Heavy Music Mothers

Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions

Julie Turley, Joan Jocson-Singh

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Paperback

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English

ABC-CLIO
27 November 2025

Theory of music & musicology; Heavy Metal music; Feminism & feminist theory; Gender studies: women

Series: Extreme Sounds Studies: Global Socio-Cultural Explorations

Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions is an exploration of women and heavy music and the ways in which women have historically engaged with musicking as mothers. Julie Turley and Joan Jocson-Singh, musicking mothers themselves, largely employ an ethnographic lens, foregrounded in powerful one-on-one original interviews as vignettes that narrate thematic patterns. Other chapters examine motherhood identity embedded in respective published rock music memoirs, discussions of rock performance as a site of maternal bonding, and themes that arise when heavy music mothers write about motherhood. Autoethnographic portions throughout give the book an intimate and personal tone: one such chapter presents the concept of vigilante motherhood within an auto-ethnographic context. The authors reference the book’s limitations, meditating on historically marginalized moms the authors predict and hope the focus will be on for the future. Heavy Music Mothers is a robust study of women and motherhood set within a music culture historically inhospitable to both women and mothers. This book, the first scholarly study of this topic, is just the beginning.

By: Julie Turley, Joan Jocson-Singh
Imprint: ABC-CLIO
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9798216371618
Series: Extreme Sounds Studies: Global Socio-Cultural Explorations
Pages: 152
Publication Date: 27 November 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Contents Chapter 1: Mother Framing: Methodologies Chapter 2: The Stories We Tell: Qualitative Interviews (Vignettes) Chapter 3: The Rock Mom Memoir Chapter 4: Vigilante Motherhood: The Embrace of Anger Chapter 5: Daughters on Rock Moms: Life, Performance, Musicking, and Bonding Chapter 6: Mother Tracks: Rock and Metal Moms Write Motherhood

Julie Turley is assistant professor and open education librarian at Kingsborough Community College/City University of New York in Brooklyn. Joan Jocson-Singh is library director at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, CA.

Reviews for Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions

Turley and Jocson-Singh's focus on motherhood sets this work apart. Heavy Music Mothers is engaging, unique, well-researched, and an important contribution to the literature concerned with music and gender and how women navigate these traditionally male-dominated spaces. -- Stacy Russo, author of <i>We Were Going to Change the World: Interviews with Women from the 1970s and 1980s Southern California Punk Rock Scene</i> Heavy Music Mothers by Julie Turley and Joan Jocson-Singh offers a brave and important look into what it takes to make extreme music while mothering—and highlights the structural and social barriers that get in the way. These mothers' stories are raw, vulnerable, harrowing, and beautiful, just like the music they make. Heavy Music Mothers will change the way you understand metal, punk, and motherhood. -- Beth Winegarner, author of <i>Tenacity: Heavy Metal in the Middle East and Africa</i>