Reinventing Spanish popular music in the 21st century: performing gender and roles in musical adaptation

Abstract

This paper will focus on the performances of Spanish groups labelled “folk” or “feminist folk” of the last decades. These musical practices are part of the process of folk revival, revitalizing a countercultural movement, which shows a context of clash of ideologies and identities. Identities and ideologies related with feminism are acted out through aesthetics of performance, its staging and their musical references. The reconceptualization illustrates how folk music is constantly adapting to its context, in different ways, topics, lyrics, aesthetics… Adapting, renewing and bringing in new gender models and innovative main characters as part of the musical discourse is one of the main features of this reinvention. In this case, research is focused in rebounding and reconstructing gender imaginaries of women through music. For this purpose, the musical production of some folk revival bands is analysed to raise the new issues, topics and narratives displayed in this musical style. These musical adaptations create new meanings and diverse mixtures of musical genres as a tool for reaching wider audiences. In this way, younger audiences which were not familiar to this music start to give meaning to folk music. The need of updating popular music to current social issues to become, in terms of Josep Martí an element of social relevance is presented through the reinvention of popular music.