The Spanish tattoo artist and illustrator La Rata publishes a global and documented reflection on the place of women in the music industry, which Virginie Despentes has translated.
In recent years – we can date the trend towards the enormous success of Panties by Pénélope Bagieu in 2016 – illustrated stories featuring forgotten pioneers are flourishing in bookstores. Pioneers of music, cinema, space exploration… Everything goes. Taking a look at the summary of the drawn essay by the Spanish tattoo artist and illustrator La Rata, Give It to Me !, which promises to review the careers of around fifty singers and musicians, we are worried. Is this yet another catalog of biographies?
From the introduction, in which the author forcefully announces her feminist, anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist intentions, all doubts are dispelled. Give It to Me !, translated by Virginie Despentes herself, is not an exercise in homage, but a global, political and well-documented reflection on the place of women in the world of music and on the possibility of writing a history of pop which would take into account the social context, economic and cultural of each period.
Dynamizing old hegemonic narratives
Throughout this drawn essay, La Rata addresses her readers directly in a very free tone – she is capable of inserting a hilarious imaginary dialogue with Debbie Harry in the middle of a very serious biographical paragraph –, for invite awareness of the way in which many artists have disrupted the patriarchal and heteronormative order by affirming fluid sexuality and a desire for emancipation. She thus focuses on Gladys Bentley, a blues singer who wore men’s suits on stage in the 1930s, on Siouxsie Sioux and on her looks which, in the 1980s, broke out the male gaze or on the songs of Nicki Minaj, which are so many“incentives to stop respecting male authority”. Stars rub shoulders with avant-garde figures and the most mainstream pop is treated with as much respect and finesse as queercore.
Beyond its fascinating talk about music and its teeming illustrations with a nod to American underground comics, Give It to Me ! is a wonderful exercise in cultural criticism. In the same breath, La Rata combines little-known biographical elements, precise musical analyzes and her personal point of view as a white lesbian feminist woman who grew up in Spain. She readily emphasizes her white privilege and assumes her situated knowledge. She never does this with the aim of exonerating herself or justifying her shortcomings, but rather to show that culture changes depending on who writes it. For decades, the history of rock was shaped by men, who did not always take the trouble to remember that Hound Dog was created by Big Mama Thornton, a black woman, before being taken over by Elvis. Give It to Me ! sends an exciting signal that things are changing and it is time to dynamite old hegemonic narratives. To replace them with this furious punk spirit which inhabits this first essay of La Rata and makes it particularly enjoyable to read.
Give It to Me! Sex women music from La Rata (Flammarion), translated from Spanish by Virginie Despentes, 304 p., 29 €. In bookstores October 16.
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