Bratmobile is an American punk band from Olympia, Washington, formed in 1991. They are known for being one of the first-generation "riot grrrl" bands. The band was influenced by several eclectic musical styles, including elements of pop, surf, and garage rock.
Queercore is a cultural/social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the punk subculture and a music genre that comes from punk rock. It is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society's disapproval of the LGBT community. Queercore expresses itself in a DIY style through magazines, music, writing and film.
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.
Tobi Celeste Vail is an American independent musician, music critic and feminist activist from Olympia, Washington. She was a central figure in the riot grrl scene—she coined the spelling of "grrl"—and she started the zine Jigsaw. A drummer, guitarist and singer, she was a founding member of the band Bikini Kill. Vail has collaborated in several other bands figuring in the Olympia music scene. Vail writes for eMusic.
Heavens to Betsy was an American punk band formed in Olympia, Washington in 1991 with vocalist and guitarist Corin Tucker and drummer Tracy Sawyer. The duo were part of the DIY riot grrrl, punk rock underground, and were Tucker's first band before she co-formed Sleater-Kinney.
Mirah is an American musician and songwriter based in Brooklyn, New York. After getting her start in the music scene of Olympia, Washington, in the late 1990s, she released a number of well-received solo albums on K Records, including You Think It's Like This but Really It's Like This (2000) and Advisory Committee (2002). Her 2009 album (a)spera peaked on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart at #46, while her 2011 collaborative album Thao + Mirah peaked at #7.
The Need is an American queercore band formed by the singer and drummer Rachel Carns and the guitarist Radio Sloan in Portland, Oregon, in the mid-1990s.
Allison Wolfe is a Los Angeles–based singer, songwriter, writer, and podcaster. As a founding member and lead singer of the punk rock band Bratmobile, she became one of the leading voices of the riot grrl movement.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is an Canadian-American poet, writer, educator and social activist. Their writing and performance art focuses on documenting the stories of queer and trans people of color, abuse survivors, mixed-race people and diasporic South Asians and Sri Lankans. A central concern of their work is the interconnection of systems of colonialism, abuse and violence. They are also a writer and organizer within the disability justice movement.
Radio Sloan is a musician from Olympia, Washington.
Rachel Carns is an American musician, composer, artist and performer living in Olympia, Washington, U.S. Raised in small-town Wisconsin, she went on to study painting and drawing at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, where she completed her B.F.A. in 1991. Carns began her career as drummer for Kicking Giant, later collaborating with several bands, including The Need. She is a celebrated graphic designer, working under the name System Lux, and plays drums and percussion with experimental performance art group Cloud Eye Control.
Aurora Levins Morales is a Puerto Rican writer and poet. She is significant within Latina feminism and Third World feminism as well as other social justice movements.
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. 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 commonly for women.
Eden Daniel Pearlstein, better known by his stage name Eprhyme, is an American Jewish rapper and producer based in Brooklyn, New York. While attending The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, he became involved with the Olympia music scene as half of the hip hop duo Saints of Everyday Failures, with which he released two albums. According to Nic Leonard of the Weekly Volcano, Eprhyme "played a major roll [sic] in the creation of the Olympia hip-hop scene." He was noticed by local independent label K Records, who released his first two singles, "Punklezmerap" and "Shomer Salaam". He then released his debut album, Waywordwonderwill (2009), through Shemspeed Records, before returning to K Records for his follow-up, Dopestylevsky (2011). He is currently part of the alternative hip hop groups Darshan, with vocalist Basya Schechter, and Ruthless Cosmopolitans, with Jon Madof.
Pretty Porky & Pissed Off(PPPO) was a Canadian fat activist and performance art collective based in Toronto, Ontario from 1996 to 2005. They used their bodies as modes of resistance against discriminatory language, cultural, social practices, and policies. Their feminist, queer, and LGBT politics were part of the DIY ethics of punk rock and the Riot Grrrl movement, and feminist activism. PPPO was a Canadian trailblazer in the international fat liberation movement.
Sins Invalid is a disability justice-based performance project that focuses on artists with disabilities, artists of color, and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists. Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid's performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body. In addition to multidisciplinary performances by people with disabilities, Sins Invalid organizes visual art exhibitions, readings, and a bi-monthly educational video series. Sins Invalid collaborates with other movement-building projects and provides disability justice training.
"Punklezmerap" is a song by American rapper Eprhyme, the lead single from his debut solo album Waywordwonderwill (2008). It was released by K Records on March 4, 2008. Produced by Smoke of Oldominion and featuring Nomy Lamm on vocals, the song heavily samples from klezmer and traditional Jewish music. Lyrically, the song details Eprhyme's musical and personal evolution. At the time of its release, "Punklezmerap" was the first K Records hip hop recording in over a decade.
Yoyo A Go Go, usually abbreviated to Yoyo and often typeset in various ways, was an independent music festival in Olympia, Washington, first held in 1994 and followed by successor festivals in 1997, 1999, and 2001. Five- and six-day concert marathons featured dozens of punk and indie rock acts stacked back to back, as well as a variety of associated entertainment and small-scale local retail. The concerts took place at the historic Capitol Theater and showcased performers from the local Olympia music scene, while also including national and international artists.
There exists a long-standing and well-documented relationship between Jews and punk rock. This includes multiple prominent Jewish musicians, promoters, and label executives who were involved in the development of punk in the 1970s and 1980s, the continued presence of prominent Jewish artists and personalities in the genre in the modern era, a small but noteworthy punk rock scene in Israel, and a more recent loose proto-scene of explicitly Jewish-themed punk bands and artists.
Sara Marcus is a writer and musician best known for her 2010 book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. She began her writing career as a participant in the riot grrrl movement, writing zines as a teenager in Washington, DC. She subsequently worked as a journalist, writing about music and politics. In 2018, she earned a PhD in English at Princeton University and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.
