Debbie Smith | |
---|---|
Origin | United Kingdom |
Occupation(s) | Musician; DJ |
Instrument(s) | Guitar; bass guitar |
Debbie Smith is a British guitar and bass player who has been in several bands from the 1990s to the present, including Curve, [1] Echobelly, [2] Nightnurse, [3] Snowpony, [4] Bows, [5] Ye Nuns, [6] SPC ECO [7] and current bands Blindness and The London Dirthole Company. [8] [9]
Smith was interviewed for the 1995 book Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock by Amy Raphael (published in the US as Grrrls: Viva Rock Divas). [10] [11] She was also interviewed and quoted for the book Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music, a sociological study of women musicians in British popular music; at the time of the interview she was in Echobelly, and the book notes that Skin and Yolanda Charles both said that Smith was the only current black British female guitarist either one of them could think of. [12] Frock Rock says that "women like Skin, Natacha Atlas, Yolanda Charles, [reggae bassist] Mary Genis, and Debbie Smith are now acting as crucial role models for future generations of black women." [12]
In 1997, Debbie Smith was the subject of the third episode of a TV series with the blanket title "A Woman Called Smith" (first broadcast on BBC2, 9 April 1997). [13]
Smith is a lesbian [2] [14] and was interviewed in a 2021 documentary film by Harri Shanahan and Sian A Williams [15] [16] [17] about her time in the feminist lesbian post-punk band Mouth Almighty (the documentary had its Channel 4 television premiere on 28 June 2022 as part of its Pride Season). She continues to perform as guitarist and DJ, and works at London music shop Intoxica! Records. [9] [18] [19]
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Kathleen Hanna is an American singer, musician and pioneer of the feminist punk riot grrrl movement, and punk zine writer. In the early-to-mid-1990s she was the lead singer of feminist punk band Bikini Kill, and then fronted Le Tigre in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since 2010, she has recorded as the Julie Ruin.
Echobelly are a British rock band, debuting in 1994 with their album Everyone's Got One. They were often compared to Blondie and The Smiths; Morrissey becoming a fan of the group.
Deborah Anne Dyer, known mononymously by the stage name Skin and often erroneously as the name of her band Skunk Anansie, is a British singer, songwriter and electronic music DJ. She is the lead vocalist of British rock band Skunk Anansie, a band often grouped as part of the Britrock movement in the UK, and has gained attention for her powerful, wide-ranging soprano voice and striking look.
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Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. Riot grrrl is a subcultural movement that combines feminism, punk music, and politics. It is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement and has recently been seen in fourth-wave feminist punk music that rose in the 2010s. The genre has also been described as coming out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a movement in which women could express anger, rage, and frustration, emotions considered socially acceptable for male songwriters but less common for women.
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