#tina bell

[aleprouswitch]

BEFORE GRUNGE WAS BIG, IT WAS BLACK

L: Tina Bell, Bam Bam R: Doug Pinnick, King's X

[nicodrawings]

Black history month isn’t just about celebrating the people we know, but uplifting the people whom we might not know.

This was truly a labor of love as I spent that past few weeks learning about Tina Bell’s life and the impact she and BAM BAM in general had on the Seattle grunge scene.

I would love it if you read about her story and share this with others who are passionate about music and black history, I want her to be just as much of a household name as Kurt Cobain.

Also please listen to their album! Its incredible!

Happy Black History Month to all my Black grunge guys gals and pals!!!! We were always here!!!

[brownskinsugarplum76]

Had not heard of her before!

Here's a Seattle Times article from last year that goes into her story a little.

https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/before-nirvana-or-pearl-jam-there-was-tina-bell-the-black-godmother-of-grunge-musicians-pay-tribute-in-upcoming-concert/?fbclid=IwAR1tvcPz9OUI60JQnezywq9-XsbwzerGTu7yCegjCAvCF_63mcMy82ADGik

[goochewb]

Tina Bell of Bam Bam, one of the founding bands of grunge.

[grrrlswhorock]

girls who rock: tina bell from bam bam

[twolips-indifferentred]

Tina Bell (1957 – 2012), the front woman of 80s grunge band Bam Bam.

Although Bell was a contemporary and predecessor of many big rock names like Kurt Cobain and Matt Cameron (who played drums for Bam Bam before Soundgarden and Pearl Jam), she is nowhere near as well remembered.

[iamdangerace]

Tina Bell - Bam Bam

[stickto-otherartists]

Black punk revolution || A song I wrote & composed

[loverockawaitsyou]

The Seattle music scene is beautifully diverse and amazing. While I've been living here, I'm growing to love it so much.

It is quite sad to see more and more how in the '90s, the media perpetuated the whole "Seattle Sound" and "Grunge" hype machine and aesthetic mostly centered around conventionally attractive white people that still has a chokehold today.

I'm still learning a lot about Seattle history, but it's insane how many people were lost, or are largely unknown outside of the Seattle community because of the lack of exposure and media attention. The most egregious example I can think of is Tina Bell.

While I adore a lot of the "Grunge" bands (i.e. Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden, etc.), there's no denying they met the image requirements to catch the attention of establishment media giants like MTV at the time. They had talent, DEFINITELY, but they had the right look which catapulted them into the international spotlight.

This also points to a problem with the diversity of music journalists. Particularly when it comes to rock music, it's almost uniformly white and male. Obviously, there are going to be a ton of blind spots in coverage, especially in the form of history books. And when it comes to social media Grunge historians and "influencers," many are also perpetuating that same image to a whole new generation.

As someone who doesn't fit the Grunge Aesthetic, I do get annoyed when people try to recreate it and uphold the "beauty standards" without any kind of understanding of the period or the history behind it. Possibly more than a lot of other things I've dealt with, there is a lot of gatekeeping.

Last thought: While I think it's great to appreciate the past, make sure you understand it. Also, pay attention to what's going on in the present.

[the-badger-mole]

The Godmother of Grunge

If any time in the history of the US something really, truly innovative and cool took off, you will never go broke if you bet on a black person having had a hand (elbow, shoulder and foot) in it.

This is Tina Bell

(I know. Take a moment, drink in the awesome)

Tina Marie Bell was born in Seattle, WA in 1957. Like most black singers, she got her start as part of her church choir, where she honed her talent and her love of music. As she got older, her love of performing found her participating in her school's theater club, cheerleading, and eventually majoring in Drama at Washington State University.

After graduating college, Tina landed a spot with the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, in the late 1970s. As she was preparing for a performance of her rendition of C'est Si Bon (a song which was performed by another black queen, Eartha Kitt). In order to make sure her French was strong enough for the song, she worked with a tutor named Tommy Martin- the man who would later become her bandmate and her husband.

In 1983, the pair would go on to form Bam Bam, with bassist, Scott Ledgerwood and drummer, Matt Cameron (who later went on to perform with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam). Bell was, of course, the lead singer, and her dynamic voice and unparalleled stage presence soon made her a staple in the Seattle music scene in the early 80s. Her ability to mix the smooth sultry sounds of her gospel and R&B background and the jarring sounds of punk garnered Bell and her band a lot of fans, including their roadie, Kurt Cobain. In 1984, one year before the band Green River would be credited with introducing a "new sound" to the Seattle music scene, Bam Bam recorded and released their first and, unfortunately only EP Villains (also wear white). Four years after that, Nirvana would release their debut album Bleach and the new musical genre, grunge, would be introduced to the rest of the world.

Why don't more people know about Tina Bell? C'mon...you know why more people don't know about Tina Bell. As a black woman moving in the largely white space of punk rock, Tina faced racism even as she became a star in the underground punk scene. At one particularly memorable show, bassist Ledgerwood recalls how a couple of skin heads came to harass Tina, shouting racial slurs and other verbal abuse at her. Tina stopped her set, whipped her microphone around and knocked both of them in the head (I WISH I COULD FIND A RECORDING OF THAT!!!!! I WOULD KILL!!!!!) before composing herself and delivering a fiery performance that I'm sure the people lucky enough to be in the audience that night still dream about.

The racism was latent as well as blatant. The industry didn't know what to do with a black woman who wasn't hip hop, r&b or pop. She drew comparisons to acts like Tina Turner (because they're both named Tina? 🤔) The inability of the public at large to accept the wild, otherworldly concept of a black woman singing rock music (even though black women also pioneered rock music) kept the band's star from rising much beyond the Seattle, in spite of their local popularity. Tina Bell quit the band in 1990, just as grunge, the musical genre she helped birth, was taking off. She moved from Seattle to Las Vegas, where in a turn that is all too common among talented artists, she fell into a cycle of alcoholism and depression. She died on October 10, 2012 at the tragically young age of 55, alone and literally written out of the history of the genre she had such a heavy hand in shaping.

Fortunately, that's not where her story ends. Through the efforts of fellow Seattle musician, Om Johari, Tina's son TJ Martin (who himself is an Academy Award winning filmmaker), and ex-bandmate, Scott Ledgerwood, Tina Bell is being restored to her rightful place as in history as the Godmother of Grunge.

Hear her music here, here, and here (my favorite)

[battleofbands]

Tina Bell, the godmother of grunge

Listen to ‘free fall from space’

[sourrr-milk]

Sourrr Milk, Issue #2

Reading and Printing PDF

Sourrr Milk archive

[afrogrunge]

[thecreativemillennial]

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

now that the competition is over, i would like to mention another snub from the competition: 90s tina bell from bam bam. I'm not surprised she wasn't brought up before, even given the number of grunge fans here, but still.

Oh my god yes. The mother of grunge herself. Technically she left Bam Bam in 1990 and stopped making music a while after that, so not quite a 90s musician, but I'm a little shocked no one mentioned her. The epitome of cool!

[iamdangerace]