Some empirical studies suggest that music instructors’ own gender biases don’t play a significant role in instrument assignment,71 but the Pinettes’ experiences suggest otherwise. It seems inconceivable that teachers’ own preconceptions about gender would not color their decisions when assigning instruments. As Veronique told me, “Girls were told [by band directors] that they couldn’t be in a drum section.”72 Veronique is the band’s easy-going trumpet player whose forearms feature tattoos of a trumpet, drumsticks, and the words “I Am Music.” She didn’t join the band until 2010, when she was nineteen years old. Unlike the older members in the band, she attended co-ed schools: Thurgood Marshall Middle School when she first started playing music and then

McDonough 35 in high school. As such, she was exposed to gender expectations that were more typical of society at large and that differed markedly from the older members of the Pinettes who formed the band at St. Mary’s Academy, a private all-girl’s school.

Veronique’s experience with instrument selection is telling:

Girls were told that they couldn’t be in a drum section. So as a young girl growing up playing drums, like, “Why do you play the drums? That’s a boy instrument, you know?” So then when I did start playing clarinet, that was the “girl instrument” and I basically picked up clarinet because everyone else—all the other girls—were playing, so I was like, “I’ll try this.” And then actually in seventh grade when I got in marching band, I was like, “The clarinet’s not loud! Nobody notices the clarinet.” So I was like, “I want to try to play trumpet” because trumpet had the melody line. Like, they were important to the song.73

For Veronique, the instrument that enabled her to communicate her individual voice was one that others had gendered masculine. In choosing the trumpet, she made a voluminous step toward musical subjectification. She began playing the trumpet to

71 Christopher M. Johnson and Erin E. Stewart, “Effect of Sex Identification on Instrument Assignment by Band Directors,” Journal of Research in Music Education 52, no. 2 (2004): 130-140. 72 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 September 2014. 73 Ibid.

31 centralize herself after realizing that—at least to her—the marginality provided by the clarinet is barely sufficient to make a statement in a high school marching band, let alone on a larger world stage.

Janine’s experience further illustrates the obstacles in playing and sticking with instruments typically played by men. She received musical schooling in both an all-girl’s school and a co-ed school.

I went to St. Mary’s for two years and then I finished from John McDonogh… But my experience was awesome because I was the only girl—of course—tuba player. So I was surrounded by guys who band was their life. I wasn’t supposed to go to John McDonogh, but I went to the band camp the summer before my Freshman year and I begged and begged, begged, begged, begged my mom to go and I was like, “Please Mom, I just want to march in the band.” So she let me go and when I walked into band camp, I had my own horn, so they’re looking at me like, “Who is this girl and where does she come from?” You know? It was only three girls in the band at the time: three trumpet players and myself. Well, four— one saxophone player. We were the minority in the band so the guys were like, “We’re going to see if they’re tough enough.” But it was good. They respected me, you know? Because when I came in, I played my horn. I wasn’t like, “Look, I want this spot, but I’m going to tip-toe.” No, I came and I demanded respect and I got it. And so it was from the beginning, from my freshman year all the way to my senior year. I held different positions in the band, band captain and co-captain. So, you know, once that came about, it was like, “Okay, we have to respect her. We have no other choice.” It was good. My four years in high school was really good.74

Janine first recalled the musicians who, like herself, strayed furthest from gender norms. The inclusion of the saxophone player as a sort of afterthought in her list of girls in the band signals the instrument’s gender ambiguity. Janine’s experience tells us that, though the gendering of instruments often materializes in the gender disparity of school marching bands, girls do learn to play brass band instruments through formal and informal schooling. After schooling, however, the only women in New Orleans who have gone on to play in brass bands at a professional level are the Pinettes. Gender has become

74 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 5 November 2014.

32 a barrier to professionalization for many young female musicians and most have been unable to fully make the transition from musical object to subject that the brass band medium provides. In Janine’s case, her success at resisting the gender norms that would establish a negative instrument-human relationship with her tuba was the result of her own strong-mindedness; she demanded respect and received it. Demanding respect from her peers upset normative gendered behavior and destabilized the essentialist and normative notion that the tuba is a “boy’s instrument.”

In New Orleans brass bands, the path to musical subjectivity for young women involves the successful navigation of gender barriers during formal and informal schooling. The transition from school marching band to professional brass band, in this context, is a critical step in this move from silence into speech.

Coming to Voice

The voice is typically thought of as embodied sound: it is produced physically, conveying meaning musically as well as linguistically. Voice is an emerging topic in sound studies that comes from our use of the term in ordinary parlance. Anthropologist

Amanda Weidman notes that “we culturally associate voice with individuality, authorship, agency, authority, and power: we ‘find’ our ‘voice,’ or discover an ‘inner voice’; we ‘have a voice’ in a matter or ‘give voice to’ our ideas; we ‘voice concern,’ and are ‘vocal’ in our opinions.”75 This term’s many uses point to its deep-seated significance in our discourse. In black feminist thought, searching for a voice to express a collective, self-defined standpoint has always been and continues to be a central theme.76 Finding or

75 Amanda Weidman, “Voice,” in Keywords in Sound, eds. David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 232. 76 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 2nd ed., 99.

33 developing one’s voice is also elemental to the brass band tradition in New Orleans. As

Bruce Barnes said, “that’s what passing music on in the city is all about—developing your own voice and being able to make your own mark.”77 Until the Pinettes came into existence, the sound or “voice” of New Orleans brass bands was created entirely by men.

The Pinettes, because of their collective gender, are a major paradigmatic shift in New

Orleans brass bands and they have “come to voice” by seeking out a sound to communicate a collective standpoint. Their music, though sonically different, is not different directly because of gender—that is to say, women as a whole don’t play music any different than men.78 The Pinettes’ musical difference results from the collective negotiation of multiple identities. bell hooks states that

the idea of finding one’s voice or having a voice assumes a primacy in talk, discourse, writing, and action. As metaphor for self-transformation, it has been especially relevant for groups of women who have previously never had a public voice, women who are speaking and writing for the first time, including many women of color.79

If the act of finding one’s voice is the process of self-transformation, the voice itself is an expression of the self. Patricia Hill Collins makes this case, stating that—given spatial barriers to mobility—“the conceptualization of self that has been part of Black women’s self-definitions is distinctive. Self is not defined as the increased autonomy gained by separating oneself from others. Instead, self is found in the context of family

77 Bruce Sunpie Barnes and Rachel Breunlin, Talk That Music Talk, 5. 78 This is an argument I’m making directly against essentialism. I remember one panel I attended that featured a panel of mostly women instrumentalists moderated by a male musician who opened with a comment about women “playing differently than men.” My gut reaction (and the reaction of all the women on the panel) was to dismiss the remark as essentialist. Looking back on this tension, I think there’s something to be learned from this observation and I hope my argument can provide some conceptual complication. 79 bell hooks, Talking Back, 12.

34 and community…”80 The Pinettes use their music to communicate a collective raced and gendered identity that loudly challenges the existing social order and recasts the sonic objectives of brass band music. While the preceding section dealt with instruments, this section aims to hone in on voice and further complicate the voice/instrument dichotomy.

It explores difference as expressed musically by the Pinettes in order to better understand what “coming to voice” means for them in their music.

How does the voice relate to instruments? How can we find voice in a wordless song? Kofi Agawu’s study of the Akpafu dirge demonstrates that the voice, while conveying meaning linguistically, bumps up against the ineffable; words “reach their limits, so to speak, unable to convey further meaning, and so defer to the more articulate music.”81 In the absence of words, affective communication often takes place. Voice is a metaphor for agency and can be applied to the creative control musicians have when playing in brass bands. The instruments themselves are technologies that allow for the voicing of the subject beyond and above semantic meaning. Brass band instruments act as a replacement for the material voice and are, as Matt notes, an example of what Donna

Haraway would call “prosthetic technologies” 82 in that they are extensions of the self, technologies that extend the body beyond its physical limitations.83 A horn can act as a technology that expands the embodied voice. Matt argues that “[t]he instruments in the brass band become instruments of power because by expressing things (“giving voice”) they are also instrumental in accomplishing things; they extend, complement, and even

80 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 113. 81 Kofi V. Agawu, “African Music as Text,” Research in African Literatures 32, no. 2 (2001): 14. 82 Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-99. 83 Sakakeeny, Roll With It, 63.

35 replace the voice.”84 Instruments possess the ability to transform consciousness through their physical and sonic presence in space.85

The Pinettes make a departure from the typical male brass band in their approach to music making and this departure has audible musical implications.86 Instead of competing with each other on the bandstand, they make an earnest effort to musically complement each other and they all point out how well they get along with each other, claiming that they’re not “blood related” but rather “love related.”87 Competition exists between male bands and within male bands.88 Unlike other brass band musicians in the city, the members are not constantly competing for gigs with each other and they manifest this collectivity in their music. From the fall of 2014 through to the spring of

2015, the Pinettes required a substitute bass drummer because Casandra French, their usual bass drummer, was on pregnancy leave. A rotating cast of male musicians substituted for Casandra with varying degrees of success. At times during this period of substitution, the bass drum would throw off the balance of instruments, playing in a dynamic range more fit to accompany lightning bolts than trombones. Sociologist Sharon

R. Bird makes the point that “[c]ompetition facilitates hierarchy in relationships, whereas

84 Ibid. 85 Doubleday, “Sounds of Power,” 3. 86 I feel the need to mention that, while their music is sonically different, it is not directly because of gender. Gender undoubtedly changes 87 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, 17 March 2014; “The Original Pinettes Brass Band - Biography,” accessed April 8, 2015, http://www.orginalpinettesbrassband.com/Biography.html 88 I remember seeing the To Be Continued Brass Band play a show where two members soloed over each other, while the musician at the microphone proclaimed, “It’s a battle, man!”

36 cooperation suggests symmetry of relationships…”89 This competition is constructed and learned through homosocial relationships between men in brass bands, and translated to the Pinettes in a way that has been acutely heard and felt through the overbearing low frequencies of the bass drum. In discussing the tendencies of the rest of the brass band community, Veronique told me that,

A lot of people try to play really, really loud and a lot of times it’s not as pleasing to the ear and they don’t really understand that. And that’s one thing we’ve come to the consensus, like, loud is not always the best. And so I think that also musically set us apart also—not just trying to blow till the horn breaks, you know? Or play high enough so the horn breaks. I mean, come on.90

The “brassy” or “fiery” timbre that is created through intensely exploring the upper extremities of volume and pitch constitutes the “street sound” that is sought by most bands, the Pinettes not included.91 This sound is characteristic of most of the brass bands in the city and is at least partially the result of playing in open space.

VERONIQUE: We have a different sound from other brass bands. A lot of them, they’re used to doing second lines, so they have this real, like, street sound and we have more like a stage band, per se…

KYLE: What is the street sound? Like, what makes a band have the street sound?

VERONIQUE: It’s always, like, really loud. A lot of times people try to play over each other and that’s usually the bands that are not used to playing on stage because, you know, a stage band has to have a way better balanced sound, but usually, in the street, you’re just trying to be louder than the next person next to you, so… it’s just really loud.92

89 Sharon R. Bird, “Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity,” Gender and Society 10, no. 2 (1996), 122. 90 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 September 2014. 91 It should be noted that I’m using cross-sensorial descriptors here, knowing full well that this is a slippery discursive strategy (excuse the pun). For more on timbre and perception, see Cornelia Fales, “The Paradox of Timbre,” Ethnomusicology 46, no. 1 (2002): 56-95. 92 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 February 2015.

In moving away from the street sound, the Pinettes attempt to recast the criteria of competency in the New Orleans brass band medium. Typically, brass bands prioritize the timbral aspects of the music, sometimes at the expense of the musical elements that are most valued in Western styles of music. What could be perceived as a garbled racket to someone not baptized in the musical tradition, could be easily gauged as highly competent to an initiated listener. The frequently heard refrain that circulates in brass band music “we got that fire” is both a boasting of competency and a reference to the timbral quality that allows the initiated listener to judge the music as such. They don’t play in the street and their sound reflects the shared musical standpoint they have crafted together. “Rather than defining self in opposition to others,” Collins writes, “the connectedness among individuals provides Black women deeper, more meaningful self- definitions.”93 The voices of the Pinettes, communicated through this collective identity, parallel the musical texture of heterophony; they all identify as black women and this collective standpoint is the melodic line upon which they hang their own subjectivities.

Turning to the topic of the embodied voice, other brass bands certainly haven’t put an emphasis on vocal performance. One need only listen to a live recording of any number of the city’s brass bands to understand how little premium is placed on vocal ability. Even though the Pinettes unabashedly play male gendered instruments, they rely more heavily on vocals than other brass bands. When I asked what made the Pinettes musically different, Dee told me,

Well, for me, I think we’re—all of the brass bands really sing. Not too many of them sing in tune, really. They try to hold a tune. But you know, I feel like as females, we tend to sing more and sound a little bit prettier and stuff like that so I will say that we try to get up there and we sound like a choir sometimes. Like, “I

93 Collins, “Black Feminist Thought,” 113.

thought we came to hear a band play? Why are you singing so much?” But, you know … I think that’s one of our trademarks, too. We harmonize.94

The Pinettes use group chants more frequently than other bands and often feature vocalist Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph in their performances. Jelly instantly lights up any venue with her commanding stage presence. She’s always fashionably dressed expresses herself effortlessly on and off the stage. As the first brass band to have a dedicated (albeit part- time) vocalist, the Pinettes place emphasis on the role of vocalist. Veronique imparted the story of how Jelly came to sing for The Pinettes.

KYLE: I love what she does so much. What’s it like having a singer? I mean, that’s something that most brass bands don’t do.

VERONIQUE: That’s another thing that makes us unique! I’ve actually never heard a singer with a brass band. And so we got with Jelly. And it was weird because Christie had been wanting a singer and so Jelly’s actually, like, my friend outside of the band… So Jelly tried it out and the first time we were like, “Yup. This is it. Jelly is it.” And, I mean, it’s crazy because if singers do start singing with brass bands, she will always have that title to be the first to do it.95

Certain musical roles have been far more available to women. In particular, women have dominated the role of vocalist, where the instrument is the body and the body can be sexualized and made to appeal to dominant heterosexual male audiences.

Ellen Koskoff, one of the first ethnomusicologists to study music and gender, contends that, “[i]n societies where males were or are the main patrons of musical performances or where male-dominated political, religious, and economic spheres call for young female performers, musical behaviors that heighten female sexuality are the norm.”96 The

94 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 April 2014; the phrase “we harmonize” gestures not only to this vocal harmony, but also to the Pinettes’ collective musical approach. 95 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 September 2014. 96 Ellen Koskoff, Women and Music in Cross Cultural Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 6.

Pinettes lean into the trope of the “female vocalist,” but—Jelly not included—wear un- revealing t-shirts and jeans. They refuse both to market themselves as objects of desire for heterosexual male audience members and to be viewed primarily in terms of their appearance or adherence to prevailing standards of beauty. This is further complicated when race is taken into account because sexualization also hinges on feminization and the portrayal of women as delicate or feminine, a portrayal which has been difficult for black women to access. Collins argues that “[m]aintaining an appropriately feminine demeanor invokes two standards, one physical and the other behavioral.”97 If the Pinettes wanted to rely on sexualization, their raced and gendered bodies would stand in the way as would the playing of masculine gendered instruments. Rather than be judged on their appearance or sexuality, they adamantly prefer to be judged on the merits of their music and thought of first and foremost as skilled musicians. In an interview, I asked Christie if there were any advantages to being a woman in the brass band game. I was hoping to dig into their branding of the band as “the world’s only all-female brass band,” but Christie took it as an opportunity to repudiate the use of sex appeal to sell music.

KYLE: I mean, there are obviously disadvantages, of course, but do you think [being a female musician] works out in your favor sometimes?

CHRISTIE: I used to until men used to say, “Excuse me, it’s all tits and ass up there.” And people used to come to shows and our last manager used to say, “I’m not worrying about how y’all sound. Y’all are girls. Y’all are females.” But I was the opposite; I was like, “Get over that girl crap! I’m looking for a sound.” And it was just crazy because we have never used that. We have never, ever, ever used that to our advantage. That’s a good question. We’ve always showed up as musicians and it went from “Y’all are cute” when we started coming up to “Yeah, y’all sounding like y’all trying to do something.” It used to be all “Hey, hey, hey.”

97 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York & London: Rotledge, 2004), 193.

Then it went, “Here come the Pinettes. Hide your flavor and hide your hands. Don’t let them see what you’re playing!” Yeah, then it wasn’t cute anymore!98

Without relying on the sexualization of the female body, the Pinettes moved past novelty to the point where they became contenders in the brass band game, forging a collective sound that challenges the primacy of the “street sound” and includes an emphasis on vocals. Whether voiced through instruments or the embodied voice, The

Pinettes speak collectively through their music. They use male gendered instruments to find a voice as women in the brass band game and rely, to some extent, on the trope of female vocalist, but, as the next section will illustrate, the use of a vocalist aids in the gendering of space.

Creating a Space for Self-Definition

While brass band members tend to form close allegiances with one another, rivalries between bands can often crop up in musical battles, where musicians place value on volume and the fiery timbre that accompanies it. At second lines, many bands parade with two tubas in order to imitate the heavy bass in hip-hop tracks and to overtake other bands in musical competition. With what must be close to 100 bands in the city, the competition for gigs is stiff. On occasion, these musical battles have come to actual blows. The Stooges Brass Band and the Rebirth have, in recent years, engaged in a

“spirited rivalry” that came to a head during a 2009 parade as band members exchanged punches after the Stooges taunted Rebirth, singing “Rebirth! Rebirth! Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?”99 Initiated by music, this physical altercation signified relationships of power. Rebirth has had a huge influence on the Stooges and this

98 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014. 99 Sakakeeny, Roll with It, 66.

41 musical feud became akin to an Oedipal drama as the Stooges attempted to overthrow

Rebirth’s longstanding informal reign as “street kings.”

The revered title of “street kings” was formalized in 2011 in the first biennial brass band competition organized by global energy drink manufacturer Red Bull. Titled the “Red Bull Street Kings Brass Band Blowout,” the 4-band competition is a fiercely competitive battle of the bands that takes place under a highway overpass. On the second of these competitions on October 26, 2013, the Pinettes competed for the title, going head-to-head with the TBC (To Be Continued) Brass Band, the New Breed Brass Band, and the New Creations Brass Band.100 The competition was simultaneously a battle for bragging rights and an “…unabashedly corporatized foray onto grassroots territory that managed to manufacture authenticity by hitting all the right notes.”101 The title of the event clearly shows how bound together notions of space and gender are in the New

Orleans brass band community. A well thought-out marketing move on the part of Red

Bull Media House, the name “Street Kings” reflects the target market’s102 assumptions about who constitutes a brass band and where they play. The second chapter will focus on the event in greater depth, but suffice it to say that the Pinettes proved victorious, claiming the title and successfully changing the name to “Street Queens.” This title, however, is symbolic and doesn’t mean that the Pinettes dominate the physical space of

100 Jennifer Odell, “The Original Pinettes Brass Band,” JazzTimes, published January 12, 2014, accessed May 6, 2014. http://jazztimes.com/articles/115230-the-original-pinettes- brass-band. 101 Matt Sakakeeny, “Street Queens Bury Competition in Brass Band Blowout,” NPR, http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/10/28/241401570/all-female-brass-band-buries- the-competition, 6 May 2014. 102 The target market is urban men and women aged 16-29. For more, see Kenneth Hein, “A Bull's Market: The Marketing of Red Bull Energy Drink,” Brandweek 42, no. 22 (2001).

42 the streets. Despite their prominence in the brass band scene, they almost never play on the streets for second lines. This was not the case when the band first began in 1991. I asked trombonist Dee Holmes about the band’s reluctance to play in the streets for long parades:

For four hours, oh my God. Yeah, I mean, when you have a good group in front of you and they’re moving their bodies, it’s okay. But, you know, with the streets, it’s a crowd-pleasing thing. So you could play one wrong thing and they’ll walk away from you, move to the next band. I’m sure you’ve been out there and seen it happen. So, yeah, if you’re not playing that tune they want to hear, boy, they will walk away from you so fast.103

Although the Pinettes usually seek to please audiences, to play on the streets and be received well, the Pinettes felt they had to make significant concessions in repertoire.

The Pinettes’ song catalogue is peppered with many female gendered songs including

“I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper,

“Valerie” by Amy Winehouse, and “The Boogie Oogie Oogie” by A Taste of Honey. All of these songs, by means of the authorial voice (the voice of the character in the song, the

“I” in the lyrics) project a female identity.104 Trumpet player Tylita Curtain told me,

“You could just play all barroom music, but no. Everybody has a different taste and style of music that you like.”105 Choosing to play on stage allows them to voice a collective identity that wouldn’t be as well understood on the streets where singing is diffuse and lyrics can be easily lost. Lyrical emphasis is important for the Pinettes and that requires performing in settings that are not the street.

103 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 April 2014. 104 For theory on the voice as communicated by songs, see Simon Frith, “The Voice,” Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 1998), 183-202. 105 Tylita Curtain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 January 2015.

At Bullet’s, the Pinettes take a moment from playing to decide on their next song.

Jelly turns around to the band members and, after some coaxing, returns to the microphone. “Alright, y’all. So we gonna do this one and if you want to try to sing it with us, sing it if you know it. Ladies: get crunk, get on the dance flooooooor!” The band plays the vamp, Jelly puts down her drink, and she begins singing “I’m every woman /

It’s all in me!” Chaka Khan has nothing on this. The Pinettes and Jelly articulate female identity in a way that genders the space and empowers those in attendance. The lyrics to the chorus of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” are as follows:

I'm every woman, it's all in me Anything you want done, baby I'll do it naturally I'm every woman, it's all in me I can read your thoughts right now Every one from A to Z

In hearing these lyrics, my initial reaction was to interpret it as essentializing, claiming that there was something universally inherent or “natural” that accompanies the category of woman. When I asked Veronique about the song, she interpreted it differently. She told me, “It’s like a women empowerment song… somebody asked us to do it just for women’s awareness month and then we took it and was like, ‘Okay. We can just play it all the time.’ But it’s really just empowering women and showing [that] we’re the girls that are doing it and representing—well, in this genre.”106 Kendra, the Friday night bartender has likely heard the song played by the Pinettes in Bullet’s more than some of the Pinettes themselves who sometimes have to opt out of gigs. She expressed sentiments that corroborated those of Veronique: “‘I’m Every Woman’ is strictly about letting you know that there is nothing in this world that a woman can’t do. I’m every

106 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 February 2015.

44 woman. Anything you need, a nurturer or a friend. A talker, a welder, a builder, whomever you need it to be, I’m that woman.”107 Of course, I would add to Kendra’s list roles like “trumpet player” or “bass drummer.” The song’s lyrics as interpreted by

Kendra and Veronique actually neglect an essentialist stance and insist that there is a multiplicity of identities available to women. The song suggests the only thing that is

“natural” to being a woman is possibility.

Though, as a public, we at Bullet’s are addressed by the Pinettes’ discourse, we have different proximities to the identities projected by these female gendered songs. I perform my identity as a heterosexual white male and the Pinettes perform a collective identity as black women. The female identity of the authorial voice projected by the lyrics demarcates between those identifying as female and those identifying as male.

Singing along or not singing along is a gesture that marks bodies as being on either side of a female/male gender binary. Using these songs, they transform Bullet’s, a neighborhood bar where the concept of community is put into practice, into an autonomous safe space where they can speak freely, voicing self-definitions of black womanhood that “back talk the dominant.”108 Collins takes note of the institutions that perpetuate controlling images of black womanhood and outlines the way community functions to counter these images:

Schools, print and broadcast media, government agencies, and other institutions in the information business reproduce the controlling images of Black womanhood.

107 Kendra Robertson, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 19 March 2015. 108 I borrow this phrase from: Steven Feld, Aaron A. Fox, Thomas Porcello, and David Samuels, “Vocal Anthropology: From the Music of Language to the Language of Song,” in A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Alessandro Duranti (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 321-45.

In response, African-American women have traditionally used family networks and Black community institutions as sites for countering these images.109

These family networks and black community institutions where black women can speak freely are “safe spaces.”110 Usually, these safe spaces are circumscribed by a black female identity that makes them “safe,” but those who are at Bullet’s are there specifically to see the Pinettes. As Kendra noted, “They have a cult following. Like, they have a little something, whereas some artists here, they don’t.”111 Fridays at Bullet’s are the busiest nights of the week and it wasn’t busy until the Pinettes landed the gig.

Following Warner’s line of thought, Bullet’s is not an institution per se, but rather a public. It is a self-organized safe space, existing outside of institutions and beyond the prescribed identities of its members.112 The “come as you are” feel that I described in the introduction of this chapter allows the physical space to function as a safe space in which the Pinettes voice self-definitions of black womanhood that offer a multitude of possibilities for what the black female identity can encompass.

The identities of the authorial voice in “I’m Every Woman” or other female gendered songs the Pinettes play don’t align with my own heterosexual male identity and to say that I feel awkward singing “I’m every woman” or “I wanna be your lover, woman, maybe your wife” (from Deniece Williams’ “‘Cause You Love Me, Baby”) is an understatement, though I’m sure I can be found occasionally singing them in a state of musical abandon on the dance floor. The awkwardness I feel comes entirely from my own fear of the (mostly older) men in the bar seeing me singing lyrics that, if they could

109 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 101. 110 Ibid. 111 Kendra Robertson, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 19 March 2015. 112 Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 88.

46 be considered a genuine expression of self, signal a gender identity that might not be warmly received. This fear, however, stems from my own age-based biases and is something I try to keep in check. In holding back on singing the lyrics, I try to avoid misrecognition of my sexual and gender identity.113 I perform my identity as a heterosexual man, often despite my urge to sing along.

In a discussion of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, rhetorician Virginia Jackson explains the ability of lyrics to address a public.

To say that in remaining closed upon herself Dickinson managed to represent the self and therefore to become “characteristic of our life” is to trace in her poetry the syllogistic logic of address … Put simply, that logic converts the isolated “I” into the universal “we” by bypassing the mediation of any particular “you.” … On this view, in order to have an audience the lyrics must not have one.114’

The tendency of subjects to understand the lyrical “I” as a “we”—the flexible pronoun—is a well-noted phenomenon in black feminist theory. Writing about Aretha

Franklin and her relation to the blues tradition, Collins corroborates this tendency of personal lyrics to address a public: “Within the blues tradition, the listening audience of

African-American women assumes ‘we’ Black women, even though Aretha as the blues singer sings ‘I.’”115 This flexible pronoun is the transition from a first-person singular to the first-person plural. Singing along is a gesture that facilitates, reinforces, and embodies this shift to a plural collectivity. Time and time again, the flexible pronoun has become a rallying cry that unites groups in protest. Signs and t-shirts proclaiming “I am Trayvon

Martin,” “I am Eric Garner” or “Je Suis Charlie” bring people together and the embodied

113 This perhaps points to the residues of my own internalized homophobia. 114 Virginia Jackson, Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 129; Jackson’s work is discussed in Michael Warner’s “Publics and Counterpublics,” but the quote included in Warner is of Jackson’s earlier manuscript draft. 115 Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 116.

47 chanting or singing of these flexible pronoun phrases serves to reinforce this collectivity.

Singing along becomes an act of solidarity with political implications that extend beyond the walls of Bullet’s. Warner argues that “[p]ublic speech must be taken in two ways: as addressed to us and as addressed to strangers. The benefit in this practice is that it gives a general social relevance to private thought and life. Our subjectivity is understood as having resonance with others, and immediately so.”116 Bullet’s is what sociologist Gary

Alan Fine would call a “tiny public,” a space in which “communities are constituted and inequality and social difference are created.”117 It is through networks of these “tiny publics” that social relations are organized. Instruments are also active in achieving this collective resonance. As noted earlier in the chapter, Matt argues that instruments go beyond and above semantic meaning, giving voice to ideas and becoming instrumental in accomplishing things.118 Through their material and immaterial voices, the Pinettes transform Bullet’s into a safe space where they voice a collective standpoint. It becomes a space of empowerment where we all sing and dance together and create space for these self-definitions to breath.

Around 11:30 p.m., the Pinettes pack up their instruments and congregate outside the bar. I place my empty bottle on the bar and thank Kendra for her friendly service.

“Thank you, baby! I’ll see you next week!” she says with a friendly grin. I step through the doorway back into the neon light cast upon the sidewalk. I thank the Pinettes for their set and walk across the street to unlock my bicycle from the stop sign. As I hop on my bike and make the forty-minute trek home, my mind cycles through their performance,

116 Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 77. 117 Gary Alan Fine, Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012), 2. 118 Sakakeeny, Roll With It, 63.

48 their use of songs, the order of the set, and the things they may have done differently. I think about whether I’ll have enough schoolwork completed to warrant my attendance at the second line on Sunday.

As I reflect on these and other things, the historical singularity of the Pinettes existence hits me in the way only something so seemingly commonplace—perhaps as the result of deep contemplation—can suddenly seem exceptional or amazing. These instruments, in the hands of the Pinettes, have acquired new meaning. They are used in the creation of a safe space that is gendered autonomously from the gendering of the streets. Voicing a collective female identity, the Pinettes have pushed against the male dominance of the brass band scene, carving out a space for women to enter the brass band game and making a lot of people dance doing it.

3. SONGS AS KNOWLEDGE

In the first chapter, I describe how the Pinettes have created autonomous spaces in which they voice alternative self-definitions of black womanhood that resist the narrow and limiting definitions in societal circulation. The chapter deals less with the particulars of those self-definitions and more with the creation of a space where these self- definitions can be voiced. This chapter examines the Pinettes’ music, aiming to deal head-on with the stereotypes that work to contain black womanhood within a narrow realm of possibility.

In Collins’ groundbreaking 1990 work Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,

Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, she argued that the intellectual work of black women has largely been ignored due to the biases and oppressive tendencies of those who define the process of knowledge validation.119 Her radical theoretical approach attempts to find an alternative knowledge validation system independent of the white masculinist system that controls the academy. From this effort to remediate epistemological exclusions came Collins’ idea of black feminist thought, which exists at the juncture of experience and consciousness. It comes from the interdependence of thought and action. It is the confluence of the commonplace taken-for granted knowledge of black women and the more specialized expert knowledge of black women who emerge

119 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 1-21.

50 from a group as representative.120 It aims to “[empower] women and men to actualize a humanist vision of community.”121

At first glance, the grouping of people based on a shared social identity and finding within that group a unified mode of thought may seem essentialist, reinforcing

“the assumption that groups, categories or classes of objects have one or several defining features exclusive to all members of that category.”122 One of the main tenets of black feminist thought is that “African American women, as a group, experience a different world than those who are not black and female.”123 It is a socially inhabited thought shaped by the lived experiences of those who share in a similar social category or experience. In this sense, black feminist thought is an embodied theoretical standpoint.

As African American anthropologist John Langston Gwaltney explains that the “business of living makes women use their minds in ways that men don’t even have to think about.”124 From Gwaltney’s perspective, it is largely shaped by material reality and the social conditions of black women. In this mode of thought, though, there is still obviously disjuncture as lived experiences within this social reality run the gamut of class, sexuality, age, nationality, ethnicity, etc. The biggest locus of this variation is most often

120 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 2nd ed., 34. 121 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 39. 122 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), 96 123 Patricia Hill Collins, “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought,” in Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, ed. (New York: The New Press, 1995), 339. 124 John Langston Gwaltney, Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America (New York: Vintage, 1980), 33.

51 class, but, as Collins notes, “material conditions of oppression can vary dramatically and yet generate some uniformity in the epistemologies of subordinated groups.”125

Robin D. G. Kelley signaled one of black feminist thought’s greatest contributions to theory by and large, noting that it brought the authority of the theorist into question. “It expanded the definition of who constitutes a theorist, the voice of authority speaking for black women, to include poets, blues singers, storytellers, painters, mothers, preachers, and teachers.”126 In an effort to redress the exclusion of black women from the production of formal knowledge, scholars have used standpoint theory—the method of evaluating authority based on perspective—to excavate black feminist thought from alternative epistemological origins, arguing that songs, novels, and poems are excellent sites for mining intellectual thought. The Pinettes’ music is an ideal site for excavating black feminist knowledge. The notion that the Pinettes’ songs are sites of knowledge resonates also from Tylita’s standpoint. She told me that introducing their music to unfamiliar audiences is “just sharing knowledge.”127

The Pinettes’ songs don’t deal with politics explicitly, but the decisions they make about their music on and off the stage are political and provide knowledge of lived experience. Angela Davis argues that “not all progressive art needs to be concerned with explicitly political problems… a love song can be progressive if it incorporates a sensitivity toward the lives of working-class women…”128 The songs the Pinettes play come from lived experience and this lived experience is frequently invoked as a criterion

125 Collins, “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought,” 334. 126 Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 154. In the Pinettes, Christie, the bandleader, was the theorist who best synthesized the collective standpoint of the band. 127 Tylita Curtain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 January 2015. 128 Angela Davis, Women, Culture, and Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 200.

52 for credibility among black women when making knowledge claims.129 Activist anthropologist Irma McClaurin identified lived experience as a crucial component, defining a black feminist perspective as:

an embodied, positioned, ideological standpoint perspective that holds Black women’s experiences of simultaneous and multiple oppressions as the epistemological and theoretical basis of a “pragmatic activism” directed at combating those social and personal, individual and structural, and local and global forces that pose harm to Black (in the widest geopolitical sense) women’s well-being [emphasis in the original].130

Black feminist theory has been around for over thirty years and one of its foundational tenets is that it can—and indeed often does—come from alternative means of knowledge production, such as music-making. In a 1986 issue of Radical America,

Hazel Carby argued that “different cultural forms negotiate and resolve very different sets of social contradictions.”131 Carby’s article, building off the work of literary scholars, made the case that tracing black feminist thought through the writings of middle class black women of the Harlem Renaissance gives us only a partial understanding of the real- life issues black women were faced with. At that point, black feminism had argued for the inclusion of race in studies of feminism, but it had not yet fully considered class or sexuality. She argued that black feminist theory was wrong to concentrate exclusively

“on the visions of black women as represented by black women writers without

129 Collins, “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought,” 346; Stanlie M. James, introduction to Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, ed. Stanlie M. Janes and Abena P.A. Busia (New York: Routledge, 1993), 2. 130 Irma McClaurin, “Theorizing a Black Feminist Self” in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics, Irma McClaurin, ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University press, 2001), 63. 131 Hazel V. Carby, “It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues” Radical America 20, no. 4 (1986): 9.

53 indicating the limitations of their middle-class response to black women’s sexuality.”132

When class and sexuality are taken into consideration, there are limitations to what the written word has historically expressed. To take the writings of the Harlem Renaissance as comprehensive is wholly inadequate if we seek lived experience as a basis for validating knowledge. By focusing on lived experience as a form of knowledge, we can achieve a more robust understanding of intersecting oppressions that include sexuality, class, race and gender. Carby sought to excavate black feminist thought from a working- class perspective. The music of blues women like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ethel

Waters provided substantial insight into this mode of thought. The songs of black blues women demonstrate, as “an emerging model for the working woman—one who is sexually independent, self-sufficient, creative, assertive, and trend-setting.”133Angela

Davis picked up the torch from Hazel Carby in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism:

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by locating black feminist thought in discourse through the blues tradition.134 Her incisive lyrical analysis detailed mechanisms of resistance, in particular, black women’s struggles against the sexually repressive society in which they lived. Her book, which includes some 250 lyrical transcriptions of recorded blues songs, is textually and historically oriented. In the

Foucaultian sense, it is an archeological work that seeks to find black feminist knowledge independent of “textbook” history written from a white masculinist standpoint.

132 Carby, “It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime,” 12. 133 Daphne Duval Harrison, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 10. 134 Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).

These approaches to alternative discourse analysis view songs as fixed textual artifacts. Extending this approach to recorded songs into the ethnographic domain, one might ask how songs communicate black feminist thought in performance. In the brass band scene, bands seek to please crowds; they change lyrics and song selections based on their interpretation of their audience’s expectations. Collins argues that “viewing Black women’s ideas that emerge from one social context as a canon to be celebrated or criticized runs the risk of reducing Black feminist thought to an academic commodity. A better approach treats Black feminist thought as a dynamic system of ideas reactive to actual social conditions.”135 To view brass band songs as having only one definitive set of lyrics or arrangement would be to deny the vitality of the musical form.

Music can take over when words fail to communicate meaning and it has the ability to communicate the semantically ineffable. Davis would agree, arguing that art, broadly speaking, is distinct because of its ability to influence feelings as well as knowledge.136 In this sense, it is a persuasive tool and a means of creating and changing consciousness. Louise Meintjes notes that, “When other aspects of social life are severely repressed, expressive culture becomes a strategic persuasive tool for all factions and a means to open up new spaces for the disempowered.”137 Through music, we see the breakdown of the function-aesthetic binary. Music is not a purposeless cultural form—

135 Patricia Hill Collins, Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 9. 136 Davis, Women, Culture, and Politics, 200. 137 Louise Meintjes, Sound of Africa!: Making Zulu in a South African Studio (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 11.

“auditory cheesecake,” in the words of cognitive scientist Steven Pinker138—but rather a functional expression of politics where opinion-producing knowledge is situated.

Music is also an area where musicians perform identities and music can be used to subvert or enhance domination on many axes of power. Ethnomusicologist Harris Berger has pointed out that “[t]he notion that music has meaning or social dynamics that we would call political is not provocative in the field of ethnomusicology today. We all agree that music is a key medium through which identities emerge.”139 More than this emergence, though, which implies a passive construction of identity, people strategically emphasize and deploy categories of identity in order to make political statements, and in the case of the Pinettes, use collective identities advantageously. Music is one place where we can learn gender, race, and sexuality. It is a site where identity categories are contested and fortified. 140 Music is active in generating racial, economic, and social politics and looking at the use of songs can provide us with a sophisticated view of black women’s politics that transcends the political constraints and various racial, gender, class, and sexuality hierarchies present in an interview.

I aim to give Davis and Carby’s approaches an ethnomusicological treatment by seeking to understand how songs are used in different performance contexts. The

Pinettes’ song choices and the different versions they play when in different performance situations have led me to ask: How might songs communicate black feminist knowledge when they change across performance contexts? In other words, how does black feminist theory look in praxis? By looking at the Pinettes’ performance decisions on and off the

138 Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 534. 139 Harris Berger, “New Directions for Ethnomusicological Research into the Politics of Music and Culture: Issues, Projects, and Programs,” Ethnomusicology 58 (2014): 315. 140 Tucker, “A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazzwomen,” 8.

56 stage, I show how the Pinettes deal with black feminist concerns and perform their identities. I argue in this chapter that the Pinettes use their songs to articulate black feminist thought through the active construction of situational collective identities. As such, their songs are not only sites of knowledge, but also tools of subversion; they operate as black feminist theory in practice.

Casanova

It’s a slow night at Bullet’s and the patrons present have thus far remained seated.

The function of a brass band in any setting is to move bodies, and the Pinettes are still working to get people out of their seats. In an interview, Dee Holmes articulated her aim when onstage with the Pinettes: “I just want them to move their bodies. I want them to feel what I’m playing. I want them to get into the groove of what we’re giving you. You know? I want them to receive us. Make me feel like I’m playing my horn for a reason.”141

There are certain songs in the brass band repertoire that instantly elicit a response from audiences familiar with the music and “Casanova” is one of them. It is required material for any brass band. Veronique Dorsey told me that, if they refused to play “Casanova” at someone’s wedding, the customer would most likely demand a refund.142 Faced with an unusually unresponsive crowd, the Pinettes decide that “Casanova” should be sufficient to energize the crowd and they’re certainly not wrong.143 Upon hearing the first few notes of the tuba line, I jump to my feet. Christie’s mother and aunt, sitting at a table near the band, also leap from their chairs, throw their hands up in the air and sway their hips from

141 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 April 2014. 142 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 Sept 2014. 143 When Bullet’s is only filled with diehard bar-goers, barroom songs tend to do the trick. Among these barroom songs are Teddy Pendergrass’s “When Somebody Loves You Back” and Lebrado’s “I’m Missin’ You.”

57 side to side. I take my camera out of my pocket and attempt an awkward combination of bombastic footwork and steady videography that could hardly be considered successful on either front. Several others get up, proving that the song—as wielded by the Pinettes— is unrelenting in its quest to put people in motion. The song was originally a 1987 hit by

LeVert, with lyrics that imply that the protagonist is not a womanizer:

I ain’t much on Casanova Me and Romeo ain’t never been friends Can’t you see how much I really love you? I want to sing it to you time and time again. Oh, Casanova…

In LeVert’s version, substantial ‘80s accoutrements—staccato synth hits and a warble-y synth bass that seems perfectly tailored for a tuba translation—follow this stanza. In an inter-generational, conversational book by Gerald Levert (leader of LeVert) and his father, Eddie Levert Sr. (leader of the O’ Jays), the senior Levert argues that

“young black men have to get past this macho sex thing they have. They walk around acting like all women are bitches and they gotta be the pimp. They’ve got to get past looking at women as sex objects.”144 Gerald Levert ostensibly takes a page out of his father’s book for “Casanova,” which makes the lyrical rewrite by the Rebirth Brass Band all the more shocking. When re-tuned to the brass band tradition by Rebirth on their 2001 album Hot Venom, they took substantial liberties with the lyrics so that the song holds a much different meaning:

I ain’t much on Casanova Me and Romeo ain’t never been friends Can’t you see how much I want to fuck you? Come and sing it to you time and time again.

144 Eddie Levert, Sr. and Gerald Levert with Lyah Beth LeFlore, I Got Your Back: A Father and Son Keep it Real About Love, Fatherhood, Family, and Friendship (New York: Harlem Moon, 1997), 93.

Oh, bitch bend over… (Take ‘em off, take your motherfuckin’ drawers off)

The systems of class, race, sexuality, and gender intersect in music, but

“Casanova” really brings gender and power under the analytical microscope. An underlying problem that allows for the subjugation of segments of the population is binary thinking, or what Collins has dubbed (perhaps a bit cumbersomely) “either/or dichotomous thinking.”145 Thinking in binaries often causes people, ideas, and things to be categorized in terms of difference to one another; they gain meaning only in relation to that which is on the flip side of the opposition. Dichotomies are divided between black and white, female and male, function and aesthetic, homosexual and heterosexual, etc.146

These oppositional dichotomies are inherently unstable and the result of this instability is subordination. bell hooks has gone so far as to claim that binary thinking is the “central ideological component of all systems of domination in Western society.”147

Objectification serves to set binary systems of oppression in motion and is a central feature in Rebirth’s adaptation of “Casanova.”148 In the re-tuned lyrics of “Casanova,” women are sexually objectified as the “Other” and viewed as an object to be manipulated and controlled. As feminist scholar Catharine MacKinnon so bluntly put it: “Man fucks woman: subject verb object.”149

The Pinettes have a different approach to the song. Leaning into the microphone,

Veronique begins singing the words to Casanova. The lyrics the Pinettes tend to sing are

145 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 2nd ed, 70-2. 146 Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 96. 147 bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston, MA.: South End Press, 1984), 29. 148 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 70-71. 149 Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 124.

59 different than the ones sung by Rebirth. Rather than singing “Bitch bend over,”

Veronique replaces it with the original lyric “Oh, Casanova” and instead of “Can’t you see how much I want to fuck you?” she reverts the lyrics to their original “Can’t you see how much I really love you?” She also retains Rebirth’s instruction to take your clothes off, although the instruction is usually delivered without expletives, making it more useable across different audiences.

I ain’t much on Casanova, Me and Romeo ain’t never been friends. Can’t you see how much I really love you? Let me sing it to you time and time again. Oh, Casanova… (Take ‘em off, take all your clothes off)

In singing “Take all your clothes off” and various other sexual/textual interpolations, the Pinettes invert the gendered meaning of Rebirth’s lyrical addition.

Referencing trombonist Nicole Elwood’s insistence on this inclusion, trumpeter

Veronique Dorsey told me with a chuckle, “But she’s talking about a man, not what

Rebirth was saying!”150

The Pinettes challenge controlling images of blackness that differ greatly from their male colleagues. Specifically, the Pinettes push against racist constructions of female sexuality rooted in the history of slavery. Collins carefully outlined the controlling images of black womanhood that work to dictate the behavior and identities of black women. They include the images of the tragic mulatta, the comic mammy, the welfare mother, and the hypersexualized jezebel.151 Sociologist Melissa Harris-Perry observes that these stereotypes “do not reflect black women’s lived experiences; instead, they limit

150 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 Sept 2014. 151 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 69-96.

African American women to prescribed roles that serve the interests of others.”152 The stereotype of the “jezebel” promotes an image of black women as insatiable, lustful, lascivious, and seductive. In the nineteenth century, it was a way of harmonizing the discordant commodification of black female bodies with the modesty upheld by Victorian ideals.153 Those inside and outside the brass band community promulgate this stereotype of the jezebel, albeit in a style more suited to the discourse of the twenty-first century.

The use of the term “bitch” in the Rebirth recording is one example of this. The controlling image of the “sexualized bitch” as disseminated by the Rebirth recording, is the modern-day equivalent to the “jezebel” image, but repackaged and sold to a twenty- first-century audience.154 While one could take the stance that the use of “take your clothes off” in the Pinettes’ version of Casanova simply adheres to the controlling image of the “jezebel” or the “sexualized bitch,” I think this reading would ignore the historical reality the Pinettes are dealing with. In the Jim Crow South in particular, black women responded to assaults on black sexuality in the representation of sexuality through its absence. This “super morality” became the way black women dealt with the hypersexualized image forced upon them.155 Historian Darlene Clark Hine argues that,

“in the face of the pervasive stereotypes and negative estimations of the sexuality of black women, it was imperative that they collectively create alternative self-images and

152 Melissa Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (New Haven: Yale University Press: 2011), 96. 153 Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen, 55. 154 Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 127-8. 155 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs (1992): 251-274.

61 shield from scrutiny these private, empowering definitions of self.”156 This creation of a deceptive exterior image has led to what Hine calls a “culture of dissemblance” in which black women’s inner lives were shielded from oppression under the guise of openness.157

Music as an expression of interiority has often acted as a release valve for cultural dissemblance. As noted earlier in this chapter, the blues have already been studied at length as a site of black feminist knowledge. In these songs, women were free to assert themselves publically as sexual beings.158 Hip-hop is also an area where the mask of dissemblance has been lifted.159 Perhaps drawing from hip-hop, the Pinettes clearly exercise their ability to move away from prescribed images in popular romantic ballads where the female authorial voice’s expression of desire is circumscribed by bourgeois ideals of female virginity and passivity.160 Instead of simply replacing the Rebirth lyrics with LeVert’s original lyrics, however, they maintain a claim to sexuality with the insistence that the (male) listener remove their garments. Other textual interpolations also surface. For instance, saxophonist Natasha Harris, making reference to a song called

“HBNS” by Rebirth, often shouts “We want hot, butt-naked sex!” during the song,

156 Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance,” in Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall (New York: The New Press, 1995), 383. 157 Ibid, 380. 158 This has been explored to such an extent that the subtitle to Eileen Hayes and Linda William’s edited volume Black Women and Music was “More than the Blues.” For examples, see Hazel V. Carby, “It Jus Be’s Day Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues,” in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, ed. Robert G. O’Meally, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billy Holiday (New York: Vintage Books, 1999). 159 Harris Perry, Sister Citizen, 64. 160 Here, I’m using the excellent wording of Gayle Wald: Gayle Wald, “From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover,” American Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2003): 387-416.

62 although this is mostly only expressed in safe spaces like Bullet’s. As Gerald Levert confessed of his musical intentions, “For us it’s always been about creating music that’s telling the truth about what men and women want. Sometimes women want it just as bad as men!”161

“For African Americans,” argues Collins, “rejecting what is expected is often the first step in resistance.”162 What the Pinettes do is more than just resistant—it’s revolutionary. While they push back against objectification in the first half of the lyrical excerpt by reverting to the LeVert lyrics, they also make it clear that they have no qualms about being sexual, instructing men in the audience to “take all your clothes off.” In their hands, the song becomes a powerful self-definition that goes beyond just “rejecting what is expected” and moving toward crafting a collective image on their own terms.

Baby/Valerie

It’s a Tuesday night and I’m catching one of the Pinettes’ shows at the Maison, a bar on Frenchmen Street, one of the city’s busiest entertainment districts. I hazard a guess that the mostly-white audience is made up of tourists, seeing as none of them look concerned about the hangovers that will likely greet them on Wednesday morning.

Finding myself in the line of foot traffic, I awkwardly attempt to move my backpack and its fieldwork-related contents out of the way so as to not be a complete nuisance. The heat of everyone’s bodies, despite the doors opened wide to the relative coolness of the evening, makes the dance floor uncomfortably warm. Even with the crowdedness of the space, the heat surprisingly does little to inhibit dancing. Over the clavé rhythm of the tuba and bass drum, Veronique Dorsey chants into the microphone “R. I. P. to my girl

161 Eddie Levert, Sr. and Gerald Levert with Lyah Beth LeFlore, I Got Your Back, 126. 162 Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 18.

Amy!” the pitch of her voice rising and falling on “A-my.” “R. I. P. to my girl Amy!” repeat the other band members. “We’re going to dedicate this one to all of you visionaries out there.” With this shouted eulogy, the Pinettes launch into “Valerie” by British neo- soul singer Amy Winehouse.163

The call-and-response memorial to Winehouse and the subsequent dedication to

“visionaries” posit Winehouse as a feminist (at least in action) and a strong female leader.

Before her death in 2010, Winehouse was indeed that, having in 2008 won more

Grammys in one night than any female artist. “Valerie” is amongst the woman-centric songs most frequently performed by the Pinettes. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I was at a gig where they didn’t play it. Rather than call the song “Valerie,” however, the

Pinettes have curiously changed the title and hook (in the last line of the following stanza) to “Baby.”

Since I’ve come on home, Well my body’s been a mess, And I miss your ginger hair, And the way you like to dress, Won’t you come on over? And stop making a fool out of me? Why don’t you come on over, Baby

When I asked Veronique about the change of the hook and title, she deferred to

Christie, whose decision it was to make the changes. The explanation she offered at least partly had to do with making the song their own, but I couldn’t help but read a little deeper into what social forces might be at play.

163 “Valerie” originated with the Zutons [2006] before being covered by Mark Ronson [2007] who recruited Winehouse to sing it. In North America, at least, the song is very strongly associated with Winehouse, and the Pinettes themselves consider it an Amy Winehouse tune, often singing in the intro the refrain “R.I.P. to my girl Amy!” (itself an adaptation of “R.I.P. to my girl Shorty” in Keedy Black’s “Hammer”).

VERONIQUE: Honestly, you might have to ask Christie, because, honestly, I’d never heard the song before until I got with the Pinettes, so I thought the name of the song was “Baby” and then I heard Amy Winehouse and I was like, “Valerie? Where did that come from?” I think also they changed it to “Baby” because they wanted to make it, like, a Pinettes song, because even though it’s “Valerie,” once we start playing it, it’s like a total different song and a different feel. So I think that’s partially the reason why, but the rest—

KYLE: Because I mean, I asked Christie one time and the answer she gave me was super ambiguous. She said, “We didn’t want anyone to have mixed emotions.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. I don’t really know what you’re getting at here. I mean I can kind of guess.”

VERONIQUE: Yeah. And because you’re singing Valerie…

KYLE: And, you know, with the protagonist of the song being a woman.

VERONIQUE: Yeah, that’s probably it, too. Because I, like—even on stage sometimes—I have to remember I’m gay, but the rest of the band’s not gay, so I have to watch my language and what I say. Yeah, even when we sing songs like “Casanova,” we have to change the language because we don’t want people to think we’re just singing like the guys.

By changing the name and hook of the song from “Valerie” to the gender neutral

“Baby” in the last line, the Pinettes have removed homosexuality from the conversation.

Were they to sing a song of lost love about a woman, their male colleagues might label them lesbians and this “accusation” of lesbianism would ostensibly carry with it a dismissive quality. The Pinettes sing a gender-neutral version of the lyrics because playing male gendered instruments often leads to, in the words of Sherrie Tucker, the identification of women as “sexually suspect.”164 She makes the case that “Women in all- girl bands were sexualized throughout their careers. Those who played nontraditional instruments aroused suspicions that they must be nontraditional in other ways as well.”165

164 Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-girl” Bands of the 1940s, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 23. 165 Ibid, 22.

While Tucker is referring to the “all-girl” swing bands of the ‘40s, the belief that women playing in an all-female band are all lesbians persists unbridled.

Trombonist Dee Holmes had a frank discussion with me about sexuality that indicated the persistence of this idea. Usually quite soft spoken, the thought of instrument selection or her own sexuality further marginalizing the entirety of the band got her blood boiling.

DEE: Just because a couple of us are [gay], it doesn’t mean that the whole band is, you know? I mean, we’re just talented women. We want to be seen in the game just like you are. I mean—me personally—close your eyes. We’re musicians, that’s it. We don’t need that, “Oh, those girls.” We don’t look at it and say, “Oh, those guys.” You know, we’re musicians. “I like the way you guys sound tonight” you know? You don’t have to do all that extra stuff.

KYLE: Do you think even if all of you were straight, there would still be that inclination to say [that you’re all lesbians]—

DEE: Of course!

KYLE: Do you have any idea where that comes from?

DEE: Girls aren’t supposed to play brass instruments. I mean, that’s just like marching in high school bands—Saint Mary’s Academy. “You go to an all-girl’s school, you must be gay.” They thought about us like that when we were in high school. So I don’t know. I think women aren’t capable in their eyes.166

Six months after my interview with Dee, I interviewed Veronique, who confirmed

Dee’s analysis:

KYLE: One thing I wanted to talk about that I talked to Dee a lot about is, like, people’s inclination—when they see a bunch of women playing brass instruments or percussion instruments—to say, “That’s a bunch of lesbians” or something like that. Like, how sexuality somehow and instrument choice align in a really weird way and people have these stereotypes.

VERONIQUE: Especially like the guys in brass bands. Like, when they first see the Pinettes—well, now everybody knows—but if it’s a new guy, they’ll be like, “Oh, they’re all gay.” I’m like, “Well, no. That’s not the case.” But, I guess

166 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 August 2014.

because they don’t expect, I guess non-lesbian women to—or, well, straight women—to play drums or play tuba. They just expect like, “Oh, because you are maybe more masculine because you’re a lesbian then, hey, you’re going to play a brass instrument or a drum.” Like, that’s not the case. But that’s just like a societal thing, though. People just expect that.

KYLE: Well, yeah. That’s the thing. And that’s one thing I really want to touch on in my writing and in thinking about these things, like, “How does that even become a thing?” Like…

VERONIQUE: I guess they associate drums and brass to masculinity.167

Since that interview with Veronique, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about her comments about the ties between masculinity, homosexuality, and instruments. It seems that there are two assumptions that operate in the brass band community that lead male musicians to (at least initially) ascertain that the Pinettes are “all gay.” First, there is the assumption that lesbianism is linked with masculinity. Second is the association of masculinity and brass band instruments.168 It is through these two associations that lesbianism and brass bands instruments become intertwined. Getting to know the Pinettes disentangles these associations, for the obvious reason that one would realize that only

20% of the band is homosexual, but also because to get to know someone is to internally grant them subjectivity and allow for an array of self-definitions beyond societal categorization.169

Dee recognized the burden that comes with being on the “deviant” or non- normative end of racial, sexual, and gender binaries, telling me, “I don’t know. I guess

I’m a triple negative, huh?”170 Though she told me this with a laugh, the gravity of Dee’s

167 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 February 2015. 168 That is to say, the male gendering of instruments I discuss in the first chapter. 169 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York & London: Rotledge, 2004), 249. 170 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 August 2014.

67 observation should not be taken lightly. As Collins notes, “In essence, to be completely

‘normal,’ one must be White, masculine, and heterosexual, the core hegemonic White masculinity. … Its antithesis, its Other, would be Black, female, and lesbian…”171 As black lesbians, Veronique and Dee’s socially prescribed identities are on the receiving end of multiple intersecting systems of oppression. My own social categorizations hold me on the normative side of things and our interactions take place over these multiple systems of oppression. Gender, sexuality, and race have shaped every aspect of my research including my entrée, the band’s trust in me, my relationships with individuals within the band, and also the epistemological tools available to me.

When I asked Christie about changing the name and the hook of the song, she responded with “we didn’t want anyone to have mixed emotions.” In doing this, she used ambiguity as a form of self-censorship because she wasn’t sure how I would respond to an outright discussion about sexuality. Her active opposition to being labeled a lesbian stems from a history of women musicians being perceived as sexually suspect and also the further oppression and marginalization that comes with non-normative sexualities.

Black law scholar Harlon Dalton suspects that, at least in the African American community, “openly gay men and lesbians evoke hostility in part because they have come to symbolize the strong female and the weak male that slavery and Jim Crow produced.

… Lesbians are seen as standing for the proposition that ‘Black men aren’t worth

171 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York & London: Rotledge, 2004), 96-7.

68 shit.’”172 In the generally sexually repressive society of the United States, adhering to normative societal roles can act as a survival technique.

Given the subversiveness of the Pinettes’ very existence, why would Christie make the decision to censor the song in this regard? There exists an inherent self- censorship when any hierarchy invades interpersonal relationships. This includes not only

Christie’s relationship with me, but also with other brass band musicians and audience members. The Pinettes have, in a sense, attempted to remove homosexuality from the conversation in order to focus on their collective identity as women. Barbara Smith has cited this “maintaining straightness” as a last resort for black women.173 This is an example of what postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak has termed “strategic essentialism”174 in which intra-group differences are temporarily put aside in order to achieve social action. It is also a strategic means of preventing offense and they tend to remove non-normative sexuality altogether from large festival gigs where some festivalgoers might be offended. Veronique told me “We definitely keep it PG for festivals.”175

While the identities of members of the Pinettes are substantially variegated

(encompassing most notably differences in sexualities and ages), they often unite in a brass band as women in a defiant act of strategic essentialism that disregards intra-group differences in favor of a united front for social change. Trombonist Dee Holmes put it

172 Harlon L. Dalton, “AIDS in Blackface,” in Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Wahneema Lubiano, ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1999), 333. 173 Barbara Smith, “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies, ed. Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (New York: The Feminist Press, 1982), 171. 174 Gayatri Spivak, “Criticism, Feminism and the Institution,” interview with Elizabeth Gross, Thesis Eleven 10/11, no. 1 (1984-85): 185. 175 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 February 2015.

69 quite succinctly when she told me, “We promote female power.”176 As astute businesswomen, the Pinettes very consciously leverage their collective gender identity as a means of marketing themselves and carving out a niche in the larger brass band market.177 Strategic essentialism, in this case, is in close conversation with what the business world would term “strategic differentiation.” Racial formation theorists Michael

Omi and Howard Winant argue that “[s]ocial movements create collective identity by offering their adherents a different view of themselves and their world.”178 Despite variations in sexuality within the band, they strategically essentialize in order to craft a collective identity that they leverage to offer audiences a different view of the brass band community—one where women command brass band instruments.

During the writing of this thesis, a reversion to the original “Valerie” has become more frequent in the Pinettes’ performances. While I’m not sure how much of this shift might have to do with the Pinettes’ knowledge of my research or the increase in support for the LGBTQ community in recent years, the gradual shift back to the original words— with their inference to non-normative sexuality—is notable. The example of “Baby” shows us that musical subversion is not always total, but rather subject to the real-life social conditions of musicians.

Get A Life

The shade underneath the Claiborne Bridge in New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood provides respite from the heat of a hot late-October day in New Orleans.

Below the overpass between St. Philip and St. Ann Street, the scene is set for the second

176 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 April 2014. 177 I will deal with their marketing choices in greater detail in the third chapter. 178 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2015), 165.

70 triennial Red Bull Street Kings Brass Band Blowout. Food trucks line the perimeter of the event, reaching from Dumaine to St. Phillip Street. One block ahead (between St. Ann and Dumaine) four stages are set up, each with rigging for lighting and street art-inspired murals providing the backdrop.

Before the event begins, the four competing bands—the Pinettes, the TBC Brass

Band, the New Breed Brass Band, and the New Creations Brass Band—occupy band tents at the end of the area opposite the stages. The TBC Brass Band launches into a few warm-up tunes to prime the small crowd around their tent. They segue into “You Don’t

Want to Go to War,” a tune that warns other bands not to engage with them in musical battle. Musical shots are fired. Not willing to back down, the New Creations Brass Band retaliates with another fiercely competitive tune called “Let’s Go Get ‘Em.” As if to call

TBC’s bluff, they also play “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothin’” by James Brown. In the two tents removed from the brass band battling, the Pinettes and New Breed watch on, anticipating the stiff competition.179

By the time the competition proper starts, thousands of people occupy the area under the overpass. To begin the competition, each band parades from one side of the demarcated area to the other, ending up on their respective stages. The first three bands parade in in the usual fashion for second lines. Few frills are added, save for crews of fans, revelers, and an especially large banner that follows the New Creations. The

Pinettes, however, have a show in mind. As they play the dirge “Just a Closer Walk with

Thee,” pallbearers in the Pinettes’ entourage carry a large polystyrene coffin with the names of each rival band painted on the top. At the end of the dirge, the body is “cut

179 It’s interesting to note that all of these competition-driven songs are Rebirth arrangements, showing just how much the band has contributed to the brass band game.

71 loose” as per the jazz funeral tradition and the lid on the coffin flies off. A dancer pops out of the coffin, much to the surprise of everyone crowded around. The Pinettes loudly blare “Rebirth Melody,” a boastful track from Rebirth’s most hip-hop-influenced album,

Hot Venom. Confetti cannons spew shiny paper shrapnel into the air, and the band throws their white button-up shirts (traditional jazz funeral attire) into the tightly packed audience, revealing white and blue baseball shirts with the band logo. The Cherry Bombs, an all-female New Orleans dance troupe, bounce umbrellas with the words “Street

Queens” written in red and blue sparkles. Members of the crowd throw their hands up in the air and bob to the syncopated blasts of the tuba. In playing a tune by Rebirth, the band at the top of the brass band patriarchy, the Pinettes send a clear message of competition to the other bands: they are a formidable musical force and should not be taken lightly.

As the bands cycle through the songs of the first round, it’s clear that the Pinettes have put significant time and preparation into their stage show. To everyone’s surprise,

TBC, the crowd favorites (and de facto “street kings”), are eliminated after the first round along with New Creations. I can feel the anticipation mounting in the crowd as the final round of the competition is about to play out. The two bands that have made it to the final round—the Pinettes and New Breed—stand poised to play at the far right and far left stages, respectively. Fulfilling their hosting duties, trombonist Glen David Andrews and hip-hop DJ Slab 1 work the audience into a frenzy. The audience directly in front of the

Pinettes’ stage is mostly clad in red and blue Pinettes regalia. Christie’s mother, wearing a blue Pinettes shirt, a red ten-gallon hat, and a matching boa, cheers the band on. The audience, familiar with the Pinettes’ music, loudly requests one of the band’s signature

72 originals, “Get A Life.” Christie reflected on the competitive spirit that took hold of them in that moment:

CHRISTIE: Glen David [Andrews] said, “We going to see who’s going first…” I said, “We going first!” And he was like, “Like that?” I said, “Yes.” And I looked at them and said, “We going to set the bar. Now they set it high, then we got to come knock it down. So we going to set it up as high as we want.” And the audience hollering, “Get A Life!” the whole time… So, you know, why not? And Jenard [Andrews, of the New Breed Brass Band], the snare drummer, he even said, [in a mocking tone] “Y’all gonna play ‘Get a Life’?” And Jazz was like, “I don’t know.” Which, we didn’t know. We didn’t know, but the people was like, “Get a Life! Get a Life!” Okay, not a problem.

KYLE: Sure. Do what the people want. I guess so!

CHRISTIE: That’s it. You’ve got to give them what they want.180

And the Pinettes give the audience exactly what they want. The back row launches into “Get a Life” as the front line yells the introductory refrain in unison: “Get a life! Get, get, get, get, get a life!” The second the booming E-minor tuba line begins, the crowd erupts, pleased that their request is fulfilled. At the foot of the stage, one of the band’s fans spins a white sign with “The Original Pinettes” emblazoned on one side and

“Street Queens” on the other.

The audience demand for the song can be better understood through the story of the song’s writing and its use in a performance context. When Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005, band members scattered throughout the United States. Not all band members could return and, for several members, continuing the band was understandably not a priority. Christie assumed leadership of the band upon her return and she set out to recruit new members to fill the band’s newfound vacancies.

180 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014.

CHRISTIE: After the storm, we had no band, we only had a back row. And we was just giving up, which no one wanted to, it’s just—you know? We had no work to do… Janine Waters came to me and said, “Why don’t you try to run the band?” and I was like, “No way! I’m not a tiger; I’m not aggressive.” So she was like “I’ll help you with what you need the help with and me and Casandra French will back you up.”

Though Christie had her reservations about taking over as band manager, encouragement from other members ultimately led to her assuming the position. As former band members began returning to New Orleans, though, friendships slowly began to erode and a legal battle for the name “The Pinettes Brass Band” ensued. Christie confronted the issue matter-of-factly:

CHRISTIE: Well, the only original members in the band, that’s Casandra French and Demaris [Dee] Holmes. I’m a Pinette. What happened was the band members that decided to quit—we were doing well—they saw we were doing well, so they started calling around telling Jazz Fest and Tipitina’s “There’s a lawsuit going on with this band. They’re stealing our name. I have papers on it so they cannot perform there.” So Jazz Fest came to me and said, “We don’t care what the problem is. If y’all need to perform here, y’all need to get that corrected. If you can’t be in there, change your name… And when they started cancelling shows for us, that’s when “Get A Life” was created.

KYLE: Yeah, things get a little bit personal at that point…

CHRISTIE: And then one of the band members was like, “They’re taking food out of my kids’ mouth. This is [crazy]. Like, I can’t believe it because we was so close.181

By adding “Original” to the beginning of the band’s name, they cleverly avoided a legal challenge. They technically changed the name, but still retained their right to it.

Christie told me that this period in the band’s history affected her emotionally as she struggled to make the distinction between “friends” and “business.”182 The issue carried with it such emotional weight that Christie arrived one day at practice upset and went off

181 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014. 182 Ibid.

74 to pen the lyrics to an original song that dealt head-on with the feud. The lyrics were direct and left no room for misinterpretation.

Won’t you get a life, ‘Cause you’re some miserable bitches, miserable bitches! Fuck you. Don’t be mad. ‘Cause we’re Original Pinettes, the Original Pinettes! Get a life! Do you and I’m ‘a do me. Get a life! Do you and I’m ‘a do me. Get a life! Do you and I’m ‘a do me. Biiiiiitch!

The meaning of the text is quite clear when you know the context of its writing.

Contextualized, however, in the larger brass band community, the song takes on new meaning. In the fiercely competitive realm of brass band music, bands play tunes like

“Let’s Go Get ‘Em” and “You Don’t Want to Go to War” as a means of intimidating and engaging in competition with other bands. When re-contextualized, “Get A Life” takes on this same competitive quality. Furthermore, the word “bitch” carries double meaning. In reference to women, the term either denotes a woman with an attitude that is

“undesirable” or that doesn’t conform to one’s normative concepts of how a woman should act. Whereas the Pinettes remove “bitch” from the sexually objectifying lyrics of

“Casanova,” they make it a prominent term in “Get A Life,” where it’s drawn out to near comedic proportions. Collins notes that the term “is designed to put women in their place.

Using bitch by itself is offensive, but in combination with other slurs, it can be deadly.”183 For the Pinettes, I suspect the term carries with it a sense of betrayal as their former band mates attempted to erode the communal ties that are crucial to subversion of the brass band patriarchy. When directed at a male band, though, the term “bitch” denotes

183 Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 123.

75 a man who holds less power than a woman or a man who is objectified as a woman. It signifies an inversion of the gender system and subverts the brass band patriarchy.

The Pinettes’ performance at the Red Bull Street Kings Competition was one performance where they directed “Get A Life” at a male band. In the final round of the competition with a huge audience of cheering fans at the foot of the stage, the Pinettes launched into the tune with considerable vigor. Recounting that moment, Christie playfully attempted to remove the band’s agency in the decision to play “Get A Life,” telling me with a sly grin, “It was like, ‘We’re going to play it.’ Nothing personal to New

Breed. That’s what they want. That’s what the people want.”184 By indirectly calling other brass band musicians bitches, the Pinettes dethrone the very idea of “street kings,” reclaiming the term “bitch” to contest male domination of brass bands. This use of the song suggests that the Pinettes, empowered by their music, rule the brass band scene. The song, brandished in this manner, becomes a feminist contestation of patriarchal rule in the brass band community. Using this song, they imagine themselves as all-powerful subjects or “Street Queens.”

By deconstructing “Casanova,” “Baby,” and “Get A Life,” I situate the Pinettes and their music within a complex field of identity politics. Angela Davis’s claim that “not all progressive art needs to be concerned with explicitly political problems”185 rings true, but by looking at the decisions the Pinettes make on and off the stage, we can go a step further to better understand the progressive politics that are at play and the artists’ agency in these political decisions. The Pinettes play with the lyrics of “Casanova,” carefully deciding on how they will deal with the sexual objectification of women. Rather than use

184 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014. 185 Angela Davis, Women, Culture, and Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 200.

76 either of the existing versions of the song’s lyrics, they modify them to their will, expressing self-definitions that respond to the brass band version (by not completely reverting to the original) and resisting the sexual objectification promoted by the brass band version. As the case of “Baby” illustrates, their subversion of oppression is not always total and becomes complicated when performing a collective identity in a band that encompasses multiple sexual identities. Self-definitions require the individuated self, but a united collective front is crucial in toppling the brass band patriarchy. They strategically essentialize, crafting a collective identity by offering audience members a

“different view of themselves and the world.”186 Finally, “Get A Life” emphasizes the situatedness of music’s meaning. In one context, a song can be an expression of discontent. In another, it becomes a means of unsettling conventional power structures.

Taken together, these songs provide knowledge of the Pinettes lived experience and the identity politics that are bound up with seemingly commonplace performance decisions.

186 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2015), 165.

4. THE FIELD OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION

The Pinettes’ collective goal, without exception, is to turn the band into a full- time job. This has been repeated time and time again in the interviews and conversations

I’ve had with the band members, and underscored here in a group interview they did with

Nick Spitzer on the American Routes radio program:

DIONNE HARRISON: I think, in the end, that’s our goal—

NATASHA HARRIS: Our ultimate goal.

DIONNE: —to not have the day job and let music be our life twenty-four seven.

CHRISTIE: Absolutely… That’s one common goal everybody has here. It’s gonna happen.187

The Pinettes are astute businesswomen who regard their brass band as a profession. Like most brass bands, however, their ability to work in the music profession full time is hampered by the undervaluation of music as labor. The conceptual divide between music and labor is deeply entrenched in public thought where music has been romanticized as a labor of love. As a society, we tend to separate it from other forms of labor like service work or manual labor, insisting that work and play cannot cohabitate the same realm of action. Labor historian Thomas Adams notes that “music is placed largely outside the cash nexus.”188 That is to say, music is not often socially viewed as an exchange with monetary implications for musicians. The conceptual distinction between

187 “Soul Sisters” interview by Nick Spitzer, American Routes, March 18, 2015, http://americanroutes.wwno.org/player/playlist/33887 188 Thomas J. Adams, “New Orleans Brings It All Together,” American Quarterly 66, no. 1 (2014): 254.

“work” and “play” provides justification for undervaluing musical labor and underpaying musicians.189 “When musical performance is de-romanticized and evaluated as a form of labor,” Matt argues, “the experiences of musicians offer insight into the role of culture in capitalist infrastructures.”190

The devaluation of music as labor is furthered by the devaluation of women’s labor. Sherrie Tucker argues that the category of worker is itself constructed as masculine and this posits women’s labor as “leisure” or a “private drama.”191 For a while (and perhaps still to an extent), male musicians thought of the Pinettes as complaisant non- contenders in the brass band game. As Christie noted, “It went from “Y’all are cute” when we started coming up to “Yeah, y’all sounding like y’all trying to do something.”

… Yeah, then it wasn’t cute anymore!”192 The gendering of brass bands and of labor both impede the Pinettes’ efforts to make a full-time career out of music, but their insistence on being taken seriously has counteracted male bands’ ideas of the Pinettes’ musical labor as leisure.

In New Orleans, the economy is centered on tourism and there is no shortage of service work available. Musical labor is one form of service work and it presents for some musicians the possibility of creating a viable career. Matt notes that “a musical performance, in addition to being a creative endeavor, is also a service provided my a worker (musician) to a client (curator), both of whom are catering to a customer base

189 Matt Sakakeeny, “Playing for Work: Music as a Form of Labor in New Orleans” in Oxford Handbook (article, forthcoming). 190 Matt Sakakeeny, “Playing for Work: Music as a Form of Labor in New Orleans” in Oxford Handbook (article, forthcoming), 16. 191 Sherry Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 57. 192 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014.

(audience).”193 In 2012, the average income for New Orleans musicians was $17,800, a figure that, even with the rising costs of living, had been fairly stagnant since 2008.194

Because of the low gig-to-gig pay musicians receive for their services, musicians’ economic survival often hinges on the ability to work multiple jobs, most often service jobs in the tourism economy. Aside from playing with the Pinettes, the band members also hold jobs in the education system, in the food industry, and the service industry.

A conversation I had with Bullet’s bartender Kendra Robertson highlighted the idea of music as labor and the similarities between music-making and bartending or other forms of service work. I asked Kendra why she always puts generous tips in “Phyllis the

Bucket” (a gendered play on “Phillip the Bucket”), despite the fact that she’s also working to make an income. Several times throughout a night at Bullet’s, she would take a tip or two and, quite visibly, walk up to the bucket and drop it in.

KYLE: I noticed that you are always, like, really nice about putting tips in Phyllis the Bucket.

KENDRA: Oh yes! Because I feel like I’m making my money because [the Pinettes are] here. If people were not coming in here to see [the Pinettes], than my tips may not be where they are, so why not give the money back as I’m making the money because we’re all making this together. We’re all doing this together.

KYLE: Absolutely. You’re working in the same way that they are.

KENDRA: Yeah. People are coming to see the music. People are going to want to drink, people are going to want to do those things. I’m providing that service. I’m providing the drinks, I’m providing the niceness, I’m providing all that. But we’re all making money together. I’m not going to give them nothing? Like, nothing? And you’re going to make 4-5 hundred dollars and you’re not going to give them nothing? Like, even though I don’t have to do any of that, it still is like, “Really?”

193 Matt Sakakeeny, “Playing for Work: Music as a Form of Labor in New Orleans” in Oxford Handbook (article, forthcoming), 12. 194 Sweet Home New Orleans, 2012 State of the New Orleans Music Community Report (unpublished), 4.

KYLE: And I think also when people see you tipping the band, it also makes them think, “Oh, we should probably tip her too!”

KENDRA: Uh, yeah! Duh. That’s how it all works. We all make money together.195

The Pinettes receive a guarantee from Bullet’s and the tips received supplement this amount. Kendra realizes that an even distribution of income benefits everyone and she works to even things out between her and members of the Pinettes, visibly dropping tips in their bucket throughout the night and priming the pumps for a steady flow of cash.

This community-minded approach to income distribution is part of a much broader pattern among black communities and differs markedly from models of community as envisioned by white dominant society. Collins argues that, in contrast (and perhaps in opposition) to the capitalist, market-driven, and de-regulated tendencies of the dominant political economy, black communities in the United States have been historically shaped as places of “collective effort.”196

Income distribution is tied very closely to distribution of wealth. Whereas income is payment for work, retirement, or social welfare, wealth is what people own.197 In socio-cultural anthropology, wealth is often better understood as capital. In his 1986 essay, “Forms of Capital,” Pierre Bourdieu argued that a capitalist society “defines as disinterested those forms of exchange which ensure the transubstantiation whereby the most material types of capital—those which are economic in the restricted sense—can present themselves in the immaterial form of cultural capital or social capital and vice

195 Kendra Robertson, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 19 March 2015. 196 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 2nd ed., 53. 197 Patricia Hill Collins, “A Preliminary Analysis of Wealth, Family, and African- American Social Class” in Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader, Nancy E. Dowd and Michelle S. Jacobs, eds. (New York and London: New York University Press, 2003), 167.

81 versa.”198 Social capital is the acquired social power in a capitalist society, whereas economic capital is accrued savings that provide economic stability to individuals and families. By looking at capital as a whole, we can gain a better understanding of the interplay of culture and the economy. For the Pinettes, social capital exists in the form of a fan base, awards, and large, engaged audiences. As the Pinettes gain social capital, that capital can be passed down generationally, altering the socioeconomic standing of the band members and their families. Despite the trappings of a capitalistic society that is

“disinterested” in economic mobility because of its emphasis on the economic freedom of individuals, social reproduction is never total and sensitive to the volatility of inequality.199 By shifting the conversation from one of income to one of wealth, family structures and race become key in analysis. A racial wealth gap exists in the United States wherein the typical white family owns $81,000 compared to $8,000 for black families.200

A conceptual shift to wealth introduces both gender and race into the fray. Collins argues that,

because wealth is typically possessed and transmitted through family, focusing on wealth fosters a shift from the individual to the family as the fundamental unit of social-class analysis. Within models using the individual as the unit of social-class analysis, women and children are often not treated as independent actors in social- class analyses because they do not consistently produce income.201

In Matt’s Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, he argues that spatial and social mobility are inseparable for the city’s brass band musicians. If

198 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, John D. Richardson, ed. (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 242. 199 Sherry B. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject (Durham: Duke University Press: 2006), 7. 200 Thomas M. Shapiro, The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 47. 201 Patricia Hill Collins, “A Preliminary Analysis of Wealth, Family, and African- American Social Class,” 169.

82 musicians are able to navigate the pitfalls (both literal and figurative) of the city’s streets and capitalize on its trickle-down cultural-economic structure, they can increase their geographic mobility and, with it, their social mobility. Bands like the Soul Rebels,

Rebirth, and the Stooges have been able to travel internationally to places where musicians are often paid substantially more than they are in New Orleans.202 New

Orleans bands get paid a premium abroad,203 but the same cannot always be said at home, where music is too often a taken-for-granted commodity. However, in examining the labor of musicians, it is not enough to simply take wages into consideration. Considering mobility (both spatial and social) in the form of wealth and social reproduction brings the work that disproportionately falls on the shoulders of black women into view. African

American sociologist Rose Brewer argues for an intersectional approach that makes wealth central: “Labor is not simply about waged work at the site of production. Within households, Black women perform a significant proportion of the social reproductive labor. The socialization of children and the cleaning, cooking and nurturing functions are all disproportionately Black women’s work.”204

In one fell swoop, Janine touched on spatial and social mobility when she spoke to me about her professional aspirations.

KYLE: What’s your ultimate goal as a musician? What do you aspire to?

JANINE: To do this fulltime and to touch every single country in the world. I mean, like, to play—

202 Matt Sakakeeny, “Playing for Work: Music as a Form of Labor in New Orleans” in Oxford Handbook (article, forthcoming), 11. 203 Usually, gigs abroad are for festivals. 204 Rose M. Brewer, “Theorizing Race, Class and Gender: The New Scholarship of Black Feminist Intellectuals and Black Women’s Labor,” Race, Gender & Class 6, no. 2 (1999): 41.

KYLE: You want to travel?

JANINE: Yeah, I love to travel and I would love to play in every single country.

KYLE: So really it’s about mobility and getting around?

JANINE: Right, right. Traveling. I mean, and if I could bring my son with me, that would be awesome to let him experience that… Because I was like, “Can I take him to Switzerland?” And they [Swiss festival organizers] were like, “No, Miss! What are we going to do with the children when you play?”… So yeah, me and Christie talk about that a lot: “Man, if we ever make it big where we can afford to, we’ll just bring a babysitter with us when we travel overseas and everything and at least we’ll have somebody to watch them while we’re playing.” And, you know, just so the kids can get that experience.205

Traveling with kids is not a priority for male bands because the gender-specific social pressures of parenting affect them differently. Cultural beliefs and ideology structure female labor by and large. Rose Brewer argues that “[l]abor is not simply about waged work at the site of production. Within households, Black women perform a significant [and disproportionate] proportion of the social reproductive labor.”206 Janine’s spatial/social mobility is hampered in part by societal expectations and priorities for mothers. On top of this, the Pinettes juggle various day jobs with their musical ambitions.

The majority of New Orleans musicians have day jobs in order to supplement their income.207 At one point during the writing of this thesis, Dee was working three separate day (and night) jobs in addition to playing with the band and sharing the responsibilities of raising her two daughters. Christie, despite not being a mother, summed up the difficulties of balancing life as a parent and as a professional.

It’s so much because you wake up, you have kids, you have a full-time job. And then some of us get out of class or get out of school. We try to make the practices

205 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 5 November 2014. 206 Rose M. Brewer, “Theorizing Race, Class and Gender,” 35. 207 Sweet Home New Orleans, 2012 State of the New Orleans Music Community Report (unpublished), 8.

where it’s convenient for everybody. We might not even start practice till 7. So you’re looking at leaving my house somewhere between 11 and 12:00 at night to wake up and do it again. You know, we might wake up one morning, gig to the next day. And Veronique plays the drum set at St. Peter Clavier Church—that’s her job [along with teaching at Arthur Ashe Charter School]—so if we’re gigging till 3 in the morning, she’s waking up to go to mass at like 7, 8:00 in the morning. So, you know, people don’t see that. And than as far as going out of town or having a gig, a guy can get up, throw something in a suitcase and go for weeks. It’s not like that here because half of us have kids...”208

Some of these difficulties are shared with other brass bands. Scheduling for ten people is not an easy task and balancing multiple jobs can be tricky as well. However,

Christie makes it clear that there is a difference in what is expected of women and men in parenting. Individual band members handle difficulties differently. Talking about balancing her security job at a hotel, a delivery job, her musical career, and parenting,

Dee claimed, “It’s pretty easy. I mean, really and truly. I try to work around my band schedule because I work nights now, which was great! I found a job that I work nine-to- five. So, for the most part we don’t have gigs when I have to work, but if we do, [my boss] gives me a little leeway. I can come a little late.”209 In this sense, in order to make the juggling of jobs possible, it is provisionally incumbent upon bosses to be flexible with musicians’ schedules.

Gender affects the Pinettes’ ability to make a living with their music in unique and sometimes conflicting ways. The Pinettes leverage their difference at times to achieve mobility and this leveraging can have significant utility in branding and marketing the band, as I will later argue. At the same time, defining the band as “Other” limits what the band can achieve because it frames the band as an oddity and devalues the

208 “Soul Sisters” interview by Nick Spitzer, American Routes, March 18, 2015, http://americanroutes.wwno.org/player/playlist/33887 209 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 August 2014.

85 musical commodity they produce. This chapter seeks to close the gap between the theoretical and material, arguing that the Pinettes’ opportunities to translate social or cultural capital (what Bourdieu would collectively call “symbolic” capital)210 into economic capital have been both advanced and hampered by gender, leaving them in a position of financial and social success that hasn’t yet rendered music a viable full-time career option.

You Got to Tip the Band

Natasha Harris, the band’s saxophonist and most prominent stage presence, takes hold of the microphone in the stage area at Bullet’s.

That’s the beautiful thing about New Orleans and about this music that we do, is that it’s so creative and you can just be in the moment. Especially when y’all giving us that good energy, y’all creating those nice, musical, creative vibes. And we can give you something in return. So we need y’all to keep giving it to us, we need y’all to keep giving us that good energy. We need y’all to get out them seats and get onto this dance floor so we can give you more, and more, and more, and more!

Natasha frames her performance as an exchange. We are instructed to give them

“good energy” (symbolic capital) in exchange for their performance. “Are y’all enjoying yourself, ladies and gentlemen?” The audience cheers in agreement and I yell out an east- coast Canadian “yeeeaaaauuup!” that sounds distinctively not New Orleanian. “Well, if you’re really enjoying the sounds of the Original Pinettes…” Christie and a substitute bass drummer begin some back-up accompaniment with a strong backbeat. “…You got to tip the band, you got to tip the band, you got to tip, tip, tip, tip, tip the band!” And with that, Natasha breaks off into a rap recitation that urges us to convert symbolic capital— our dance moves as social currency—into economic capital to supplement their weekly

210 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Richard Nice, trans. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).

86 guarantee from Mr. Bullet.211 She makes it clear that all forms of economic payment are accepted, repeating each of the following lines twice to drive the point home.

We take ones, we take fives, we take tens, we take twenties!… We take fifties and hundreds, fifties and hundreds! Hundred! Hundred! Hundred! Hundred! A debit card, debit card, credit card! A debit card, a debit card, credit card! Louisiana Purchase food stamps, oh yeah! I said, Louisiana Purchase food stamps! We want to eat!... I said, give me a pin number! Ah-give me, give me, give me, give me a pin number!

…And on, and on. In the context of Bullet’s, this type of recitation is sometimes flanked by tunes like “For the Love of Money” by the O’ Jays or the brass band traditional “Food Stamp Blues” that encourage the patrons to “tip the band” by throwing bills into Phyllis the Bucket. In order to make a livable income, the Pinettes, like other bands, have developed what anthropologist Alexis Bunten terms “commodified personas,” which are created through “any type of product performance that requires the individual to adjust his or her values, emotions, or both, to achieve an economic goal…”212 Bunten examines the commodified persona within an outsider-insider relationship between tourist and cultural performer, but she also notes that commodified personas “may shift in contexts outside the cultural-tourism setting,” as it does with the

Pinettes.213 This includes a setting like Bullet’s, which is on the fringes of tourist spaces and is mostly occupied by black working-class New Orleanians. The Pinettes

211 I don’t have the precise number for the guarantee from Mr. Bullet, the bar’s owner, but I get the feeling that it’s consistent with other well-paying brass band gigs around town. I don’t imagine, however, that it would approach the $4-500/individual Kendra makes in a night. This is an ethnographic difficulty I’ve come up against in the writing of my thesis. 212 Alexis Celeste Bunten, “Sharing Culture or Selling Out? Developing the Commodified Persona in the Heritage Industry,” American Ethnologist 35, no. 3 (2008): 381 213 Ibid.

87 significantly alter their presentations of self during onstage performance in order to attain economic and social capital.

VERONIQUE: I try to bring energy to the stage. So as far as, like, with the playing, I’m going to play my best, but I also try to give, like, that persona, like I’m a star. I probably don’t act like that outside [offstage]. The person I am onstage and the person I am actually is two totally different people, but I just try to bring that persona to the stage just to have that energy. [Emphasis added]

KYLE: Yeah, so how does it change when you’re onstage? Like, what do you do? Do you just act like you’re in charge of the whole bar? Well, you get people to—

VERONIQUE: Tip and dance.214

Veronique left me with little room to misinterpret her. The band members self- commodify in order to increase the flow of capital. In adopting commodified personas, the Pinettes demand an exchange of “energy” between listener and performer and also a transfer of capital from immaterial to material. This is vital if the Pinettes are to make a living playing music.

Receiving income from performance is only one channel of revenue and constitutes just a small piece of the puzzle when considering what a musician must do to piece together a living. Outside of local performance, there are many channels through which a musician can earn revenue, most notably licensing royalties, and merchandise sales. Successfully navigating a broad array of revenue streams almost necessitates a manager or agent whose dedicated job is to handle negotiations and provide business know-how to the position. The Pinettes already inhabit multiple roles onstage, offstage, at home, and at work, and Christie has additionally taken on management of the band.

Musicians advocacy group Sweet Home New Orleans detailed the limits of self- management for New Orleans musicians.

214 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 February 2015.

In many places, musicians or their informal agents have the ability to create a fictitious persona for negotiations. In New Orleans, scale alone renders that approach impractical, especially as negotiations are often [face-to-face]. Negotiating as an artist requires a separation of the self from the marketable product, a difficult prerequisite for many to manage.215

Attaining reliable management has proven difficult for the band in part because there is a shortage of managers (only twenty-seven percent of musicians in New Orleans have professional managers),216 but also because few managers want to work with women. The band had a manager before Katrina for about one year and nine months, but they parted ways not long after he made a live recording of the band released an album without consulting the band members. Apart from that period of time, the band has been under the management of different band members, finding the most success with Christie at the helm. Tylita expressed frustrations with the attitudes of managers, who seem to think female musicians are the ones with bad attitudes. “You’re dealing with managers who particularly don’t want to deal with females because they think we’re aggravating, catty, or divas, you know, stuff like that.”217 Gendered and raced pre/misconceptions about women being ill natured provide a substantial barrier to management and professionalization. Social expectations demand women to conform to normative images of feminine passivity and deviations from this standard are often perceived as relationally aggression.218 Cattiness defies normative femininity, which is characterized by “passive, gentle, submissive, emotional, domestic, and narrowly defined understandings of beauty

215 Sweet Home New Orleans, 2012 State of the New Orleans Music Community Report (unpublished), 10-11. 216 Ibid., 10. 217 Tylita Curtain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 January 2015. 218 Linda M. Waldren, “‘Girls Are Worse’: Drama Queens, Ghetto Girls, Tomboys, and the Meaning of Girl Fights” Youth & Society 43, no. 4 (2011): 1298-1334.

89 often expressed through heterosexual desirability.”219 For black women, this catty or bitchy stereotype is manifest in the stereotype of the sapphire. The sapphire image has many hues including the bad or deviant black woman, the black bitch, or the emasculating matriarch.220 Of the various controlling images discussed thus far, the sapphire has been the least studied, indicating that it is perhaps one of the most accepted stereotypes in scholarship.221 In not conforming to the limited societal standards of feminine passivity and acquiescence and in playing male gendered instruments, the

Pinettes run the risk of being labeled “aggravating, catty, or divas” and they’ve had difficulty acquiring management as a result.

Christie did not take over the position of leadership until after Hurricane Katrina at Janine’s suggestion, but she was skeptical as to whether she could develop the assertiveness required to take on the role, telling Janine, “I’m not a tiger; I’m not aggressive.”222 With some coaxing, Christie assumed the management/bandleader position and learned the skills required while on the job. Since the storm, the band has achieved a level of success greatly exceeding that of their previous incarnations. They have appeared on multiple episodes of HBO’s Treme and have received media attention from the Rolling Stone and NPR. Increasing their spatial mobility, they have traveled to

New York City, Switzerland, and Turkey. In 2013, they released their debut album,

Finally, further spreading their music outside the city’s limits. Without a manager outside the band’s membership, marketing sometimes happens onstage where band members assume a commodified persona and advertise while they perform.

219 Ibid, 1312. 220 Melissa Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen. 221 Ibid., 89. 222 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014.

CHRISTIE: We don’t have a manager. I’m the leader, but no one wants to manage us. I think I [got] turned down like three or four times. And you know what they tell me? Even by women: I don’t ever want to deal with females!

KYLE: That seems like another place where just being a woman perhaps works out really a lot to your disadvantage.

CHRISTIE: And I have to ask, I was like, “Why?!” … And another man told me that, “Man, you know, women have bad attitudes…” I was like, “It’s not this bad.” I mean, you see our band hanging around more than you see [other bands hanging around] … They come hang at my house, we christen each other kids. Man… You know, one of the guys asked the trumpet players that: “Do y’all really hang together or y’all just doing this out here?” And they looked at him like he was crazy. Like, “What do you mean? I just was at her house all weekend.”

You know, Natasha, Janine, all our kids play together. I christened Nicole [Elwood]’s son, Demaris [Dee] and Casandra christened each other’s kids. My motto is … “we’re not blood related, we’re love related.”223

Fighting against stereotypes of cattiness, the Pinettes feel the constant need to assert their amiability, emphasizing to me many times how close they are with each other.

It’s not unusual for me to see some of them together out at a second line or hanging out on Frenchmen Street after their gig at Bullet’s. The preconception of them being catty might stem from the commodified personas they present on stage. Onstage, the Pinettes might appear assertive or forceful playing masculine gendered instruments or engaging banter with the audience to gather tips, but when they step off the stage, the identity performance ends.

The need to inhabit the roles of musician and manager is perhaps best illustrated by their performance of the song “Who You Gonna Call.” From Finally, it is a tune copped from the 1983 film, Ghostbusters. The modified lyrics from the original act as a sonic business card for the Pinettes, illustrating the blend between expressive art and business that the Pinettes maintain as skilled working musicians.

223 Christie Jourdain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 March 2014.

If you’re looking for a band, (If you’re looking for a band) That’s good as gold, (That’s good as gold) Who you gonna call? The Pinettes!

If you’re looking for a band, (If you’re looking for a band) That’s got some soul, (That’s got some soul) Who you gonna call? The Pinettes!

The standard call and response of “Who you gonna call? / Ghostbusters!” is replaced with, “Who you gonna call? / The Pinettes!” For over a century in New Orleans, it has been common to see the business cards of musicians proudly proclaiming “Music for all occasions.” The paper version of the Pinettes’ business card sports Christie and

Janine’s phone numbers on one side. Just below these numbers, the text “Weddings,

Parties, Conventions, Festivals, etc… We’ll travel Wherever!” shows not only that they are able to play “for all occasions,” but that they are willing—and even hoping—to mobilize and extend the reach of their music. On the back of the card, the lyrics “Who you gonna call… The Pinettes!” further cements the tune as a sonic business card. The

Pinettes’ unique position in the brass band scene is reflected in this song where they thriftily deliver a performance paired with an advertisement.

Branding the Band

“The World’s Only All-Female Brass Band” is a title the Pinettes proudly display on their website, business card, and social media posts and it is used most frequently in promotional materials by venues. The Pinettes use this difference-based claim to their advantage, marketing their band as unique with strong intra-gender appeal. This is an

92 example of strategic differentiation/essentialism. I asked Dee about the band’s tendency to use difference to their advantage.

KYLE: Do you think there are times where being a woman playing in a brass band is beneficial because you can sell yourself as the “World’s Only All-Female Brass Band?” Do you think it really works to your advantage sometimes despite the other drawbacks? Maybe if you want to talk about those sides…

DEE: I want to say that, for me, I think it’s a blessing and a curse. I mean, in this male-dominated business, you know, a lot of people they kind of tend to lead towards the male bands, but when they hear [about women playing in a brass band], I mean, they’re like “Girls playing that? Nah, nah!” But then when they hear us, they’re like, “Oh my god, you really play like that?” “Yeah!”224

The marketing of the band as the world’s only female brass band is exemplified by their selection of repertoire from within and outside the brass band canon. The New

Orleans brass band song canon by and large is fairly self-contained; original brass band tunes stem from a handful of veteran bands in the scene, most notably the Rebirth Brass

Band. Cover tunes, if not introduced by veteran brass bands, tend to be ephemeral radio hits with little staying power. Like all other brass bands, the Pinettes have re-tuned the contemporary popular music of their generations to fit within the brass band tradition.

Like the Hot 8 covering “Ghost Town” by the Specials, the Soul Rebels covering “Get

Lucky” by Daft Punk, or Rebirth covering “Casanova” by LeVert, the Pinettes have also brought their own popular tunes with which they identify into the tradition. Unlike their contemporaries, however, they play pop music that conjures images of powerful female vocalists. Songs like “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan, “Girls Just Want to Have

Fun” by Cyndi Lauper, “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse, “The Boogie Oogie Oogie” by A

Taste of Honey, “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele, and “Cause You Love Me Baby” by

Deneice Williams are in heavy rotation in the Pinettes’ tool belt of tunes. In thinking

224 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 April 2014.

93 about the transcendent aspect of the Pinettes’ repertoire, I find Ingrid Monson’s idea of

“intermusicality” helpful.

[E]ach individual [audience member] has a personal listening world that intersects to a greater or lesser degree with those of other participants in a particular musical tradition . . . Some jazz listeners know more repertory than others, which comes as no surprise. This audience stratification by aural familiarity creates groups of people sharing musical bonds that are denser at the center than near the edge of any particular category.225

The Pinettes’ musical selections are not always in line with other brass bands, and this swings their audience out to the edge of the brass band community, dragging the

Pinettes along with them. Other brass bands don’t incorporate the Pinettes’ original songs or covers into their repertoire, making for a sort of “one-sided dialogue” in this musical community organized by songs. From the peripheries of the brass band community, however, the Pinettes manage to introduce their music to different audiences, extending music of the larger brass band community to audiences that might not otherwise have exposure to it. They are dually marginalized by race and gender and while they share in knowledge (in the form of songs) of New Orleans’ black music community, they are simultaneously excluded from its production.226 Furthermore, their musically articulated collective identity as women allows them to cut across the social divides of race and class, at times making gender a totalizing identifier.227 In October of 2014, they played for a “Women’s Luncheon” in support of the reelection of white U.S. Senator Mary

Landrieu where they cut across these class and race lines with what seemed like ease.

225 Ingrid Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 125. 226 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 11-13. 227 This is consistent with the idea of the “outsider-within” as described by Collins in Black Feminist Thought. The history of black women’s labor has been characterized in large part by the ability to cut across race divides in occupations most notably including domestic work.

I’ve seen them play at a fundraiser for an all-female dance club and they frequently play for fundraisers that support causes typically associated with women like breast cancer research, and services for victims of domestic violence. They choose songs based on the demographic and their own identities can be used advantageously to appeal to female audiences. In choosing to strategically emphasize gender, they have increased their spatial mobility.

The Pinettes tend to choose their songs through trial and error, but the sampling of tunes is perhaps more expansive than what other bands might try out because they also play female gendered songs. Band members bring songs to rehearsals and the songs that adapt well to a brass band treatment are rehearsed and performed. Tylita told me about their song-picking process:

You’ve got to be diverse with music, because music is a diverse art. So it’s like you don’t want to confine yourself. You don’t want to box yourself in. And I think that’s what makes us different. Like, we’ll play a song and be like, “Can it be a brass band song? Let’s try it.” And we’ll try it and we’ll go from there. But I think every band does it, but I think we have more of an advantage, too, because you’re not going to see the male brass bands playing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” or playing “Valerie/Baby.” Even though they would. They would. But you’d kind of look at them like, “Why are y’all playing all these chick songs?” I mean, you know, no offense, but it’s just more fitting for us. Like, “I’m Every Woman,” we jam that song.228

The Pinettes use their female identity to reach a different market segment and expand the musical territory covered by brass bands. The leveraging of gender is not without its limits. While giving the Pinettes a unique and advantageous positioning within the market, branding by gender hinges on the band’s singularity in order to be

228 Tylita Curtain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 January 2015.

95 successful.229 It is both a “blessing” and a “curse,” in Dee’s words. If other women established an all-female brass band, the Pinettes would no longer be able to use their difference as a marketing tool, making “The World’s Only All-Female Brass Band” a somewhat precarious slogan to use. In this sense, other women following in the footsteps of the Pinettes could weaken the marketing force of their claim to fame. The Pinettes don’t want to monopolize the all-female brass band market and would prefer to see more women take to the stage. As Janine told me, “We encourage that because we don’t necessarily want to be the only. You know, it’s enough room for everybody. It’s enough food on the table for everybody to eat.”230 Although the term doesn’t hold any more than a theoretical potential to hold other female brass band players back, its limits are important to note.

The title “The World’s Only All-Female Brass Band” also reflects the othering the Pinettes feel as a band. It tends to place them in a liminal position in the brass band community; they’ve made a place for themselves among the pantheon of New Orleans brass bands, but they aren’t fully integrated into the brass band scene because of this othering. The band’s social and economic marginalization has frustrated Veronique, though the band has certainly overcome a number of gender-based barriers to professionalization.

We’re like the “Other” of the brass band world. I mean, it took us a while to actually get that recognition that we deserve. I feel like a lot of people just look at us as “the girl band” or just “those girls” but I think it’s the people outside of the actual musicians that will look at us like that while the musicians just look at us as people trying to come take their money, you know? … It’s hard because—us

229 The term “brass band” in the slogan is accurate in that it “brass band” is to be understood in the New Orleans style, rather than as a type of music including styles from far-reaching regions like the Balkans or Britain. 230 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 5 November 2014.

being all girls—in the kind of situations if somebody has something to do, we can’t just call somebody and be like, “come play” because there are people looking for an all-female band and there aren’t females doing it.231

The Pinettes brand their otherness to appeal to a female-based market segment.

The problem with this, as Jean and John Comaroff argue, is that “Difference… may produce profit in a wide variety of ways. But those who embody its essence are too often marginalized by it to be able to control its potential market value.”232 The Pinettes’ reliance on difference has not only acted as a barrier to the possibility of other female brass bands, but, at times, it has also had negative effects on their ability to intermingle with the larger brass band community. It inhibits the creation of an inter-gender brass band. When they attempt to feature male musicians on gigs, venues are less than pleased with the band’s allowance of non-female musicians onstage.

VERONIQUE: Maison gets mad sometimes because they’re like, “We want the all-girls! No men on the stage!”

KYLE: Oh, really? So the venue itself, like, just says, “No, we don’t want any guys on stage?”

VERONIQUE: Yeah, they’re upset sometimes… But then it’ll be times they’ll be like, “Okay, it’s cool.” I guess it’s the amount of people, too. If it’s like, overwhelming or overbearing, they’re like, “No. Just stick with the band.”

KYLE: Okay. That’s really interesting. Do you think, like, if you had other women sit in with you, they’d feel the same way?

VERONIQUE: I don’t think they would.

KYLE: Would they even notice is the other thing.

VERONIQUE: No. No, but I think because out of all of them, like, Vaso’s might promote us as “the Pinettes,” Blue Nile will probably promote us as “the

231 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 September 2014 232 John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 71.

Pinettes,” but I notice they always put “Pinettes, the all-female brass band” so that’s their, like, calling card to get people in.233

As shown in the example of venues, the reliance on gender in marketing can reify and have real-life consequences for the band. The marketing of difference leaves the band vulnerable to marginalization because, as a marketing technique, it relies on the dominant to give it meaning as “special” or “other.” This sets them up to be judged as an “oddity” rather than on their objective musical merits in relation to their male contemporaries.234

As I mentioned in the second chapter, Dee insisted on being judged not as “those girls,” as is so often the case, but rather as a competent brass band with musical merit, telling me

“We want to be seen in the game just like you are. I mean, me personally, close your eyes. We’re musicians, that’s it.”

While this branding has some utility, it also has limitations, which the Pinettes have bumped up against. The promise to deliver an all-female band is difficult when no substitutes can be called for a gig. Because of this, fewer gigging opportunities are available to them than would be available to a male band, where musicians are fairly interchangeable even in the most recognized of bands.

Since they claimed the title of “Street Queens” in October 2013, the band has used it much more frequently in promotional materials. Using this as a marketing hook provides exciting possibilities that allow for other women to enter the brass band game without being detrimental to the Pinettes’ marketing strategy or a united front for gender empowerment. As “Street Queens,” the Pinettes claim to be the best all-female brass band, rather than the only all-female brass band.

233 Veronique Dorsey, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 17 September 2014. 234 In the first chapter, I attempted to judge their music on its merits in the “Coming to Voice” section.

On the Way Up

CHRISTIE: My goal is to travel internationally.… I would prefer if we could keep it going and just enough for us to do it full-time to support our families, not to be rich and wealthy, just enough for us to enjoy—

KYLE: Just to be comfortable…

CHRISTIE: To be comfortable, maybe get that Grammy nomination, because when Rebirth got nominated—when Troy, Trombone Shorty got nominated, that was huge.235

With the Grammy comes a significant amount of social capital. It is the pinnacle of musical achievement. In an interview with “GRAMMYs on the Road,” an online interview series by Grammy.com, Christie more conspicuously alluded to her Grammy aspirations: “We come under the Rebirth Brass Band, which won a Grammy, of course, so hopefully that can happen with us.”236 With their Grammy nominations,237 Rebirth and

Trombone Shorty are renowned locally and internationally and their Grammy Award nominations are part and parcel of this renown.

DEE: Well, I will say my goal for the Pinettes is just to become a full-time brass band where, you know, we can actually walk away from our regular nine-to-fives and be on our way…. So my goal for us as a group is to become 100% just that band that travels: “Rebirth, the female version” [laughs].238

One means of achieving a high level of social capital is to emulate bands that have been successful in this regard. The band with the most social capital is undeniably the Grammy-Award-winning Rebirth Brass Band, who is highly respected by all the brass bands in the scene. The mimetic relation with Rebirth that Dee talks about has one

235 Ibid. 236 “The Original Pinettes Brass Band,” Grammys on the Road, July 17, 2012, accessed May 7, 2014, http://www.grammy.com/videos/the-original-pinettes-brass-band. 237 Rebirth won the Grammy for “Best Regional Roots Album“ in 2012 for their CD, Rebirth of New Orleans and Trombone Shorty received a nomination in 2011 for Backatown. 238 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 April 2014.

99 caveat, however, and that is that they are all women: they seek to be “Rebirth, the female version.” There are no female bands for the Pinettes to emulate and the fact that Dee would even point out gender in describing their mimetic process suggests that (1) gender is significant in how the band members identify and market the band and (2) gender acts as a barrier—or at least a caveat—to their success in accumulating social capital.

Anthropologist Michael Taussig argues that “[t]he wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and power of the original, to the point whereby the representation may even assume that character and that power.”239 Gender complicates the Pinettes’ ability to mimetically assume the same power (symbolic capital) as Rebirth.

The Pinettes have begun to attain a degree of social capital commensurate with

Rebirth and Trombone Shorty. The following ethnographic episode will detail their musical collaboration with Arcade Fire, the winners of the 2011 Grammy for album of the year and one of the headlining bands of the 2014 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage

Festival.

Arriving at Jazz Fest, I go to the artist entrance, where a college friend has reserved a backstage pass for Arcade Fire’s stage. Feeling fortunate that I have a friend in the know, I shuffle through the crowds at the fairgrounds toward the Acura Stage, meeting up with friends in the backstage area, where I am introduced to some of the members of Arcade Fire. Not wanting to interfere with the band as they prepped for their set, we set off to enjoy some food and make it back in time to see their set from the wing of the stage.

239 Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), xiii.

100

When we return to the backstage area, I spot the Pinettes, clad in matching grey t- shirts. Dee greets me with a full-toothed grin and vigorous wave and Christie follows suit with a warm and excited hug. Their elation is palpable as they wait to play with an internationally renowned band performing on the biggest stage of their hometown’s biggest festival. When I spoke with them the night prior, they still hadn’t received confirmation that they would be playing with Arcade Fire, so I am particularly happy to see them backstage.

Watching Arcade Fire’s set, my anticipation mounts as they begin playing “Wake

Up.” I look around and the Pinettes are nowhere to be seen backstage. The song ends, the audience claps, and I am left feeling utterly confused as to where the Pinettes had gone.

Much to my delight, one member of Arcade Fire picks up a floor tom, straps it to himself and continues the “We Will Rock You-style” stadium-rock rhythm that undergirds the entire song. The other band members soon follow with cowbells, tambourines, and an acoustic guitar and they meet the Pinettes at the foot of the stage. The sea of people continues singing the song’s defining group chant on the syllable “oh” even as Arcade

Fire’s singer puts down the wireless microphone in favor of a megaphone. Unable to follow them from the stage through the audience, I chat with my friend about the excitement of what I had just witnessed. I hear the two bands approaching the backstage area and quickly run over to see that a massive crowd that has formed around them as they made their way to the backstage area by Arcade Fire’s trailers. By the time they get to the fence leading to the backstage area, the Pinettes are playing the New Orleans classic “Iko Iko.” The crowd cheers approvingly as the song comes to an end.

101

Veronique expressed her enthusiasm about the performance on the band’s

Facebook page, declaring, “I had a blast. It had to be one of the best experiences of my life.” Even Trombone Shorty was impressed that they shared the stage with such a big name.240 Janine even picked up a memento from the first time the band played with

Arcade Fire that symbolizes the degree of social capital the Pinettes earned, telling me that “…the people were just around us screaming and hollering and I still have that picture on my Facebook—it’s a picture of somebody taking a picture of me.”241 In this

“meta-picture,” concertgoers with raised phones surround Janine. In front of her, a cell phone clearly shows an image of Janine, with her tuba hoisted over her shoulder. One can almost detect the social capital present in each distancing, self-referential layer.

Although opportunities like this provide substantial social capital for the band, the social capital doesn’t equate with economic capital. Local bands are only paid a few thousand to play at Jazz Fest, whereas Arcade Fire charges at least $150,000 per show, which, after percentages are take off the top for booking, management, and expenses, still likely totals more per band member than it does for an entire brass band.242 Playing at

Jazz Fest with Arcade Fire, the Pinettes found themselves within the machinery of a huge festival production that favors international artists over locals, despite the fact that people come to Jazz Fest disproportionately for the local acts.243

DEE: I think they do underpay the local acts because Jazz Fest is kind of a local festival for local artists. I mean, people come from all over the world to hear local artists. They’re not really coming to see if Public Enemy is gonna be there, you know? They really don’t care about that. I mean, of course, it’s a plus!

240 Janine Waters, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 5 November 2014. 241 Ibid. 242 The online estimates put the number at a minimum of $150,000. 243 Matt Sakakeeny, “Chapter 3: Constraints” in Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 69-109.

102

KYLE: You can see that elsewhere, though.

DEE: Of course it’s a plus, but I think they waste a lot of money on the larger acts when they could be blessing our local artists better. Now, I won’t complain; it’s a gig.244

Bourdieu argues that symbolic capital “under certain conditions, and always in the long run, guarantees ‘economic’ profits.”245 What are the conditions under which symbolic capital may guarantee economic profits? Furthermore, are the conditions right for the Pinettes or New Orleans brass bands at large to acquire these economic profits and achieve an equitable and stable income? The Pinettes have begun to attain a higher degree of social capital, but converting this social capital into economic capital to achieve economic mobility has proven difficult because negotiations generally require a typical business-oriented infrastructure involving a booking agent and manager and the Pinettes have had difficulty finding management outside the band because of gender- and race- related stereotypes. Circumventing these channels, the Pinettes have adopted commodified personas, leveraged difference to their advantage, and inhabited multiple societal and performative roles in the creation of music that they hope will take them far geographically and economically. Strategically maneuvering within the field of cultural production, the Pinettes have pressed up against the brass ceiling.

244 Dee Holmes, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 25 April 2014. 245 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 75.

103

5. CONCLUSION

Although women still compose a minority of musicians in the brass band scene, the Pinettes have created a collective voice that they have used to challenge masculine hegemony, articulate alternative images of black womanhood, and push toward economic sustainability.

My research provides only a partial perspective, but it is a partial perspective enriched by multiple overlapping voices. I’ve created a piece of writing that I hope extends the casual, polyvocal, and dialogic nature of the interviews I conducted with the

Pinettes into the terrain of black feminist theory. In one sense, this thesis is a long and deeply pondered response to the Pinettes that I would never be articulate enough to voice in conversation. In other ways, it is an invitation to the reader to engage and listen to the varied experiences of the Pinettes. In crafting a dialogic or polyvocal ethnographic work,

I’ve sought to amplify the political work initiated by the Pinettes and the music they perform.

By focusing on the Pinettes, I have also brought the to the center the voices of women who have been located at the margins of a male-dominated musical culture, filling a scholarly silence with a loud, multi-layered heterophony of text and music. To some extent, the very purpose of anthropological work has been to critique Western knowledge practices and bring to the fore the voices of those excluded from knowledge

104 production.246 Again, as Clifford Geertz wrote, anthropology seeks “to keep the world off balance; pulling out rugs, upsetting tea tables, setting off firecrackers.”247 The Pinettes are revolutionary and they loudly disrupt normative brass band practices.

Over the last twenty-four years, they have begun to redefine what it means to be a brass band in New Orleans. It seems as though the Pinettes have also helped to normalize the idea of women playing brass band instruments professionally, which could have a significant impact on future generations of young female musicians and their musical careers. The Pinettes’ impact on the gendering of instruments and the musical genre is perhaps already being felt. For example, the high-school-aged Red Wolf Brass Band has a female tuba player named Shelby Simmons. Young women now have a successful model to replicate if they want to join brass bands. I hope that this thesis will, even in its

(likely) modest circulation, expand the possibilities for girls who seek to find their voices using brass band instruments.

This project is far from complete and one of the biggest questions I’m left with is:

Why there is such a steep drop-off in female participation in music right around the time of high school graduation when many male horn players are beginning to professionalize? While I dug at this topic a bit in the first chapter, it unquestionably deserves more than a peripheral focus. When I expressed my interest in this research question, Tylita proposed an intergenerational approach to the study. She told me I should begin by asking the older founding members of the Pinettes; the members in their

246 Douglas R. Holmes and George E Marcus, “Refunctioning Ethnography: The Challenge of an Anthropology of the Present,” The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research 3rd ed. Norman K. Denizen and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005), 1101. 247 Geertz, Clifford. "Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti‐Relativism," 275.

105 twenties; and then Jazz Henry, the youngest band member who hasn’t yet reached twenty. From there, I would work my way out from these band members in concentric circles, interviewing their peers to get a broader understanding of what these gendered barriers are and how they affect young women differently. She underlined the importance of a study that makes this its focus: And once you find out, please let me know.248 Please let me know, because I beat my own self up when I think about how long I didn’t touch my horn. And I regret it because now that I pick it up, I feel like I did myself an injustice because there was so much stuff I could have been learning that I didn’t.249 Though Tylita picked up her horn again, many of her contemporaries didn’t, and that is obviously reflected in the male dominance of the brass band scene. In fact, during the writing of this thesis, Tylita sadly had to leave the band, citing the difficulties of balancing multiple roles as a young professional. Furthermore, with the loss of gender-segregated Catholic schools to the charter system in New Orleans, will the same opportunities exist for girls to play in all-female bands without this “gender autonomy?”

By virtue of the Pinettes’ existence, they have contested the symbolic tie of brass band instruments to masculinity, but the more practical issue of sustaining female music- making beyond the walls of a classroom persists and presents an excellent opportunity for research. With each blow of the trumpet, the Pinettes herald in a new age of brass band music in which social thought is challenged, negotiated, and reified across multiple intersecting modes of oppression. Tuned to the gender constraints of the brass band scene, the Pinettes defiantly perform in defiance of the brass band patriarchy as the city’s street queens.

248 If you’re reading this, Ty, I haven’t figured it out yet. If/when I do, I’ll let you know. 249 Tylita Curtain, personal interview, New Orleans, Louisiana, 10 January, 2015.

106

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abeles, Harold F., and Susan Y Porter. “The Sex-Stereotyping of Musical Instruments.” The Journal of Research in Music Education 26, no. 2 (1978): 65-75.

Adams, Thomas J. “New Orleans Brings it All Together” American Quarterly 66, no. 1 (2014): 245-56.

Agawu, Kofi V. “African Music as Text.” Research in African Literatures 32, no. 2 (2001): 8-16.

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Hellen Tiffin. Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Barnes, Bruce Sunpie, and Rachel Breunlin. Talk That Music Talk: Passing on Brass Band Music in New Orleans the Traditional Way. New Orleans: The Center for the Book at University of New Orleans, 2014.

Behar, Ruth, and Deborah A. Gordon, eds. Women Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press: 1995.

Bell, Diane, Pat Caplan, and Wazir Jahan Karim, eds. Gendered Fields: Women, Men, and Ethnography. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Berger, Harris. “New Directions for Ethnomusicological Research into the Politics of Music and Culture: Issues, Projects, and Programs.” Ethnomusicology 58, no. 2 (2014): 315-20.

Bird, Sharon R. “Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity.” Gender and Society 10, no. 2 (1996): 120-32.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

—. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, edited by Randal Johnson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

—. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John D. Richardson. New York: Greenwood, 1986.

107

Brewer, Rose M. “Theorizing Race, Class and Gender: The New Scholarship of Black Feminist Intellectuals and Black Women’s Labor.” Race, Gender & Class 6, no. 2 (1999): 29-47.

Brothers, Thomas. Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.

Bucholtz, Mary. “The Politics of Transcription.” The Journal of Pragmatics 32, no. 10 (2000): 1439-65.

Bunten, Alexis Celeste. “Sharing Culture or Selling Out?: Developing the Commofidied Persona in the Heritage Industry.” American Ethnologist 35, no. 3 (2008): 380-95.

Burns, Mick. Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2006.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Carby, Hazel. “It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues.” Radical America 20, no. 4 (1986): 9-24.

Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus, eds. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, 25th Anniversary Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004.

—. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

—. “A Preliminary Analysis of Wealth, Family, and African-American Social Class.” In Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader, edited by Nancy E. Dowd and Michelle S. Jacobs. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

—. “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” In Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, edited by Beverly Guy- Sheftall, 338-57. New York: The New Press, 1995.

108

Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Connell, R.W., Masculinities, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Curtain, Tylita. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. January 10, 2015.

Dalton, Harlon L. “AIDS in Blackface.” In Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by Wahneema Lubiano. New York: Pantheon, 1999.

Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Vintage, 1999.

—. Women, Culture, and Politics. New York: Vintage, 1990.

Delzell, Judith K., and David A. Leppla. “Gender Association of Musical Instruments and Preferences of Fourth-Grade Students for Selected Instruments.” Journal of Research in Music Education 40, no. 2 (1992): 93-103.

Dorsey, Veronique. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. February 22, 2015.

—. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. September 17, 2014.

Doubleday, Veronica. “Sounds of Power: An Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender.” Ethnomusicology Forum 17, no. 1 (2008): 3-39.

Fales, Cornelia. “The Paradox of Timbre.” Ethnomusicology 46, no. 1 (2002): 56-95.

Feld, Steven, Aaron A. Fox, Thomas Porcello, and David Samuels. “Vocal Anthropology: From the Music of Language to the Language of Song.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alessandro Duranti, 321-45. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Fine, Gary Alan. Tiny Publics: A Theory of Group Action and Culture. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012.

Gabbard, Krin. “Signifyin(g) the Phallus: ‘Mo’ Better Blues’ and the Representations of the Jazz Trumpet.” Cinema Journal 32, no. 1 (1992): 43-62.

Geertz, Clifford. “Distinguished Lecture: Ant Anti-Relativism.” American Anthropologist 86, no. 2 (1984): 263-78.

—. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

109

Griswold, Philip A., and Denise Chroback. “Sex-Role Associations of Music Instruments and Occupations by Gender and Major.” Journal of Research in Music Education 29, no. 1 (1981): 57-62.

Gwaltney, John Langston. Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America. New York: Vintage, 1980.

Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-99.

Harris-DeBerry, Kelly A., Denese Shervington, and Rashida Govan. Crooked Room: Stories From New Orleans. New Orleans: Institute for Women and Ethnic Studies, 2014. http://iwesnola.org/assets/downloads/2015/04/crooked- room3_final_web1.pdf.

Harrison, Daphne Duval. Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Harris-Perry, Melissa. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.

Hayes, Eileen, and Linda Williams. Black Women and Music: More than the Blues. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Hein, Kenneth. “A Bull’s Market: The Marketing of Red Bull Energy Drink.” Brandweek 42, no. 22 (2001): 21-3.

Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race.” Signs 17, no. 2 (1992): 251-274.

Hine, Darlene Clark. “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West: Preliminary Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance.” In Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, edited by Beverly Guy- Sheftall, 380-7. New York: The New Press, 1995.

Holmes, Dee. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. April 25, 2014

—. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. August 22, 2014.

Holmes, Douglas R., and George E. Marcus. “Refunctioning Ethnography: The Challenge of an Anthropology of the Present.” In The Sage Handbook Of Qualitative Research, 3rd edition, edited by Norman K. Denizen and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005. hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press, 1984.

110

—. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press, 1989.

—. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1989.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography. Edited by Robert E. Hemenway. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984.

—. Tell My Horse (reprint). Berkeley: Turtle Island Foundations, 1982.

Jackson, Virginia. Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

James, Stanlie M. Introduction to Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, Edited by Stanlie M. James and Abena P.A. Busia. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Johnson, Christopher M., and Erin E. Stewart. “The Effect of Sex Identitifcation on Instrument Assignment by Band Directors.” Journal of Research in Music Education 52, no. 2 (2004): 130-140.

Jourdain, Christie. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. March 17, 2014.

Kelley, Robin D.G. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.

Koskoff, Ellen. Women and Music in Cross Cultural Perspective. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Levert Sr., Eddie, and Gerald Levert with Lyah Beth LeFlore. I Got Your Back: A Father and Son Keep it Real About Love, Fatherhood, Family, and Friendship. New York: Harlem Moon, 1997.

Longhurst, Brian. Popular Music and Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.

MacKinnon, Katharine. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

McClaurin, Irma, ed. Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

Meintjes, Louise. Sound of Africa!: Making Zulu in a South African Studio. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Monson, Ingrid. Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

111

Newton, Esther. “My Best Informant’s Dress: The Erotic Equation in Fieldwork” in Out in the Field: Reflections of Gay and Lesbian Anthropologists. Edited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap. Chicago: University of Illinois Press: 1996.

Odell, Jennifer. “The Original Pinettes Brass Band.” Jazz Times. Published January 12, 2014. Accessed May 6, 2014. http://jazztimes.com/sections/features/articles/115230-the-original-pinettes-brass- band.

“The Original Pinettes Brass Band.” Grammys on the Road, July 17, 2012, accessed May 7, 2014, http://www.grammy.com/videos/the-original-pinettes-brass-band.

Ortner, Sherry B. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.

Regis, Helen. “Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second Line.” American Ethnologist 28, no. 4 (2001): 752-77.

Robertson, Kendra. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. March 19, 2015.

Sakakeeny, Matt. “Playing for Work: Music as a Form of Labor in New Orleans.” Oxford Handbook, forthcoming.

—. Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

—. “Running with the Second Line: How new Orleans Brass Band Went Hip-Hop.” Red Bull Music Academy Magazine. Published October 15, 2013. Accessed June 28, 2015. http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/10/running-with-the-second- line-how-brass-band-went-hip-hop.

—. “Street Queens Bury Competition in Brass Band Blowout.” NPR. Published October 28, 2013. Accessed May 6, 2014. http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2013/10/28/241401570/all-female-brass- band-buries-the-competition.

Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053-1075.

Shapiro, Thomas M. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

112

Smith, Barbara. “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism.” In All the Women Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, edited by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. New York: The Feminist Press, 1982.

Spivak, Gayatri. “Criticism, Feminism and the Institution.” Interview with Elizabeth Gross, Thesis Eleven 10/11, no. 1 (1984-85): 175-87.

Sweet Home New Orleans. “2012 State of the New Orleans Music Community Report.” Unpublished.

Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Tucker, Sherrie. “A Feminist Perspective on New Orleans Jazzwomen.” New Orleans Jazz National Park Service. Published September 30, 2004. Accessed November 12, 2014. http://www.nps.gov/jazz/learn/historyculture/upload/New_Orleans_Jazzwomen_ RS-2.pdf

—. Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

Wald, Gayle. “From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover.” American Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2003): 387-416.

Waldren, Linda M. “‘Girls Are Worse’: Drama Queens, Ghetto Girls, Tomboys, and the Meaning of Girl Fights.” Youth and Society 43, no. 4 (2011): 1298-1334.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother’s Garden: Womanist Prose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.

Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2002.

Waters, Janine. Personal interview. New Orleans, Louisiana. November 5, 2014.

Weidman, Amanda. “Voice.” In Keywords in Sound, edited by David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, 232-47. Durham: Duke University Press.

113

BIOGRAPHY

Kyle DeCoste was born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada. He received his BA in music from Bishop’s University in Quebec, Canada, where he completed his honors thesis on early twentieth-century trumpet players in New Orleans. Upon submission of this thesis, he will have completed his Master of Arts in Musicology with a specialization in New Orleans music at Tulane University. He is a recipient of the Maynard Klein

Award. He dislikes writing about himself in the third person.