Be it through punk music, self-publishing, or other types of collective expression that involve embracing being otherwise, the spark of Black women is eclectic and eternal.
Across different genres are musicians, bands, singers, and artists who challenge authoritarianism with vim. But punk music is particularly known for tackling the atrocities of governments. And the Blues — originating from the songs and music of Black Americans in the Deep South — articulate melancholy while calling out structural causes of it. Indeed, many punk anthems incorporate call-and-response — a pattern that conjures communality and can be traced back to the Blues’ roots in Black African and diasporic traditions of oral and sonic storytelling.
Black Punk Now: Fiction, Non-Fiction and Comics, edited by James Spooner and Chris L. Terry (2023), foregrounds Black life in punk. Elsewhere, writers and scholars Laina Dawes (2012) and Maureen Mahon (2020) have illuminated the overlooked yet significant work of Black women in rock and roll — those who stridently fronted heavy metal bands, provided backing vocals that carried classic rock, or were soloists commanding the stage and screen. Shaped by such writing and the vital DC Punk Archive, in this “Letter to America”, I reflect on the political and soulful heat of Black women in blues and punk.
Amid contemporary climate crises, colonialism, genocides, and 24-hour media flows, we are inundated with statements that refer to flames to frame life. “The world is on fire” and “burn it down” are just two of the countless expressions that speak to this. Fire — literally and figuratively — can cause anguish and can be violently weaponised against people and places. However, fire is not all bad. It can bring much-needed friction, warmth, and energy.
The heat brought by Black women in blues and punk continues to be a balm and generative fuel in the face of a world on fire. But Black women should not be expected to shoulder the burden of providing and sustaining the kindling — musically and otherwise — that might move us closer to a better world.
Hailing from Washington, DC, the band Fire Party (1986–1990) were part of the time surrounding “Revolution Summer”. As detailed in many living archives, zines, and other forms of DIY publishing, that season of 1985 was a time of political resistance and musical innovation within DC’s hardcore punk space. That summer brought heat, responding to the politics of the scene and that of the nation it was situated in. Revolution Summer marked a particular moment of change — a time of anti-apartheid, reproductive justice, and anti-war actions that pushed back against misogyny, racism, imperialism, and more.
As acknowledged in Andy Greenwald’s (2003) book, Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo, Jenny Toomey, musician and co-founder of the record label Simple Machines, described Fire Party as being “the world’s first female-fronted emo band”. But the multiracial band and their music were about much more than just speaking up and out as women. Fire Party — Natalie Avery, Amy Pickering, Kate Samworth, and Nicky Thomas — created a unique sound that would shape the directions of emotional hardcore (emocore — aka emo) and post-hardcore music.
The band’s 1987 debut show was dedicated to the late Toni Young — a Black woman who, as noted in Jaleesa Leslie’s encyclopedia of Black Women in Rock, was a pivotal part of punk and a member of the bands Dove, Peer Pressure, and Red C. Due to the infancy of the internet in those days, records of Young’s and Fire Party’s performances and presence in punk are not as digitally documented as those of recent musicians and bands who drew from the foundations they laid.
As Norman Brannon asks in a brilliant essay in Amy Fleisher Madden’s (2023) NEGATIVES: A Photographic Archive of Emo (1996–2006): “And if you believe most of the documented histories that trace emo’s origins back to 1985, when the punk scene in Washington DC, declared a ‘Revolution Summer,’ then why don’t we ever talk about Amy Pickering from Fire Party?”. Building on that point and naming bands and people, including Fire Party’s Nicky Thomas — a Black woman whose bands also include Mavis Piggott — Brannon asks:
Also, why do we seem to gloss over the fact that the entire first wave of emo that came forth from Revolution Summer was decidedly multiracial?…while a majority of the most popular and recognisable voices in emo and post-hardcore do in fact belong to straight, cis gender, white men, there is and always has been a plurality of invaluable contributions to this scene from women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ folks.
As pointed out by Brannon (founder of hardcore zine Anti-Matter and member of the bands Texas Is The Reason, New End Original, and, more recently, Thursday), many accounts of hardcore, post-hardcore, emo, and adjacent music are whitewashed. But the DC Punk Archive (at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library) presents crucial opportunities to learn about the reality of such histories, including the band Fire Party.
In the world of zines, the specifics of Black life in punk have been spotlighted by Shotgun Seamstress, as highlighted in Jenessa Williams’ (2022) article, “‘All you have to do is participate’: how the Shotgun Seamstress zine made space for Black punks”. Created by Osa Atoe in 2006, the luminous Shotgun Seamstress was developed into a published anthology in 2022.
The zine started out life being “[o]riginally laid out by hand, photocopied, and distributed in small batches, each issue featured essays, interviews, historical portraits of important artists and scenes, reviews, and more. Shotgun Seamstress paid tribute to musicians and artists who typify free Black expression and interrupt notions of Black culture as a monolith”. In turn, the zine can be thought of as an example of the heat of Black women in punk — how Black women depart from and disrupt the status quo.
As Stephanie Phillips wrote in an introduction to the Shotgun Seamstress anthology: “After all, in many ways, DIY is inherently Black. Whether in the U.K., where migrants from the Commonwealth countries and beyond are often quietly barred from higher-paying jobs and decent housing, or in the US, where structural racism was written into the laws, Black people have always had to find ingenious ways of getting around the obstacles in their lives”. Be it through punk music, self-publishing, or other types of collective expression that involve embracing being otherwise, the spark of Black women is eclectic and eternal.
Although material modes of creating, documenting, and sharing knowledge still exist, we are in a digital age when vast amounts of information are accessed online. This is also a time when searching the internet for answers may lead to inaccurate and harmful responses that warp the realities of life and history. It is in this context that people in the US and beyond are witnessing governmental efforts to decimate public archives, public education, and public media — attempts to squash social justice movements and diversity on campus, cull children’s public broadcasting service (PBS) shows, and erode public broadcasting at large.
When Nina Simone poignantly sang “Young, Gifted and Black” on the PBS show Sesame Street in 1972, she did so at a time shortly after the Civil Rights Era (1954–1968) battle against racial segregation. The soulful song, inspired by playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry — a late friend of Simone’s, is uplifting in its affirmation of Black children, young people, and ultimately, Black life.
The recent political backlash against Sesame Street — a show that once pioneered rare media representations of children in multiracial groups — is not simply about backlash against children’s PBS. It is also about backlash against what such a show can symbolise: the chip, chip, chipping away at segregationist media landscapes and mindsets, while sometimes also platforming Black women, art, music, and consciousness-raising, in the process.
Bringing it back to the Blues again, I close this piece by thinking about “Strange Fruit”.
Composed and written by songwriter and poet Abel Meeropol (whose work was published under the pseudonym Lewis Allan), the song “Strange Fruit” was recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The song’s lyrics critically address the white supremacist lynchings of Black people in the US, resulting in controversy that surrounded Holiday’s recording of it as a Black American woman.
The US Government’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) at the time targeted Holiday, telling her to never sing the song again. In a move that reflects an anti-Black aim to depoliticise Black music, paired with the pathologising of drug use, FBN also framed jazz (which blues influenced) as a problem to be eradicated.
In current times, discussion of “Strange Fruit” and the censoring of it has been reignited, following Hayley Williams’ (front woman of the band Paramore) release of new solo music. Aligned with her track record of allyship and expressing support of Black liberationist struggles, Williams’ song “True Believer” (2025) references “Strange Fruit”, stating that if the South does not pay for every one of its sins, it “will not rise again”.
Online, people have stressed that “True Believer” appears to be facing censorship on TikTok. Such suppression can be traced back to the days of Holiday being harassed because of her performance of “Strange Fruit”. That original song and the political flames brought by, and aimed at, Black women in blues, continues to be treated as a threat to the oppressive American norm – whether in the form of social media platforms suppressing music that refers to “Strange Fruit”, or current Black singers, musicians and artists being penalised for denouncing racist, imperialist and genocidal governments.
When thinking about how the sentiments of “Strange Fruit” are still subject to censoring, the political power of music is apparent. The importance of archiving music history lies in ways that refuse racist and revisionist accounts of the legacy of Black women, such as Holiday, and many others in blues, punk, and across a constellation of creativity that tends to our emotions as well as moving us to act. The heat brought by Black women in blues and punk continues to be a balm and generative fuel in the face of a world on fire. But Black women should not be expected to shoulder the burden of providing and sustaining the kindling — musically and otherwise — that might move us closer to a better world.
As I previously wrote when thinking about how Black women in music are memorialised, “the ways that Black women are remembered (and forgotten) in society are shaped by the specifics of misogynoir — the interconnected effects of racism, sexism and misogyny. Black women are so much more than the binary narratives projected onto them — strong versus soft, young versus old, singer versus actor, survivor versus victim and living versus dead”.
While writing this, the work of many archives and libraries in the US is being defunded and obstructed in other vociferous ways. The task of care-fully and meaningfully recording everyday life and history remains essential to informing current and future publics, including matters related to music, the lives and enduring impact of Black women, and protest in the US. As captured by bold words emblazoned across a Mount Pleasant Library (DC) t-shirt, in support of local library programming and inspired by DC Punk Archive: “What’s More Punk Than The Public Library?”. I echo that critical message and, with love, add an accompanying provocation: What’s More Punk Than Black Women?
References
Dawes, Laina (2012). What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal. New York: Bazillion Points.
Brannon, Norman (2023). Texas Is the Reason / New End Original. In NEGATIVES: A Photographic Archive of Emo (1996–2006) by Amy Fleisher Madden. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Greenwald, Andy (2003). Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Leslie, Jaleesa (2016). Toni Young Red-C. Black Women in Rock: Encyclopedia of Black Women in Rock Music, 6 September.
Mahon, Maureen (2020). Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll. Durham: Duke University Press.
Sobande, Francesca (2025). Black Life in / and “Alt” Music Subcultures. Self-published, July.
Sobande, Francesca (2025). Aaliyah’s turn as a vampire in the nu-metal film Queen of the Damned is an often-overlooked part of her legacy. The Conversation, 7 May.
Spooner, James and Terry, Chris L. (eds) (2023). Black Punk Now: Fiction, Non-Fiction and Comics. New York: Soft Skull Press.
Williams, Jenessa (2022) ‘All you have to do is participate’: how the Shotgun Seamstress zine made space for Black punks. The Guardian, 21 November.
Image credit: kixmi71 from Iruñea, Euskal Herria, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
