Blues & det politiska : Identitet, konflikt och feministiskt motstånd inom Stockholms informella bluesmusiknätverk

Sammanfattning: The title of this study is Blues & the Political: Identity, Conflict & Feminist Resistance in the Stockholm Informal Blues Music Network. The aim of this study is to examine struggles over power, the construction of identity and the role of the meanings of blues within the Stockholm blues music network from a feminist and intersectionalist perspective. The overarching research question is how the informal network could be seen as political in the sense of a societal struggle over power. Three major power struggles were identified in the interviews with white female blues musicians.   The first struggle takes place between female musicians and older men where conflicts about representation, recognition and authenticity are articulated. A major conflict is about how the blues should be played. Most of the interviewed musicians see themselves as playing modern blues, whereas the older men mostly are portrayed as “organizers”, “blues police”, or “puritans” with a conservative view of blues, and thereby discursively excluding the blues women from the genre, causing negative affect, mostly expressed by cursing. Especially younger blues women are contesting the concept of blues as a twelve-bar structure. Paradoxically, they all partly see it as a very significant element of blues, which indicates a masculine hegemony influencing their minds. Feminist resistance is expressed through irony, anger, debate, lyrics, and performance. Two out of seven musicians do not express a feminist ideology and several express fatigue and resignation. One of them, however, said that taking to the stage is almost enough as a form of resistance. In this way all musicians are ‘claiming space’.   The second power struggle takes place between younger and older musicians, where the younger ones can be seen as part of reproducing a hegemonic masculinity rendering the older blues women invisible. The third struggle concerns cultural appropriation. Black female musicians are said to be not good enough, not welcome because of critique of cultural appropriation or excluded because of their association with jazz, as the white musicians construct jazz as opposed to blues. Although the younger musicians partly express feelings of understanding towards their opponents and there is consensus about the importance of representation in general, the older blues women are more inclined to see accusations of appropriation as racism.