Gender Representation in Rock Music

Abstract

What does it actually feel when we hear the word ‘Rock’ and how is it really perceived when we listen to the ‘rock music’? The matter of fact is that as a genre of popular music, rock music has always been most fascinating part of music. The distinct music type and unusual projection of rock music made the musicians and the audience of this genre think about it more and more. As a student of English Literature and Language and being a part of rock music I always find a relationship between rock music and cultural studies. Music, as a part of society, changes and shapes the cultural pattern and the behavior of the members of a particular culture and these changes and influences over culture have some importance. Society consists of some major phenomena and more precisely gender, behavior, psychology and perception are the vital. There are some interactions between rock music and the construction of gender through it can be located by the current scenario and the history. The exposure of rock music is changing the pattern of the thinking of the listeners and the followers but history showed that this kind of musical pattern is not out of social construction. Gender inequality has been working since the birth of rock music and as a product of society this particular music pattern could not get out of male biased structural pattern. Every aspect of rock music can be therefore critically analyzed to get closer to the reflection of social construction. So music is not only about the matter of instruments or tunes but society and culture play a big role to establish music as a part of society and that is also reflected in rock music. Rock music is perceived by human beings where gender concept plays a prominent role and my focus is to analyze the underlying base of gender construction in rock music. The role of men and women, relation and communication of them through music and the psychological difference combined create a space of analysis. The representation of gender in our society is being done by music and obviously in rock music, though this image is more prominent in the west than any other places. In our society the flavor of rock emerged with some preexisting notion of gender role based on male biased impression. The youth and their role in rock music vary through the gender construction, class and status. Therefore in one social structure we can find so many different functions and rock music is not out of that function. Religion and culture also influence the music through different gender construction. Media plays even a bigger role to shape the vision of gender through the representation of rock. So in my work I would like to analyze gender through all the social and cultural phenomena, events, values, perception in rock music. Precisely I would like to give importance to the presentation gender of rock music. Rock, as worldwide musical platform, has always been under a big range of representation. In my work I tried to find out that how various representation of rock music reflects the notion of gender issues.