by Nicole Kali (3/16/2021)
Saturday, March 13th, Black Rockers United had a monumental discussion with six Black rock-hers: women who revolutionize the genre their own way. Check it out, view the full roundtable right here!
Kim Gill, the #BRU admin team and I were so ready for Melanin March, this key moment in Black rock music representation. We brainstormed within months. How would we spotlight influential femmes throughout the scene? Meredith Bell (Palaceburn), Honeychild Coleman, GuitarGabby and Militia Vox kindly were onboard to join us! Our announcement unveiled on International Women's Day! We already could feel the paradigm shift. Rock-hers were uniting.
##BRU crew again wishes a happy International Women’s Day and invites you to Black Rock-Her Roundtable, Sat. 6PM! Support Black rockin’ women! 🤘🏾
Kim Gill
is Black Rockers
United Media Director since 2020, a valuable member in #BRU's expansion.
The Bajan-American metal
mogul curates great content at #BRU!
She hosted fantastic interviews with
GuitarGabby
and Militia Vox,
Diamond Rowe (Tetrarch,
awesome heaviness)! Those
#BRUTalks
were this
Rock-Her Roundtable's groundwork! Thanks so much, Kim. This can't happen without
you!
Nicole Kali (me) held it down as roundtable co-host. You can find my Afro-diasporic, radical world over at Nicokali.com. Now we introduce our four unforgettable guests!
Meredith Bell is the iconic metal vocalist for Philadelphia-based band, Palaceburn, and a vanguard for sure. She continues to be a passionate advocate of Black femme power alongside her fellow panelists, consistently bringing rock-hers to the forefront. You might have heard "Stars Align", "And You Wonder Why They Kneel" and her Fozzy cover for Chris Jericho, All Elite Wrestling! Meredith Bell, we appreciate!
Honeychild Coleman truly embodies rock's potential and liberation for us. She has one of the coolest rock timelines #BRU knows: Apollo Heights, Sista Grrrl Riot with Simi Stone, Maya "Mother Goddess", Tamar-kali and herself, The Veldt, The 1865 plus a great solo career. We had a beautiful #BRUTalk in Black August!
GuitarGabby, Gabby Logan, proudly comes from Atlanta. She is a Spelman College and Vermont Law School graduate and guitarist over 25 years now. GuitarGabby played for Diamond (Crime Mob). That backing band was a gateway to The Txlips today. They're an internationally touring grunge rock group we love a lot. Shout out to her!
GuitarGabby has so much creative power and diversity to offer: contributing editor to Guitar World Magazine, diversity editor for Guitar Girl Magazine, musicology, even endorsed by PRS!
Militia Vox has been a blazing force for her entire life; she began an artistic career in classical music and became an award-winning pianist during childhood. Militia combined her gothic taste, the love of stage by college.
She formed a lasting name for herself via New York's grindcore and rock circuit. Swear On Your Life (NYC legends) and Militia Vox are well-known projects from there. The accomplished rock star recently adds SXSW Mentor, immersive experiences at Fivars International Stories Festival under her metal bullet belt!
Kim Gill, each participant and our wonderful audience set a wonderful tone for the roundtable. First we introduced ourselves and #BRU's mission.
"My name is Kimetal, and I'm Media Director for Black Rockers United."
"Hello, world! This is Nicole Kali, fellow #BRU Media! Thank you for introducing me, Kimetal, keeping it real as always. It is good to see you all and thanks for joining our first Black Rock-Her Roundtable."
Militia Vox: "[Laughs] Hi, how are you? I'm Militia...I've come to destroy you sonically. That's all." We expect nothing less!
Kim: "And Honeychild Coleman?"
Honeychild Coleman: "I live in Brooklyn, I've known most everybody here for quite a while in real life and social media! And I'm very honored to be among such an esteemed panel of sisters reppin' for the rock."
GuitarGabby: "Hey! My name is GuitarGabby. I'm the founder, manager, lawyer and frontwoman of the international all-Black female rock collective called The Txlips."
Meredith Bell: "Hello, hello, my name is Meredith Bell, lead singer of Palaceburn: a hard rock unit out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania! And you most notably saw me singing, very recently for Chris Jericho for All Elite Wrestling a long time ago back in February 2020. So yeah, I'm very, very excited and very, very honored to be here!"
Kim Gill: "So what we wanted to accomplish with this live stream today was to bring Black women in the metal industry together—to share their stories and experiences. And we wanted to celebrate Women's History Month and International Women's Day also.
...We named this the Black Rock-Her [Roundtable] for a reason because I feel like very rarely do Black women in the metal industry and the rock industry, and the punk industry get a chance to have a platform to express themselves and to have their stories heard—in spaces where they're not questioned or challenged."
PART ONE
We talk all about celebration of Women's History Month, highlights in everyone's lives and then progressed toward artivism. Black Rock-Her Roundtable asked what International Women's Day was like for each rock-her.
And we discussed a resonant question: has our Blackness and activism alienated audiences? Does the industry feel like our freedom is a trend?
Militia Vox has been "doing interviews, I guess, just talking about my experience as a woman in music, a woman in life, or you know, woman in this stratosphere and the multiverse. But that's it. I mean...
I'm a woman 365 days out of the year so this month, I just kind of go 'Eh'. But it's nice to see other people's stories, you know, and hear other people's, women's stories."
Meredith Bell agreed our voices in rock were more relevant than a one-time show too. "Honestly, it was just so great to see each other people's stories just like Militia was saying, just like, being able to support other women...and not only women themselves, but their male partners and non-binary partners. That was the biggest thing for me."
GuitarGabby brought up the good point: if we want proper representation for Black rock-hers, we can do it without approval! "I'm the diversity editor at Guitar Girl Magazine, and so I just spent the entire day, really the last two or three months just FLOODING the Internet with Black women, non-binary musicians who play instruments.
And plus I also think it's a good inspiration for us, like, other Black girls out there that are watching us..."
Honeychild Coleman "used of all her social platforms to reshare other people's experiences, and especially in the indie Black world because we're often so dismissed. And I tried to mix up between women who DJ, women who play instruments, women who compose, women who are scientists.
@blackrockersunited ##BRU crew + each awesome panelist set a wonderful tone for 1st Black Rock-Her Roundtable! Thank you again! Our article debuted today too! 🥳 ##rock
♬ original sound - Black Rockers United
Like I really went in...really showing the Black female contribution. Even though it's Women's History Month, I look at it like Black Women's History Month as many people have."
Nicole Kali: "My grandmother passed away twelve years ago during this month so it's centered around her and the stuff she would do, which is rock out to like, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Mother's Finest and all that stuff. Yeah."
Kim followed up with "something that I did, was donated to a non-profit that specializes in wellness and mental health for Black women. They're called Black Women for Wellness Los Angeles...
I believe in any organization or any platform that is going to foster wellness with Black women, especially when it's such a desired thing that we need right now and it's urgent. So they deal with mental health, they deal with education. They also have birthing services."
What's uplifting in our lives? Watch here.
MUSIC INDUSTRY ACTIVISM: PERFORMATIVE OR NOT?
Militia later mentioned that she felt restricted to February or March as media tokenism, but the artistic world accepted her without that box.
Honeychild said that "there's definitely a performative tone happening with the indie-based platforms that never included Black women before...it's interesting because I feel like all of 2020 magnified how performative everyone was with politics.
'Oh, we're about Black lives. We're about the election! We're about this, we're about that.' But as soon as everything calms down, they go back to their regular lives. I also work in nightlife and the other conversation happening there is: oh yeah, when you open back up, will you actually book diverse acts?"
Meredith had the same feeling. "Within our scene, I feel like it's definitely performative, kind of piggy-backing off of what Militia said. You see all these things during Black History Month like 'Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we're supporting Black artists, we're gonna do all this other stuff and reach out.
Amplify Black voices'...where are you going with that? I get e-mails from Loudwire and Metal Hammer and that sort of stuff. And I didn't really see anything in regards to any sort of Black artists within our scene."
Militia Vox chimed in that "I saw Cammie [Gilbert] got some attention. You know Cammie Gilbert from Ocean's Slumber. She got somethin'. That was cool. But I know what you mean. I've been doing metal for years and I've been in Metal Hammer ONCE [laughs]."
GuitarGabby found a way to change the game. "I can tell sometimes it's performative so I can check a box of how many Black writers they have doing stuff.
My thing has always been I don't wanna wait for someone else to represent or put what needs to put in there, the way it needs to put in there. So I just decided instead of continuing to ask white people to do it correctly, I'd rather just do it myself."
Art's purpose is to reflect and change the times! Black women have been pioneers forever. We hope you enjoy the full roundtable on YouTube! Thanks so much.
