Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.08.2014, Síða 21

Culture | Hip hop
21The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 11 — 2014
is expected to perform like profession-
als. They're eager and willing to step into
those shoes, but their origins complicate
the matter. They feel dual, perhaps con-
flicting, responsibilities: on the one hand
they need to maintain their fundamental
tenets—to encourage women with no rap
or musical experience to take the mic
and have a go; but on the other hand, they
want to improve as rappers and be taken
seriously.
Awkwardly occupying this liminal
space, they have evaded formal musical
critique thus far. Having spoken with
several people who have seen them peri-
odically throughout the year, I've noticed
a common narrative arise: they get bet-
ter and tighter each time. Some, ignoring
their structure and origins, hold them to
the standards of other rappers and hip
hop artists and find much to criticise.
Reykjavíkurdætur's embrace of ama-
teurism, however, does set them apart.
Their very premise—that women should
feel empowered to rap, to speak their
mind, regardless of musical experience,
regardless of the audience—renders cri-
tique irrelevant. While Reykjavíkurdæ-
tur keep music quality as a primary
concern, they get to enforce their own
standards. They exist in their own cat-
egory and use this fortuitous position
to pronounce their gospel of freedom,
equality and self-affirmation.
Everyone Needs
Feminism
Even in Iceland, which consistently
clocks in as the best country to be a
woman, inequality between the sexes
remains marked. Iceland may have the
smallest wage gap, but there still is a
wage gap. Sexual harassment, rape, slut-
shaming and victim-blaming continue.
The group's most recent song and video,
"D.R.U.S.L.A." ("S.L.U.T."), released as an
anthem for the fourth annual Reykjavík
SlutWalk, calls out the Supreme Court
for its failure to rein in rape culture.
Reykjavíkurdætur refuse to be com-
placent, refuse to buy into the hype of a
"feminist utopia." They're unsatisfied
and want to package their dissatisfaction
in consumable metre and verse.
They evidently have a public and
prominent platform, but it's hard to
gauge their efficacy. With no unified,
clear agenda, determining their efficacy
may be beside the point. Perhaps their
rise to prominence is enough—people
are, indeed, listening. Still, their struc-
ture prevents them from being a purely
feminist apparatus. Their inspiration
comes from personal experiences, not
necessarily from universal concerns.
This may limit their scope and their au-
dience: while they remember to check
their privilege and to acknowledge the
intersectionality between feminism and
issues of race and class, such areas of
critical discussion remain unexplored.
The adage, "Write what you know" cer-
tainly applies here (we're talking about a
relatively homogenous society with rela-
tively low income inequality) but at the
same time, it seems that Reykjavíkurd-
ætur's audience is largely comprised of
middle-class, white Icelanders—albeit, a
large demographic but not the entirety
of the Icelandic population. Their liberal
appropriation of bindis—South Asian
forehead decorations that carry religious
and cultural significance—for aesthetic
purposes is one indicator of their limited
scope. While their defence of the orna-
ments points to a lack of critical discus-
sion on cultural appropriation in Iceland,
it also indicates that they're working
within an Icelandic context.
Since they hold no pretensions about
being universal feminist paragons, all
this may well be moot; but it does dem-
onstrate the in-betweenness of their
political project. By eschewing a unified
agenda and the explicit label of femi-
nism, they evade the universal scope of
the movement; at the same time, their
lyrics and concerns about personal mat-
ters are in line with feminist thought.
This position affords the women a large
amount of freedom for expressing and
communicating their own experiences
which, Anna Tara emphasises, is a pri-
mary aim for the group. Liminality, it
would seem, is the sweet spot for Reyk-
javíkurdætur—in between amateur and
professional, personal and political. Sit-
ting comfortably in their in-between-
ness, Reykjavíkurdætur get to set their
own standards and play their own game
according to their own rules. With that
set-up, it's little surprise that they're
winning.
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