Women saving the world?

A retrospective of Ivor Cutler's work is due to be released on Chemikal Underground this month. Titled Return To Y'Hup, it will be released on 24th January and features re-imagined Cutler songs by Citizen Bravo, Raymond MacDonald and friends. A taster single, 'Women of the world' has been released, featuring the vocal talents of Tracyanne Campbell.

I wasn't familiar with this particular Cutler track, and it's fair to say that the Citizen Bravo/Raymond MacDonald/Tracyanne Campbell version is probably very different, but I really love it. It's got a straightforward simplicity to it, both musically and in terms of the message.

It reminded me of a particularly hopeful song by Helen McCookerybook, also called 'Women of the world', and that in turn got me thinking about the mid eighties post punk opus that is Martha and the Muffins 'Women around the world at work'.

McCookerybook's 'Women of the world' feels almost like a re-affirmation of Cutler's message in that it is also a call to arms. But it also feels like a series of observations on female solidarity and a c-change in society.

It was this latter aspect that got me thinking again about the Martha and the Muffins track because 'Women around the world at work' isn't a call to arms at all, it's an observational take on the long view of women's history. It's a roll call of women getting on with things: Mundane things, brave things, ordinary things... while copping a lot of shit along the way. It's the kind of song that is political by its very existence, rather than because it is explicitly a protest song. Its message is oblique rather than explicit.

Each of these three songs could be regarded as feminist, and as a protest song, but taken as a trio they are also a reminder that there are many ways to express this.