Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(Oxford Handbooks) Fred Everett Maus, Sheila Whiteley - The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness-Oxford University Press (2022)
(Oxford Handbooks) Fred Everett Maus, Sheila Whiteley - The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness-Oxford University Press (2022)
Edited by
FRED EVERETT MAUS AND SHEILA
WHITELEY
with
TAVIA NYONG’O AND ZOE SHERINIAN
Associate Editors
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s
objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a
registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
F E M
PART V HISTORIES
23. Music in the Margins: Queerness in the Clerical Imagination, 1200–
1500
L C
31. Out in the Undercurrents: Queer Politics in Hong Kong Popular Music
Y F C and J K
32. How to Do Things with Theory: Cultural “Transcription,”
“Queerness,” and Ukrainian Pop
S A
Index
L C
Dirk von der Horst, Instructor of Religious Studies, Mount St. Mary’s
University, Los Angeles
The great debt of this book is to the writers and thinkers who have created
and sustained the field of queer music studies. Such work required courage
from the beginning and still does to the present.
Many authors in queer music studies identify as LGBTQ+ personally;
others who do not may be assumed to have close connections with
LGBTQ+ people. Either way, but especially for those who are LGBTQ+,
we have had to reckon with prevalent discrimination—homophobia,
transphobia, racism, classism—making decisions about self-presentation in
our lives and our workplaces and in our public professional work. The
Handbook chapters by Gould and Fisk describe personal longing and
struggle. It should be understood that every chapter in this book is the
outcome of a long series of commitments made in potentially hostile
environments. The content of this book should be savored not only as
knowledge but also as perseverance and integrity.
One strand of queer music studies identifies the inhibitions and
constraints of established paradigms of music research; Philip Brett was
eloquent on this topic. Music-scholarly norms have often suppressed
discourse about gender and sexuality in relation to musical life and have
discouraged personal discourse altogether. Writing about music and
queerness can have negative professional consequences. Anyone in the field
knows of superb scholars who sought but never found an appropriate
academic position, or who found it only after a long search. Identifying
oneself as queer or writing on queer topics adds to the already-inherent
stress and vulnerability at every point of scholarly professional life, from
the formation of a dissertation topic, to conference proposals and
publication submissions, to the job hunt, to application for tenure. Special
difficulties arise for ethnomusicologists, who often have to get their
research approved by foreign governments. Here is one way to show the
precarity that still characterizes queer music studies: despite the many
superb publications that have established the field, it seems there has never
been a music faculty position advertised simply as “Queer Music Studies”
or “LGBTQ Studies in Music”; neither I nor the people I asked about this
could remember even a search in “Gender and Sexuality Studies in
Music.”1
Queer music studies, if professionally risky, has also been intensely
rewarding to its practitioners, individually and in relationships with
colleagues. For many of us, feminist and queer research transformed what it
feels like to be an academic scholar of music. It opened up new possibilities
that academic research and writing can be personally expressive and
politically engaged. One aspect of queer music studies has been its repeated
turn to multi-author formations—conferences and conference panels, edited
collections, special issues of journals. Queer music studies is not just a
genre of writing; it creates communities and movements. And every public
gathering of queer music scholars, from conference session to Handbook,
calls out to potential new participants. At the same time, as communities
form, we must always be alert about marginalized or not-yet-included
people and topics.
I am deeply grateful to the contributors who have created this book. For
some chapters, there was little change from the initial submission to the
published version. In many other cases I collaborated with authors on
extensive revisions. In working with the authors on their chapters, I was an
interventionist editor, not in order to change ideas but to improve clarity.
Clarity is not a simple quality; it invites the question “clarity to whom?”
And the answer might be uncomfortable: perhaps “clarity to a normative
subjectivity,” perhaps that of a cisgender able-bodied straight white man.
There is tension between the goal of clarity and the love of diversity. I hope
the authors and I have found an appropriate accessibility that fully respects
difference. I am grateful to the authors who worked patiently with me on
revisions. I know each of the authors much better than when the project
started; that has been one of the great benefits of this work.
It was a pleasure to interact with my main OUP contacts Norm Hirschy
and Lauralee Yeary. Hirschy was strongly committed to this Handbook
from the beginning. How delightful to encounter Yeary in our new
relationship, after having been her teacher at UVA. Hirschy and Yeary were
consistently patient and supportive, and gentle with the quirks of my
personality. They made important, substantive interventions as we put this
book together. Anonymous reviewers commissioned by OUP responded to
the project with many useful comments at the proposal stage and partway
through the process of submission and revision of chapters.
Beyond my conversations with authors about their individual chapters, I
consulted about aspects of this project with many colleagues as the
Handbook took shape. They included Christina Baade, Dana Baitz, Andre
Cavalcante, Adrian Childs, Suzanne Cusick, Sam Dwinell, Shana Goldin-
Perschbacher, Sumanth Gopinath, E. Patrick Johnson, Matt Jones, Roberta
Lamb, Alejandro Madrid, Horace Maxile, William Meredith, Susan
McClary, Robert McRuer, Gregory Mitchell, Mitchell Morris, Stephan
Pennington, Emily Wilbourne, and others.
I am fortunate to work in the Department of Music at the University of
Virginia, where academic faculty have autonomy in choosing topics for
research and teaching and in designing our own courses. It was the perfect
environment to think about this book. Many schools of music and music
departments do not offer such freedom and flexibility. Colleagues Nomi
Dave, Bonnie Gordon, and Michelle Kisliuk, along with past colleagues
including Suzanne Cusick, Kyra Gaunt, and Elizabeth Hudson, have
ensured that UVA has a lively culture of thinking about gender and
sexuality in relation to music.
If I were to name all the loved ones and friends who have ensured my
happiness over the Handbook years, I would go on at length. Here are only
the most essential. I have no inkling who I would be, personally and
intellectually, apart from the wonderful time I spent with brilliant, kind,
loving Katharine. Teco continues to offer me joy of many kinds. Everett and
Sophie enrich my life immeasurably.
As mentioned in the Introduction, Rachel Cowgill and Sophie Fuller,
members of the original editorial group, made valuable contributions to the
formation of this project, up to the milestone of a contract with OUP. I
enjoyed our work together and was sad when they left.
Associate editors Tavia Nyong’o and Zoe Sherinian, who joined the
project after the contract was approved, were superb resources in thinking
about contributors and theoretical perspectives, editing chapters, and
pondering the shape of the book. The Handbook is much better because of
their collaboration.
Sadly, I need to name two participants who passed away before
completion of the Handbook.
Tim Stüttgen (1977–2013) is remembered by Tavia Nyong’o, who knew
him, as “a dynamic queer journalist, activist, curator and theorist who came
out of the punk scene in post-reunification Germany. He was born in 1977
in Solingen, and studied film studies, fine art, and gender-queer theory in
London, Hamburg, Maastricht, and Berlin. He was a member of the b-
books collective and a part of the cinematic post-porn poem Arret la
machine! postpone postpone happiness (2007). His posthumously published
monograph, In a Qu*A*re Time and Place: Post-Slavery Temporalities,
Blaxploitation, and Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist between Intersectionality and
Heterogeneity exemplifies his radically open and imaginative mode of
researching, thinking, teaching, and writing.”2
The Handbook of Music and Queerness would not exist without my co-
editor Sheila Whiteley’s imagination and energy. Throughout her career
Whiteley, who died in 2015, was a force for innovation in popular music
studies; her numerous publications include monographs and edited
collections on counterculture, women and gender, space and place, cultural
meanings of Christmas, virtuality, and more. Conspicuously open and
friendly, she could also be firm when necessary, which was important in the
often-misogynist worlds of popular music studies and music studies
generally. Her edited and co-edited collections embody her enduring desire
to identify remarkable early-career scholars and publish their work. Her
warmth and imagination are sorely missed by many, and of course I missed
her terribly in the later stages of work toward this book. May this Handbook
stand as one more manifestation of her beautiful mind and spirit.
N
1. That is, a dedicated position, as opposed to a position that includes sexuality studies in a list of
possible areas.
2. Tim Stüttgen, ed. Daniel Hendrickson, Max Jorge Hinderer, and Margarita Tsomou, In a
Qu*A*re Time and Place: Post-Slavery Temporalities, Blaxploitation, and Sun Ra’s
Afrofuturism between Intersectionality and Heterogeneity, SUM Magazine (Berlin: b-books,
2014).
R
Stüttgen, Tim, ed. Daniel Hendrickson, Max Jorge Hinderer, and Margarita Tsomou. In a Q*A*re
Time and Place: Post-Slavery Temporalities, Blaxploitation, and Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism between
Intersectionality and Heterogeneity. Berlin: b-books, 2014.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
F R E D E VE RE T T MAU S
Q
She notes uses of “queer” that open onto the interactions of multiple
“identity-constituting, identity fracturing discourses”—interactions also
conceived since 1989 through Kimberlé Crenshaw’s term
4
“intersectionality.” Further, she suggests that “a word so fraught as
‘queer’” cannot simply denote or connote, but always draws attention to the
relation between the word and the person who uses it, “dramatizes
locutionary position itself.” “Anyone’s use of ‘queer’ about themselves
means differently from their use of it about someone else.”5
The intensity of “queer” has diminished since then, though unevenly.
The word sometimes feels close to pure denotation, an affectively and
politically neutral abbreviation referring in general to lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and other minority genders and sexualities. It has sometimes
seemed to mean simply “gay male,” for instance in the television titles
Queer as Folk (2000) or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003). But change
was inevitable, as Sedgwick marked with her title “Queer and Now.” Judith
Butler, in another now-classic essay “Critically Queer” (1993), wrote of a
risk that “the term will be taken as the summarizing moment.” Instead, she
proposed, “it is perhaps only the most recent.”6 Nonetheless, if usage has
sometimes become routine, even bland, “queer” remains the name under
which many groundbreaking projects continue to emerge: No Future: Queer
Theory and the Death Drive (2004), Black Queer Studies (2005), Cruising
Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009), The Queer Art of
Failure (2011), and more.7 And to the present, academia uses the word
cautiously. It rarely appears in the names of college or university
departments (as in the possible but rare designation “Department of Queer
Studies”), and this is the only Oxford Handbook so far to use the word in its
title. Words with less political energy—“sexuality,” “LGBT” or “LGBTQ,”
“sexual minority”—are common in academia. The risky, defiant, anti-
normative potential of the term sometimes glows brighter, sometimes fades.
Despite the goal of stimulating an unpredictable, perhaps limitless
variety of anti-normative projects, “queer” has its own provincialism,
originating in a particular time and place: in the United States, with a
conspicuous early use in New York City in the Queer Nation Manifesto
quoted above, and in activist settings where white people, especially men,
were often dominant. Thus, despite the aim of broad inclusiveness, the term
could marginalize the already-marginalized, as Cathy J. Cohen showed in
her influential essay “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” (1997):
In its current rendition, queer politics is coded with class, gender, and race privilege, and
may have lost its potential to be a politically expedient organizing tool for addressing the
needs—and mobilizing the bodies—of people of color.8
Like “queer,” the term “music” is not simple. “Music” in European and
American academic settings—colleges and universities as well as schools
of music—has often been understood primarily as Western art music
(WAM), that is, music created by trained composers, mostly white and
male, in European historical settings, communicated and preserved in
written notation, along with other music understood as historically
continuous with it. Similarly, “musicology” has often meant “the academic
study of WAM.” Other areas of music study have been labeled—
"ethnomusicology,” “popular music studies”—and they have been
pursued both within and beyond music departments or schools of music.12
The centrality of WAM in academic institutions is widely recognized as
problematic. But academic habits change slowly. It remains common for a
music program to have individual faculty members for several different
time-periods of “music history” (Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic,
etc.—period designations of European music), while having, perhaps, one
or two faculty designated as ethnomusicologists, identified with a
geographical specialty or area. Many researchers also have theoretical
specialties, such as gender studies, but are primarily identified by their time
period or geographic area. Ethnomusicologists may be charged with
teaching not only their research specialty and closely related material, but
also “world music,” a topic designation that many find to be obviously
problematic. (Music programs that offer the PhD in ethnomusicology will,
of course, have stronger staffing.) A music department might have one or
zero scholars active in popular music research or sound studies.13
Obviously this disproportionate staffing has consequences for the
distribution of power in academic programs.
This Handbook includes valuable chapters about WAM but intentionally
decenters it. The authors address many different kinds of music and
sometimes nonmusical sound.14 And they write from many different
perspectives. Authors include scholars from music programs, but many
come from other fields, among them American studies, performance
studies, media studies, and religious studies. Throughout, music is
considered, not as a collection of texts or sound objects, but (as Christopher
Small influentially put it) as musicking—any form of human activity in
relation to musical sound.15 Thus “music” is not set apart from the world
but is in the world, along with genders, sexualities, and the rest of life.
Q M S B
In the 1990s, the scholarly conjunction of music and queerness felt rare and
bold. That has changed, in that such scholarship is now abundant, though it
remains a courageous act for a music scholar to work on queer topics. I do
not think it is possible to give a coherent, unified narrative of developments
in queer music studies between its origins and the present; the quantity and
scope of research have expanded in many directions. Possibly specialists in
specific areas of music studies would see plotlines that I do not.
The 2019 update of the excellent Cumulative LGBTQ Music
Bibliography, an unannotated, uncategorized list of academic publications
in queer music studies, takes up sixty-two single-spaced pages and has
1,178 entries.49 The bibliography reveals two main areas of concentrated
work: WAM, especially in Europe and North America, and white
Anglophone popular music, including musical theater and film music.50 It
lists about 300 articles and books on WAM composers. These include work
on Schubert (mostly from the 1990s), Tchaikovsky, Poulenc, and especially
Britten; also valuable work on the US modernists Thomson, Copland,
Bernstein, and others, and the US experimental tradition of Cowell, Cage,
Harrison, and Oliveros. A smaller group of texts on WAM performance
includes distinguished work on topics such as castrati, queer performers,
and cultures around performance such as opera queens. Books and essays
on popular music include studies of famous queer musicians and musicians
with large queer followings such as Lady Gaga. There are fine studies of
women’s music and disco.
The bibliography also shows excellent, though less abundant, material
on Black musicians and music cultures. Hip hop, by Black and also white
musicians, has received the most attention. There are queer studies of recent
popular music by Black artists, gospel, and women blues singers, a few on
jazz, and essays about specific figures in relation to sexuality—Josephine
Baker, Julius Eastman, Michael Jackson, Billy Strayhorn. A few queer
studies of popular music in Latin America and other non-Anglophone areas
appear in the bibliography, as do studies of Asian and Asian American
music and Latinx music in the United States. The compilers have not
attempted to include studies written in languages other than English.
It is relatively easy to assemble scholarly resources about WAM, a
unified field sustained through music departments and schools of music, the
American Musicological Society and similar organizations in other
countries, and a handful of scholarly journals. Similarly, ethnomusicology
comes together in dedicated scholarly organizations and journals. It is
harder to get an overview of queer scholarly work about popular music.
Popular music scholarship exists in many different academic fields and is
published in journals of various disciplines; it is only partly unified by the
existence of IASPM, itself a large and dispersed multi-national
organization.
The very useful Cumulative Bibliography is under continuous revision
to keep up with new publications and previously omitted material.51
The need for more research on queer topics related to Black people and
people of color persisted for a long time; however, see the list of new books
at the end of this section for terrific recent work. Eileen Hayes’s book,
mentioned earlier, was an outstanding early contribution. In 2016 a
symposium took place in Vancouver, “Race-ing Queer Music Scholarship,”
held just before the joint annual meeting of SMT and AMS; papers from the
symposium made up a special issue of Women & Music in 2018.52 In 2020
Current Musicology published a special issue, “Queering and Quaring
Musicology.”53
As often happens, the B and T of LGBTQ have received relatively little
emphasis in queer music studies. This is especially conspicuous for
transgender issues, where there is, meanwhile, drastic discrimination and
violence in non-musical life, along with significant attention, some of it
positive, some malign, in non-musical public discourse and popular culture.
Trans music-making exists in many forms, some of it described by Shana
Goldin-Perschbacher and Dana Baitz in their chapters for this book; in
general there has been little uptake in academic research. A forthcoming
book by Goldin-Perschbacher will be valuable in offsetting this
inattention.54
In two practical fields with their own research literatures, queer studies
has recently gathered momentum. Four Symposia on LGBTQ Studies and
Music Education have taken place (2010, 2012, 2016, and 2021). During
the same time, there has been more publication than before on queer and
trans issues of music education; there was little before 2009.55 No public
bibliography on queerness and music education exists.56
There has been a recent increase in LGBTQ-related writing for music
therapists. Again, no public bibliography exists. Colin Lee kindly shared his
unpublished bibliography with me. It shows a trickle of publications from
1990 on, among them Lee’s beautiful case study Music at the Edge: The
Music Therapy Experiences of a Musician with AIDS.57 Typically there
were one or two publications per year, or none, until 2017, when suddenly
there were seven. 2019 brought a bumper crop, partly because of a special
issue of Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy on “Queering Music
Therapy.”58 This subfield of music therapy is established now, and an
Oxford Handbook of Queer and Trans Music Therapy, edited by Colin Lee,
is in preparation.59
As work on this Handbook reaches its end, superb new publications in
queer music studies continue to appear, breaking new ground in topics and
methods: Karen Tongson, Why Karen Carpenter Matters (2019); Susan Fast
and Craig Jennex, editors, Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer
and Feminist Interventions (2019); Moshe Morad, Fiesta de diez pesos:
Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba (2019); Vincent L.
Stephens, Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace,
and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music (2019); Gregory Barz and William
Cheng, editors, Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (2020);
Ashon T. Crawley, The Lonely Letters (2020); Grace Elizabeth Hale, Cool
Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed
American Culture (2020); Alisha Lola Jones, Flaming?: The Peculiar
Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (2020);
Matthew J. Jones, Love Don’t Need a Reason: The Life & Music of Michael
Callen (2020); Tes Slominski, Trad Nation: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in
Irish Traditional Music (2020); and more.60 The field is thriving and is in
motion in wonderful ways. This exciting situation does, though, raise
questions of what a Handbook about these topics might be.
A H
Perhaps this description has in mind a more coherent and delimited research
field than “music and queerness”; surely the project of “a critical survey of
the current state of scholarship” falters in light of the conspicuously
heterogeneous sixty-two-page bibliography just described. In my view, the
most accurate “conception of the field” is that it is characterized by
diversification of topics and methods, ever-increasingly so; that is part of
what is good about it. The motion of queer music studies is centrifugal,
rather than centered, and a Handbook should find a way to represent that.
I initially joined this project as the fourth member of a four-person
editorial group that included Rachel Cowgill and Sophie Fuller along with
Whiteley. We worked together on a proposal for the Press, an enjoyable
process that was well underway when I arrived. Once the proposal was
accepted by OUP, Cowgill and Fuller left the group for other projects. This
was a reasonable decision; they had already put a great deal of work and
insight into the project. Deep gratitude to them!
We had struggled to define the scope of a Handbook on queerness and
music and, even at the time of the contract, had not resolved some
significant doubts.
An early draft of the proposal listed seventy chapters, all by different
authors, each author paired with a specific topic. Despite this large number
of topics, the proposal was problematic in its heavy emphasis on the history
of European music and the recent past of Anglophone popular music. And
even within those topic areas, there were many obvious gaps. Further,
almost every proposed chapter seemed to invite an author who had already
published on its topic to come back and say a little more; this orientation to
past research was dispiriting. We kept working.
The revised proposal that was accepted by the Press still had many,
many proposed authors, with chapters now organized in a chronological
plan: two sections on music before 1918, almost all on WAM, and a large
section on music after 1918 that included art music topics, popular music
studies, and ethnomusicology. We had moved away from the idea of
assigning specific topics to authors, but the proposal still matched each
potential contributor with a likely research area. We expected to
commission about fifty chapters, ranging from 4,000 to 8,000 words in
length. Nonetheless there were still obvious omissions of potential topics.
The idea of coverage was not working out well.
When it was time for Whiteley and me, contract in hand, to begin
inviting authors, we made several decisions that reoriented the project.
We brought two new Associate Editors, Tavia Nyong’o and Zoe
Sherinian, into the project, with responsibility for recommending
contributors and reviewing chapter drafts in their areas of knowledge,
African American studies and performance studies (Nyong’o) and
ethnomusicology (Sherinian). Their ideas transformed the project.
And we decided to invite prospective authors to contribute their most
exciting current work, with no specification of subject matter beyond the
book title itself. This meant giving up the idea of coverage, curated by the
editors, in favor of unpredictable topics. I think the result is thrilling. Many
chapters undertake work that an editor could not have imagined; sometimes
they represent new departures for the authors themselves. The idea of
including short chapters of 4,000 words had been an accommodation to the
goal of coverage; we set that aside in favor of fewer, longer chapters. In
selecting authors, we chose to represent the expansiveness of the field by
inviting contributors from a wide range of academic specializations. We
chose not to emphasize senior scholars whose work was already well-
established, and we did not give priority to the WAM research that has
sometimes dominated music studies.
With no attempt to control the topics of chapters, we also gave up any
hope of foreseeing the structure of the book. The chronological organization
of our proposal was uninspiring; we knew this, and the proposal expressed
hope for something else. We were, perhaps, strangely confident that a
satisfying structure would emerge.
We did not ask contributors to agree to a specific interpretation of
queerness, nor specify for them the role that it would have in their chapters.
The result is a wide variety of relations to the term, itself a fascinating
aspect of the collection.
Sheila Whiteley’s death in June 2015 left a great gap in popular music
studies and was a painful loss for her many friends. It slowed the progress
of this book and meant that I had to move forward without her wonderful
imagination and insight. The content of the completed book embodies our
collaborative planning. The editing of most chapters fell to me, along with
Nyong’o and Sherinian for some topics. The organization of the book is
mine; I am sure it would have pleased Whiteley.
R M Q
The sections of this book reflect a grouping of chapters by what one might
call approaches, or styles of thought, or topics; I like the term “rhetorics,”
which emphasizes the process of organizing material into persuasive verbal
artifacts. Not surprisingly, the chapters of this book participate in various
traditions of writing about music and queerness. I have gathered them into
groups within which the chapters share a particular rhetorical orientation.
Obviously, many relationships link chapters and cut across the rhetorical
sections. Many chapters have ethnographic aspects, drawing in various
ways on ethnography, participant-observation, oral history, and
autoethnography. Not surprisingly, issues of gender identity and gender
performance come up in many chapters. There are chapters on African
American music and audiences (Garcia-Mispireta who writes about Black
people and other queers of color, Patrick Johnson, Smalls, Nyong’o,
Stüttgen). There are chapters on transgender issues (Goldin-Perschbacher,
Pennington, Baitz). Two chapters draw on Sarah Ahmed’s brilliant Queer
Phenomenology (Daniel, Baitz). Two chapters rework Cusick’s reflections
on “music as sex” in imaginative ways (Taylor, Wilbourne). And so on—I
hope that the exploration of such links will be part of the pleasure of this
collection.
Comments on the rhetoric-based sections and the individual chapters
follow.
K M
Sexual minorities have often been associated with specific kinds of music.
These kinds may be intentionally created within communities that have
distinct queer identities, as in the disco of the 1970s or the women’s music
of the 1970s and 1980s. Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta’s chapter identifies,
in commonly told narratives of electronic dance music, an intermittent role
for queers of color. Such narratives obscure the continuous participation of
queers of color, from disco to the present, in a wide range of dance music
scenes.
Sometimes there is a constitutive but partially hidden presence of queer
people in a kind of music. Many gay men contributed to the creation of US
musical theater. Performed for a broad audience, musicals can yield special
meanings for queer audiences, constituting communication with the creators
that is typically unobserved by straight fans. Bradley Rogers’s chapter
inquires into this possibility, lingering over a reading of Mame. The
presence of gay men in Black gospel performance is widely known but not
openly acknowledged in the context of churches that teach against
homosexuality. E. Patrick Johnson’s chapter brings queer creativity to the
fore in a revised history of gospel music, drawing on oral history and fiction
for details.
In other cases, kinds of music may be created and consumed without
special attention to queer people, who may nonetheless have roles as
creators and performers or in audiences. Through interviews, Tes Slominski
finds ways that queer performers of Irish traditional music and dance in the
United States negotiate their identities in a scene that often seems uniformly
heterosexual. Shana Goldin-Perschbacher and Shanté Paradigm Smalls
write about queer artists’ uses of kinds of music—country and hip hop—of
which the musicians and audiences might be assumed to be sexually
normative or homophobic.
V
Art is always made out of other art; sometimes the relationship is especially
direct, when one artifact is plainly a reworking or version of another.
Creating versions through dissident interpretations can be a way of
responding to a dominant culture, as argued in Birmingham School
accounts of subcultures.62 More generally, the assumption of the superior
validity of an original over an imitation has been challenged in many ways
over the last decades, for example in Jacques Derrida’s mischievous phrase
“originary trace,” which builds regression into any attempt to privilege an
original.63 Judith Butler’s important work on performativity cuts against
any account of heterosexuality as more authentic than queerness; both are
practices of repetition.64 Sue-Ellen Case rejects the depiction of lesbian
butch-femme roles as derivative from heterosexuality, offering instead a
contrast between playful camp theater and drab realistic theater.65 The
rejection of the traditional hierarchy of original over copy or version is
welcome in queer music studies.66
In various ways Dirk von der Horst, Freya Jarman, Nina Treadwell, and
Karen Tongson show the creative resources of versions. Von der Horst
describes two anti-homophobic musical settings of Biblical passages, and
then finds resonances to their meanings in contemporary theology. Jarman
articulates the fresh meanings that emerge as two novellas are made into
operas and films. Treadwell reports on fan music videos as a queer practice
and augments previous interpretations by emphasizing the contributions of
music. Tongson takes us from reflections on karaoke to a meditation on
repetition in queer thought.
V S
The chapters in the final section all concern locations beyond Western
Europe and the Americas. In these settings, concepts and practices of
gender and sexuality may be very different from Euro-American ones.
Superficial resemblances may tempt assimilation of such phenomena to
Euro-American concepts; these chapters resist such conflation. At the same
time, Euro-American concepts and political goals have sometimes been
adopted alongside indigenous practices. And, as Zoe Sherinian argues, it
may be wrong to insist on a complete cross-cultural otherness of
expressions of sexuality and gender.
Sherinian, an accomplished ethnographer, in her chapter turns to the
ethnographic work of other scholars, asking what happens if we view their
material through the lens of queerness. She offers a series of important
methodological suggestions about queer ethnomusicology. Joseph Lam
considers the complex meanings of cross-dressing in performances of
kunqu, a type of Chinese opera. Henry Spiller discusses a range of
Indonesian performances that diverge from Euro-American conceptions of
normative gender, asking what they mean, not to the Euro-American
imagination but to indigenous understanding. Yiu-Fai Chow and Jeroen de
Kloet describe a shift in the public visibility of gay popular music stars in
Hong Kong around 2012 and a mingling of local and Euro-American
concepts of sexuality. Stephen Amico’s conceptually ambitious essay
ponders the appropriateness of concepts of queerness in understanding the
gender play of a Ukrainian pop group; Amico offers an attractive analogy to
musical transcription for thinking about cross-cultural understanding.
May this unusual, indeed rather queer Handbook lead its readers to
many new discoveries and unforeseen trajectories!80
N
1. Should that be “same-gender sexual desires” or “same-sex sexual desires”? This use of “same-
sex,” for some, evokes undesirable biological essentialism and binarism. But it is possible to
hear “sex” as drawing attention to embodiment without essentialism or binarism. “Gender”
works for me, but there is a range of arguments and stakeholders in this choice.
2. “The Queer Nation Manifesto,” 1990. Available on the site History is a Weapon,
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/queernation.html. Note the persistence of the
categories “gay” and “lesbian” in this early statement.
3. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 8.
4. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of
Chicago Legal Forum 1989, 1 (1989): 139–167.
5. Sedgwick, Tendencies, 8–9.
6. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 223.
7. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2004); E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson, eds., Black Queer Studies (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2005); José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There
of Queer Futurity (New York: NYU Press, 2009); Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
8. Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” GLQ 3 (1997): 449.
9. E. Patrick Johnson, “‘Quare’ Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I
Learned from My Grandmother,” Text and Performance Quarterly 21, no. 1 (January 2001): 3.
10. Roderick A. Ferguson, Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
11. See, for example, Sarah Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2017). Valuable political uses of “lesbian feminist” may be distinguished from radical feminist
positions that feature an antipathy to trans women.
12. I have used “music studies” as the encompassing term for all ways of studying any kind of
music. Some scholars have argued that the term “musicology” could be used in that very general
way. I like this proposal. But the term “musicology” still retains a strong association with the
historical study of WAM, and some people do not hear it in the more general sense. On
“musicology” as a general term for music studies, see Stephen Amico, “‘We are All
Musicologists Now,’ or, the End of Ethnomusicology,” The Journal of Musicology 37, no. 1
(Winter 2020): 1–32.
13. For an excellent account of the problematic role of classical music in musical academia, see
Loren Kajikawa, “The Possessive Investment in Classical Music: Confronting Legacies of
White Supremacy in U. S. Schools and Departments of Music,” in Kimberlé Williams
Crenshaw, ed., Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2019), 155–174.
Were this project to be undertaken afresh in the present time, I would want to have a stronger
14. representation of sound studies.
15. Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1998).
16. Queer scholarly studies of music have been primarily Anglophone; my own orientation to U.S.
research will be obvious in this introduction, and this book was created by editors and associate
editors in the United States and England. I regret any parochialism reflected in this introduction
and the broad editorial decisions of this Handbook, and I urge people with different knowledge
to press ahead with their work and develop their areas of inquiry in all the ways they can.
17. I offered a sketch of these developments in “What was Critical Musicology?,” Radical
Musicology 5 (2010–2011): unpaginated.
18. See http://ams-lgbtq.org.
19. Gregory Barz, “Queering the Field: An Introduction,” in Gregory Barz and William Cheng, eds.,
Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (New York: Oxford University Press,
2020), 7–27.
20. It might be imagined that there is not, at present, LGBTQ+-related discrimination in
workplaces, or in professional settings such as conferences; nor anxieties about what to include
in a resume or what to say in a job application. That would be wrong. See, for instance, Fred
Everett Maus, “LGBTQ+ Lives in Professional Music Theory,” Music Theory Online 26, no. 1
(March 2020), https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.1/mto.20.26.1.maus.html. Queer groups in
professional organizations remain important resources in many ways.
21. Introductions to special journal issues on gender and sexuality take note of this reticence.
Barbara Bradby and Dave Laing, “Introduction to ‘Gender and Sexuality’ Special Issue,”
Popular Music 20, no. 3 (2001): 295–300; Aaron Lecklider, “Introduction,” Journal of Popular
Music Studies 18, no. 2 (2006): 117–123.
22. Philip Brett, “Britten and Grimes,” in Music and Sexuality in Britten, ed. George E. Haggerty
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 11–24. First published in
Musical Times, 1977.
23. Richard Dyer, “In Defence of Disco,” in Only Entertainment (London: Routledge, 1992), 151–
160. First published in Gay Left, 1979.
24. Karen E. Petersen, “An Investigation into Women-Identified Music in the United States,” in
Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ellen Koskoff (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1987), 203–212. Carolina Robertson (as Carol E. Robertson), “Power and Gender in the
Musical Experiences of Women,” in Koskoff, Women and Music, 225–244.
25. Dee Mosbacher and Boden Sandstrom, Radical Harmonies (Woman Vision, 2002). Eileen M.
Hayes, Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women’s Music (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2010).
26. D.A. Miller, The Novel and the Police (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1989). Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 2nd ed. (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2008). First published 1990.
27. Susan McClary, “Introduction,” in Philip Brett, Music and Sexuality in Britten, ed. George E.
Haggerty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 3.
28. Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2002). First published 1991. On Tchaikovsky, see “Sexual
Politics in Classical Music,” 53–79.
29. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, eds., Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and
Lesbian Musicology, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006). First published 1994.
30. Mary McIntosh, “The Homosexual Role,” Social Problems 16, 2 (Autumn 1968): 182–192.
31. Philip Brett, “Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet,” in Brett, Wood, and Thomas, Queering
the Pitch, 9–26.
32. Suzanne G. Cusick, “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music: A Serious Attempt Not to Think
Straight,” in Brett, Wood, and Thomas, Women and Music, 71.
33. Ibid., 67–83.
34. John Gill, Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Music
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
35. Walter Hughes, “In the Empire of the Beat: Discipline and Disco,” in Microphone Fiends: Youth
Music and Youth Culture, ed. Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose (New York: Routledge, 1994), 147–
157.
36. Zoe C. Sherinian, “Sounding Out-Ethnomusicology: Theoretical Reflection on Queer Fieldnotes
and performance,” in Barz and Cheng, Queering the Field, 31-52, and Gillian M. Rodger,
“Queer in the Field? What Happens When Neither ‘Queer’ Nor ‘The Field’ Is Clearly
Defined?,” op. cit., 67–90.
37. A version of this paper was published posthumously. Brett, “Queer Musical Orientalism,” in
Echo: A Music-Centered Journal 9, no. 1 (2009): unpaginated.
38. Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta (as Luis-Manuel Garcia), “‘Can You Feel it Too?’: Intimacy and
Affect at Electronic Dance Music Events in Paris, Chicago, and Berlin” (PhD diss., University
of Chicago, 2011), and subsequent publications. Mosbacher and Sandstrom, Radical Harmonies.
Hayes, Songs in Black and Lavender. Stephen Amico, Roll Over, Tchaikovsky!: Russian Popular
Music and Post-Soviet Homosexuality (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014).
Moshe Morad, Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba (New
York: Routledge, 2019). Tes Slominski, Trad Nation: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Irish
Traditional Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2020).
39. For other recent texts touching on the history of queer ethnomusicology, see Gregory Barz,
“Queering the Field: An Introduction,” in Barz and Cheng, Queering the Field, 7–27; and
Steven Moon, “Queer Theory, Ethno/Musicology, and the Disorientation of the Field,” Current
Musicology 106 (2020): 9–33.
40. For a lively account, see Martin Scherzinger, “Please Resume Your Normal Activities: Music
Theory and Queer Issues at SMT 1999,” in GLSG Newsletter 10, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 2–4,
http://ams-lgbtq.org/newsletters-archive.
41. Joseph Kerman, “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 2
(Winter 1980): 311–331.
42. McClary, “Sexual Politics in Classical Music,” in Feminine Endings, 53–79; “Constructions of
Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,” in Brett, Wood, and Thomas, Queering the Pitch, 205–233.
43. Versions of the papers mentioned were all published, though not in music theory journals.
Charles Fisk, “Schubertian Confidences,” GLSG Newsletter 10, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 4–7. Martin
Scherzinger (with Neville Hoad), “Anton Webern and the Concept of Symmetrical Inversion: A
Reconsideration on the Terrain of Gender,” repercussions 6, no. 2 (1997): 63–147. Jennifer
Rycenga, “Endless Caresses: Queer Exuberance in Large-Scale Form in Rock,” in Queering the
Popular Pitch, ed. Sheila Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga (New York: Routledge, 2006), 235–
247. Ivan Raykoff, “Transcription, Transgression, and the (Pro)creative Urge,” in Queer
Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell (Champaign-
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 150–176. Nadine Hubbs, “A French Connection:
Modernist Codes in the Musical Closet,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 6, no. 3
(2000): 389–412. Fred Everett Maus, “The Disciplined Subject of Musical Analysis,” in Beyond
Structural Listening: Postmodern Modes of Hearing, ed. Andrew Dell’Antonio (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 13–43.
44. Gavin Lee, ed., Queer Music Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, in preparation).
45. Brett and Wood was commissioned for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians but
suffered unwelcome editorial interventions. It is best read in its original form, as published in
the GLSG Newsletter or the second edition of Queering the Pitch. Brett and Wood, “The
ORIGINAL Version of the New Grove Article,” GLSG Newsletter 11, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 3–
14. Brett and Wood, “Lesbian and Gay Music,” in Brett, Wood, and Thomas, Queering the
Pitch, 351–378. Judith Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity
from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005).
46. Barbara Bradby and David Laing, eds., “Gender and Sexuality,” special issue, Popular Music
20, no. 3 (March 2002). Aaron Lecklider, ed., “Queer Studies,” special issue, Journal of
Popular Music Studies 18, no. 2 (August 2006). Tavia Nyong’o and Francesca Royster,
eds.,“Trans/Queer,” special issue, Journal of Popular Music Studies 25, no. 4 (December 2013).
47. Sheila Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga, eds., Queering the Popular Pitch (New York: Routledge,
2006).
48. Sheila Whiteley, Kip Pegley, Jennifer Rycenga, Suzanne G. Cusick, Martha Mockus, and Paul
Attinello, “Queering the Pitch: Past, Present, and Future,” GLSG Newsletter 14, no. 1 (Spring
2004): 1–15, http://ams-lgbtq.org/newsletters-archive.
49. Jacob Sagrans, Keith Wace, and Lloyd Whitesell, eds. Cumulative LGBTQ Music Bibliography,
2019. Access at http://ams-lgbtq.org/queer-musicology-bibliography or
https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/sexuality. Whitesell has also published a superb brief annotated
bibliography, “Queer Musicology,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2020,
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/.
50. The categorization by subject matter as classical and popular is not part of the bibliography,
which does not sort the entries. It is mine, and matches my sense of disciplinary conversations.
It is not exhaustive; many entries do not fit either category.
51. Suggestions for additional references may be sent to Lloyd Whitesell; the address is at the
beginning of the Bibliography.
52. Emily Wilbourne, ed., “Race-ing Queer Music Scholarship,” special issue, Women & Music: A
Journal of Gender and Culture 22 (2018).
53. Laina Dawes, ed. “Queering and Quaring Musicology,” special issue, Current Musicology 106
(July 2020).
54. Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, Queer Country (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
forthcoming).
55. But see Roberta Lamb, “Music Trouble: Desire, Discourse, Education,” Canadian University
Music Review 18, no. 1 (1997): 84–98; Elizabeth Gould, “Desperately Seeking Marsha: Music
and Lesbian Imagination,” Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 4, no. 3
(September 2005): unpaginated.
56. The Cumulative LGBTQ Music Bibliography includes entries on music education. Material from
the first conference appears in Gregory F. DeNardo and Allen R.Legutki, eds., “Establishing
Identity: LGBT Studies & Music Education—Select Conference Proceedings,” Bulletin of the
Council for Research in Music Education 188 (Spring 2011): 9–64.
57. Colin Andrew Lee, Music at the Edge: The Music Therapy Experiences of a Musician with
AIDS (New York and London, Routledge, 1996).
58. “A Special Issue on Queering Music Therapy,” Candice Bain and Maevon Gumble, eds., Voices:
A World Forum for Music Therapy 19, no. 3 (2019).
59. Colin Lee, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Queer and Trans Music Therapy (New York: Oxford
University Press, in preparation).
60. Karen Tongson, Why Karen Carpenter Matters (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019). Susan
Fast and Craig Jennex, eds., Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist
Interventions (New York: Routledge, 2019). Morad, Fiesta de diez pesos. Vincent L. Stephens,
Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered
Pop Music (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019). Gregory Barz and William
Cheng, eds., Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2020). Ashon T. Crawley, The Lonely Letters (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020).
Grace Elizabeth Hale, Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and
Changed American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020). Alisha
Lola Jones, Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel
Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). Matthew J. Jones, Love Don’t Need a
Reason: The Life & Music of Michael Callen (Goleta: Punctum Books, 2020). Slominski, Trad
Nation.
61. Available at https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/page/about.
62. For example, Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Abingdon and New York:
Routledge, 1979).
63. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 40th-anniversary ed.
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). First published 1976.
64. Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay
Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991), 13–31.
65. Sue-Ellen Case, “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic,” Discourse 11, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 1988–
1989): 55–73.
66. Excellent earlier studies of queer versions in music include Mark J. Butler, “Taking it Seriously:
Intertextuality and Authenticity in Two Covers by the Pet Shop Boys,” Popular Music 22, no.
11 (January 2003): 1–19, and Raykoff, “Transcription, Transgression, and the (Pro)creative
Urge,” in Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Fuller and Whitesell, 150–176.
67. Pauline Oliveros, Software for People: Collected Writings 1963–1980 (Baltimore: Smith
Publications, 1984), 182.
68. Tim Ingold, “Four Objections to the Concept of Soundscape,” in Being Alive: Essays on
Movement, Knowledge, and Description (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 136. Ingold
specifically warns that sound recording is misleading in its separation of sound from the world
(136–137).
69. Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life & Work of an Uncommon Man (New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 1999). Martha Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian
Musicality (New York: Routledge, 2008). Joshua Gamson, The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend,
the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco (New York: Picador, 2005). Alice Echols, Scars of
Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
2000).
70. See Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York:
Routledge, 1991).
71. Wayne Koestenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire
(New York: Poseiden Press, 1993). D.A. Miller, Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). Cusick: see note 32. Philip Brett, “Piano Four-
Hands: Schubert and the Performance of Gay Male Desire,” 19th-Century Music 21, no. 2
(Autumn 1997), 149–176.
72. Brett, “Musicality,” 23.
73. Maynard Solomon, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” 19th-Century
Music 12, no. 3 (1989), 193–206.
74. Brett, “Piano Four-Hands,” 150.
75. Ibid., 171.
76. This is somewhat like Michelle Kisliuk’s criterion for personal material in ethnomusicology:
“Most anthropologists and other ethnographers have not been trained to distinguish between
self-indulgence and ethnographically-relevant experience, and have thereby impaired
themselves and their readers. The way to distinguish, I suggest, is to ask ourselves whether an
experience changed us in a way that significantly affected how we viewed, reacted to, or
interpreted the ethnographic material (and to write with those connections in mind).”
“(Un)doing Fieldwork: Sharing Songs, Sharing Lives,” in Gregory Barz and Timothy J. Cooley,
Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, 2nd ed. (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
77. See Marion A. Guck, “Music Loving, or the Relationship with the Piece,” Journal of
Musicology 15, no. 3 (Summer 1997), 343–352.
78. John McCullough, Reckless Paper Birds (London: Penned in the Margins, 2019).
79. Michel Foucault’s transformative proposal that sexuality has a history includes, influentially, his
dating of homosexuality to the late nineteenth century. Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An
Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
80. I am grateful to many people who helped me think about aspects of this Introduction: Christina
Baade, Matti Bunzl, Andre Cavalcante, Jennifer Fraser, Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, Matthew
Jones, Ellen Koskoff, Horace Maxile, Susan McClary, Gregory Mitchell, Mitchell Morris, Tavia
Nyong’o, Ann Powers, Gillian Rodger, Tes Slominski, Stephen Stuempfle, and Lloyd Whitesell.
Special thanks to Associate Editor Zoe Sherinian for detailed, insightful, consequential
comments on a draft of the full introduction.
R
American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory. 2020. Annual Meeting Program
Guide,
https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.amsmusicology.org/resource/resmgr/files/virtual2020/final_guides/a
ms-smt_program-guide_2020-1.pdf.
“The Queer Nation Manifesto,” 1990. Available at
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/queernation.html.
Ahmed, Sarah. Living a Feminist Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.
Amico, Stephen. Roll Over, Tchaikovsky!: Russian Popular Music and Post-Soviet Homosexuality.
Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014.
Amico, Stephen. “‘We are All Musicologists Now,’ or, the End of Ethnomusicology.” The Journal of
Musicology 37, no. 1 (Winter 2020): 1–32.
Bain, Candice and Maevon Gumble, eds. “A Special Issue on Queering Music Therapy.” Voices: A
World Forum for Music Therapy 19, no. 3 (2019).
Barz, Gregory. “Queering the Field: An Introduction.” In Queering the Field: Sounding Out
Ethnomusicology, edited by Gregory Barz and William Cheng, 7–27. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2020.
Barz, Gregory and William Cheng, eds. Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Bradby, Barbara and David Laing, eds. “Gender and Sexuality.” Special issue, Popular Music 20, no.
3 (March 2002).
Brett, Philip. “Britten and Grimes.” In Music and Sexuality in Britten, edited by George E. Haggerty,
11–24. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. First published in Musical
Times, 1977.
Brett, Philip. “Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet.” In Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and
Lesbian Musicology, 2nd ed., edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, 9–26.
New York: Routledge, 2006.
Brett, Philip. “Piano Four-Hands: Schubert and the Performance of Gay Male Desire.” 19th-Century
Music 21, no. 2 (Autumn 1997): 149–176.
Brett, Philip. “Queer Musical Orientalism.” Echo: A Music-Centered Journal 9, no. 1 (2009),
unpaginated.
Brett, Philip and Elizabeth Wood. “The ORIGINAL Version of the New Grove Article.” GLSG
Newsletter 11, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 3-14. “Lesbian and Gay Music.” Reprinted in Queering the
Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, 2nd ed., edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and
Gary C. Thomas, 351–378. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Brett, Philip, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, eds. Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and
Lesbian Musicology, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006. First published 1994.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.
Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” In Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay
Theories, edited by Diana Fuss, 13–31. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Butler, Mark J. “Taking it Seriously: Intertextuality and Authenticity in Two Covers by the Pet Shop
Boys.” Popular Music 22, no. 1 (January 2003): 1–19.
Case, Sue-Ellen. “Towards a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” Discourse 11, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 1988–
1989): 55–73.
Cohen, Cathy J. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens.” GLQ 3 (1997): 437–485.
Crawley, Ashon T. The Lonely Letters. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique
of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago
Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–167.
Cusick, Suzanne G. “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music: A Serious Attempt Not to Think
Straight.” In Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, 2nd ed., edited by Philip
Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, 67–83. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Dawes, Laina, ed. “Queering and Quaring Musicology.” Special issue. Current Musicology 106 (July
2020).
DeNardo, Gregory F. and Allen R.Legutki, eds. “Establishing Identity: LGBT Studies & Music
Education—Select Conference Proceedings.” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music
Education 188 (Spring 2011): 9–64.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 40th-anniversary ed.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. First published 1976.
Dyer, Richard. “In Defence of Disco.” In Only Entertainment, 151–160. London: Routledge, 1992.
First published in Gay Left, 1979.
Echols, Alice. Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin. New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 2000.
Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2004.
Fast, Susan and Craig Jennex, eds. Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist
Interventions. New York: Routledge, 2019.
Ferguson, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Fisk, Charles. “Schubertian Confidences.” GLSG Newsletter 10, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 4–7.
Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Gamson, Joshua. The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco.
New York: Picador, 2005.
Garcia-Mispireta, Luis Manuel (as Luis-Manuel Garcia). “‘Can You Feel it Too?’: Intimacy and
Affect at Electronic Dance Music Events in Paris, Chicago, and Berlin.” PhD diss., University of
Chicago, 2011.
Gill, John. Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Music.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
Gould, Elizabeth. “Desperately Seeking Marsha: Music and Lesbian Imagination.” Action, Criticism,
and Theory for Music Education 4, no. 3 (September 2005), unpaginated.
Guck, Marion A. “Music Loving, or the Relationship with the Piece.” Journal of Musicology 15, no.
3 (Summer 1997): 343–352.
Halberstam, Jack. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
Hale, Grace Elizabeth. Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed
American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge,
1991.
Hayes, Eileen M. Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women’s Music. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 1979.
Hubbs, Nadine. “A French Connection: Modernist Codes in the Musical Closet.” GLQ: A Journal of
Lesbian and Gay Studies 6, no. 3 (2000): 389–412.
Hughes, Walter. “In the Empire of the Beat: Discipline and Disco.” In Microphone Fiends: Youth
Music and Youth Culture, edited by Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose, 147–157. New York:
Routledge, 1994.
Ingold, Tim. “Four Objections to the Concept of Soundscape.” In Being Alive: Essays on Movement,
Knowledge, and Description, 136–139. London and New York: Routledge, 2011.
Johnson, E. Patrick. “‘Quare’ Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I
Learned from My Grandmother.” Text and Performance Quarterly 21, no. 1 (January 2001): 1–25.
Johnson, E. Patrick and Mae G. Henderson, eds. Black Queer Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2005.
Jones, Alisha Lola. Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel
Performance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Jones, Matthew J. Love Don’t Need a Reason: The Life and Music of Michael Callen. Goleta:
Punctum Books, 2020.
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PA RT I
KINDS OF MUSIC
CHAPTER 2
E dance music (EDM)1 scenes have long had to deal with the
impact of cycles of wider popularity and exposure, which have often
strained their connection to the original contexts of their emergence. For
many of these scenes, their origins can be traced to the urban nocturnal
worlds of sexual and ethnic/racial minorities. Such worlds have historically
played an important role in queer lives as “counterpublics”2—that is,
protected spaces where nonnormative forms of embodied stranger-sociality
can flourish and alternate modes of collective life can be temporarily
sustained. Therefore, given the importance of these originating music
scenes to their minoritized participants as spaces of survival, comfort,
recognition, and community-building, it is equally important to examine
this pattern of estrangement and assess its stakes for the queers of color3
who have played a pivotal role in this music’s development.
This chapter seeks to redress the lacunae of conventional electronic
dance music historiography by providing a revised (and necessarily
condensed) account that focuses on issues of sexuality and race in the early
years of disco, house, garage, and techno. Furthermore, it traces queer
counterhistories into the present, which militate against the apparent
disappearance of queers of color from the scenes where electronic dance
music has continued to develop. Nonlinear, fragmentary, and scattered
geographically by necessity, these counterhistories include the midtown
Manhattan deep-house scene of the 1990s, vogue balls, circuit parties
(yearly, large-scale, highly commercialized gay men’s dance events), Paris’s
queer women’s dance scene, the continuing queer scene of Berlin, and a
transnational network of South Asian queer dance nights.
Audiences change, music travels, new substyles emerge, and the music
industry’s marketing methods often intervene. From disco to the
innumerable sample-based dance music styles that have spawned in its
wake, a double transformation continues to take place, wherein the
participation of queers of color seems to decline, while their mythical status
as originators ossifies in layers of nostalgia and fetishized projection. This
double transformation is apparent in current-day Berlin, for example, a city
that has regained its status as an international center for electronic dance
music during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Notably, the years since around 2010 have seen a resurgence in the
popularity of disco and early house music—both styles historically and
imaginatively associated with racialized queerness. After the implosion of
Berlin’s 1990s rave scene—centered mostly around harder versions of
techno and trance styles—the city’s dance music scenes reemerged with
their own minimal substyle, which featured starkly minimalist textures
taken from techno, swinging drum patterns taken from house music, and an
emphasis on hypnotic, slowly shifting patterns. But by the end of the
decade, a backlash against this apparently overplayed and overexposed
minimal style was taking shape both in Berlin and abroad, and soon certain
DJs, venues, and event promoters began to show a renewed interest in disco
and the classic, “old-school” house music of the 1980s and 1990s.
For example, many of the resident DJs of Panorama Bar/Berghain, such
as Tama Sumo, ND_Baumecker, Boris, and (until 2012) Prosumer, have
risen to prominence with a repertoire that ranges from early disco to mid-
1990s “deep house,” along with new tracks that have a classic sound (e.g.,
in 2013, this included productions by SoundStream, Morgan Geist, and
Bicep, as well as recent releases on Rush Hour Recordings). It is likely no
coincidence that these disco-friendly DJs are all queer-identified, holding
residencies at a nightclub that has its origins in queer fetish parties.
This renewed appetite for early disco and house-music tracks has come
with a strong sense of nostalgia for the golden age of these styles, and this
yearning for a charmed past has brought with it images (and imaginings) of
the queer, racialized clientele that filled such clubs as The Loft (New York),
Paradise Garage (New York), and The Warehouse (Chicago). This retro turn
has generated a sharp rise in demand for veteran American DJs from the
early years of house music—most of them men of African-American or
Afro-Caribbean descent, and some also queer—in Berlin’s clubs, as well as
all over Europe. Further, against the background of predominantly white
European audiences, these DJs’ perceived race and sexuality often take on
renewed symbolic significance as markers of authenticity, as living links to
a lost era of plenitude. Since the early 2010s, electronic dance music fans in
Berlin have been willing to wait in hourlong queues and squeeze into
overcapacity venues to see a real house DJ, where “real” often stands for
some combination of American, Black, Latinx, and queer.4
This investment in a historically freighted, aura-imbued, sexual-racial
nexus of identities is by no means unique to Berlin, nor is the diminishing
profile of queer and/or nonwhite participants in electronic dance music
scenes a recent, Berlin-specific development. In 2011, for example,
unreleased material recorded by early Chicago house-music artists more
than 20 years earlier was published to great international success by a
Dutch record label. Rush Hour Recordings released Resurrection (2011,
RH-113-BOX), a five-LP box set of 30 previously unreleased tracks by the
1980s house duo Virgo Four, personally selected by the label’s manager
from hundreds of four-track demo tapes.
In all the advertising for Resurrection, Rush Hour never failed to
mention that all the tracks were previously unreleased, recorded between
1984 and 1990 in various home studios. Despite the steep price-tag of 45
euros (not including shipping for a very heavy box of vinyl), Resurrection
sold out quickly, and soon the box set appeared on secondhand vinyl
websites like Discogs.com, with a substantial markup.5 One of the singles
from the collection, “It’s a Crime,” became a worldwide club anthem over
the summer of 2011. The collection was well received in Chicago, where
house-music fans (both young and old) were pleased to see a renewed
international interest in the city’s music producers (albeit with a historical
slant). And yet, in a city that still is racially hypersegregated, many of the
predominantly white and straight house-music fans of Chicago’s North Side
scene were only discovering this dimension of their city’s music history
through a Dutch recording label, 20 years later. Meanwhile, Chicago’s
original queer Black scenes are alive and well, still partying in the
interstices of the urban landscape.
Diverse queer dance-music scenes continue to thrive today, largely out
of the view of the globalized master narratives of electronic dance music
historiography. But if these scenes are the modern-day incarnations of those
that founded electronic dance music’s central cluster of genres, why are
they not attracting more attention and reverence? The remainder of this
chapter is composed of histories and counterhistories.
I first recount the conventional and oft-repeated histories of disco and its
inheritors, noting where queers and people of color both entered and exited
the scene of storytelling. I then turn to a cluster of counternarratives,
traversing a set of case studies that ranges from vogue balls to circuit parties
to Parisian lesbian discothèques to Berlin’s ongoing queer dance scene, in
order to trace continuities in queer dance-music activity right into the
present. In this sense, my project here is a historical-revisionist one, but it is
also critically presentist:6 it reveals how electronic dance music
historiography occludes the present-day musical worlds of queers of color.
Why have queerness and Blackness/brownness been frozen in the past—
like the “primitive” research subjects of early anthropology—to be
aestheticized, fetishized, and mourned as “lost,” when the corresponding
scenes continue to flourish in the present?
H
Indeed, there is much, much more to electronic dance music history than
what appears on the web pages of its dominant historians—and the
undeniably political dimension of this situation is that the musical worlds of
queers of color are conspicuously left out of the story. Instead, they are
relegated to the distant historical past, left to imbue electronic dance
music’s genesis story with an aura of subcultural authenticity while
apparently remaining absent from its current mainstream—or even its
cutting edge. Meanwhile, present-day queer nightlife scenes appear to float
at the margins, unmoored from electronic dance music’s historical
timeline.58
Perhaps this is because classical historiography tends to see beginnings
and endings where there were gradual shifts, emergences, and
metamorphoses. The counterhistories related thus far, in contrast, describe
ever-changing continuities that link successive generations of queer dancers
and music-lovers. Many of these scenes are both progressive and
conservative, keeping queer musical/dance traditions alive while altering
and adapting them to changing circumstances. Further, despite their relative
obscurity, they continue to serve as crucibles for far-reaching cultural
developments in mainstream media.
But perhaps this state of affairs has something to do with a felt absence
in the middle of electronic dance music scenes themselves. As this cluster
of musical styles have gained in popularity, its demographics have changed,
shifting the discursive center of these musical counterpublics and
progressively weakening their claims to subcultural, countercultural, and
outsider status. Whose refuge is this “House Nation,” when it has become
the domain of white, middle-class, straight, privileged partygoers?
So, in the electronic dance music scenes of Berlin, Paris, London,
Chicago, Toronto, New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere, the dwindling
presence of queers of color seems to be registered as a degradation in the
scene’s subcultural authenticity—like a faded photograph, bleached of
color. This felt loss, in turn, generates anxieties that are sublimated into a
yearning for a dark, culturally rich queer past of vibrant colors and affective
intensity. While present-day queer dance culture would only serve to
remind these larger, more mainstream scenes of this absence, this disco-era
and house-era imaginary holds out the promise to imbue electronic dance
music scenes with a sense of subcultural “realness.” And, while the veteran
Black and Latinx DJs of these early electronic dance music scenes enjoy
renewed attention during this most recent retro turn in house music, they
may also serve a more problematic purpose. Rather than the popular
romantic view of DJs as spiritual leaders or shamans, minority-identified
DJs risk becoming fetishized as totems of racial and queer authenticity,
bestowing validation with their presence upon music events that may have
little to do with their own experiences and affinities.
“What has happened to the minority-identity-politic music?” asks Pablo
“Beaner” Roman-Alcalá, a Chicano-American house DJ who also serves as
the slapstick-but-deadly serious evangelist for the political artists’
collective, La Mission, “Is it now only being played for privileged
honkies?” Based in Berlin, La Mission operates as an ongoing queer Latinx
performance art project, an anticapitalist record label, and a horizonalist-
syndicalist art collective—all of it expressed through a camp pastiche of
charismatic doomsday cults and references to the satirical film Network
(1976). I have found myself recruited to the cause since La Mission’s
founding in 2012, contributing essays to the magazines that are distributed
with the collective’s vinyl EP releases.59
Politically, the members of La Mission are invested in the transformative
potential of utopianism, particularly in the politically engaged sense
developed by Ernest Bloch and José Estéban Muñoz.60 In this view, queer
utopias are not merely escapist refuges for society’s outcasts, but also
rehearsal spaces for a better tomorrow—places where one can stage a more
livable world and then ask why it is not already a reality.
Thus the importance of Roman-Alcalá’s provocatively phrased question.
Early disco and house scenes undoubtedly served utopian functions within
minoritized queer communities, providing a safe space where these
marginalized “others” could build worlds that made survival possible and
improvement imaginable. So, what are the stakes when both the soundtrack
and the imagery of minoritized groups’ utopias are turned into the fodder of
mainstream consumption? What is lost and what is gained when queers of
color are frozen into history, to serve as a subcultural fetish for the
authenticity that more privileged consumers feel they have lost?
If, as Thaemlitz suggests, house-music culture is primarily shaped by the
efforts of marginalized peoples to construct a space where they can feel
important, what are we to make of more recent resurgences in this culture,
where these same groups seem to be only valued in absentia? Where does
that leave the queer nightlife scenes that still thrive today? Certainly, similar
questions have already been asked in relation to the shifting listenership and
mainstreaming of jazz, salsa, hip-hop, and other forms of racially and
ethnically marked expressive culture—but that does not make this problem
any less pressing. Whose house is this, anyway?
In the time that has elapsed from the first draft of this chapter until the
last, developments in global politics, as well as the electronic dance music
industry, seem to have provided some preliminary answers to these
questions. The electronic dance music boom that has been taking place
since at least 2010 has mainstreamed this genre in a manner that profitably
repackages queer, Latinx, and Black culture for the consumption of
predominantly white, straight, and cisgendered audiences—a pattern
recognizable in the history of other Afrodiasporic music genres within
popular music industries (e.g., jazz, blues, rock, hip-hop, reggaetón). And
as the prevailing logics of “ethical consumption” encourage consumers to
view their choices as endorsement or material support, the enjoyment of
Afrodiasporic, queer, and transgender musical subculture enables more
privileged electronic dance music fans to view their tastes as proof of their
progressive values, leaving unexamined the workings of patriarchy and
white supremacy within their own scenes. Notably, the fascination with
visual and aural representations of historically distant queers of color serves
to cover the absence of living ones on their dance floors.
The political incoherence pooling under electronic dance music has
become more apparent in 2016–2017, as the resurgence of right-wing,
neofascist politics in the United States and Europe has drawn latent bigotry
back into the public sphere. While many artists, labels, and event organizers
have publicly positioned themselves in opposition to this conservative turn
—invoking the Black, brown, queer, and transgender histories of the music
scene as an ethical call to arms—there has also been a spate of
controversies within electronic music discourse about bigoted statements or
instances of harassment and assault. The heated and increasingly polarized
debate surrounding these controversies has exposed a seam of reactionary
conservatism under the surface of electronic dance music culture.
The most depressing answer to the questions this chapter asks might be
that contemporary electronic dance music culture has been coopted and
perverted into a fig leaf for the persistence of systems of oppression. A
slightly more optimistic answer may be that these controversies are the
inevitable outcome of queers of color, women, and transfolk having more
success in intervening within these fields of cultural production (and profit).
Indeed, a persistent theme in online political discourse of these past few
years is how unsurprised queers of color are by this resurgent conservatism:
they always knew that mainstream popular culture did not welcome them as
much as their creativity. It is nonetheless a rude awakening for many in
electronic dance music scenes, but one that may yet prove salutary.
N
1. “Electronic dance music (EDM)” is a broad term originally developed in academic and
journalistic contexts to refer to any style of postdisco, sample-based dance music without
reducing it to its venues (e.g., club music, rave music), prioritizing one style over others (e.g.,
techno music), or conflating it with very different musical fields that have already laid claim to
“electronic music” (e.g. electroacoustic music). A recent popularization of the term—especially
the acronym—in mainstream media, however, has complicated the semantic field, such that it
can also refer to a more limited spectrum of dance music genres that have gained mainstream
popularity in North America since 2010 (e.g., dubstep, moombahton, trap). Nonetheless, the
usage of “electronic dance music” in this chapter refers to the term’s initial use as an analytic
metacategory; when discussing concrete cases, I will instead employ case-specific terms such as
“deep house” or “minimal techno.” In any case, the scholarly use of the term “electronic dance
music” continues with the 2009 inauguration of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music
Culture. For examples of this scholarly usage, see Kai Fikentscher, “You Better Work!”
Underground Dance Music in New York City (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000);
David Hesmondhalgh, “International Times: Fusions, Exoticisms, and Antiracism in Electronic
Dance Music,” in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation
in Music, ed. Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2000); Susana Loza, “Sampling (Hetero)Sexuality: Diva-Ness and
Discipline in Electronic Dance Music,” Popular Music 20, no. 3 (2001); Kembrew McLeod,
“Genres, Subgenres, Sub-Subgenres, and More: Musical and Social Differentiation with
Electronic/Dance Music Communities,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 13, no. 1 (2001);
Robert Fink, Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005); Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, “On and
On: Repetition as Process and Pleasure in Electronic Dance Music,” Music Theory Online 11,
no. 4 (2005): http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.05.11.4/mto.05.11.4.garcia.html; Mark J.
Butler, Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Rebekah Farrugia, Beyond the Dance Floor:
Female DJs, Technology and Electronic Dance Music Culture (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2012);
Alistair Fraser, “The Spaces, Politics, and Cultural Economies of Electronic Dance Music,”
Geography Compass 6, no. 8 (2012): 500–511.
2. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002).
3. In keeping with the theoretical framing of this volume, I use “queers of color” here as an
inclusive category that can span a range of sexualities, gender expressions, and ethnic/racial
identities. I do so advisedly, however, with the understanding that such terms may not have been
in use or predominant in the various scenes that I discuss here. I use more specific categories of
gender, sexuality, and ethnicity as appropriate in the descriptions of individual scenes, but
“queers of color” remains the metaconcept that permits me to suture these case studies into a
larger narrative.
4. Some examples from 2015 include Joe Claussell, Shaun J. Wright, Carlos Souffront, Miss
Honey Dijon, Sadar Bahar, Ron Trent, and Rahaan.
5. For the listing on Discogs, see http://www.discogs.com/sell/list?release_id=2743970&ev=rb.
6. Readers will no doubt note that the historical and counterhistorical narratives presented here
lack truly global breadth, leaving out the Global South and East Asian regions. This is partially
because the initial lines of flight for disco and its successors are anchored in North American
and European urban centers, but this does not mean that there are no stories to tell about
electronic dance music elsewhere in the world. Indeed, much historical work remains to be done
on the early days of electronic dance music outside the West and the North.
7. Anthony Haden-Guest, The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night (New
York: William Morrow, 1997); Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music
and Dance Culture (London: Picador, 1998); Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a
DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (New York: Grove Press, 2000); Tim
Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Peter Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around: The Secret
History of Disco (New York: Faber and Faber, 2005); Alice Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the
Remaking of American Culture (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).
8. Vince Aletti, “Discotheque Rock ’72: Paaaaarty!” Rolling Stone, September 13, 1973.
9. Ibid.
10. For an account of Siano’s founding of The Gallery, just as Mancuso’s Loft was drawing to a
close, see Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: 99–112.
11. Vince Aletti, “Vince Aletti Interviewed,” in The Disco Files 1973–78: New York’s Underground,
Week by Week, ed. Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster (London: DJhistory.com, 2009), 455.
12. John Badham, Saturday Night Fever (United States: Paramount Pictures, 1977).
13. This displacement was likely facilitated by the sort of perceived pan-Mediterranean cultural and
affective continuities between Hispanic and Italian ethnicities that Nadine Hubbs identifies in
the American reception of late-1970s disco. Nadine Hubbs, “‘I Will Survive’: Musical
Mappings of Queer Social Space in a Disco Anthem,” Popular Music 26, no. 2 (2007): 231–
244.
14. Gillian Frank, “Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash Against Disco,” Journal
of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 2 (2007): 276–306; Hubbs, “‘I Will Survive’: Musical
Mappings of Queer Social Space”; Walter Hughes, “In the Empire of the Beat: Discipline and
Disco,” in Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, ed. Andrew Ross and Tricia
Rose (London: Routledge, 1994); Carolyn Krasnow, “Fear and Loathing in the 70s: Race,
Sexuality, and Disco,” Stanford Humanities Review III, no. 2 (1993): 37–45; Nyong’o, Tavia. “I
Feel Love: Disco and Its Discontents.” Criticism 50, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 101–12; Frank Rose,
“Discophobia: Rock & Roll Fights Back,” Village Voice, November 12, 1979, 35.
15. Echols, Hot Stuff, 207–208; Fink, Repeating Ourselves, 241–242n16; Frank, “Discophobia,”
290n50; Reynolds, Energy Flash, 24.
16. Murray Forman, The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002).
17. There are now several historical accounts that cover this event in great detail: Echols, Hot Stuff;
Frank, “Discophobia”; Lawrence, Love Saves the Day; Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around.
18. Echols, Hot Stuff; Frank, “Discophobia”; Rose, “Discophobia: Rock & Roll Fights Back.”
19. For instance, Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life; Reynolds, Energy Flash;
Hillegonda Rietveld, This Is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces, and Technologies
(Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998).
Strangely enough, a monograph-length history of Chicago’s postdisco dance music scenes has
20.
yet to be written. Nonetheless, the city appears prominently in nearly every historical account of
house music: Brewster and Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life; Matthew Collin and
John Godfrey, Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House (London: Serpent’s
Tail, 1997); Marcel Feige and Kai-Uwe Müller, Deep in Techno: Die Ganze Geschichte des
Movements [Deep in Techno: A History of the Movement in Its Entirety] (Berlin: Schwarzkopf
& Schwarzkopf, Germany, 2000); Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson, Discographies: Dance
Music, Culture, and the Politics of Sound (New York: Routledge, 1999); Ariel Kyrou, Techno
Rebelle: Un Siècle de Musiques Électroniques (Paris: Denoël, 2002); Alejandro L. Madrid, Nor-
Tec Rifa! Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008); Simon Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1998); Energy Flash; Rietveld, This Is Our House; Hillegonda Rietveld,
“Disco’s Revenge: House Music’s Nomadic Memory,” Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance
Music Culture 2, no. 1 (2011): 4–23; Mireille Silcott, Rave America: New School Dancescapes
(Toronto: ECW Press, 1999); Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural
Capital (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996).
21. Sean Albiez, “Post-Soul Futurama: African American Cultural Politics and Early Detroit
Techno,” European Journal of American Culture 24, no. 2 (2005): 131–152; Christoph Schaub,
“Beyond the Hood? Detroit Techno, Underground Resistance, and African American
Metropolitan Identity Politics,” Forum for Inter-American Research 2, no. 2 (2009),
http://www.interamerica.de/category/volume-2-2/.
22. Albiez, “Post-Soul Futurama”; Reynolds, Energy Flash; Schaub, “Beyond the Hood?”; Dan
Sicko, Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk (New York: Billboard Books, 1999).
23. It is telling that no published history of Detroit techno to date has compared this competitive,
fashion house–inspired social-club system to the “house”/“family” systems of vogue ball
culture, even though this latter system was already largely in place by the late 1970s in larger
US cities. See also notes 36–41.
24. Albiez, “Post-Soul Futurama”; Schaub, “Beyond the Hood?”
25. Carleton S. Gholz, “‘Where the Mix Is Perfect’: Voices from the Post-Motown Soundscape”
(PhD thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2011).
26. Carleton S. Gholz, interview with author, September 10, 2013.
27. See Collin and Godfrey, Altered State; Reynolds, Energy Flash; Thornton, Club Cultures.
28. Keith H. Halfacree and Robert M. Kitchin, “‘Madchester Rave On’: Placing the Fragments of
Popular Music,” Area 28, no. 1 (1996): 47–55; Steve Redhead, Subculture to Clubcultures: An
Introduction to Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1997).
29. Mark Heley and Matthew Collin, “Summer of Love 1989,” i-D, September 1989.
30. Silcott, Rave America.
31. Ibid., 103.
32. For more on the notion of hypersegregation, which was developed in part to describe the racial
landscape of Chicago, see Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, “Hypersegregation in U.S.
Metropolitan Areas: Black and Hispanic Segregation Along Five Dimensions,” Demography 26,
no. 3 (1989): 373–391; Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid:
Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1993); Loïc Wacquant, Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality
(Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008); Rima Wilkes and John Iceland, “Hypersegregation in the
Twenty-First Century,” Demography 41, no. 1 (2004): 23–36.
33. In popular discourse, “transgender” is often assumed to refer only to binary-identified people
(i.e., trans men and trans women), but the term describes all those whose gender identity does
not align with their socially-ascribed sex, thus including identities such as nonbinary,
genderqueer, genderfluid, and so on.
34. Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk, and Ashwani
Sharma, Dis-Orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1996).
35. Simon Reynolds, “The History of Our World: The Hardcore Continuum Debate,” Dancecult:
Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 1, no. 2 (2010): 69–76.
36. Roger Baker, Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts (New York:
New York University Press, 1995); George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture,
and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994),
http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?clio6986554; Eric Graber, “A Spectacle in Color:
The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem,” in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the
Gay and Lesbian Past, ed. Martin B. Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey (New
York: NAL Books, 1989); Shane Vogel, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality,
Performance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); James Wilson, “‘That’s the Kind of
Gal I Am’: Drag Balls, Lulu Belles, and ‘Sexual Perversion’ in the Harlem Renaissance,” in
Staging Desire: Queer Readings of American Theater History, ed. Kim Marra and Robert A.
Schanke (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002).
37. Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1972).
38. Jennie Livingston, Paris Is Burning (United States: Miramax, 1990). For the debate surrounding
the film and the gender impersonation it portrays, see Judith P. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On
the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993); Ann Cvetkovich, “The Powers of
Seeing and Being Seen: Truth or Dare and Paris Is Burning,” in Film Theory Goes to the
Movies, ed. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins (New York: Routledge 1993):
155–169; Phillip Brian Harper, “‘The Subversive Edge’: Paris Is Burning, Social Critique, and
the Limits of Subjective Agency,” Diacritics 24, no. 2/3 (1994): 90–103; Lucas Hilderbrand,
Paris Is Burning: A Queer Film Classic (Vancouver, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013); bell
hooks, “Is Paris Burning?” Z Magazine, 1991: 60–64; bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and
Class at the Movies (New York: Routledge, 1996).
39. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge,
1990); Butler, Bodies That Matter.
40. Madonna, “Vogue” (Sire W-9851-T, vinyl EP, 12”). Also released on CD and cassette tape. For
more commentary—both academic and journalistic—on this video, see Marcos Becquer and
Jose Gatti, “Elements of Vogue,” Third Text 5, nos. 16–17 (1991): 65–81; Carol Benson and
Allen Metz, The Madonna Companion: Two Decades of Commentary (New York: Schirmer
Books, 1999); David Fraser, “Oral Sex in the Age of Deconstruction: The Madonna Question,
Sex, and the House of Lords,” Australasian Gay & Lesbian LJ 3 (1993): 1; José I. Prieto-
Arranz, “The Semiotics of Performance and Success in Madonna,” Journal of Popular Culture
45, no. 1 (2012): 173–196.
Marlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in
41. Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013); Becquer and Gatti, “Elements of
Vogue”; Jonathan David Jackson, “Improvisation in African-American Vernacular Dancing,”
Dance Research Journal 33, no. 2 (2001): 40–53; Jonathan David Jackson, “The Social World
of Voguing,” Journal of the Anthropological Study of Human Movement 12, no. 2 (2002): 26–
42; José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York:
New York University Press, 2009).
42. Fiona Buckland’s monograph on Manhattan’s queer club world in the 1990s provides a nuanced
and critical ethnographic account of this transformation, including its impact both on the
availability of safer spaces for nonheteronomative sociability and on the personal life-worlds of
individual partygoers. Fiona Buckland, Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World-
Making (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002).
43. Fikentscher, “You Better Work!”
44. Ken Taylor, “DJ Sprinkles: House of Mirrors,” XLR8R, May 5, 2009.
http://www.xlr8r.com/features/2009/05/dj-sprinkles-house-mirrors.
45. In preparation for a similarly themed magazine article for Resident Advisor, I conducted a
lengthy interview with Terre Thaemlitz via email, which is archived in unabridged form here:
https://lmgmblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/terrethaemlitzinterview/.
46. Taylor, “DJ Sprinkles: House of Mirrors.”
47. See journalist Mireille Silcott’s book, which includes a chapter on gay circuit parties: Silcott,
Rave America, 149–182.
48. For example, Grant N. Colfax, Gordon Mansergh, Robert Guzman, Eric Vittinghoff, Gary
Marks, Melissa Rader, and Susan Buchbinder, “Drug Use and Sexual Risk Behavior Among
Gay and Bisexual Men Who Attend Circuit Parties: A Venue-Based Comparison,” Journal of
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 28, no. 4 (2001): 373–379; Steven J. Lee, Marc
Galanter, Helen Dermatis, and David McDowell, “Circuit Parties and Patterns of Drug Use in a
Subset of Gay Men,” Journal of Addictive Diseases 22, no. 4 (2004): 47–60; Andrew M.
Mattison, Michael W. Ross, Tanya Wolfson, and Donald Franklin, “Circuit Party Attendance,
Club Drug Use, and Unsafe Sex in Gay Men,” Journal of Substance Abuse 13, nos. 1–2 (2001):
119–126; Patrick O’Byrne and Dave Holmes, “Desire, Drug Use, and Unsafe Sex: A Qualitative
Examination of Gay Men Who Attend Gay Circuit Parties,” Culture, Health & Sexuality 13, no.
1 (2010): 1–13; but see also Kane Race, “The Death of the Dance Party,” Australian Humanities
Review, no. 30 (2003), http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-October-
2003/race.html; Kane Race, Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Russell Westhaver, “‘Coming Out of Your Skin’:
Circuit Parties, Pleasure, and the Subject,” Sexualities 8, no. 3 (2005): 347–374; Russell
Westhaver, “Flaunting and Empowerment: Thinking About Circuit Parties, the Body, and
Power,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 6 (2006): 611–644.
49. Tammy L. Anderson, Rave Culture: The Alteration and Decline of a Philadelphia Music Scene
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009); Thierry Colombié, Nacer Lalam, and Michel
Schiray, Drogue et Techno: Les Trafiquants de Rave (Paris: Stock, 2000); Kyle Grayson, “The
(Geo)Politics of Dancing: Illicit Drugs and Canadian Rave,” in Chasing Dragons: Security,
Identity, and Illicit Drugs in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Sean Hier,
“Raves, Risks, and the Ecstasy Panic: A Case Study in the Subversive Nature of Moral
Regulation,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 27, no. 1 (2002): 89–105; Geoffrey Hunt, Molly
Moloney, and Kristin Evans, Youth, Drugs, and Night Life (New York: Routledge, 2010);
Thornton, Club Cultures.
50. Maria Pini, Club Cultures and Female Subjectivity: The Move from Home to House
(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001).
51. For example, Judith Halberstam, “What’s That Smell? Queer Temporalities and Subcultural
Lives,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (2003): 313–333; Elspeth Probyn,
Outside Belongings (New York: Routledge, 1996); Karen Tongson, “Tickle Me Emo: Lesbian
Balladeering, Straight-Boy Emo, and the Politics of Affect,” in Queering the Popular Pitch, ed.
Sheila Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga (New York: Routledge, 2006), 55–66.
52. This is an abbreviation of “electroclash,” a style emergent in the early 2000s that fused
contemporary house with 1980s electro-pop, New Wave, and synth-rock. It is characterized by a
preponderance of arpeggiated synthesizer chords, heavy use of equalizer filters, distortion, and
deadpan vocals, all of which signal a certain nostalgia for the sounds of 1980s music.
53. “Minimale” was a term used in Paris music scenes during the late 2000s that referred to sparse,
minimalist renditions of both house and techno styles of electronic dance music. This category
is roughly equivalent to the “minimal” associated with Berlin, as described in the introduction of
this chapter.
54. Jennifer Cardini, interview with author, September 19, 2013.
55. Farrugia, Beyond the Dance Floor.
56. Kira Kosnick, “Out on the Scene: Queer Migrant Clubbing and Urban Diversity,” Ethnologia
Europaea 38, no. 2 (2008): 20.
57. Ibid., 21.
58. This state of affairs has shifted somewhat while this chapter was in progress. In 2014, I wrote
and published a similarly themed feature article for the online electronic dance music magazine
Resident Advisor, which received a surprising amount of attention. Since then, other electronic
dance music media outlets such as Thump (a subsidiary of Vice magazine), Red Bull Music
Academy, and DJ Broadcast have all been publishing feature-length articles engaging with
sexuality in club culture. See Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, “An Alternate History of Sexuality
in Club Culture,” Resident Advisor, January 28, 2014;
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1927.
59. See also La Mission’s website, available at http://www.joinlamission.com/.
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1986); Muñoz, Cruising Utopia.
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CHAPTER 3
Thus, “Mother’s voice may be associated with the lullaby, oral gratification,
and regressive sleep. But it may also reactivate primitive fears of
psychobiological destruction.” Turk’s argument regarding the soprano voice
seems to suggest a theory potentially more broadly applicable to female
vocality in musical theater. To extend Turk’s claims, the polarized responses
often engendered by the musical—either eager fandom, or embarrassed
pleasure, or outright rejection—seem plausible as a response to the various
pleasures and anxieties generated by the female voice within a narrative
medium.41
Miller’s and Turk’s arguments about motherhood also recall Alexander
Doty’s “My Beautiful Wickedness,” an essay in which Doty argues that The
Wizard of Oz fixates on motherhood as a vehicle for an exploration of
different Sapphic identities. While the narrative centers on Dorothy’s return
to the maternal figure of Auntie Em, there is no doubt that the Oz sequences
—particularly those involving the Wicked Witch—are the most significant.
For Doty, the Oz sequences depict a world governed by two kinds of
witches, and indeed two kinds of lesbians: the aggressive, butch Wicked
Witch, and the good invisible femme, embodied by Glinda.42 As Doty
writes,
When a puzzled Glinda asks the tomboyish yet gingham dressed Dorothy if she “is a good
witch—or a bad witch” (a femme or a butch) Dorothy denies being any kind of witch,
because, as culture has told her, all witches are old and ugly. It is here that Dorothy’s fantasy
reveals that Glinda is also a witch, thereby establishing a model through which she can
begin to explore and come to terms with her own lesbian desires under cover of witch
femme-ininity. But while Glinda provides her with a safe, because straight appearing, outlet
for lesbian expressiveness, Dorothy invests the Wicked Witches of the East and West with
the most power and fascination of anyone in her fantasy.43
In this way, The Wizard of Oz, with its plot revolving around the safe return
of a child to her mother figure, punctuates that narrative of maternal
bonding by allowing exploration of different models of femininity. Doty’s
readings help us to understand how this structure can enable an exploration
of transformational possibility, particularly one involving lesbian desire.
Stacy Wolf has published a number of remarkable studies arguing for the
significance of lesbian spectatorship to the genre. Her work has shown how
Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, and Julie Andrews—three of the greatest
divas of the stage—have presented powerful depictions of three iconic
lesbian roles: the tomboy, the butch, and the femme.44 In her reading of
Peter Pan, for example, Wolf persuasively argues that Mary Martin’s turn
as Peter Pan employs a gestural vocabulary and a vocal technique that
signifies her as a femme-tomboy lesbian in a narrative that opposes her both
to Wendy—who acts briefly as Peter’s “wife”—and to Cyril Ritchard’s
campily fey Captain Hook, with whom Martin’s Peter Pan becomes a
lesbian playing opposite a gay man.45 Peter’s unwillingness to “grow up”
signifies an unwillingness to conform to heterosexual norms, and while the
plot asks Peter to remain asexually oblivious to Wendy’s desire for him, the
actress portraying Peter registers desire for the act of performing as a boy.
Wolf similarly understands both the stage and film versions of The
Sound of Music to support lesbian readings of its performances and themes.
In these readings, the narrative thus becomes one in which “Maria
represents an unsocialized femininity, and the musical ultimately values
Maria’s disorder and negates the discipline of the nuns, of the Captain, of
the Nazis.”46 The musical concludes as Maria has successfully upended the
conservative worlds of the family. While she herself has also been tamed
through her romance with the Captain, theirs is not a passionate love affair,
but instead an unconvincingly docile partnership—which, along with her
trademark individuality and courage, permits an ongoing Sapphic
investment despite her marriage.
Even the most casual exegesis of Mame would find it hard to deny that
Patrick’s own mother figure is rich with lesbian overtones: Patrick avows
early in the play that he will “be exactly like [Auntie Mame] and keep my
relations with the opposing sex—plutonic,” after which revelation he
mentions that he learned the word “lesbian” at one of Mame’s parties.47 The
following morning, Vera finds herself hung over, and as Mame leaves her
own bedroom, Vera crawls into the bed, which she refers to as “No Man’s
Land.” Mame’s greatest critique of heterosexual romance occurs precisely
when Mame and Vera attempt to refashion Agnes and endow the homely
girl with conventional allure: after discarding Agnes’ eyeglasses, removing
her orthopedic Oxfords, and ordering her to close her pores, Mame
summons her butler to find Mame’s “sexy gown” and “all my cosmetics:
face creams, eyebrow pencils, lipstick.”48 “And a chisel,” Vera adds. After
the “dowdy nanny” is immediately transformed, the book directs the three
women to “strut off in the best burlesque-esque style.”49 The process of
turning a woman into the conventional representation of femininity is here
treated as a comic scene whose ultimate punchline occurs just a minute
later, when Agnes returns, once again dowdy but this time pregnant.
Steven Cohan has shown how MGM awkwardly deployed stars like
Judy Garland and Debbie Reynolds in numbers that—much like Agnes’
“coming out” scene—“enac[t] a camp’s recognition of the incongruities
arising from glamour’s operation as a cultural mechanism of
heterosexualization.”50 Cohan’s reading of Garland’s “Ziegfeld Girls”
number (in the 1941 MGM musical Ziegfeld Girl) understands the star as
representing “a camp subjectivity finding humor, not pain, in the balancing
act required of femininity, particularly when acting out its most idealized,
heterosexualized, and incongruous cultural expression, glamour.”51 Further,
the chorus boys who often surround Garland in these kinds of numbers
seem to share her knowledge, uniting these likely queer men and the diva in
mutual understanding of the unsustainable demands of conventional gender
norms and compulsory heterosexuality.
Furthermore, while women are generally made the focus of musical
theater, the exceptions which glorify men—in particular, the works of Fred
Astaire and Gene Kelly—affirm Steve Neale’s comment that the film
musical was “the only genre in which the male body has been unashamedly
put on display in mainstream cinema in any consistent way.”52 The
spectacularization of the male body in these performances enacts yet
another fascinating contradiction between narrative and performance in the
genre: as Cohan writes, the musical’s fascination with the male body
“challenges the very gendered division of labor which it keeps reproducing
in its generic plots.”53 Cohan argues that Astaire provides “a highly
theatricalized representation of maleness on screen which oscillates
between, on the one hand, a fictional character grounded in the static and
reductive binarism of traditional gender roles and, on the other, a musical
persona whose energy choreographs a libidinal force that revises
conventional masculinity and linear desire.”54 Thus, a great deal of
Astaire’s appeal emerges from how the musical genre deploys his dancing
body in a way that reorients cultural assumptions about gender: he becomes
the spectacle, taking the place conventionally assigned to women, yet his
spectacularity is mediated by his uniquely masculine reconfigurations of the
conventionally feminine tropes of “narcissism (in his solo performances and
special-effects numbers)…, exhibitionism (in his show numbers…)…and
masquerade (in his dandyish costuming…).”55 For Cohan, this “revaluation
of the male star and his ‘dancing persona’ in terms of spectacle over
narrative” finds its ultimate expression in Gene Kelly’s film The Pirate, in
which Kelly’s character, Serafin the actor, “whose playful and performative
masculinity is based in spectacle,” ultimately draws the attention of Judy
Garland’s Manuela from her competing, narrative-driven desire for the
conventionally masculine Macoco.56 Further, Kelly’s own lifelong attempt
to associate his dance with butch athleticism can be seen as another strategy
for reframing the anxieties produced by spectacularizing the male body.
Exceptionally efficient at hiding gay desire within every nook and
crevice, Mame represents the culmination of an era—and in occasionally
allowing the queer tensions to edge closer to visibility, the piece anticipates
how this tensive structure would give way to increasingly overt displays of
homosexuality and queerness in musicals that followed shortly thereafter. In
one scene of the 1970 musical Applause, a musicalization of the film All
About Eve, Margo Channing goes with her gay dresser, Duane, to a bar in
Greenwich Village. As Comden and Green’s stage directions gingerly
indicate, “[t]he place is filled with people, all of them dancing, and it
becomes apparent that all of them are male, dressed in various flamboyant
attire.”57 The 1973 musical Seesaw contains a similarly stereotypical role:
Tommy Tune played the part of David, a gay choreographer who’s “got
wonderful ideas about decorating.”58
By the mid-1970s, the use of gay characters for mild comic relief began
to give way to more complex portrayals. A climactic moment in the 1976
musical A Chorus Line features the monologue of Paul, one of the dancers
auditioning to be part of the eponymous line. In it, he describes with
touching detail his childhood love of movie musicals, and how they
fostered in him a desire to imitate Cyd Charisse. He eventually ends up
performing in drag at the Jewel Box Revue, and he movingly tells of how
his parents inadvertently saw him in his costume, looking “like Anna May
Wong.”59 As Paul tells it, his father—at the theater in order to say goodbye
to him before the show traveled to Chicago—“turned to the producer and
said: ‘Take care of my son…’ That was the first time he ever called me
that…I…ah…I…ah. (He breaks down.)” Despite the dramaturgically odd
choice that the revelation is delivered in a monologue—and not in a song—
it nonetheless marks a significant moment in musical theater.60
William Finn’s and James Lapine’s March of the Falsettos, originally
produced in 1981 at Playwrights Horizons, centered on the family dynamics
of Marvin, a man who leaves his wife for a man.61 This unconventional
musical explores the complicated bonds—and the manifold forms of love,
regret, and confusion—that develop between Marvin, his son, his new
partner, his ex-wife, and his psychiatrist. A sequel, Falsettoland, first
produced off-Broadway in 1990, picks up the story of the family in the
AIDS crisis of the Reagan years, as the unconventional family—along with
two lesbian neighbors—deal with the adolescence of Marvin’s son
alongside the sickness of Marvin’s boyfriend, Whizzer Brown.
The AIDS crisis was also depicted in Jonathan Larson’s 1996 Rent,
which celebrates the warmth and community among bohemians in the
Lower East Side as they fight not only the ravages of disease, but also the
pain of rejection and the displacement of the group by gentrification. The
piece follows two principal relationships: one heterosexual—between
songwriter Roger and the S&M performer Mimi, both of whom are living
with HIV—and one homosexual—between revolutionary intellectual Tom
Collins and cross-dressing street performer Angel, both of whom are people
with AIDS. In addition to these two couples, the piece also depicts a
significant lesbian relationship involving Joanne and performance artist
Maureen, who organize a protest against the group’s eviction.62 Opening
not long after Rent, the extremely popular 1998 off-Broadway musical
Hedwig and the Angry Inch encouraged audiences to identify with the title
character, a genderqueer singer whose botched operation leaves Hedwig in
a liminal space between genders and sexualities.63 Hedwig, in particular,
revealed the usefulness of the form to address complex issues related to
sexuality. The 2005 stage musical The Color Purple focused intently on the
lesbian relationship of characters Celie and Shug, and more recently, the
extraordinary 2013 off-Broadway musical Fun Home, which musicalized
the coming-of-age memoir of Alison Bechdel, featured a remarkable score
by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron that situated the cartoonist’s own emergent
lesbian sexuality alongside the queer desires of her father.
However, perhaps the turning point in the representation of
homosexuality on the Broadway stage was the 1983 musical La Cage aux
folles, which might as well have been a revival of Mame.64 Like Mame, it
concerned a son who resents his unconventional family as he courts a
woman from a more conservative background; however, in this case, the
son’s family includes his father and his father’s partner, a flamboyant drag
diva. Thus, La Cage aux folles invites the closeted characters of Mame to
come out and profess their desire—situating openly gay characters within
the classic structure of musical comedy. Having noted the similarities of La
Cage to Mame, John Clum remarks most perceptively that “[f]or the most
part, openly gay musicals are less ‘gay,’ in all senses of the word, than their
closeted Broadway predecessors.”65 As Miller observes,
the theme of homosexuality in La Cage works against recognizing the homosexualizing
fantasmatic structure of the Broadway musical in general. While the structure is seducing
any man engaged by it into a feminine identification, the theme moves to deny this
identification by confining it within, precisely, a “cage” of extreme cases.66
In other words, the generic form seduces men to engage with their queer
desires, yet the plot of La Cage, with its conventional notions of sexual
domesticity alongside its cartoonish depictions of flamboyance, works to
contain that very desire. For Miller, the beauty of the classic Broadway
musical is that its closeted aesthetic suggests a richness of queer desire and
affect that cannot be fully comprehended by the notion of gay identity:
Identity…stands in an essentially reductive relation to the desire on which it is based: a kind
of homogeneous precipitate that can never in itself suggest how variously such desire
continues to determine the density, color, taste of the whole richly embroiled solution out of
which, in so settled a state, only a small quantity of it has fallen…the featuring of
homosexuals on the Broadway stage…works positively against the recognition of the
homosexual desire that diffused through ‘other’ subjects, objects, relations, all over the
form. Indeed, by the contrary application of the same cruel logic, Gypsy and its closeted
kind can now seem to have rendered a far richer account of this desire than anything we are
likely to owe to a counter-tradition of gay avowal.67
T H E G O S P E L A C C O R D I N G TO
T H E G AY S
Queering the Roots of Gospel Music
E . PAT RI CK JOH NS O N
While Knight denied the rumors about her and Tharpe, many of those
closest to Tharpe suggested that she was intimate not only with Knight, but
also with other women as well, even while she was married. Whatever the
case, it is clear that Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s unconventional style—onstage
and off—queered gospel music of the era and perhaps offered other
“possibilities of intimacy in a world where lines of gender and sexuality
were religiously policed.”4
Chicago is also the birthplace of one the most famous gay pioneers of
gospel music, Reverend James Cleveland (1931–1991), known as the
“crown prince of gospel.” Anyone listening to Cleveland’s records today
would never guess that he had been a boy soprano. As a member of the
children’s choir under the direction of Thomas Dorsey at Pilgrim Baptist
Church, Cleveland sang solo on many songs and began studying piano at
age five. As a teenager, he joined a local group, the Thorne Crusaders, with
whom he sang for eight years. The combination of a lower register brought
on by puberty and vocal strain from singing with the Thorne Crusaders left
him with the “gruff, unpretty voice” that was so distinctive.5
Over his more than 40-year career, Cleveland worked with some of the
greatest gospel singers and musicians in the country, many of whom were
both his mentors and protégés. These include Roberta Martin and Albertina
Walker, for whom he served as a composer, arranger, pianist, and
occasional singer/narrator for her all female group, the Caravans. Walker
provided Cleveland with the opportunity to make his first recording,
convincing her record company to record him. He quit the Caravans
temporarily a number of times to join other groups. His recording of “Peace
Be Still” sold hundreds of thousands of copies, thanks to Cleveland’s
comforting growl and emotional command.
Cleveland founded his own choir, the Southern California Community
Choir, as well as a church, Cornerstone Institutional Baptist Church, in Los
Angeles that, at the time of his death, boasted more than 7,000 members.
Indeed, it was Cleveland’s work with choirs that made his legacy so
enduring. In his vocal arrangements, he removed the bass part, creating
three-part harmony instead of four. This is one of the reasons why the tenor
part in many gospel compositions is so unforgiving on the male voice (no
doubt influenced by his own strained voice as a child), often requiring
tenors to hit and sustain G, A flat, and even B flat above middle C. But the
choir was also a space where, as I discuss later in this chapter, gay men
could show off their vocal virtuosity. Cleveland recorded most of his songs
live and loved the vamp (the repetition of a line), and the songs he wrote
spoke of everyday trials and tribulations of being Black in the United
States.
His most enduring legacy, however, is the Gospel Music Workshop of
America (GMWA), a convention that he organized in 1968 and that
continues today. GMWA has more than 30,000 members in 150 chapters
and has produced some of the world’s most popular contemporary gospel
singers and musicians, such as John P. Kee and Kirk Franklin. The GMWA
is also widely known as a place where queers in the gospel scene cruise and
party, which is why in some circles, GMWA is called “Gay Men and
Women of America.”
Cleveland himself is rumored to have had a penchant for his younger
male protégés who were constantly around him during the convention. As
in the church itself, it was not uncommon for queer singers and musicians
to use the occasion of a “holy” conference for secular purposes. Even the
National Baptist Convention provided a site for queer desire to spring
eternal. In her autobiography, Willa Ward-Royster, the sister of famous
gospel great Clara Ward, described how her sister was outed at a convention
gathering:
We had met plenty of gays and usually had great fun in their company—it was easy enough
to admire their creativity and wit—but I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Clara
and I had been invited to such a party.
I soon got my explanation when one of the young men we had come with bounced down the
stairs in a T-shirt and a towel, on his way to get some ice. In passing he excused himself for
not entertaining us but offered, “Honey, I’m on a mission. When Mother gets back upstairs,
she’s gone dive right in the middle of all that flesh. Clara, if I’d have thought about it, I
would have invited someone for you. I know this sharp young child who’d just love you,
she’s a Stone man, Honey.” The guy probably thought I knew, but until then, I had no idea
that my sister had dabbled in homosexual activities. She was really embarrassed that I had
heard, and we were both so uncomfortable that we left.6
While we must take Willa’s story at face value since Clara is deceased,
rumor and willful silences are some of the only ways in which we can
document homosexuality within these communities. Historian John Howard
calls recollections such as Willa’s “twice-told stories.” He states: “This
hearsay evidence—inadmissible in court, unacceptable to some historians—
is essential to the recuperation of queer histories. The age-old squelching of
our words and desires can be replicated over time when we adhere to ill-
suited and unbending standards of historical methodology.”7 Relying on
hearsay and rumor to document homosexuality in the gospel world is
particularly important because keeping one’s sexuality a secret would have
been critical not only to one’s livelihood, but also to one’s acceptance in the
church.
Cleveland passed away in 1991 in Los Angeles. Although an official
statement declared that he died of natural causes, many in the Black queer
community knew that Cleveland died of complications due to AIDS. Not
until months after his death, when his foster son and alleged lover,
Christopher Harris, filed a patrimony suit against his estate, did folks began
to wonder if Cleveland was the man they thought they knew. In fact,
probably most of his church and choir members knew about his sexuality
but chose to overlook it or deny it altogether. This willful denial speaks to
the investment that many Black communities have in perceptions of those
outside the race. As Gayle Wald puts it:
Homosexuality ranked as a different order of sin…reflecting broader social and cultural
prohibitions on sexual identities that violated…the natural, God-given order of things. For
many Black people, homosexuality threatened to hinder the progress of “the race” as a
whole, insofar as they believed progress to be predicated on mainstream acceptance.8
This investment in respectability manifests in what I believe to be an
unholy trinity: shame, guilt, and denial. Parishioners see what they want to
see, deny what they do not want to see, or feel shame or guilt about what is
hidden in plain sight. This is a blessing and curse for queer singers and
musicians, who are ostracized for being an “abomination,” but also
celebrated for their gifts and talents at the same time.
The latter does provide some leeway for gender nonconformity in the
name of the Holy Spirit. How else could one explain the number of
flamboyant singers such as Little Richard, who grew up in and returned to
the church, whose sexuality seems to have never been an issue? The same
can be said of gender nonconformity. An example is Willmer “Little Ax”
Broadnax (1916–1994), one of the great postwar gospel quartet singers.
Broadnax was a diminutive man with a big voice. He and his brother,
William “Big Ax,” were born in Houston and formed a quartet called the
Golden Echoes in southern California. William eventually left for Atlanta,
where he joined the Five Trumpets, but Willmer stayed on as lead singer. In
1950, Willmer joined the Spirit of Memphis Quartet, one of the best gospel
quartets to ever record. Although his time with the quartet lasted only two
years, he went on to perform with other great groups like the Fairfield Four
and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, with whom he recorded into the
1970s and 1980s. Upon his death in 1994, it was discovered that Broadnax
was assigned female at birth but had been passing as a man his whole life.9
Not all queer gospel singers led hidden or clandestine lives, however.
Sylvester, the high-priestess drag queen of the 1970s disco era, started
singing at Palm Lane, which was a member of the Church of God in Christ
(COGIC). Born in 1944, Sylvester James, known as “Dooni” as a child,
grew up in South Central Los Angeles.10 Known for featuring a powerful
falsetto (despite Sylvester also having a rich baritone voice), Sylvester’s
music is undeniably tinged with the gospel music that he sang as a child,
especially on songs such as “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” which
became a disco anthem and maintains the 4/4 rhythm that gospel is known
for. Although Sylvester was celebrated by secular disco fans, he was also
embraced by progressive churches such as the Love Center Church in East
Oakland, founded by the Reverend Walter Hawkins (of “Oh Happy Day”
fame). Hawkins often invited Sylvester to sing at the church, and he was
sometimes accompanied by Hawkins and his brother, Edwin. Walter
Hawkins also gave the eulogy at Sylvester’s funeral.
One of Sylvester’s friends and cosingers at the Love Center in East
Oakland was the Reverend Yvette Flunder. An out lesbian and activist,
Flunder is a native San Franciscan and a third-generation preacher with
roots in COGIC. She was licensed in COGIC and later ordained by Walter
Hawkins of Love Center Ministries; she served as the associate pastor and
administrator at Hawkins’s Love Center Church. In 1984, Flunder began
performing and recording with Walter Hawkins and the Family and the
Love Center Choir. Flunder is also an ordained minister of the United
Church of Christ (UCC) and a graduate of the Ministry Studies and Master
of Arts programs at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.
She founded the City of Refuge Community Church UCC in 1991 to unite a
gospel ministry with a social ministry. City of Refuge is a thriving, inner-
city congregation that celebrates the radically inclusive love of Jesus Christ.
Preaching a message of action, the church has experienced steady numerical
and spiritual growth and is now located in the South of Market (SoMa) area
of San Francisco. The song for which she is most known is “Thank You,”
recorded in 1990 on Walter Hawkins’s Love Alive IV album.
The lives and careers of these gospel artists—both those open about
their sexuality and those not—reflect the array of queer performers and the
ways in which they negotiated, reconciled, and celebrated their spirituality
and sexuality. Their stories, however, are not unique. Many “church sissies”
and “church butches,” who have not become famous for their singing but
who were raised in the church choir, have similar stories. Some of these
experiences have been captured in oral histories and in literature. It takes
rumor, hearsay, oral history, and fiction to capture the fullness of the history
of gospel.
Some of these stories are in my book Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the
South—An Oral History. For example, Chaz/Chastity, a gender
nonconforming person who lives in North Carolina, who for several years
lived her life as “Chastity” Monday through Saturday and as
“Chaz/Charles” on Sunday, explained that he and other little boys in the
children’s choir used catching the spirit as a guise to be flamboyant, and
later as a way to signify their homosexuality:
Oh yes. We say all the time, well she’s just a big ole sissy, referring to a guy that’s in the
choir, or possibly the director, or you know, someone who’s very flamboyant as far as the
choir’s movements, because in Black choirs a lot of times there’s a lot of…emotion in the
song, not just in the way that the song is sung but in the way that you move to the song.….
So yes, even now when I’m observing some youth choirs, [I] can see the traits, especially
with some little boys. Sometimes [when] I’m observing youth choirs, [I] can see the little
boy that’s got the tambourine. He’s just going on, and I mean, very much on time with the
beating, and he’s just more into it than the other kids; a lot of the times it’s because of his
artistic nature, and through time, you’ll be able to see that I was right.11
Thus, the choir serves as a nurturing site for one’s “creativity” and “artistic
nature” for effeminate boys who otherwise might be ostracized outside the
confines of that particular space. Indeed, as Bobby from Atlanta declared,
“Where else but in the Black church can a queen be a star whether she has
talent or not? Baby, it ain’t the army where you can be all that you can be,
it’s the church. Homophobic or not, church folk will give you your props.”
Black gay men have surmised that the church is a place to express their
talents vis-à-vis the choir and other church performance venues. I want to
be clear, however, that I am not calling into question the authenticity of the
Black queer’s faith, but rather suggesting that the manifestation of that faith
in performance provides a vehicle through which one can also express
queerness in covert ways. On the other hand, I would venture to say that
there are some queens who are conscious about the limitless possibilities of
queer expression via church performances and who exploit those
possibilities for what they are worth—who actually take pleasure in pushing
the boundaries of gender theatricality within the confines of the church. For
example, Anthony “First Lady” Hardaway, who was born in Memphis,
Tennessee, got his name because of his imitation of women from his
church. He says:
First Lady comes from the Southern church. It came from when I was in Jackson,
Mississippi, in college in 1990. I imitated a lot of the women in my church. I didn’t imitate
the men; I imitated the women—they were dressier. There was something about them.
These women wore the biggest hats. They were the nurturers of the church. There was
something about them. Us gay boys, we immediately imitated them.…I wore big hats, the
furs. It really had nothing to do with the spirituality part. My gay friends locally and
nationally named me because of the way I dressed and conducted myself. They said I
carried the church with me…and the name stuck.
Why do you think there are so many Black gay men in the church, and
particularly in the choir?
We have such a talent. Well, first let me use the word “gift.” We have such a profound gift.
And when I go back to Mother Africa, everything was ceremonial—beads, feathers, masks,
movement, music, sound, drums, that the church is our haven and the Black Mecca in the
Black world. That’s our haven. If you don’t have anything else, you got the church. So
singing has always been a way for a lot of us to release. And again, to express ourselves. So,
I mean, think about it, I’m a part of something that has a lot of sound to it. I’m making
movement with it. I’m able to express myself. And in doing this, I’m helping to heal me.
[…] And I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re in the choirs and different areas. And it
gives us a chance to be in a production, so to speak. The bigger the choir, the better the
choir, the more you can get away with certain things. And even in your home church. If this
musician is wearing this piano or organ out and you’re able to really direct this choir or sing
this song, then everybody is in the spirit of rejoicing, so they’re really not going to ridicule
you for that, at that moment. Do you know what I mean? So I believe that’s one of the
reasons why so many of us, it gives us the opportunity to express ourselves in the church a
little bit more than if you were in any other auxiliary of the church, if you know what I
mean. If you’re an usher, you can’t do a whole lot, you just usher. If you’re a Sunday school
teacher, you just teach. If you’re a minister, you still have to be poised and refined. But in
that choir stand, I can get away with some stuff. I can see what I need to see. I can do what I
need to do. And that’s the truth what I’m saying. So it’s all right to be in the choir because,
first of all, this robe allows me to sometimes fantasize about some things. It can be a gown;
it can be whatever. I remember doing that. I remember doing—this robe made me, I was
able to flow. If I did certain things, maybe I wouldn’t be ostracized, if I twirled a little bit
and hit this note, because that was like a Sam Cooke to them, that was like a James Brown
movement to them, so they could identify with that, and I can get away with it, because this
robe is really going to hide this twist I got. So I believe that’s one of the reasons why the
choir has always been the glamour, to a point, of the church, to me.12
First Lady Hardaway’s narrative is instructive of the ways that queers use
the church, and specifically the choir, as a site to express their queerness.
Many scholars on the Black church have noted its built-in “theatricality,” its
improvisational components, and its rituals of performance. Few have made
the connection between these aesthetics of the Black church—all of which I
consider to be a part of its camp aesthetic—and the manifestation of the
holy/unholy spirit as a vehicle for queer performativity. First Lady
Hardaway’s testimony shows how singing was a “release” for him, and how
he and other queers employed the camp aesthetic of the church to “get
away” with expressing their sexuality and not be ostracized.
Some of the pleasure and duplicity enjoyed by church sissies is also
represented well in African American literature. Much of James Baldwin’s
fiction captured the tension between spirituality and sexuality, piety and
worldliness, and holy rapture and sexual ecstasy. In the following scene
from his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, the narrator’s description of the
character Elisha playing the piano is significant:
At one moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat standing on his brow, he sat at the
piano, singing and playing; and then like a great Black cat in trouble in the jungle, he
stiffened and trembled, and cried out. Jesus, Jesus, Oh Lord Jesus. He struck on the piano
one last, wild note, and threw up his hands, palms upward, stretched wide apart. The
tambourines raced to fill the vacuum left by his silent piano, and his cry drew answering
cries. Then he was on his feet, turning, blind, his face congested, contorted with this rage,
and the muscles leaping and swelling in his long, dark neck. It seemed that he could not
breathe, that his body could not contain this passion, that he would be, before their eyes,
dispersed into the waiting air. His hands, rigid to the very fingertips, moved outward back
against his hips, his sightless eyes looked upward, and he began to dance. Then his hands
closed into fists, and his head snapped downward, his sweat loosening the grease that
slicked down his hair; and the rhythm of all the others quickened to match Elisha’s rhythm;
his thighs moved terribly against the cloth of his suit, his heels beat on the floor, and his fists
moved beside his body as though he was beating his own drum. And so, for a while, in the
center of the dancers, head down, fists beating, on, on, unbearably, until it seemed the walls
of the church would fall for very sound; and then, in a moment, with a cry, head up, arms
high in the air, sweat pouring from his forehead, and all his body dancing as if it would
never stop. Sometimes he did not stop until he fell—until he dropped like some animal
felled by a hammer—moaning, on his face. And then, a great moaning filled the church.13
QUEER AS TRAD
LGBTQ+ Performers and Irish Traditional
Music in the United States
T E S S L O MI NS K I
I
Despite having a hard time coming out in the early stages of transitioning,
he reports generally positive experiences in the scene:
There’s this “live-and-let-live” facet of Irish culture that seems to have carried over into the
trad scene: most trad musicians really don’t seem to give two fucks about what’s in my
pants or who I sleep with. They’ve got more important things to think about, like making
music.
Rowan thus invokes the idea that the music transcends difference, but
Laoise expresses fear that difference can influence the way other musicians
and dancers interpret one’s performance as more or less “traditional”: for
someone who is already not the “traditional” norm in Ireland—white, male,
and Irish—adding another form of difference may increase that person’s
perceived distance from the center of “the tradition,” thereby lowering their
potential status.15
Not surprisingly, geography and cultural context are significant factors
in choices about being out, and most participants responded that they are
selectively out in the trad scene, often completely open with close friends
and age peers but not with casual acquaintances or older or especially
religious musicians. Anne, a fiddler, expresses her frustration about her
local scene in Texas:
It’s [an] intolerant atmosphere, and it bleeds into everything. And so, I’m not out right now,
but I’m hoping that I can change that.…It’s like trying on clothes that are four sizes too
small….
For Anne, who was active in her local LGBTQ+ scene in the 1980s before
she encountered Irish traditional music, her interests in both punk and trad
caused some to question her sexuality. She reasons that this policing of
norms was partly the product of a wider conservative cultural context, but
found it restrictive:
I guess the few lesbian guitar players…were accepted, and the stuff that was played at the
clubs was accepted, but I was like, “No! I like punk!” And they were, like, “Well, that’s just
wrong—maybe you’re not really a lesbian. Maybe you’re bisexual or something.” And I’m
like, “What does what I like have to do with who I know I want to get with?”…And then I
discovered Irish music…and that was just out of the question—you weren’t supposed to like
that.
Rowan takes a more introspective view, and for him, the embodied activity
of playing music provided a way to embody his understanding of himself at
a time when other ways were less available:
I think that music is the most important nongendered act that I do. Before I transitioned,
making music was the one thing I could do where I really felt good in my body, where I was
interacting with the world and creating this magical thing that had absolutely nothing to do
with gender. It was the only time that I really felt like I was fully inhabiting my body.
Given that the genre is relatively slow to change, queer musicians will
probably continue to experience engagement with Irish traditional music as
simultaneously liberatory and confining for a while longer, but the question
of whether sexuality matters in trad also has the potential to be productive
for understanding normative musicians’ experiences. As Eva says:
People just think, “Oh, that’s fine. Like, we don’t care—we don’t care what your different
thing that you bring is. You’re still welcome here.” But what they’re also saying is “We
don’t recognize the value that what you are might bring.”
G AY C O U N T RY,
TRANSAMERICANA, AND
QUEER SINCERITY
S H ANA GOL DI N- P E RS CH BA CH E R
T first openly gay country music album came about when Patrick
Haggerty, the son of Washington tenant dairy farmers, put together a band
of gay and allied friends in 1972 to get out “the information” about being
gay to isolated listeners.1 Despite having what he later realized was an
unusually progressive and loving family for a gay kid in the 1950s, he had
experienced confusion and trauma and lacked sources of knowledge and
advice from other gay people.2 Passing on “the information” felt like a
crucial project to Haggerty. The record Lavender Country was released in a
pressing of one thousand copies in 1973 through Gay Community Social
Services in Seattle. The band put ads in gay bookstores and underground
gay newspapers and sold the record from a post office box. When asked,
forty years later, to account for the album’s value, Haggerty responded quite
honestly, “I would like to say it’s remarkable because it’s such a fabulous
album, but that would not be the truth—even though it may be. What’s truer
is how thirsty all of us were for any kind of information at the time. We
were coming up with information, out of whole cloth, by ourselves; nobody
was telling us anything about what it means to be gay. Any kind of
information we could get from anywhere, we were just gobbling it up.
That’s what happened with Lavender Country.”3 As for genre, he said, “I
stuck with country because that’s what I knew best.”4 “Maybe it was a
brazen thing to do, to come out with a gay country album. On the other
hand, why not? I think we forget that gay people come from everywhere.
And I came from Dry Creek.”5
What strikes me about this story is that the artist prioritized country
music as a medium for sharing desperately-needed knowledge about the
experience of being gay6; his choice of genre was practical and also the
most truthful means to deliver “the information”; and his album was
produced not by a record company but by a gay community center, with
sixty percent of proceeds donated “back into community-oriented projects
for the sexual minority communities.”7 Haggerty’s voice is both earnest and
campy, invitingly singing “You all come out, come out my dears to
Lavender Country,” a phrase that served as the name of the band, the song,
and the album, as well as creating a possible genre and a physical or
metaphorical space. The LP’s back cover reads, “We’d like to tell you about
Lavender Country. For many, it means a land of fear, confusion, and
loneliness; for the rest of us, it means a life of struggling towards liberation
and an affirmation of Gayness.”8 The album intersectionally critiques white
supremacist patriarchy, homophobia, and capitalism, and calls listeners to
rise up against the period’s psychiatric (mis)treatment of gay people.9 It also
offers gay and lesbian love songs and campy jokes. In the song “Crying
These Cocksucking Tears” you might hear the pain of rejection and the
anger over patriarchy/homophobia in Haggerty’s modest yet evocative
voice, as well as the humor of his full-voiced lesbian backup singer Eve
Morris’s impassioned chorus singing in the “most earnest Joan Baez voice
you’ve ever heard the name of the song over and over again like it’s
‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’”10
When music scholars write about genres that appeal to North American
queer and/or transgender participants (or appeal to us as scholars for
making the sorts of claims we’re interested in exploring about trans and
queer identities), we have tended to look to almost any other type of
popular or art music besides country. One notable exception is musician
k.d. lang, whose popular performances of country music since the 1980s
have been analyzed for their ambiguous, queer, and sometimes camp and/or
performance art aesthetics.11 And yet in this discourse, lang is typically
understood as an anomaly and outsider to the commercial country music
industry. Her self-described “cross-pollinized”12 musical style, which
included “rock-a-billy surfer, punk, honky-tonk, yodeling, polka, torch
song, and 1940s jazz,” was considered so broad as to seem problematic.13
Further, her shift in genre (away from country to torch songs and adult
contemporary), and her enormous growth in sales and recognition after this
change, seem to suggest to some critics that she was never really a country
musician.14 Country and related genres and its listeners are regularly
assumed to invest in concepts of tradition, stasis, naturalness, conservative
Christian religiosity, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy, ways of
structuring life that make existence difficult for many trans and queer
people. Country music, connected in theory if not always in practice with
the rural, is understood as bigoted. Nadine Hubbs’s 2014 book Rednecks,
Queers, and Country Music complicates this assumption, noting that the
rural and working class, who are often themselves stigmatized as non-
normative, were at one time more accepting of queerness than the middle
class was; it was only in the 1970s and 80s when middle class people
shifted from elitism to cultural omnivorousness that they projected their
own former intolerance onto the working class.15 At least one hundred
bands or solo acts of transgender and/or queer musicians have played
country, Americana, old time, bluegrass, roots, folk, or alt.country over the
last forty-five years, mostly in the last fifteen. When I’ve heard these genres
played by transgender and queer musicians, the styles and genre
descriptions intermingle in different ways than they might when played by
straight and/or cisgender musicians; queer and/or trans community
networks and activism tend to be prioritized over traditional musical
pairings or being featured by mainstream commercial musical venues.
While one musician hosts a regular show with rotating artists called “Queer
Country Quarterly,” other musicians express reservations about being
labeled as country.16 Thus, I also employ the sociomusical term
“transAmericana,” a label coined by journalist Sylvia Sukop but not
typically used as a genre description.17
When scholars and journalists address transgender and/or queer people’s
musical performances, we have tended to focus on camp aesthetics or
rebellious styles. For example, k.d. lang’s country music performances have
been widely discussed for their camp appeal. While lesbian fans worldwide
adored lang’s country music, it was frequently viewed with suspicion by
both journalists and the country music industry, despite her repeated claims
of honest appreciation for country music and her view that loving a genre
included having a sense of humor about it.18 But gay and transgender
country and Americana musicians since Lavender Country have developed
sincere and politically activist aesthetics using roots styles. Esteemed
country songwriter Harlan Howard is credited with saying that country
music is “three chords and the truth.”19 While scholars such as sociologist
Richard Peterson have demonstrated how country music has been
commercially fabricated around the concept of authenticity, what we can
draw from often-repeated quotes such as Howard’s is a sense of how
country music tells its story, as well as why someone like Patrick Haggerty
might want to use country music to communicate about being gay when
there were few sources of affirming narratives, especially in this style.20 As
he explained, “[N]obody ever dreamed of accusing Lavender Country of
being invalid. It was valid information; it sure was. It still is, for that matter.
That’s what people loved about it—it was honest information about the
topic.”21
The notion of truthfulness is compelling in the North American popular
music industry, suggesting that listeners will get a real sense of an artist’s
life and perspective. But cultural notions of what honesty entails have also
created problems and danger for people with marginalized gender and/or
sexuality. The narrative of the “out and proud” urban coastal queer has
made life difficult for rural gay and trans people, as ethnographer Mary
Gray found in her study of LGBT teens in Kentucky at the turn of the
twenty-first century. Although the rural is often situated rhetorically as the
closet of North America, if not a space of death for queer and trans people,
Gray and other scholars have found that rural queers develop different ways
of surviving and, in some cases, thriving in their settings.22 While today,
gender- and/or sexually-diverse people are expected to move to an urban
and especially coastal area and to visibly and audibly differentiate from
straight (and, for some, also cisgender) people, Gray argues that this
narrative creates problems for a core structural value of rural life,
“familiarity.” In a small rural town, residents depend on one another for the
basic services that would be provided by large institutions and government
in a city. Out gay Appalachian folk musician from Southwest Virginia Sam
Gleaves invokes rural familiarity directly in the title of his debut album,
Ain’t We Brothers.23 The title prompts the imagined homophobic listener to
reconsider the relationship between himself and his gay neighbors, based on
the rural ethics of familiarity in which they should be considered socially
tied.
One way to approach gay country and transAmericana musical
performances of honesty and familiarity might be as expressions of “queer
sincerity.” At least since 1973’s Lavender Country, sincerity has been an
appealing and yet complicated concept for queer and trans country
musicians. The concept of sincerity traditionally depends on a notion of
inner truth, or authenticity, expressed outwards. Thus, it appears to be
essentialized and conflicts with postmodern understanding of identity. And
yet theater scholar Siân Adiseshiah argues that there is possibility of
rethinking sincerity in light of “poststructuralist irony, cynicism, and
fatigue” without rehabilitating an “essentialist self.” Adiseshiah identifies a
performative aesthetic in experimental theater: “a genuine, communicative
encounter, where trusted and trusting, inter-connected spectators are
interpellated as part of a conversation about things that matter in the world,
but where residues of an ironic affect continue to trouble the encounter,
ironic moments that exist within the space of sincerity, and the authentic is
always in question.”24 Rather than setting sincerity at odds with camp, we
might hear queer sincerity as expressing yearned-for earnestness with room
for a camp wink. After all, camp includes a deep attachment to straight
culture’s discarded objects and identifications. Queer theorist Ann
Pellegrini explores such relationships using the term “camp sincerity,”
building on critical theorist Susan Sontag’s writing on camp. Navigating
Sontag’s decades of changing and cryptically autobiographical theorizing
about camp, Pellegrini finds that Sontag drew an unnecessary line between
gay male aesthetic camp and Jewish, as well as lesbian, moral seriousness.
She explores examples that are both camp and morally serious, finding that
these modes of expression may have commonality, depending on the author,
audience, and intent. Pellegrini argues for “a precious form of queer
resilience, imagination, and…‘moral seriousness’ in the face of
vulnerability.”25 Pellegrini notes that Sontag described feeling vulnerable as
she navigated her own queerness, Jewishness, and exposedness as an author
whose explorations intersected with her own life.
For queer and/or transgender country and Americana musicians, sincere
autobiographical writing is important, though risky, both as country
musicians and as queer and transgender people. Transgender people are
regularly asked to account for their gender identification in a way not asked
of most people.26 And while a person’s disclosure of lesbian, gay, or
bisexual identification may lead a hearer to believe that the speaker has
shared an inner truth—something that offers deeper and more intimate
understanding of the person than outer appearances or pleasantries—those
learning about a person’s transgender identity may feel deceived, as though
a person’s outer appearance is incongruous with a notion of “inner truth” in
which the hearer believes.27 The expectation of this audible “truth” extends
to the perceived gendering of a person’s voice. Stephan Pennington writes
in this volume that, “At a time when the relationship between bodies and
identities is ever more complex, the voice is clung to as the locus of
essential, non-alterable gender ‘truth.’ The eyes may deceive, but the voice
never lies.”28 Faced with this sort of rhetoric, the choice of irony over
truthfulness may not be surprising, as it avoids reinvesting in cisgender
notions of essentialist identity. But given that country music is said to be,
simply, “three chords and the truth,” what work might this and related
genres do for transgender and queer musicians? And what might these
particular musicians’ experiences tell us about Americana as well as North
American identities?
Country and Americana have a history of unmarked middle-class
stakeholders stereotyping marginalized identities. Music historian Karl
Hagstrom Miller notes that while Black and white southern musicians could
sing or play many styles of music, the industry pigeonholed them into
racialized and regionalized roles.29 This stereotyping is a common
experience for oppressed people. Sociologist Beverly Skeggs argues that
culturally devalued people such as the working class and people of color
tend to have their identities fixed in place, essentialized, and diminished.
She claims that this process allows middle-class people to temporarily
borrow from fixed and devalued identifications in ways that offer value to
the borrowers while fixing the borrowed-from as valueless and
pathologized.30 These fixed selves and cultural borrowing make money for
the music industry, but the musicians on both sides of this equation may be
caught in a tough place navigating expectations of genre and truthfulness.
For example, in Murray Lerner’s 1967 documentary Festival! about the
early years of the Newport Folk Festival, blues musician Mike Bloomfield
identifies himself as a white Jewish man, and suburban-raised son of a
millionaire, and implies that while he has learned to play the blues, Black
southern musician Son House is the blues.31 While this statement is meant
to praise House’s musicality, Bloomfield’s rhetoric fixes House in a
racially-, regionally-, and socioeconomically-marked position. Once fixed
like this, House’s sociomusicality is available for Bloomfield to borrow
without shedding his own racial, regional, and class privilege. These
stereotyped, marginalized identities are appealing to middle-class people
through what historian Benjamin Filene identifies as the irony of the appeal
of “outsider populism” in which othered citizens are positioned (often by
the middle class) as exemplary “common people,” a process that both
solidifies a sense of otherness and yet draws audience identification with
othered peoples’ “grit and character.”32 Filene’s example is John and Alan
Lomax’s marketing of Lead Belly, who, by intimate accounts, was a sharp
dresser and gentle person, yet pushed to perform barefoot wearing his old
prison uniform, and marketed as a dangerous Black man coming to
Northeast colleges to play some songs between committing homicides. Gay
country and transAmericana have inherited this “outsider populism.” Artists
must be visibly or audibly different in order to be appreciated by straight
(and/or cisgender) audiences for their “grit and character” as othered
people, yet tell recognizable stories to be accepted as “common people.”
Queer and trans audiences may want more varied stories and humor from
artists, whereas straight and/or cisgender audiences may want the artist’s
“coming out” song included in each performance.33 Artists’ queer sincerity
can be useful to articulate experiences of difference and similarity, politics,
and modes of solidarity to mixed audiences that include both queer and/or
trans people looking for camaraderie, humor, tears, and activism, as well as
cisgender and/or straight audience members consuming artists via “outsider
populism.”
So if “queer sincerity” in country music in 1973 invited listeners to a
sometimes painful, yet also revolutionary musical land called “lavender
country,” how might a queer transgender professional country musician in
the twenty-first century navigate similar issues involving identity,
authenticity, genre, and humor? In the autobiographical book Gender
Failure, Canadian musician and author Rae Spoon writes, “How do you
become a transgender country singer? For some, it’s easier to be
transgender from the start and then work towards becoming a singer. For
others, it’s better to play music first, and then come out as transgender.
About ten years ago, I managed to do both in the space of a few months.”34
This passage invites a number of reactions. How does one become a
transgender country singer, and why? Why pick country, of all musical
genres, when you are a singer-songwriter who identifies as a transgender
man who has decided not to use testosterone because it will affect your
soprano voice? (Spoon has since “retired from gender,” identifying as
nonbinary and transgender, and uses “they.”35) Is country music a
hospitable genre for trans singers (or for trans pedal steel players, fiddlers,
and banjo players)? Further, is Spoon teasing readers a little, responding to
anticipated reactions of disbelief by ignoring the seeming juxtaposition,
instead offering a playful list of “best practices” around becoming a trans
country singer, letting us know that there are many paths, but assuming that
we know that there are plenty of transgender country singers?36
Spoon’s music has explored different understandings of whether or not
rural spaces are safe to queer and trans people. Their song “Keep the
Engine Running” is about crossing the United States-Canadian border by
car to tour the American Midwest.37 They’ve discussed with me the added
stress of crossing the border into America, paying for a visa to play here,
and needing connections to make good on the investment of the trip; a US
tour requires participation in the country’s more specialized musical
markets and territory, as compared to fewer Canadian venues, which
typically, for financial and practical reasons, welcome musicians of all
genres. The song features their strategy of keeping the car running at rest
stops in case they’re threatened, delivered musically with both solemnity
and humor. Spoon’s delicate voice against a spare banjo part is poignantly
vulnerable, and yet their lyrics and enunciation poke fun: Spoon sings that
people at the station are so impressed by their “Sunday best” that they
“want to know all about us.” Of course as an atheist and former Pentecostal,
Spoon is wearing their musical stage costume and not going to church. And
the people’s curiosity may or may not be friendly. Spoon’s yodeling
melisma on the phrase “gas station” makes it sound like “gay station.”38
Spoon counters the notion of the rural as a potential space of death for
queers in songs about queer and trans people of the Canadian prairies, like
“A message from the Queer Trans Prairie Tourism Co.,” which seems to use
“queer sincerity” to counter audiences’ “outsider populism.”
At the 2016 joint meeting of the US and Canadian chapters of the
International Association for the Study of Popular Music, fellow music and
queer studies scholar Craig Jennex and I hosted Rae Spoon for a concert
and stage conversation. During their performance of this song, Spoon
cheerfully reassured our audience, “Don’t worry, this isn’t a ‘tourism
Alberta’ song, it’s for tourists in the queer community,” and explained that
the song is “a tuneful sing-along and a good way to test a room.”39 The last
line of the chorus stands out from the rhythm of the rest of that verse,
partially for making an ideological point of including both “queer” and also
“trans” in the tourism company name (an unlikely, and thus funny, name for
a company), as well as squeezing in more words than the rest of the lines
(which is also more awkward, and less easy to anticipate, for the audience’s
singalong). Yet how audience members react to this experience could “test
the room” for willingness to experience discomfort, laugh, or consider the
idea of perhaps being “tourists in the queer community” simply by being
straight or cisgender and in the audience at that moment.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual,
Transgender and transsexual
It’s better to ask if you don’t know
A message from the Queer Trans Prairie Tourism Co.
Moustaches, cowboys, and the stampede
You might not think there’s a queer trans scene
But Brokeback Mountain filmed some scenes
Fifteen miles from Calgary.40
Spoon sings about this feeling, “my prairie home fits like a Sunday dress,”
commenting on feeling stifled both by their family’s Pentecostal religion
and also by forced femininity.42 Spoon’s sense of being “Albertan on the
inside” could sound like essentialism, but we might also think about Pierre
Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus,” the ways people come to embody cultural
capital.43 Artists are encouraged to leverage features from their upbringing
to create a compelling artistic voice. Yet as Beverly Skeggs argues, the
value of these qualities is contextual and intersectional. For example, once
Spoon identified as a transgender man living in Vancouver, country music
(and its references to Albertan lifestyles) became more appealing to utilize
than it had been to them when living in Alberta. Based on her intersectional
analysis, Skeggs rethinks “habitus” in relation to concepts of identity in late
capitalism, defining the “self” as “a metaphoric space in which to store and
display resources.”44 Gender and sexuality are thus “resources” that one
may (or may not) have access to deploy to realize value in the self. Skeggs
worked ethnographically with white working-class women, who, like Lead
Belly and Son House, are seen as fixed by their status and thus are unable to
deploy the traits of others. She notes, “some people use the classifications
and characteristics of race, sexuality, class, and gender as resources even as
others are denied their use because they are positioned as those
classifications and are fixed by them.”45 I’ve noticed in Spoon’s music and
autobiographical texts, and in our conversations, the way they draw
resources from their past in ways that feel accurate and ethical, and when
encountering a rigidity of category that does not fit with their sense of self,
a disidentification with or move away from using that category.46 Spoon’s
artistic ethical code requires some personal connection as permission to
write about a topic.47
Spoon recalls their early role models, their uncles who, at times, rescued
the family from Spoon’s abusive father:
Sometimes, in daydreams, I pictured myself as one of them, out in the middle of the prairies
driving alone in my truck, blowing smoke out the window, and sleeping in hotels and
temporary trailers. I would listen to Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, and Randy Travis. My
hands would be dirty with crude oil. I wanted to be a cowboy so that I could hold back my
tears and protect my family. I used to smoke and drink, but then I quit both. I never learned
how to drive, work the oil rigs, or ride a horse, but I did write songs about these things. I
was not a cowboy in reality, but my heart always felt lonely enough to sing about it with
conviction.48
This passage lends insight into the musical habitus of queer sincerity,
which offers a sense of authentic self despite not having personally
experienced each of those activities. Spoon wrote the song “Cowboy” as a
kind of post-country song for Chelsea McMullan’s 2013 documentary about
Spoon, My Prairie Home.49 Rather than claiming lived experience as proof
of musical authenticity, “Cowboy” compares Spoon’s queer and trans exile
from Alberta to lonely cowboy life:
I wanted you to think I was a cowboy,
So I told you where I was from.
But all I ever did was run from trucks
And I never held a gun.
…
I wanted you to think I was a cowboy
So I told you where I am from.
And I walked around like I didn’t care
That I lost everyone.50
What we might learn from these examples is that for the last forty-five
years, out gay and transgender country and Americana musicians have self-
resourced selectively from their life experiences, creating music that is
meant to communicate in an activist as well as an artistic fashion. This
practice affects their genre choices and performance venues. But their
audiences are by necessity mixed in terms of sexuality, gender,
socioeconomic status, and musical taste. The “outsider populism” they have
inherited from folk music marketing becomes a way to articulate
personhood and community relationships, even across stark divisions. But
with that outsider populism comes the fixity of stereotypes that can
pigeonhole an othered artist. Queer sincerity, with its moral seriousness as
well as its winks to knowing listeners, may cut through some of those
stereotypes, and offer artists in these positions a sense of agency and an
avenue for truthful expression.
N
1. Haggerty explains that tenant dairy farmers are “essentially sharecroppers for the dairy
industry”; Patrick Haggerty, Lavender Country, Paradise of Bachelors PoB-12, 2014, compact
disc. Originally released in 1973 by Gay Community Social Services of Seattle. Available at
http://www.paradiseofbachelors.com/pob-12/.
2. Ibid., 3–4 and 8–10.
3. Ibid., 18.
4. Ibid., 8.
5. Ibid., 7.
6. One could compare Haggerty and friends’ “coming up with information, out of whole cloth, by
ourselves…about what it means to be gay” with Joanne Meyerowitz’s account of how, in the
twentieth century, word traveled between trans people via autobiographies, newspaper articles,
and medical texts about favorable experiences with sympathetic doctors. Meyerowitz notes the
importance of these documents and their circulation, but also discusses the limitations—doctors
used these accounts as the standard by which to assess future patients’ descriptions of gender
identity and so when speaking with doctors, transgender people learned to repeat “acceptable”
stories whether they were representative of their own experiences or not. See Joanne
Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2002) as well as a challenge to the effects of these constrained
and medicalized transgender narratives in Dean Spade, “Mutilating Gender,” in The
Transgender Studies Reader, ed. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge,
2006), 315–332.
7. Haggerty, Lavender Country, 1973, back cover.
8. Haggerty, Lavender Country, 1973, back cover.
9. Haggerty was briefly committed to a psychiatric hospital following his ejection from the Peace
Corps for being gay and describes the experience as traumatic in the song “Waltzing Will
Trilogy” and in the 2014 liner notes (8–11).
10. Patrick Haggerty, “Crying These Cocksucking Tears,” Lavender Country, 2014. Pitchfork writer
Jayson Greene interviewed in director Dan Taberski’s documentary short, These C*cksucking
Tears, 2016, Vimeo video, 15:50, http://www.thesec-cksuckingtears.com/.
11. Lang’s country music achievements include two Grammy Awards, the Entertainer of the Year
Award by the Canadian Country Music Association, and an appearance singing at the Winter
Olympics. Scholarship about gender and sexuality in lang’s country music includes: Keith
Negus, “Country, k.d. lang and lesbian style,” Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction
(Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 130–133; Stella Bruzzi, “Mannish Girl: k.d.,
from Cowpunk to Androgyny,” in Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender, ed. Sheila
Whiteley (London: Routledge Press, 1997), 191–206; Martha Mockus, “Queer Thoughts on
Country Music and k.d. lang,” in Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology,
ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas (New York: Routledge, 1994), 257–271;
Sheila Whiteley, “k.d. lang, a Certain Kind of Woman,” Women and Popular Music: Sexuality,
Identity and Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2000), 152–170; John M. Sloop, “‘So Long,
Chaps and Spurs, and Howdy—er, Bon Jour—to the Wounded Songbird’: k.d. lang, Ambiguity,
and the Politics of Genre/Gender,” Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in
Contemporary U.S Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), p. 83–103; and
Zoe C. Sherinian, “K.D. Lang and Gender Performance,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of
World Music, vol. 3, The United States and Canada, ed. Ellen Koskoff (New York: Garland
Publishing, 2001), 107–110.
12. Brendan Lemon, “Virgin territory: k. d. lang,” The Advocate 605 (16 June 1992), 38.
13. Sherinian, “K.D. Lang and Gender Performance,” 108.
14. John Sloop argues persuasively that journalists rhetorically disciplined lang in reviews of her
country music performances for their ambiguity of gender, sexuality, and genre commitment.
Her humor was seen as criticism of the genre, rather than a mark of affection for it and/or ease
in it. lang’s simultaneous genre shift and coming out seemed to signal to journalists that her
music from Ingenue onwards was more “honest,” and showed musical and ideological
progression, maturity, and commitment. Sloop notes that although lang was now an out lesbian,
her shift from low cultural value country music to higher cultural value torch singing and easy
listening led to approval from journalists. Sloop’s stance marks a distinct difference from Sheila
Whiteley’s, which suggests that ambiguity allowed lang some safety to navigate popularity
without having to officially come out. I would anticipate that Vincent Stephens, who has written
on the post-World War II history of male performers in the United States and the “open secret,”
would agree that ambiguity allows a performer more flexibility, sales, and career longevity.
Sloop, Disciplining Gender; Whiteley, Women and Popular Music; Vincent Stephens, Rocking
the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019).
15. Nadine Hubbs, Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2014).
16. Karen Pittelman, of Karen and the Sorrows, has hosted Queer Country Quarterly in Brooklyn
since 2011. Eli Conley has organized related “Queer Country West” concerts in San Francisco
since 2015.
17. Sylvia Sukop, “Transamericana: From Folk Roots Up and Out,” Huffington Post, March 18,
2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sylvia-sukop/transamericana-from-folk_b_424035.html.
18. Interview with Dave Jennings, “The Twang’s the Thang: k.d. lang,” Melody Maker (May 26,
1990): 41, quoted in Mockus, “Queer Thoughts,” 260 and 264, and Rich Kienzel, “Review:
Absolute Torch and Twang,” Country Music (Sept/Oct 1989): 59, quoted in Mockus, “Queer
Thoughts,” n. 24.
19. Tony Russell, “Obituary: Harlan Howard: Prolific Writer of Country Music Hits,” The
Guardian, 5 March 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/mar/06/guardianobituaries.
20. Richard Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1997).
21. Haggerty, Lavender Country, 2014, 19.
22. Mary Gray, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America (New
York: New York University Press, 2009). Some of the growing body of scholarship on LGBTQ+
rural life includes: John Howard, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001) and Scott Herring, Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism
(New York: New York University Press, 2010). The most recent bibliography of rural queer
studies may be found in Mary Gray, Colin R. Johnson, and Brian J. Gilley, eds., Queering the
Countryside: New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies (New York: New York University Press,
2016).
23. Sam Gleaves, Ain’t We Brothers, Community Music 2015 CMCD301. Available at
http://www.samgleaves.com/buy-a-cd.php.
24. Siân Adiseshiah, “Spectatorship and the New (Critical) Sincerity: The Case of Forced
Entertainment’s Tomorrow’s Parties,” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 4/1 (2016):
186 and 189.
25. Ann Pellegrini, “After Sontag: Future Notes on Camp,” in A Companion to Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies, ed. George E. Haggerty and Molly McGarry (Wiley-
Blackwell, 2007), 174.
26. Analysis about identity formation and how music contributes to sense of self are fraught and
have often relied on discussion about (and not with) transgender people as examples, as Stephan
Pennington’s essay in this collection argues.
27. Author conversation with Marcus Desmond Harmon, November 8, 2014. I discuss the
repercussions from one musician’s onstage disclosures in Shana Goldin-Perschbacher,
“TransAmericana: Gender, Genre, and Journey,” New Literary History 46, no. 4 (2015), 786–
788.
28. Pennington, this volume.
29. Karl Hagstrom Miller, Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim
Crow (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
30. Beverly Skeggs, “Uneasy Alignments, Resourcing Respectable Subjectivity,” GLQ 10, no. 2
(2004): 291–298.
31. Murray Lerner, Festival! Patchke Productions/Eagle Rock Entertainment EE391019R2, 1967,
DVD.
32. Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill:
The University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 64.
33. Transgender Americana musician Joe Stevens has regularly said to me (between our first
interaction in April 2010 and the present) that he calls his most famous song, “Guy Named Joe,”
his “You’ve Got a Friend.” But unlike Carole King’s 1971 hit that she is expected to play at each
show, Stevens’ song delivers information about a facet of his identity that he feels is central to
him, and is one that he built his early career around sharing musically. I discuss this in: Goldin-
Perschbacher, “TransAmericana,” 2015. Coyote Grace, “A Guy Named Joe,” Boxes & Bags,
Mile After Mile 2006, MAM0001 and mashup “Joelvis,” Buck Naked, Mile After Mile, 2010.
Available at https://www.coyotegrace.com/albums.
34. Rae Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote, Gender Failure (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014), 129.
While this book is co-authored, chapters are credited to individual authors, and thus addressed
as such in following notes.
35. Spoon, Gender Failure, 249–252.
36. In addition to Rae Spoon, I know of at least fourteen transgender singer-instrumentalists who
perform country, Americana, old time, folk, and related styles of music.
37. Rae Spoon, “Keep the Engine Running,” Your Trailer Door, 2005 Washboard Records
621365082120. website defunct and album not available for sale. Lyrics reproduced with the
artist’s permission.
38. Gas stations are not always unpleasant or dangerous places for queer or trans people on the road,
though. As ethnographer Anne Balay discusses, queer and trans people (and the diverse array of
people attracted to them) regularly have consensual sex at truck stops. Anne Balay, Semi Queer:
Stories of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2018).
39. Rae Spoon in concert, International Association for the Study of Popular Music United States
and Canadian chapters’ joint meeting, May 28, 2016, in Calgary, Alberta.
40. Rae Spoon, “A Message from the Queer Trans Prairie Tourism Co.” (unpublished). Lyrics
reproduced with the artist’s consent.
41. Spoon, Gender Failure, 129–130.
42. Rae Spoon, “Sunday Dress,” My Prairie Home, SOCAN 2013. Available at
https://raespoon.bandcamp.com/album/my-prairie-home. Lyrics reproduced with the artist’s
permission.
43. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
44. Skeggs, “Uneasy Alignments,” 292.
45. Skeggs, “Uneasy Alignments,” 293.
46. The term “disidentification” was developed by queer performance studies scholar José Esteban
Muñoz to describe the creative ways that queers of color craft a sense of self in critical relation
to existing normative categories, because it is impossible to create a space entirely apart from
existing categories. Disidentification may also used by White queer and transgender people,
such as Spoon, who has “retired from gender,” rather than refusing any relationship with the
system of gender. José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the
Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
47. Spoon, conversation with the author, Calgary, May 29, 2016.
48. Spoon, Gender Failure, 62.
49. Chelsea McMullan, My Prairie Home (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada C9913425,
2013). DVD, 76 minutes.
50. Rae Spoon, “Cowboy,” My Prairie Home, SOCAN 2013. Available at
https://raespoon.bandcamp.com/album/my-prairie-home. Lyrics reproduced with the artist’s
permission.
51. Spoon, Gender Failure, 130.
52. Spoon, Gender Failure, 135–136.
53. Spoon, phone conversation with the author, December 19, 2015.
54. Spoon, phone conversation with the author, December 19, 2015.
R
Adiseshiah, Siân. “Spectatorship and the New (Critical) Sincerity: The Case of Forced
Entertainment’s Tomorrow’s Parties.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 4, no. 1 (2016):
180–195.
Balay, Anne. Semi Queer: Stories of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2018.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Bruzzi, Stella. “Mannish Girl: k.d., from Cowpunk to Androgyny.” In Sexing the Groove: Popular
Music and Gender, ed. Sheila Whiteley, 191–206. London: Routledge Press, 1997.
Filene, Benjamin. Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Goldin-Perschbacher, Shana. “TransAmericana: Gender, Genre, and Journey.” New Literary History
46, no. 4 (2015): 775–803.
Goldin-Perschbacher, Shana. Queer Country. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming 2022.
Gray, Mary. Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America. New York:
New York University Press, 2009.
Hubbs, Nadine. Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2014.
Hubbs, Nadine. “‘Jolene,’ Genre, and the Everyday Homoerotics of Country Music: Dolly Parton’s
Loving Address of the Other Woman,” Women & Music 19 (2015), 71–76.
Lemon, Brendan. “Virgin territory: k. d. lang.” The Advocate 605 (16 June 1992), 34–46.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Miller, Karl Hagstrom. Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Mockus, Martha. “Queer Thoughts on Country Music and k.d. lang.” In Queering the Pitch: The
New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. Philip Brett, 257–271, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C.
Thomas. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Pellegrini, Ann. “After Sontag: Future Notes on Camp.” In A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, and Queer Studies, ed. George E. Haggerty and Molly McGarry, 168–193. Malden:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2007.
Peterson, Richard. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1997.
Sherinian, Zoe C. “K.D. Lang and Gender Performance.” In The Garland Encyclopedia of World
Music, vol. 3, The United States and Canada, edited by Ellen Koskoff, 107–110. New York:
Garland Publishing, 2001.
Skeggs, Beverly. “Uneasy Alignments, Resourcing Respectable Subjectivity.” GLQ 10, no. 2 (2004):
291–298.
Sloop, John M. “‘So Long, Chaps and Spurs, and Howdy—er, Bon Jour—to the Wounded Songbird’:
k.d. lang, Ambiguity, and the Politics of Genre/Gender.” In Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex
Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture, 83–103. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
2004.
Spoon, Rae, and Ivan E. Coyote. Gender Failure. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014.
Spade, Dean. “Mutilating Gender.” In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and
Stephen Whittle, 315–332. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Stephens, Vincent. Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny
Mathis Queered Pop Music Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019
Sukop, Sylvia. “Transamericana: From Folk Roots Up and Out.” Huffington Post (March 18, 2010),
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sylvia-sukop/transamericana-from-folk_b_424035.html.
Whiteley, Sheila. “k.d. lang, a Certain Kind of Woman.” Women and Popular Music: Sexuality,
Identity and Subjectivity, 152–170. London: Routledge, 2000.
Discography and Filmography
Coyote Grace. Boxes & Bags. Mile After Mile MAM0001, 2006, compact disc.
Coyote Grace. Buck Naked. Mile After Mile, 2010, compact disc.
Gleaves, Sam. Ain’t We Brothers. Community Music CMCD301, 2015, compact disc.
Lavender Country. Lavender Country. Paradise of Bachelors PoB-12, 2014 (originally released by
Gay Community Social Services of Seattle, 1973).
Lerner, Murray. Festival! Patchke Productions/Eagle Rock Entertainment EE391019R2, 1967, DVD.
97 minutes.
McMullan, Chelsea. My Prairie Home. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada C9913425, 2013,
DVD. 76 minutes.
Spoon, Rae. My Prairie Home, SOCAN 2013, compact disc.
Spoon, Rae. Your Trailer Door. Washboard Records 621365082120, 2005, compact disc.
Taberski, Dan. These C*cksucking Tears, 2016. Vimeo video, 15:50. http://www.thesec-
cksuckingtears.com/.
CHAPTER 7
On July 4, 2012, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA)
member Frank Ocean publicly came out on his Tumblr blog, stating that he
had had a love affair with a man.1 Although Frank Ocean is a honey-voiced
singer who also sometimes raps, his public proclamation made giant waves
in and out of the hip hop community, as he is a part of a notorious and
prolific hip hop crew that is often criticized for its homophobia and
misogyny. Even though Odd Future had an openly lesbian member, the
producer/DJ Syd the Kid, a cofounder of The Internet (one of Odd Future’s
many spin-off groups), the skater rap group’s consistent and overt violent
verbal treatment of women and queers put them under constant scrutiny.2
Frank Ocean’s coming out was indeed important, signaling a shift for
mainstream popular culture, hip hop, and hip hop–R&B,3 but it was neither
the beginning nor the end of open and out LGBTQ hip hop artists.
In fact, almost a decade earlier, 2005 marked a watershed year for queer
hip hop.4 In that year, two major LGBTQ hip hop festivals occurred:
PeaceOut World Homohop Festival,5 the original queer and queer-ally hip
hop festival in the Oakland/San Francisco area; and Peace Out East,6 New
York City’s LGBTQ hip hop festival.7 That was also the year that LGBTQ
hip hop artists were codified in the documentary film Pick Up the Mic,
directed by Alex Hinton, which premiered at the Toronto International Film
Festival on September 11. The festivals and film, imperfect and not
exhaustive of the panoply of LGBTQ hip hop artists who came before and
after them, nevertheless matter to the history of queer music, performance,
and culture; hip hop culture; performance and music; and independent art-
making.
Writing a queer hip hop historiography is bound to be a fraught project.
LGBT and queer, intersex, genderqueer, and gender-nonconforming
(QIGGNC) bodies have been both integral to US hip hop cultural
production and denied as integral to said production. Queer culture and hip
hop culture have been arranged as antagonistic, both internally in each
respective culture and externally by news outlets, thinkers, and pundits.8
Yet many queer hip hop artists speak to the immense import of hip hop on
their queer identity. Hanifah Walidah, a Brooklyn- and Massachusetts-based
rapper, producer, singer, and filmmaker, noted that when she was closeted,
“[she] could see through [her] body language that [her] body was tight, that
[she] was holding something in.”9 Queer hip hop pioneer Dutchboy reveals
that “ironically, I didn’t get back into hip hop until after my coming out
process.” He continues, “I first became involved in performing hip hop…as
an extension of my finding a place within…the queer or the LGBT
community.”10 These artists underscore the relationality of their queerness
and their hip hop identities.
This chapter reflects a broader trend in hip hop studies to reclaim and
publicize hip hop history beyond the sanctioned orthodoxy of New York
City as the only site of rap and hip hop production.11 I attempt to map a
queer genealogy within hip hop cultural production—one that is archival,
performative, and speculative. This text will plot how I’m using “queer” to
think with and about hip hop music. It will also touch on wider definitions
of queerness within hip hop music that are not necessarily related to bodies
and subjects who claim queerness as an identity or affect, but who may
have a queer affect or effect in their work. I delineate some pivotal queer
performance moments: the appearance of the first “queer” relation in the
form of the hypermasculine man and the sonic-visually constructed “fairy”
in the first rap hit, “Rapper’s Delight” (1979); the first gay-identified rap
group, Age of Consent; and some of the major moments in the “Golden
Era” of queer hip hop. I end with a speculation on queer hip hop futures. I
hope that current and future hip hop artists, scholars, participants,
researchers, and activists will add correctives, revisions, and contestations
to this work.
L Q , L H H
Calling hip hop “queer” is certain to irritate, or even enrage, some hip hop
artists and fans. The current hip hop moment is filled with strict (although
ever-changing) sites of categorization of the authentic, the real, and the
’hood as metonyms for a particular kind of Black-popular-masculine affect.
This presents a normative conundrum for a queer or queered project. It is a
challenge for some to learn of hip hop’s queerness—past, present, and
future. This chapter indexes queer being (identity, subjectivity), doing
(performance, performativity), and effects/affects. “Queer” is deployed here
as a denaturalizing and destabilizing force—the coitus interruptus into hip
hop heteronormativity, hetereopatriarchy, and racial authenticity. As
Annamarie Jagose claims, “[Q]ueer opts for denaturalisation as its primary
strategy,”12 and so I use it as a temporal, cognitive, and affective disruption
to the apparent seamlessness of a unified hip hop presentation.
Concurrently, I attend to the racialized and gendered dynamics and
meanings associated with the terms “hip hop” and “queer” in order to tease
out some of the axes on which they rotate.
Cathy Cohen’s insight into the limits of queer politics informs my
thinking, in which she calls on queer theory to expand notions of queer to
include straight or heterosexual bodies and performances that interrupt
hegemonic heteronormativity, whether purposefully or not. She continues
that “instead of destabilizing the assumed categories and binaries of sexual
identity, queer politics has served to reinforce simple dichotomies between
the heterosexual and everything ‘queer’.”13
Hip hop cultural production and performance, including music, theater,
dance, fashion, sound, visual art, and poetry, constitute an ongoing
repertoire and arts movement.14 Although hip hop has its archival and
genealogical strains,15 narratives are constantly being contested and revised.
Hip hop is expansive. As Jeff Chang argues in his edited volume Total
Chaos, he “intends to document some of the [hip hop arts] movement’s
historical vectors, capture a snapshot of some of its pressing issues,
illuminate marginalized and emergent aspects of the movement, and, above
all, suggest the breadth and the beauty of hip-hop arts.”16 Both queer and
hip hop definitions suggest expansiveness, deconstruction, inclusivity,
mixology, and creativity. Thinking about hip hop and its aesthetics queerly
is an attempt to illuminate the artistic contributions of LGBTQ people and
themes, showing how their creativity and musicality enriched both hip hop
and queer arts movements.
Q N , Q P : O ,
W D W M W W S
“B ”?
Many scholars and artists have convincingly argued that rap music, and
sometimes hip hop culture writ large, is “Black American music,” and that
its central characteristics are Black, African American, or both.17 Others
note “hip-hop’s undeniable African American origins [and endeavor to]
query […] the formation of distinct identities within hip-hop[,] while
simultaneously interrogating the definitions of authenticity that often
dominate discussions pertaining to cultural hybridity and the risk of
appropriation as hip-hop circulates ever further afield and is more deeply
embraced in the social mainstream.”18 Perry and Forman clarify some of
the troubling ways that hip hop’s inherent cultural, aesthetic, historical, and
material hybridity has been used to wrest hip hop cultural production and
performance away from Black American and Black diasporic peoples,
cultures, and traditions. While Forman gestures toward the pitfalls of
authenticity as a response to the anxieties caused by hybridity, he moves too
quickly to the threat of appropriation by a larger social mainstream. Black
authenticity and hip hop authenticity present unique problems for Black
people and Black artists negotiating nonauthentic Black subjectivities.
When Blackness becomes a metonym for authenticity or an essential,
authentic Blackness, according to Gust Yep and John Elia, it is “linked to
masculinity in its most patriarchal significations…this particular brand of
masculinity epitomizes the imperialism of heterosexism, sexism, and
homophobia.”19 Yep and Elia offer the Logo TV series Noah’s Arc as an
example of a contra-authentic Black cultural product. The series ran from
October 2005 to October 2006 and centered on the lives of Black gay men
living in Los Angeles. It “open[ed] up the discursive field to new horizons
and possibilities for imagining, embodying, performing, renegotiating, and
unfixing hegemonic Blackness…Noah’s Arc is queering/quaring authentic
Blackness.”20 While music and television are different media, and
representation is a fraught project, images of Black men and women do
have an impact on viewers, listeners, and industries.21
Over the last two decades of hip hop music, the range of Black
performance has decreased. The overwhelming current trope for men is the
über-rich hip hop man as hustler/gangsta/pimp, while women are limited to
the vixen, female hustler, or thug, or sometimes a more positive role. These
conservative and restricted modalities of Black possibility are transmitted to
and codified in the popular imaginary. The Black performer who strays
from the contemporary sanctioned roles of masculinity is often labeled with
invective imagined to be the most damaging: something related to being
gay, a faggot, or possessing a “feminine” quality. In the next section, I offer
a revisionary reading of Black heterosexual masculine performance that
queers itself through the dismissal of a “failed” heterosexual white male
gender performance. Next, I follow that reading with a recounting of the
first known gay hip hop (GHH) group, made up of two white gay men and
one straight white woman.
H H F P : “R ’
D ” A C
The story of the Sugarhill Gang, the male rap group that record mogul
Sylvia Robinson put together and signed to Sugarhill Records, and their
smash hit “Rapper’s Delight” (1979), is well known.22 Though the New
Jersey–based trio was a constructed “boy band” (and therefore considered
inauthentic by many rappers toiling to make their art), their record was a
commercial smash. Selling more than 2 million units in three months, the
song, based on an interpolation of Chic’s disco record “Good Times,”
launched rap music and hip hop culture into American and global
mainstream culture.23 “Rapper’s Delight” is a fun song filled with
braggadocio, hyperbole, catchy phrases, and simple but memorable rhymes.
As the sonic undergirding for the song, Chic’s “Good Times” is a near-
perfect party song and was a smash hit the previous year.24 Of the three
rappers in the group, Big Bank Hank (Henry “Hank” Jackson) is the one
who plays the ladies’ man. Hank, in a raspy, cool, tenor timbre, introduces
himself as “the C-A-S-A-N the O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y.”25 Hank
presents himself as the paradigmatic heterosexual male, informing us of his
height (six foot one), his impeccable style, and his desirable material
possessions (a color television, a Lincoln Continental, and a Cadillac).
Wonder Mike, who recites the first verse, focuses on addressing the
audience and getting the party started. Master Gee, the third member of the
Sugarhill Gang, does mention that “all the foxy ladies and fly girls” know
his name, and he specifically tells the “ladies [he’s here at the party] to
hypnotize.”26 But it is Big Hank who returns time and again to his
hegemonic Black masculinity as his rap qualifier. Hank’s boasts don’t touch
as much on his ability to move the crowd or his lyrical ability as they do on
his masculine prowess.
In his second verse, Hank shifts the lyrical locus from his heterosexual
desirability to his lyrical and rhyming superiority over other rappers, but
then he detours back to his Casanova persona in a fantasized encounter with
the iconic reporter from DC Comics, Lois Lane. Lois Lane is, of course, the
paramour of the DC Comics legend Superman. How does one compete
against the Man of Steel? Hank resolves this conundrum by imagining Lane
choosing him—“just lemme [sic] quit my boyfriend Superman”—and also
by disaggregating Superman from suitable heteromasculinity by pointing to
his gender trespass—[Superman] “flyin’ through the air, wearing
pantyhose.” Big Hank asserts Superman is unsuitable as Lois’s mate: “he’s
a fairy, I do suppose.” One way to circumvent Superman’s impenetrable
masculinity is to presuppose that his masculinity fails at the level of dress.
His “pantyhose”—his Superman tights—contrast with the fly, gender-
appropriate clothes that Big Hank wears.27
Unable to leave Superman alone, Big Hank reconsiders Superman’s
appeal in the next verse, even as he again disses him: “He may be very sexy
or even cute, but he looks like a sucka in a blue and red suit.” Hank’s erotic
gaze fixes on Superman, evaluating him not as simply sexy, but as very
sexy. But Superman fails this particular articulation of hip hop masculinity
because for all of his “very sexy”-ness, he is also a fairy and a sucka. Hank
counters Superman’s powers of flight with own power to “rock a party ’til
the early light.”
The dénouement firmly returns to exemplary Black male heterosexuality
through a specious stereotype about white and Black male anatomy:
Superman ultimately fails as a proper heterosexual masculine subject due to
his “little worm.” Big Bank Hank, by contrast, is most suitable for Lois
Lane, as he can “bust her out with [his] super sperm” (emphasis added).
Hank’s boast depends both on his superlative heteronormative performance
and his homoerotic gaze.
In her reading of Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the Id, Judith Butler
argues that heterosexual male identity is a melancholic one. This reading
aids me in locating Big Bank Hank’s managed hyperbolic heterosexual
male desire and his homoerotic attachment. Butler argues that “the
prohibition against homosexuality is culturally pervasive,” and that the
“‘loss’ of homosexual love is precipitated through a prohibition which is
repeated and ritualized through culture.”28 Big Hank rehearses his loss and
the repudiation of his erotic attachment to Superman as a figure of
admiration, but Hank also usurps Superman as the idealized version of
heterosexual masculinity. Not only is Hank performing “fairy-phobia,” he’s
simultaneously displacing white heterosexual masculinity as paradigmatic.
Ironically, Hank is the least well dressed and traditionally handsome of
the three members of Sugarhill Gang. In a 1979 televised recording of
“Rapper’s Delight” at the Soap Factory in Palisades Park, New Jersey, the
rap trio presents a visual picture that contours their sonic personas. Wonder
Mike and Master Gee both wear form-fitting sweaters that accentuate their
taut, well-muscled bodies. Mike has well-trimmed muttonchops along with
his short natural hairstyle, while Master Gee rocks a gloriously beautiful
Afro.
Meanwhile, Hank is slovenly in comparison: His yellow T-shirt looks
plain and ill fitting, especially as he’s surrounded by partiers in their
resplendent club outfits. His white Kangol Bermuda Casual adds a dash of
cool to his underwhelming appearance, but as he shimmies and shakes and
smiles for the dance revelers, it’s a stark (and welcome) contrast to his
Casanova persona. In this visual moment, he’s more reminiscent of the late
dancer, actor, and comedian Fred Berry (1951–2003), who played Rerun on
the popular US television sitcom What’s Happening!! (1976–1979) than of
Muhammad Ali, Shaft, or other Black “cool cats” that he references. Like
Cathy Cohen, I’m interested in Hank’s performative disjunctures at the
level of race, gender, sexuality, and body image.29 Hank’s sonic masculine
triumph over Superman has a queer effect. Hank articulates Superman’s
desirability, concurrently spelling out Superman’s sexual impotence and
highlighting his own sexual prowess. Superman, imagined as a tights-
wearing, sexy, and cute fairy with a “little worm,” is trumped in the realm
of desire by the sonic boom of an affable, pudgy, former pizza shop worker
remade as an indomitable emcee.
A C
Hardy’s words, directed solely at Black men who love, like, or have sex
with other Black men, were important for The Source’s audience to read.
They gave further voice and imagery to the imagined/famous, unknown,
gay or bisexual, Black, male rapper.
As mentioned, there were already out LGBTQ rappers, but none of them
were famous. Some involved in hip hop are more interested in using “gay”
as the anti–hip hop identity, rather than being curious about those who
seamlessly embody “gay,” “queer,” or “trans” and “hip hop.” Queer emcees
started releasing albums and increasingly performed locally, regionally, and
nationally in 1998. Perhaps all the “gay rapper” hype was helpful because it
made listening audiences curious about the work of gay, trans, and queer
emcees. The rise of visible, prominent LGBTQ entertainers and politicians,
the consolidation of wealthy lesbian and gay individuals and organizations
like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) into serious political forces, and
the visibility of LGBTQ youth all helped queer hip hop to make sense as a
phenomenon in the late 1990s.
Cyrus (pronounced “ser-e-ous”), a prolific lyricist, played Pride events
and other shows in the mid-1990s and released her album The Lyricist in
1998 on Outpunk founder Matt Wobensmith’s now-defunct Queercorps
record label. Cyrus, currently a music producer in Columbus, Georgia,
joined the military in the late 1990s and then faded into obscurity after
being discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). Her song “Y Us”
reflects her fierce rhyming style; it narrates the dynamic between an out
lesbian and a queer female friend who passed for straight, and the ways that
passing affected both of them. Cyrus raps, “You doin’ your own thing a
portrait of success, congratulations! You’ve been nominated best supporting
actress, I certainly hope the enemy is impressed. Now I carry the struggle
on my shoulders cuz I’ve inherited your stress.”55
“Y Us” articulated the effects of passing that are “positive” for Cyrus’s
friend: she achieved some level of success for playing the role of a straight
woman in mainstream society. The stress that the friend alleviated for
herself through her passing fell onto those who could not or would not pass
for straight. These narratives between friends and lovers inside LGBTQ
communities don’t often appear in the hip hop lexicon. Hearing the
frustration, complexity, and terror that heterosexism and patriarchy placed
on the queer or gender-nonconforming body relocated listeners from
considering heteronomative narratives as natural or benign. Rather, the
subversive narrative of songs like “Y Us” underscored heteronormativity as
a ruse in which one may participate to varying degrees.
H , Q H H , G ’90
In this section, I gloss three influential queer hip hop musical entities:
Rainbow Flava, a highly influential LGBT rap group that arguably
popularized queer hip hop in the 1990s; Deep Dickcollective (D/DC), an
Afrocentric Black group active in the late 1990s through the late 2000s; and
Hanifah Walidah, a multigenre artist who innovated under a big record label
deal and made way for women in hip hop production. Although they read as
short bibliographical sketches, they are meant to exemplify the breadth of
queer hip hop creativity in a shorter format. I discuss some of these artists
and others in my forthcoming book Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in
New York City (NYU Press, 2022), wherein I focus in depth on the
aesthetic, artistic, and political import of LGBTQ hip hop artists in New
York City in the chapter on queer hip hop. For the purposes of this chapter,
however, I mention these artists to archive their achievements and the ways
that they intervened in the difficult world of independent and major record
labels and the treacherous waters of the music business.
Rainbow Flava: The Birth of the HomoHop
Movement
The musical group Rainbow Flava and the record label and production
company Phat Family helped to usher queer hip hoppers into the wider
world of hip hop culture. Both were inside hip hop culture and queer culture
—they carved out a more visible space for homohop. Rainbow Flava, a San
Francisco–based, multiracial, and multigender LGBTQ hip group,
performed together from 1996–2001. The group’s members rotated and
included rapper and spoken-word artist Juba Kalamka, a founding member
of D/DC and the founder of the PeaceOut World Homohop festival;
Dutchboy, producer, rapper, DJ, founder of Phat Family, and cofounder of
Peace Out East and the hip hop soul group, B.Q.E. (I was the other
cofounder of the last two groups); Tori Fixx, a rapper, producer, and DJ
who produced songs for some of queer hip hop’s Golden Era luminaries; DJ
Monkay, a hip hop and drum-and-bass producer/DJ; N.I. Double K.I., one
of the foremost and foundational queer female rappers; and Reh-Shawn, a
rapper who was an early member of the group. The group made three
albums: the out-of-print Rainbow Flava Soundsystem (1998), Digital Dope
(2000), and Family Business (2001) before disbanding in 2001.
Rainbow Flava and some its individual members were directly
responsible for the visibility and explosion of LGBTQ hip hop artists in the
United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany. The group
formed to create a queer presence in hip hop and to build a community
around queerness in hip hop. Dutchboy recounted in an interview that his
evolution as an artist occurred partly due to the generational disconnect
with the wider LGBTQ popular culture, a sentiment shared by other queer
youth and young adults who were part of LYRIC, a queer youth center in
San Francisco.56 Rainbow Flava emerged from a specifically queer youth
and young adult context: Some of the artists knew each other from LYRIC,
while others met at Club Freaky, an all-ages club frequented by many local
LGBTQ youth and young adults. They signaled a shift from queers rapping
as an isolated entity, and differed from a quietly queer-identified person
making a hip hop record. They were a queer group whose main function
was to produce, spin, and play hip hop that bridged the gap between two of
the communities of which the youth were a part. They were also attempting
to recalibrate the marginalized status of those youth within both hip hop and
queer cultures.
Rainbow Flava’s visibility increased considerably in 2001. That was, in
part, due to the mainstream LGBTQ press beginning to take interest in hip
hop’s lyrics, particularly at the moment that the rapper Eminem was gaining
mainstream prominence.57 The group’s biggest influences and contributions
were the records that they released. Beside putting out their own albums,
which had guest appearances by the Houston-based artist and producer
Miss Money, D/DC, and MC Lymus, and myself, Phat Family Records put
out three compilations: Volume 1: The Dozens (2002), Volume 2: Down 4
the Swerve (2002), and Volume 3:Freaks Come Out (2003). These albums
showcased other artists in the nascent scene, including Deadlee, God-Des,
Janiah, JenRo, Q-Formed, Chaser, and others, and also helped to codify the
Golden Era of Queer Hip Hop.58
Not only did the group and its chief architect, Dutchboy, create a strong
web presence, pre-Myspace, with their website (www.rainbowflava.com)
and the Phat Family Records website (www.phat-family.org)59 (both now
defunct), they mounted a 30-city US tour in 2001 that significantly raised
the visibility of LGBTQ hip hop. Rainbow Flava was the prototype for the
twenty-first-century queer hip hop group or performer: They were rooted in
hip hop culture, they were do-it-yourself they were youths or young adults,
and they were technically skilled in various areas of the hip hop elements
(DJing, rapping, producing, graffiti, although not b-boying/b-girling),
connected to their local queer communities, web-savvy, and capable of and
invested in building posses—loosely formed associations of artists,
managers, and supporters.
Black Queer Masculinities: D/DC’s Intersections
D/DC was a Black, queer, Afrocentric, homohop group based in Oakland,
California. Founded in 2000 by Juba Kalamka (pointfivefag), Tim’m T.
West (25Percenter), and Philip Atiba Goff (lightskinneded), the group, in its
many permutations, performed officially until 2008. The three founders met
through various venues—Goff and West knew one another from Stanford
University, where both were enrolled in PhD programs; and West and
Kalamka were familiar with one another from the local spoken-word and
hip hop scenes. D/DC were consummate performers, but they also tapped a
vital nerve inside and across queer hip hop: they were queer Black men,
some with a more masculine presentation and others a more feminine one,
and they were doing hip hop, and doing it well. Their material bodies and
sonic material investigated the intersections of Blackness, Afrocentricity,
masculinity, queerness, and hip hop.
I first encountered members of D/DC as part of “Homo Hop Massive” in
New York City in April 2002. I knew of Tim’m T. West through the usual
queer channels: He and my then-girlfriend had gone to undergraduate study
together at Duke University, and I was friends and work colleagues with
one of Tim’m’s ex-boyfriends. A number of us were scheduled to perform
at the legendary dyke club, Meow Mix, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Over the course of the two-day festival, comedian-singer-poet Robin Cloud,
Dutchboy, Tim’m T. West, Juba Kalamka, G-Minus of D/DC, DJs Ross
Hogg and Daryl Raymond, and I performed. It was an exhilarating time.
The packed crowd put Meow Mix at capacity; there were also standing-
room-only audiences at the related panel discussion at People of Color in
Crisis, a social service center in Brooklyn catering to gay and bisexual men,
Men who have Sex with Men (MSM), and transgender women.
The crowd at Meow Mix on that Saturday, April 27, was filled with hip
hop heads, queer folks, and others who refused easy identification. It was
breathtaking to see thug-looking men of all colors hanging side by side with
shaved-headed Black, brown, and white lesbians. Everyone wanted to hear
and see queer folks doing hip hop. Tim’m performed “Blingizm,” which
moved the crowd to dance as it critiqued the obsession in hip hop and
American culture with “bling”—objects and evidence of material wealth.60
Tim’m, a powerfully built, handsome, dark-skinned Black man from the US
South, looked like the archetypal hip hop artist: He was dressed all in blue
—deep blue jeans, a sea blue Triple Five Soul T-shirt, and a midnight and
sea blue knit cap—and his see-through “stunna” sunglasses gleamed under
the small bar’s lighting as he held the mic in one hand. His other arm,
muscles flexing, pulled us in with its gesticulations, compelling us to listen
while we moved to his words:
Bling, bling! How many times can you sing “Bling, bling”? How many lives lost in pursuit
of the dream…So shiny and metallic, metabolism stings the Sun…FUBU will take your
Benjamins, leaving you Washington. Boys look pretty in the city, what a pity they’re
cloaked in labels.61
That night, I felt part of something incredibly special. Like other queer
hip hop artists and fans, I had experienced isolation, in thinking that I was
the only one who lived and breathed hip hop. After the show, many of us
vowed to stay in touch—these connections were how I heard of the
PeaceOut festival and secured an invitation to perform at the event in
Oakland in September 2002. The power of seeing queer Black men doing
hip hop cannot be overstated. It’s problematic, of course, that so much
emphasis is placed upon Black masculinity in hip hop, but it’s
understandable that the veneration of Black men happens in this space, one
of the few where Black men reign supreme in the United States.
Many young and not-so-young Black people have deep emotional
investments in hip hop and its legacy. Imani Perry has called hip hop (rap
music, specifically)“masculine space,” and indeed, it is a space that Black
men have carved out as a site for creative articulation. At the same time, hip
hop is an open space, ungendered and unfixed. There is value to the queer,
Black, male, hip hop performer as an analog to his straight, Black
counterpart. In fact, he is needed to validate queer hip hop, so it will not be
dismissed as an undertaking done by “them” (read: white queers) or only
“femcees” (female rappers) or rappers of non-Black racialized groups.
For better or for worse, these attitudes exist, and D/DC is a powerful
corrective to the notion that queer Black men couldn’t be dope emcees. In
fact, D/DC is one of the groups whose lyrics are included in the
groundbreaking Yale Anthology of Rap (2010), a volume intended to
canonize the best of rap’s lyrics and lyricism. Over their eight-year formal
existence, D/DC’s members were Kalamka, West, Goff, Ralowe
Trinitrotulene Ampu (G-Minus), dancer Doug E., Dazié R. Grego, Jeree
Brown (JBRap), Marcus René Van (Mr. ManMan), Leslie “Buttaflysoul”
Taylor, Soulnubian, Salas B. Lalgee, and Baraka Noel.
Hanifah Walidah: The Renaissance Artist
Hanifah Walidah is arguably the most successful queer person who has
made a hip hop album, although she wasn’t out at the time that her album
debuted. S. Craig Watkins addresses the challenges of being Black and
female in hip hop and the invisibility of Black girls’ stories. He argues,
“[hip hop films]…[reveal] a strong bias toward the plight of young Black
males…corporate rap is dominated by the stories that young male MCs
create. And despite the proliferation of hip-hop magazines there are
virtually no empowering images of Black women.”62 As a queer Black
woman making music, film, and theater for over 20 years, Walidah is a
powerful example of independent creativity and fortitude in three industries
that are routinely disempowering to Blacks, queers, and women.
Going by the name of Sha-Key, Walidah (neé Hanifah Johnson) released
the acclaimed A Headnadda’s Journey to Adidi-Skizm (1994) on the
Imago/BGM label. The album blended hip hop, soul, house music, and
spoken word in the vein of De La Soul, Soul II Soul, A Tribe Called Quest,
and Saul Williams. Walidah, who does not call herself a queer hip hop
artist, nonetheless is an out lesbian who has supported and participated in
LGBTQ-focused hip hop festivals, including PeaceOut and Peace Out East.
Her prolific career includes being a producer, writer, and lead vocalist for
Brooklyn Funk Essentials and releasing a hip hop opera called Adidi-The
Untold Story (2004), starring the actor and spoken word artist Saul
Williams and the Def Jam poet and actor Mums the Schemer, and featuring
the music of the AntiPop Consortium’s Earl Blaize.
Walidah is currently the front woman for the futuristic blues-rock,
electro, and hip hop group St. Lô. Walidah wrote the one-woman show
“Black Folks Guide to Black Folks,” as well as a film called White Lies
Black Sheep (2007), cowritten with Afropunk (2003) director James
Spooner. She also wrote the GLAAD Media Award–winning documentary
U People (2009), about three days in the lives of queer and straight women
and transgender people of color. Walidah, a bald, thin, sharp-cheekboned,
gloriously androgynous butch woman, has negotiated the male-dominated
space of music-making and directing. Imani Perry states that by finding a
place for themselves inside of hip hop’s highly masculinized space, women
“occup[ied] styles of presentation and archetypal roles coded as male in the
world of hip hop or in the larger world of Black popular culture.”63 If this is
true, the female queer Black hip hop artist is in a double bind, as her
queerness is already mistakenly conflated with a desire to be male. This
double bind is further complicated if the queer female is butch,
androgynous, or gender-nonconforming.
A way to radicalize Perry’s concept is to divorce masculinity (gender
presentation) from sex (male/female/intersex). This applies to queer
women, as well as straight women in hip hop culture who feel more
comfortable with hip hop masculine styles. There’s also an aspect to Perry’s
statement that can be interpreted to be about safety; if female hip hoppers
do not wish to be overtly sexualized (if they can maintain any say over their
presentation)—that is, if they want to be heard before they are seen—
certain clothing styles might aid this. It’s not unproblematic, but wearing
certain clothing styles codes female rappers as serious about rhyming and
may be a strategy to resist unwanted misogynistic sexualization. As Perry
reminds us, to be taken seriously as artists, “women must become subjects
instead of objects.”64
Walidah made space for other artists for whom she produces music or
directs; she also paved the way for independent, technologically savvy
Black female artists. As a highly collaborative artist, she’s generous with
and to her art forms. She’s a Renaissance woman who continues to reinvent
and reinvest herself in music- and art-making.
A Queer Hip Hop Future
In conclusion, I’d like to think about the sonic future of queer hip hop and
queer artists making hip hop music. The years 2011 and 2012 introduced
out LGBTQ rappers from all US regions. None of them had significant ties
to earlier homohop or queer hip hop movements. Azealia Banks, an out
bisexual woman, blazed the way for queer commercial success when she
became an Internet star through her dynamic, house-influenced rap, “212.”
Banks helped secure industry success for Zebra Katz, creator of the
infectious and dark song “I’ma Read.” Mykki Blanco (“Waavy”), Angel
Haze (“Coming Out My Closet”), Le1f (“Wut”), and Frank Ocean have
garnered significant Internet followings. The controversial “212” has gotten
over 155 million views on YouTube as of June 2018.
Times have changed. Straight-identified rappers like Murs and
Macklemore have made gay-positive songs. For instance, Murs made
“Animal Love” to combat homophobia both inside and outside hip hop. His
decision to play the role of the boyfriend in the video and kiss his paramour
onscreen promoted calls for him to “explain” his decision.65 Macklemore &
Ryan Lewis made “Same Love” (which featured the haunting voice of Mary
Lambert) in part to honor his gay uncles and their love story; the song had
just shy of 203 million views on YouTube as of June 2018.66
Hip hop has a future partly because the artists, fan base, music
programmers, and others are able to more freely produce their music (and
gain success) without initially being bound by the profit-hungry record
companies. The shift from the total power of major record labels to a more
experimental and quirky Internet interface has made it possible for “weird”
to become “cool” and profitable for the artist.
Many queer hip hop artists, especially emerging mainstream ones, are
refreshingly odd and countercultural, making songs about club drug culture
(Blanco’s “Waavy”), paying homage to Chicago and New York house
music (Banks’ “1991”), and making gloriously dark songs (Haze’s “New
York”). The emergence of AfroLatinx The Brooklyn rapper Young M.A has
absolutely shattered the notion that a masculine woman could not be a
successful mainstream hip hop star. Young M.A’s signature, thick-throated
style manages to combine traditional New York City boom-bap-style hip
hop with the more millennial, regionally diverse (though thoroughly
Southern) style of trap music when she burst onto the mainstream scene
with the infectious hit “Ooouuu” in the fall of 2016. “Ooouuu” was a top 20
hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 and peaked at number 3 and number 5 on
Billboard’s US Rap and US R&B/Hip Hop charts, respectively.67 This
makes Young M.A, alongside Azealia Banks, the most successful queer
woman hip hop artist to date. Young M.A., like many other contemporary
queer hip hop artists, has chosen to stay independent rather than signing to a
major record label.
Although still not the majority, and certainly still experiencing the
deleterious effects of patriarchy, transphobia, antiqueerness, and the ways
that those elements intersect with antiblackness, the wider access to and
proliferation of queer hip hop, of queer and transgender artists making hip
hop, and of straight and nontrans artists making hip hop celebrating queers
mark a break in hegemonic hip hop authenticity and the insistence that hip
hop has no queer interior. It is a bright, odd future indeed.68
N
1. “Frank Ocean Talks Coming Out, Sex, Labels, and Love,” NewNowNext,
http://www.newnownext.com/frank-ocean-talks-coming-out-sex-labels-and-love/11/2012/. This
is Ocean’s original post: http://frankocean.tumblr.com/post/26473798723.
2. Ralph Bristout, “Odd Future’s Syd the Kyd Criticized for Homophobia,” XXL Magazine,
February 14, 2012, http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2012/02/odd-futures-syd-the-kyd-criticized-
for-homophobia/.
3. Amy Wallace, “Ocean-ography,” GQ Magazine, December 2012,
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201212/frank-ocean-interview-gq-december-2012?
currentPage=1.
4. There is no unified term to refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)
people who make rap music, b-boy/b-girl, make graffiti, or DJ (and their allies). Some of the
more popular terms include “queer hip hop,” “gay hip hop (GHH),” and “homohop.” “Queer hip
hop” is often, although not exclusively, used by artists to denote a critical intervention into
mainstream hip hop culture and mainstream gay culture, as well as the biases of both cultures
regarding each other. “Gay hip hop (GHH)” is often used by artists and media to describe
LGBTQ people making hip hop. “Homohop” originated in the LGBTQ hip hop community, but
is no longer widely used there. It has become a media designation, but is often used
interchangeably with GHH.
5. “PeaceOUT World Homohop Festival,” Myspace, http://www.myspace.com/peaceoutfestival.
6. “Peace Out EastTM,” Myspace, http://www.myspace.com/peaceouteastfestival.
7. In addition, there were three spin-off festivals: Peace Out UK, in London; Peace Out South, in
Atlanta, Georgia; and Peace Out Northwest, in Portland, Oregon. All of these were only held in
2005.
8. See Tricia Rose’s The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk about When We Talk abour Hip Hop—and
Why It Matters (especially 236–240), 2008. New York: Civitas Books, 2008 for a discussion of
homophobia in hip hop; see also Terry Sawyer’s “Queering the Mic,” Alternet.com, March 18,
2004 http://www.alternet.org/story/18168/queering_the_mic/.
9. Touré, “Gay Rappers: Too Real for Hip-Hop?” The New York Times, April 20, 2003, Arts
section: 2.
10. Dutchboy, Paradigm. B.Q.E. Interview. Video shot and edited by Robert Penn. Robert Penn
Productions, United States, May 21, 2005.
11. Matt Miller, Bounce: Rap Music and Local Identity in New Orleans (Amherst, MA, and Boston:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2012); T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Pimps Up, Ho’s Down:
Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women (New York: New York University Press, 2007); Jeff
Chang, ed., Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop (New York: Basic Civitas, 2006);
S. Craig Watkins, Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a
Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005).
12. Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press,
1996), 98.
13. Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer
Politics?” in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, ed. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G.
Henderson (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 22.
14. For more on hip hop as an arts movement, see Jeff Chang, “Introduction: Hip-Hop Arts: Our
Expanding Universe,” in Total Chaos, ix-2.
15. Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994); Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A
History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005); Alan Light, The Vibe
History of Hip Hop (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999); Murray Forman and Mark Anthony
Neal, That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 2nd ed. (New York and London:
Routledge, 2012); Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino
Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
16. Chang, Total Chaos, xiii.
17. Perry locates the following four characteristics as determinants of hip hop music’s status as
Black American music: “(1) its primary languages is African American Vernacular English
(AAVE); (2) it has a political location in society distinctly ascribed to Black people, music, and
cultural forms; (3) it is derived from Black American oral culture; and (4) it is derived from
Black American musical traditions.” Imani Perry, Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in
Hip Hop (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 10.
18. Forman and Neal, That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, 3.
19. Gust A. Yep and John P. Elia, “Queering/Quaring Blackness in Noah’s Arc,” in Queer Popular
Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television, Thomas Peele, ed. (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007), 31.
20. E. Patrick Johnson, “‘Quare Studies’ Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer
Studies I Learned from My Grandmother,” in Black Queer Studies, 126. Yep and Elia,
“Queering/Quaring Blackness in Noah’s Arc,” 31.
21. For more on Black representation and television, see: Debra C. Smith, “Critiquing Reality-
Based Televisual Black Fatherhood: A Critical Analysis of Run’s House and Snoop Dogg’s
Father Hood,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, no. 4, Race and Reality TV (2008):
393–412, doi:10.1080/15295030802328020.
22. Watkins, Hip Hop Matters. 9–32.
23. Ibid., “Introduction.”
24. For more on disco’s queerness, see Tim Lawrence, “Disco Queering the Dance Floor,” in
Cultural Studies, 25, no. 2 (2011): 230–243; Brock F. Webb, “This Side of Midnight:
Recovering a Queer Politics of Disco Club Culture,” MA thesis, Bowling Green State
University, May 2013; Ani Maitra, “Hearing Queerly: Musings on the Ethics of
Disco/Sexuality,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 25, no. 3 (2011): 375–
396.
25. Michael Wright, Henry Jackson, and Guy O’Brien, Rapper’s Delight (New York: Sugarhill
Records, 1979).
26. Ibid.
27. For more on gender stereotypes of people in same-sex relations, see Diane Felmlee, David
Orzechowicz, and Carmen Fortes, “Fairy Tales: Attraction and Stereotypes in Same-Gender
Relationships,” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 62, nos. 3–4 (2010): 226–240,
doi:10.1007/s11199-009-9701-x.
28. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories Is Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1997), 140.
29. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens.”
30. See Walter Hughes, “In the Empire of the Beat: Discipline and Disco,” in Microphone Fiends:
Youth Music and Youth Culture. (New York and Oxford: Routledge, 1994, 2014), 147–157.
Also, The Roots’ drummer and musical director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Mo’ Meta
Bluse: The World According to Questlove (New York: Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book
Group, 2013) is perhaps the most sweeping and eclectic contemplation on the deep and
divergent influences on hip hop artists and musicians.
31. Listen to the song here: http://www.ageofconsentrap.com/multimedia.htm.
32. Night of the Night and Master Bate, Fight Back MP3 (Los Angeles),
http://www.ageofconsentrap.com/multimedia/mp3s/age_of_consent-fight_back.mp3.
33. Ibid.
34. Brad Rader, “Rader of the Lost Art,” My Beautiful Installment 10, February 8, 2010,
http://raderofthelostart.com/blog/labels/David%20Hughes.html.
35. Ibid.
36. Following Johnson and Buttny’s foundational study on “sounding Black” and “sounding
White,” Billings concludes, “Although not dealing with BS specifically, the study used 93
college participants and employed Mulac’s (1975) 21-item Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale to
underscore two key findings. First, White participants rendered even more negative assessments
of speakers who sounded Black if the content of the message was abstract and/or hard to
comprehend. Second, the researches found that sounding Black caused White participants to
describe the speaker in stereotypical terms” 70. Andrew C. Billings, “Beyond the Ebonics
Debate: Attitudes About Black and Standard American English,” Journal of Black Studies 36,
no. 1 (September 2005): 68–81, doi:10.1177/0021934704271448.
37. Darcy Diamond, “Consent Raps to a Different Beat,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner (November
13, 1981), Weekend Style, http://www.ageofconsentrap.com/press.htm.
38. For more on whiteness and hip hop realness, see Mike Hess, “Hip-Hop Realness and the White
Performer,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22, no. 5 (2005): 372–389,
doi:10.1080/07393180500342878.
39. Diamond, “Consent Raps to a Different Beat, http://www.ageofconsentrap.com/press.htm”
40. Samir Hachem, “L.A. Rappin’ with Age of Consent,” The Advocate (April 14, 1983), Music
Ticket section.
41. Bakari Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New
Reality of Race in America (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005), 27.
42. Ibid.
43. Fred Everett Maus, “Masculine Discourse in Music Theory,” Perspectives of New Music 31, no.
2 (1993): 264–293.
44. John Hughes, David Callahan, and Thea Other, “History Rap” (Los Angeles, CA, USA
performed live June 1982 on KPFK-FM radio)
http://www.ageofconsentrap.com/multimedia/mp3s/age_of_consent-history_rap.mp3.
45. Watkins, Hip Hop Matters, 12.
46. Kurtis Blow, managed by a young Russell Simmons, was the first major-label rapper. He was
signed to Mercury Records in 1979 and released his first album, Kurtis Blow, in 1980.
47. Jamal X, “Confessions of a Gay Rapper,” 1997,
http://www.prismnet.com/~larrybob/gayrap.html.
48. Paula T. Renfroe, “She Got a Big Mouth: Hip-Hop Shock Jock Wendy Willams Tells All,” The
Source, 1997.
49. James Baldwin, “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” in James Baldwin: Collected
Essays, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of America, 1998), 824.
50. Davey D, “Gays, Lesbians, and Hip Hop Culture” Hip Hop Daily News, July 27, 1997,
http://www.daveyd.com/gaynews.html.
51. Laura Jamison, “A Feisty Female Rapper Breaks a Hip-Hop Taboo,” The New York Times,
January 18, 1998, http://www.prismnet.com/~larrybob/queenpen.html.
52. R. K. Byers, “A B-Boy Adventure into Hip-Hop’s Gay Underground,” The Source, December
1997.
53. Ibid., 107.
54. James Earl Hardy, “Boys Will B-Boys: An Open Letter to All My Homie-Sexuals in Hip Hop,”
The Source, December 1997.
55. Cyryus, Y Us CD, The Lyricist (San Francisco: Queercorps Records, 1998).
56. Jason Victor Serinus, “All the ‘Flavas’ of the Rainbow,” Bay Windows (Boston, May 3, 2001),
News section.
57. Sandra P. Angulo, “GLAAD Handed,” EW.com, September 7, 2000,
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,85521,00.html.
58. Although I don’t discuss it here, the film Pick up the Mic (dir. Alex Hinton, 2005) did a
tremendous job of building on queer hip hop’s subcultural following. I discuss the topic at
length in my book, Hip Hop Heresies: New York City’s Queer Aesthetics (forthcoming). See also
Pick up the Mic, http://www.pickupthemic.com/Pick_Up_The_Mic/Home.html.
59. You can look at Phat Family’s discocraphy in the Way Back Machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20160401024125/http://www.phat-family.org/discography.html.
60. For another read on bling, see Krista Thompson’s “Introduction: Of Shine, Bling, and Bixels,”
in Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2015).
61. Tim’m West, Blingizm, live performance, Songs from Red Dirt (New York: Celluar Records,
2002).
62. Watkins, Hip Hop Matters, 220.
63. Perry, Prophets of the Hood, 156.
64. Ibid., 157.
65. Jerry Portwood, “Murs Explains His Reasons for the Gay Kiss in ‘Animal Style’,” Out
Magazine, July 16, 2012, http://www.out.com/entertainment/interviews/2012/07/16/murs-gay-
kiss-animal-style-video.
66. I first began writing this chapter in late December 2012. At that time, “212” had 39 million
views and “Same Love” had 9 million. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s song has soared in
popularity, but it also has been criticized for his white cis-hetreo privilege and his collapsing of
homophobia with Black/hip hop culture. See Karen Tongson (and the vitriolic comments
section), “‘Same Love,” Same Old Shit?” From the Square, June 10, 2013,
http://www.fromthesquare.org/?p=5005; and Thaddeus Russell, “The Progressive Lineage of
Macklemore’s and Lorde’s Attacks on the Pleasures of the Poor,” Reason.com, February 1,
2014, http://reason.com/archives/2014/02/01/that-kind-of-luxe-just-aint-for-us-the-p. Murs’s
“Animal Style” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwTSPcNSi40) is provocative and au
courant, as it takes on the issue of gay male suicide, homicide, closetedness, interracial desire,
and masculinity/masculine performance. Although the topics may seem somewhat conservative,
in the realm of hip hop performance, this song and video are cutting edge. See this interview
with DJ Vlad for Murs’s views on the video, his playing a queer male character, and some of the
reaction from other artists and fans, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBJyiW4XLrM.
Incidentally, Murs’s video has not even broken 700,000 views as of mid-June 2018.
67. Young M.A Chart History: Billboard Top 100, Billboard,
http://www.billboard.com/artist/7462235/young-ma/chart; Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs,
http://www.billboard.com/artist/7462235/young-ma/chart?f=367; Hot Rap Songs,
http://www.billboard.com/artist/7462235/young-ma/chart?f=1222.
68. There has been a small but visible surge in queer hip hop scholarship, including the Queerness
of Hip Hop/Hip Hop of Queerness conference (http://qohh.tumblr.com/), organized by C. Riley
Snorton and Scott Poulson-Bryant at Harvard University on September 21, 2012; there have
been at least three special issues of scholarly journals on queerness and hip hop: for instance, the
special issue “The Queerness of Hip Hop/The Hip Hop of Queerness,” ed. C. Riley Snorton,
Palimpsest, 2, no. 2 (2013); and the special issue “All Hail the Queenz: A Queer Feminist
Recalibration of Hip Hop Scholarship,” eds. Jessica N. Pabón and Shanté Paradigm Smalls,
Women and Performance, 24, no. 1 (2014).
R
Brown, Ruth Nicole, and Chamara Jewel Kwakye (Eds.). Wish to Live: The Hip-Hop Feminism
Pedagogy Reader. New York: Peter Lang, 2012.
Chang, Jeff (Ed.). Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop. New York: BasicCivitas Books,
2006.
Cohen, Cathy. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”
In Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G.
Henderson, 21–52. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2005.
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New
York & London: Routledge, 2004.
Ellis, Nadia. Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in Black Diaspora. Durham, NC, and
London: Duke University Press, 2015.
Hobson, Janell, and Dianne Bartlow (Eds.). “Representin’: Women, Hip-Hop, and Popular Music.”
Meridians: Feminism, Race, and Transnationalism 8, no. 1 (2008): 1–14.
Johnson, E. Patrick, and Mae G. Henderson (Eds.). Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology,
Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2005.
Means Coleman, Robin R., and Jasmine Cobb. “No Way of Seeing: Mainstreaming and Selling the
Gaze of Homo-Thug Hip-Hop.” Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and
Culture 52, no. 2 (2007): 89–108. DOI: 10.1080/15405700701294053.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Pabón, Jessica N., and Shanté Paradigm Smalls (Eds.). “All Hail the Queenz: A Queer Feminist
Recalibration of Hip Hop Scholarship.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 24,
no. 1 (2014): 1–7.
Rose, Tricia. The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk about When We Talk about Hip Hop—and Why It
Matters. New York: Civitas Books, 2008.
Royster, Francesca T. Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul
Era. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
Neal, Mark Anthony. Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities. New York: New York
University Press, 2013.
Snorton, C. Riley, Ed. “The Queerness of Hip Hop/The Hip Hop of Queerness.” Palimpsest: A
Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 2, no. 2 (2013): 238.
PA RT I I
VERSIONS
CHAPTER 8
F R O M Q U E E R M U S I C O L O G Y TO
INDECENT THEOLOGY
Liberal and Liberationist Protestant Theology
and Musical Queerings of the Bible
DI R K VO N DE R HO RS T
The locus classicus for gay-affirmative engagement with the Hebrew Bible
is 2 Samuel 1:26–27, in which King David proclaims the love Jonathan, son
of King Saul, had for him. This proclamation is part of a lament over the
deaths of Saul and Jonathan, but earlier episodes in the narrative also stress
Jonathan’s love for David. Debate over what kind of love these verses
represent continues unabated; erotic and non-erotic understandings have
been put forth.11 Given the historical distance between the texts and our
times, agnosticism on this matter is probably the wisest approach.12
Nevertheless, a musical composition and/or performance must make an
interpretive choice one way or the other. Several musical interpretations of
David’s lament exist, including Abelard’s planctus; Jacobean anthems by
Thomas Tomkins, Thomas Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons; George Frideric
Handel’s oratorio Saul; and Lou Harrison’s version for the Portland Gay
Men’s Chorus.13 In 1947, Ned Rorem composed a setting of this text for
baritone and string quartet, titled “Mourning Scene.”
Rorem set the entirety of the lament to music, in contrast to his
contemporary Lou Harrison, who selected primarily the verses that dealt
with Jonathan to bring out the potential homoeroticism of the text. Rather
than excise verses irrelevant to depicting love between two men, Rorem
used musical-rhetorical strategies to cast Jonathan’s love for David in relief.
In four separate registers—tonality, tempo, texture, and the manner of
interaction between voice and instruments—Rorem sets the expression of
Jonathan’s love off from the remainder of the song. The composition overall
treats D as a tonic within a non-triadic neo-tonal idiom but tonicizes various
pitches over the course of the song. The string quartet generally moves in a
conspicuously polyphonic texture and gives the singer melodic cues before
his entrances. Before the moment the singer exclaims Jonathan’s love, the
viola outlines an octave on E, which the singer takes up to begin the section
on Jonathan’s love with an octave leap on E, hearkening back to an earlier
octave leap on E on the words “mountains of Gilboa.” The tempo slows
(the score indicates a change from ♩ = 90 to ♩ = 72), the texture of the
quartet becomes much sparer, and rather than providing specific gestural
cues to the singer, the quartet provides a slightly more “atmospheric”
background over which the singer describes Jonathan’s love and slowly
unravels emotional control as the close of the statement drifts from E to E
flat. The song subsequently returns to D and a notable martial melodic
gesture from early in the song and ends in the home tonality.
Rorem’s setting of Jonathan’s love as distinct from the remainder of the
lament divides Saul and Jonathan into representatives of militarism and
love respectively. In the lament, the love of Jonathan for David is one
element in a larger military elegy. The biblical text suggests a public
performance in which tropes of military commemoration are paramount and
the assertion of love is a side note. By setting the lament as a chamber
music vocal piece, he facilitated a shift toward highlighting the intimate
dynamics between David and Jonathan over against the larger context of
military defeat.14 The division of Saul and Jonathan into representatives of
militarism and love furthermore contrasts with some contemporary
interpretations of the David story that understand David as sexually active
with both Saul and Jonathan.15 Without excluding Saul from David’s erotic
experience, treating the contrast love/militarism as a binary opposition
would be impossible to sustain. Finally, “Mourning Scene’s” differentiation
of homoeroticism from militarism is salient in light of Rorem’s Quaker
identity. In this respect, Rorem joined Benjamin Britten in linking Christian
narratives, homoeroticism, and pacifism. Rorem, however, would have
resisted the interpretive move to connect music, religion, and politics in his
music because he was committed to a view of musical autonomy that queer
musicologists generally find inimical to our work.16
In line with this commitment to musical autonomy, Rorem posited an
almost impermeable boundary between art and religion. His “Notes on
Sacred Music” outline his understanding of music vis-á-vis religion. Like
the reformer Ulrich Zwingli before him, Rorem’s thoughts on sacred music
value both religion and the arts, but keep them strictly separated.17 While he
recognizes the interaction between religion and music, it is an interaction
that remains like that between oil and water. They can occupy roughly the
same space, but never on each other’s terms. Thus, he did not understand
his turning to a biblical text as a theological act. Rorem’s resistance to
theology can furthermore be seen in the fact that he writes as an atheist
Quaker, opening his notes with the unequivocal “I do not believe in God.”
Two pages later, he writes “God gave me a gift for music.”18 This
discrepancy is less of a contradiction than a movement between different
discursive uses of the term “God.” He was perfectly willing to use “God” as
a figure of speech, but not as a metaphysical reality. Finally, he notes that
“as a composer I am apolitical. As a Quaker I am superpolitical. There is no
halfway point.”19
Although Rorem makes a firm distinction between apolitical music and
political religion, his discussion of the performance of “Mourning Scene”
weakens this distinction. He described the context of the first performance
as an explicit clash between an avowed homoerotic identity and a
homophobic institutional context. In 1948, Rorem participated in a
composers’ consortium at the Eastman School of Music. In his memoir,
Knowing When to Stop, he describes how, a year before the performance, he
formed a friendship with a group of Eastman students who “spoke…
disparagingly of director, Howard Hanson, who had fostered homosexual
purges.”20 Despite the students’ warning that the text “Thy love to me was
wonderful, passing the love of women” would “outrage the faculty,” the
baritone performed it “glowingly.”21 The Eastman students recognized not
only the homoeroticism of Rorem’s setting, but the general recognizability
of homoeroticism in the piece. In this case, even the cultural pedigree of the
Bible could not neutralize the scandal of homoeroticism amidst Cold War
gay panic. The cultural, if not religious, authority of the Bible could,
however, provide enough counterweight to cultural homophobia for
homoerotic desires to be explicitly represented, making “Mourning Scene”
a clear example of the positive and effective use of the Bible to disrupt
heterosexist norms.
D G : P M
Carter Heyward was one of the first women to be ordained as a priest in the
Episcopal Church. Although the Episcopal Church was still debating the
issue, two retired bishops and a resigned bishop proceeded with the
ordination of eleven women in 1974.40 She describes her studies in
seminary as a period of spiritual and sexual awakening and Heyward came
out publicly as a lesbian in 1978. She developed an interest in the “death-
of-God” theology of Thomas Altizer while in seminary. This combination
of sexual and spiritual radicalization culminated in a theological position in
which everything flows to and from the radical redefinition of God as “our
power in mutual relation.”41 This non-theistic understanding of God marks
a significant break with Harkness’s idealist personalist view of God as
universal mind.
Unlike Martin Buber, another relational theologian on whom Heyward
draws heavily, Heyward does not consider cultural artifacts in her
discussions of relationality.42 But her emphasis on God as relational power
mirrors a similar emphasis in much queer and feminist musicology.43
Although Heyward does not use many musical metaphors or engage music
directly, Women’s Music is a strong presence in her The Redemption of
God, which has lyrics from the Holly Near and Meg Christian song “The
Rock Will Wear Away” as its epigraph and at one point defines God with
Cris Williamson’s phrase, “the changer and the changed.”44 Women’s
Music embodied a lesbian-feminist, sometimes separatist, vision of
egalitarian politics that contrasted to some later Queer explorations of the
erotics of dominance and submission.45 If we take Women’s Music as a
normative musical stance in Heyward’s thought, Rorem and Galas are both
distant from the sonic world Heyward inhabits. One major contrast between
Heyward and Rorem and Galas is simply in the difference between the
juxtaposition of Women’s Music and biblical faith culminating in a
synthesis of relational theology and direct musical queerings of biblical
texts. A simple setting of biblical texts in the musical styles of Women’s
Music would be uncomfortably close to some forms of conservative
Christian rock music. It is precisely Women’s Music avoidance of
patriarchal religious texts that allows Heyward to use Women’s Music as a
vantage point from which to articulate her criteria for selecting scriptural
norms.
Furthermore, Heyward takes her relational understanding of God to the
center of her understanding the Bible. Because all biblical narratives are
imagined reconstructions of prior events, not direct reports, reading the
Bible is a participation in an ongoing process of reinterpretation in which
new agents find ways to relate to past stories.46 What is central is the prism
of relation—including relations to the text and the people who wrote the
text—not the text itself. For Heyward, then, the central theological question
is not “how do Rorem and Galas interpret the Bible?” but instead “what
relational dynamics do their respective musickings reveal and foster?” The
question of how these interpretations relate to biblical traditions must serve
the question of clarifying the human relations opened by the specific
musical practices, not simply rest as examples of biblical exegesis. In either
case, musical practices as part of a web of social practices would trump the
musical rhetorical or narrative compositional strategies at stake. In Rorem’s
case, the performance of “Mourning Scene” opened room for a naming of a
social oppression among an intimate group of friends; the discussion among
Eastman students preceding the performance would be of more importance
for Heyward’s theology than the performance itself. In this light, unlike
Harkness, Heyward would embrace an interpretation of “Mourning Scene”
that downplayed its move from a polyamorous text and that would stress its
disruptive presentation of homoeroticism in a heterosexist context.
Galas would provide Heyward with an excellent example of how
biblical interpretation is never a matter of accepting the text as binding in a
coercive sense, but rather of adjudicating ideological tensions and effects of
the Bible. Building on Hannah Arendt’s understanding of authority,
Heyward develops the idea of trustworthiness as the key to determining in
what ways a given biblical passage can have authority. Galas’s Plague Mass
serves as an object lesson in demonstrating that the Levitical ideology is not
trustworthy for queer people grappling with the AIDS crisis. For both
Heyward and Galas, Leviticus can be fairly rejected as misogynistic and
homophobic. In the course of adjudicating the Christian tradition, Heyward
draws a direct line from Leviticus to Pope John Paul II as representatives of
a misogynistic God who must be plainly rejected.47
Another link between Heyward and Galas is that Galas performed
Plague Mass in an Episcopal cathedral; both critique classical Christian
thought while negotiating—on admittedly very different terms—the
boundaries of the authority of the Episcopal Church. Heyward also invokes
the 1960s as a time in which the spirit of radical collective action for
change modeled the kind of hope she sought to capture. The fact that
Galas’s musicking is part of a larger activist practice shows a basic
congruence between Heyward’s and Galas’s use of the sacred to articulate
meanings of social struggle. Finally, Galas’s unflinching representation of
descents into suffering and madness illuminate the tragic quality of
relational theology. If God is our power in mutual relation, God is as fragile
as our mortal bodies and not a guarantee that everything will be made well.
The voice of protest against unjust relations and the madness induced by
non-relation is a crucial aspect of the process of developing strong, mutual
relations.
M A -R : I
T
O P E R AT I C A D A P TAT I O N S A N D
T H E R E P R E S E N TAT I O N O F N O N -
N O R M AT I V E S E X U A L I T I E S
F RE YA JARMAN
FIGURE 9.2 Micaëla’s sympathetic counter-melody in the Letter Duet, suggesting emotional
proximity of her and José.
FIGURE 9.3 Safe harmonies and smooth texture in Micaëla’s Act III aria.
In this particular adaptive shift, the narrative core is altered in order to bring
one part of the signifying field into greater focus, as Bizet’s opera zooms in
on the signification of José’s tale, thereby losing the authority of Mérimée’s
anthropological narrator. But the opera enhances the various
characterizations by way of certain narrative changes and amplifies them
significantly with the new level of meaning brought to the text by the
music, which not only comments from outside on the characters and their
actions, but also fundamentally embodies them; Carmen is her strophic,
rhythmic, percussive, modal sound, just as José is his through-sung
bourgeois lyricism.
Thus, while the narrative close-up on José’s tale serves to amplify the
signifying power of its constituent elements, the musical frame performs the
work of the now-lost narrator more intensely, by persistently voicing in
musical terms the narrator’s and José’s desires and bringing them to bear
instead on the audience; where it was the narrator’s and José’s first-person
desires that Mérimée’s reader perceived, it is now the audience’s own desire
at stake. Music thereby serves both to embody Carmen’s sexuality and to
pass judgment on it.
A self-identified adaptation of Bizet’s opera, Carmen Jones (dir.
Preminger, 1954) is famous for its all-Black cast and relocation of the
narrative to mid-1950s America. The relationship between Joe and Carmen
proceeds narratively in much the same way as that between José and his
gypsy temptress, but the effect is rather different. The tension between the
two lead characters—his emotional dependence on her, and her decreasing
interest in him—is a part of the narrative core of any manifestation of
Carmen, and evidently requires some kind of sexual element and some
differential of power. Yet the relationship in Carmen Jones ultimately seems
in all ways founded on a far more conservative sexuality than that in its
narrative ancestor. If Bizet’s text essentially renders Carmen a threat on the
three levels of racial, sexual, and social status, then the Preminger film
effectively dilutes all three levels. And just as Bizet’s music consolidated
those elements in the opera, the musical decisions made by Hammerstein
and Preminger contribute to an almost entirely opposite effect.
The very rendering of this opera into a piece of musical theater is the
first issue at stake. Bizet’s Carmen sounds conspicuously vernacular when
set against the bourgeois strainings of José in his Act II aria, but Joe’s “Dis
Flower” does not have quite the same effect in terms of relief from
Carmen’s soundworld. Rather, the mise-en-scène of the film is such that a
vernacular tinge colors the entire event, and, as such, Joe’s song—here sung
as a brief soliloquy rather than, as in the opera, an impassioned declaration
—appears more like a change of dramatic tempo than it does a contrast of
ideological realm; in the musical, this is “a slow number,” where in the
opera it is from a different sonic world, and therefore characterizes José as
from a different social order. It is true that LeVern Hutcherson, who
provides the voice of Joe (for Harry Belafonte’s on-screen performance),
has an operatic, cultured quality to his voice, exceeding that of Marilyn
Horne in her singing for the title role (played on screen by Dorothy
Dandridge), and a comparison between “Dis Flower” and “Dere’s a Café on
the Corner” (the Seguidilla in the opera) shows a palpable difference
between the two voices. At the same time, however, both songs call for the
stylized African American pronunciation common at the time (“dis,”
“dere,” “dat”), which renders them in similar aesthetic worlds. On screen,
Belafonte is seen topless and undertaking physical labor in the prison,
situating the actor and the character both in a long history of objectifying
the Black body on screen. The overall effect, then, is more one of unrefined
authenticity (albeit with aspirations to something greater) than it is one of
innate bourgeois privilege such as José represents.
Further to this comparative lack of musical contrast is the lack also of
racial contrast, which frames the (non-)normativity of sexuality in Mérimée
and Bizet. The cast of Carmen Jones is by no means homogenously Black,
as Dandridge in the lead role is light enough in her skin tone (and
sufficiently made up, no doubt) that she almost imbues the role with a hint
of its Hispanic origins; she contrasts strikingly with Broc Peters21 in the
role of Joe’s superior officer or Roy Glenn as Rum Daniels (the manager of
Husky Miller, the boxer who substitutes for Escamillo). Nonetheless, there
is no hint in the narrative or the casting that Carmen and her allies Frankie
(Frasquita) and Myrt (Mercedes) are intended to be racially other to Joe or
any other character. The artistic decision here was, of course, made in an
America still laboring under lingering Jim Crow laws, some years before
the 1964 Civil Rights Act, much less the 1967 Federal repeal of anti-
miscegenation laws; once Hammerstein had taken the decision to set the
story with an African American element, a direct equivalent to Bizet and
Mérimée in terms of racial contrast was arguably too politically sensitive to
consider.22 In addition to denying the contrast between the leading
characters along lines of race, the couple is rendered safer still in several
incidents where Carmen displays domestic and domesticating instincts—
taking Joe to meet her grandmother, cleaning his clothes, and so on—
thereby inviting a sympathetic audience response to the possibility of this
relationship. So, while most fundamental narrative checkpoints are rendered
equivalent, descriptive details being changed to suit the new context and
without great adaptive significance, the sexual significations (in some cases
by way of racial difference) are lost at the expense of the already culturally-
significant attempt to provide a cultural space for an African American
musical text.
One musico-narrative checkpoint that is noticeably adjusted is the
decision to deny Carmen her Chanson bohème, and to give the tune instead
to Frankie (“Beat Out Dat Rhythm on a Drum”). If the operatic text
exemplifies Carmen’s status as a gypsy as well as the variety of threats she
poses, in Carmen Jones, the song is transformed into a musical discourse on
Africanism, notably by way of an opening drum solo played on toms with
soft beaters. Also underpinning the “Blackness” of the event is the
directorial decision to keep the iconic singing voice of Pearl Bailey, who
plays Frankie, with all its connotations of Black vocality; notably, this is in
contrast to the characters of Carmen and Joe, whose songs were voiced by
white singers despite both of the actors having enjoyed singing careers of
their own. Thus, all the burden of difference brought about in the Chanson
bohème is laid instead at the door of a secondary character who barely even
casts a shadow of guilt on Carmen by association. Carmen herself is free to
brood about Joe’s absence, and the audience is altogether left less
threatened by her as a figure.
Taken as a whole, Carmen Jones maintains the principle of sexual
tension between its two leading characters, but is much less challenging
overall on the levels of threat established by Bizet’s music. Despite a
surface attempt to translate Bizet’s opera for a contemporary audience, the
musical changes combine with other decisions to transform considerably
the signifying potential of the text, fundamentally adapting the field of
meaning while ostensibly not mutating far from its narrative predecessor.
Ultimately, in Carmen Jones, music helps redirect the source toward
comparative normativity in the sexuality on display, where Bizet had more
fully immersed his audience in transgressive desire.
D V
The theme and its attendant timbres are so particular in their contextual
use that it is not long before the simple sound of the vibraphone conjures an
association with Tadzio. Once Aschenbach has pondered, “Surely the soul
of Greece lies in that bright perfection […],” the vibraphone yields to the
more grounded percussion of drums (a different flavor of percussive sound
that will continue to characterize the boy as physically energetic), although
cymbals continue to lend a metallic, unreal edge to the sound. Everything
gives way to the cold, harsh sound of a solo piano which brings the
audience back into Aschenbach’s mind—into his determinedly Apollonian
analysis of the question, “How does such beauty come about?” Later, in the
Games sequence and elsewhere, a chorus sings from off stage of Tadzio’s
beauty and physical superiority; the sound, libretto content and function of
the chorus summon associations with Greek melodrama, associations
cemented by the off-stage countertenor voice of Apollo. At such instances,
music does not describe Tadzio, but embodies Aschenbach’s view of him.
The gamelan-style percussion sound that frames the boy is not a device to
characterize his foreignness—it is hardly a sound one would associate with
a Polish character. Rather, music is part of the vision by which Aschenbach
is so captivated; the exotic music is Tadzio through Aschenbach’s eyes,
which is the only Tadzio the audience is ever able to perceive.29
There is an argument to be made that Tadzio-as-object is common to all
three texts, and that the balletic device in Death is but a medium-
appropriate means of achieving that symbolic end. But by reducing the boy
to a musical and visual spectacle with no voice, by navigating
Aschenbach’s feelings through monologues, and by weaving his internal
tension throughout the musical fabric via Apollo and the shape-shifting
Dionysus, the operatic result is also to resituate the audience in relation to
Tadzio, and to invite the audience further into Aschenbach’s mental world.
Where Mann distances the reader from Aschenbach through the narrator’s
voice, and Visconti introduces some more substantial role for the boy
through the numerous return gazes, Britten’s musical frame serves to align
the viewer with and within Aschenbach, rendering them complicit in this
transgressive desire. Consequently, the change of medium serves to shift the
overall effect of the narrative—not completely and absolutely, but
nonetheless palpably and profoundly.
It seems obvious that the treatment of sexuality in adaptations is likely to
be as varied and diverse as the world of adaptations, which is indeed
complex. All that this chapter has considered are examples of adaptations
that take a single point of reference as their narrative ancestors; I have not
ventured anywhere as intricate in terms of narrative genetics as, for
example, Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (which might be summed up as
the hero of La bohème and the heroine of La traviata, filtered through a
recycled soundtrack of Bollywood, Hollywood, and 1980s pop). What I
have intended to demonstrate, though, is the role that music plays in
changes to and from operatic forms of texts under adaptation, in terms of
the place and meaning of sexual desire. And while there is clearly much
more that could be said about that role in any one of the texts mentioned, it
should also be clear by now that it is a significant one. Specifically, music
can succeed in taking up the work of a narrator when a novel is adapted to
an opera; this works either by acting as a third-person commentary in lieu
of a first-person narrator, as in Bizet’s Carmen, or by bringing the audience
into first-person alignment with the events previously described by a third-
person voice of judgment, as in Britten’s Death in Venice. Moreover, as
music serves to characterize various protagonists—not only in the sense of
enhancing a character who is already sufficiently defined by dialogue and
narrative checkpoints, but also in the sense of being part of the definition of
the character at all—then it becomes a part of the character; it is not simply
that music inflects a pre-existing character that would exist without it, but
that characters are to some extent their music. (This is particularly true in
the case of the mute Tadzio.) In any given case, the narrative content may
be left quite intact or it may not, but the signification opened up by the
adaptations is notably enhanced by the intervention of music in the new
medium. From the perspective of non-normative sexuality, a trace of their
various source texts remains in the adaptations I have discussed here
(Mérimée in Bizet, Bizet in Hammerstein/Preminger, and Mann in both
Visconti and Britten). Consequently, any non-normativity in the source text
casts a long shadow in the adaptation, even if, as in Carmen Jones in
particular, a musical frame may also confine the limits of any sexual threat,
and transgression is more a ghostly reminiscence of the source than it is
present in the new text. But certainly, sexuality operates in narratives at the
level of the signifying field, wherever else it might also operate, and music
plays a significant role in positioning it.
N
1. Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (New York/London: Routledge, 2006), 3.
2. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York/London: Routledge, 2006), 8–10.
3. Linda Hutcheon and Gary Bortolotti, On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity
Discourse and “Success”—Biologically, New Literary History 38, no. 3 (2007): 447.
4. Ibid., 449.
5. Freya Jarman-Ivens, Queer Voices: Technologies, Vocalities, and the Musical Flaw (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 13–17.
6. See Halperin (1995) and Jagose (1996) in addition to Jarman-Ivens (2011).
7. See Roland Barthes (1975).
8. The famous instance to which I refer is of course that of Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz,
which were silver in L. Frank Baum’s book (1900) and ruby red in the glorious Technicolor film
(dir. Fleming, 1939). It is interesting to consider whether the cultural significance of the film
has, over time, afforded the ruby slippers signifying potential that has come to transcend what
was a pragmatic change of a descriptive detail.
9. Hutcheon and Bortolotti (2007, 449).
10. Such a reading is not beyond the possibilities invited by Shakespeare’s text, of course, and there
is some agreement that the play contains distinctly homoerotic undertones, particularly in the
relationship between Romeo and Mercutio (see Dalmaso 2016), which is perhaps most clearly
queered in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film. My point here is simply one about the importance of the
medium of musical theater in 1950s America to any reading of the adaptive result. One might
also consider the Anita/Maria dyad in Bernstein’s musical as another example of the
significance of homosociality to West Side Story, as Stacy Wolf does (2006).
11. Davies notes that there have been at least eighty film adaptations alone (2005, 3).
12. See for instance: McClary (1991); McClary (2005); Davies and Perriam (2005); Powrie et al.
(2007).
13. Prosper Mérimée, Carmen and Other Stories, Trans. Nicholas Jotcham (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989), 4.
14. Ibid., 23.
15. Carmen’s companions, Frasquita and Mercedes, are also creations for the operatic narrative.
16. Indeed, it is the music of the bullfight that bookends the opera itself, opening both the first and
final acts, and inviting the audience to remember this as a crucial musical feature.
17. See Jarman (2013) for an exploration of the emergence of this style and the gender politics
thereof.
18. We might also read it as part of Carmen’s social slipperiness, with reference to Mérimée’s
description of the gypsies’ linguistic slipperiness (1989, 23).
19. Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 1991), 56.
20. Ibid., 57–58.
21. Elsewhere, Brock Peters.
22. See also McClary (2005, 210).
23. Although Britten’s opera was debuted after Visconti’s film, he worked independently from
Mann’s novella (Strode 1987, 26); this is not an adaptation of an adaptation, but a coincidental
text directly descended from the same ancestor.
24. Ritchie Robertson, Classicism and Its Pitfalls: Death in Venice. In the Cambridge Companion to
Thomas Mann, ed. Ritchie Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 97.
25. See James Larner’s PhD dissertation: Benjamin Britten and Luchino Visconti: Iterations of
Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (2006, 43).
26. Thanks to my colleague Dr Giles Hooper for his insights on this audiovisual moment.
27. James Larner (2006, 42).
28. In terms of operatic history, balletic content is not at all unusual; quite the contrary, it was a
convention of grand opera. However, in Britten’s Death, that generic frame which would make
ballet an expected feature is not present. Moreover, the sequences in Death differ from grand
opera’s ballets in form, as they are generally solos or pas de deux and woven into the narrative
rather than a stand-alone divertissement involving a corps de ballet. My point here, therefore, is
that the sequences in Death stand out from the general context of the opera as a sung narrative.
29. A number of scholars have explored the relevance of the gamelan to Britten, both personally and
in terms of the characterization of Tadzio. See Brett (2006, ch.7–8), Brett (2009), and Cooke
(1998, ch. 8).
R
Barthes, Roland. An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative. New Literary History 6, no.
2 (1975): 237–272.
Brett, Philip. Music and Sexuality in Britten: Selected Essays, Edited by George E. Haggerty.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Brett, Philip. Queer Musical Orientalism. Echo 9, no. 1 (2009). www.echo.ucla.edu.
Carmen Jones. Directed by Otto Preminger, written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Harry Kleiner.
20th Century Fox, 1954.
Cooke, Mervyn. Britten and the Far East: Asian Influences in the Music of Benjamin Britten.
Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 1998.
Dalmaso, Renata Lucena. Queering the Performance: Mercutio as an Emblem of Non-Normativity in
Romeo and Juliet. Scripta Uniandrade 14, no. 2 (2016): 72–85.
Davies, Anne. Introduction. In Carmen: From Silent Film to MTV, Edited by Anne Davies and Chris
Perriam, 1–8. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
Davies, Ann and Chris Perriam, eds. Carmen: From Silent Film to MTV. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
Halperin, David. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York/London: Routledge, 2006.
Hutcheon, Linda and Bortolotti, Gary. On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse
and “Success”—Biologically. New Literary History 38, no. 3 (2007): 443–458.
Jagose, Annamarie. Queer Theory: An Introduction. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996.
Jarman, Freya. Pitch Fever: The Castrato, the Tenor, and the Question of Masculinity in Nineteenth
Century Opera. In Masculinity in Opera: Gender, History, and New Musicology, Edited by Philip
Purvis, 51–66. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Jarman-Ivens, Freya. Queer Voices: Technologies, Vocalities, and the Musical Flaw. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Larner, James. Benjamin Britten and Luchino Visconti: Iterations of Thomas Mann’s Death in
Venice. PhD Diss., Florida State University, 2006.
McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 1991.
McClary, Susan. Carmen as Perennial Fusion: from Habanera to Hip-Hop. In Carmen: From Silent
Film to MTV, Edited by Anne Davies and Chris Perriam, 205–216. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005.
Mérimée, Prosper. Carmen and Other Stories, Translated by Nicholas Jotcham. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989.
Morte a Venezia [Death in Venice]. Directed by Luchino Visconti, written by Thomas Mann, Luchino
Visconti and Nicola Badalucco. Warner Bros, 1971.
Powrie, Phil, Bruce Babington, and Ann Davies, eds. Carmen on Film: A Cultural History.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
Robertson, Ritchie. Classicism and Its Pitfalls: Death in Venice. In The Cambridge Companion to
Thomas Mann, Edited by Ritchie Robertson, 95–106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. New York/London: Routledge, 2006.
Strode, Rosamund. A Death in Venice Chronicle. In Benjamin Britten: Death in Venice, Edited by
Donald Mitchell, 26–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Wolf, Stacy. “We’ll Always Be Bosom Buddies”: Female Duets and the Queering of Broadway
Musical Theater. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 3 (2006): 351–376.
CHAPTER 10
QUEER AUDIOVISUAL
C R E AT I V I T Y
Fan-Created Music Videos from Star Trek to
Bad Girls
NI NA T RE ADWE L L
I
I would add that Star Trek, as an ovular text for vidders, also embodied the
necessary relational tensions between characters that allowed vidders to
creatively explore relationships in their vids, most notably homoerotic
desire between Spock and Captain Kirk.15 While these queer expressions
were, more often than not, created by straight women in the early days of
vidding, the impetus for queer exploration also resonates with Star Trek’s
foundational mission for exploring alternative universes, and thus
alternative characters (Spock as half human, half Vulcan), alterative view
points, and alternative relationships.16 The term “slash” was coined in
response to the coupling of two male characters by juxtaposing their paired
initials; thus, in the case of Star Trek, the subtextual, homoerotic pairing of
Kirk and Spock was referred to as K/S. I will return to the topic of slash,
and more specifically femslash, later in this chapter.
While slash found expression in Star Trek fan fiction and fan art—
arguably easier mediums to negotiate than vidding from a technical
standpoint—it comes as no surprise that, likewise, the earliest work by
vidders contains elements of slash. Claiming precedence for any work of
art, be it subcultural or mainstream, is always a fraught endeavor, however,
Coppa has carefully contextualized her herstory of fannish vidding within
the VividCon community. According to Coppa, this community of vidders
traces its lineage back to Kandy Fong’s slide show, “What Do You Do with
a Drunken Vulcan?” (1975), first “performed” at The United Federation of
Phoenix, according to Fong herself “the longest running Star Trek fan club
in the world.”17 Using discarded Star Trek footage that Fong’s husband
acquired from Lincoln Enterprises, Fong was able to bring new visual
sources to an audience eager for new Star Trek material;18 film footage was
converted into carefully chosen stills (slides) that were set to the popular
filk (fan-created song) “What Do You Do with a Drunken Vulcan?”19
At that time, vidding involved carefully cueing slides to either filk—a
distinctive genre in its own right—or popular songs, with the latter
predominating. The vid was performed live, in the sense that Fong activated
the slides in situ at a club or conference (con) as the pre-recorded song was
played.20 While the results (and the available technology) might seem
rudimentary from an outsider’s perspective today, the way in which stills
were synced to songs and particularly to a song’s lyrics was highly
suggestive to those familiar with a given television series or movie. For
fans, particular stills generated a complex web of meanings that related to
the original dramatic context of a still, its repositioning within the vid itself,
and previous “citations” in other vids that circulated in the fan
community.21 The juxtaposition of music and lyrics further complicated
interpretive possibilities. The combination of visual and aural materials (at
any given moment) worked to produce a multiplicity of “readings” or, as
Jenkins describes it “a complex grid of associations;”22 the greater the
knowledge of the visual sources, the richer the meanings, which could also
work self-referentially as the vid proceeded through time. It is worth noting
that during this early period a song’s lyrics (rather than specific musical
elements) appear to have been given a privileged position in the
construction of vids in terms of the meaning-making process; from the most
obvious standpoint, selected slides were frequently synced with words that
had a specific visual correspondence, a trend that continues in digital
vidding practices today. That said, in 2008, long-time vidders (as well as
more recent exponents) identified song choice as the crucial component of a
video,23 which presumably referred to both the significance of a song’s
lyrics and the music’s general affect, at the very least. Discussion of the
relationship between visuality and musical details is all but non-existent in
the scholarship on vids, although this should not reflect the explicit (or
implicit) way in which vidders work with music, a topic which is explored
most fully in the second part of this chapter.
To return to Star Trek specifically: Kandy Fong’s vid to “Both Sides
Now” (c. 1980, videotaped 1986) is another early vid consisting of Star
Trek stills that holds special significance, not least because we have a record
of it, thanks to Fong who videoed her endeavors. The piece can now be
readily viewed via the Critical Commons website.24 It has already been
given quite extensive analysis by Coppa,25 so I will only discuss certain
aspects of the vid here. In so doing, I will concentrate my attention on
queerness and music, aspects that Coppa only touches upon. I say “music”
not song, because Coppa uses the song’s lyrics, in part, to structure her
analysis of the (visual) stills.
The vid might be loosely described as a thought-provoking meditation
on the dual nature or otherness of the character of Spock; the version of
“Both Sides Now” chosen by Fong for the vid is not sung by Joni Mitchell
who wrote the song, nor Judy Collins who first popularized it; rather, Fong
uses the 1968 cover by Leonard Nimoy (who plays the character of Spock)
from the actor’s third album The Way I Feel.26 In her commentary to the
vid, Coppa suggests the following:
By creating an intertext between Leonard Nimoy the actor and Leonard Nimoy the singer,
Fong gives the unemotional Mr. Spock an unexpected poignant inner voice that’s hard to
dismiss, since it’s Nimoy’s own.…By staging the contrast between Nimoy’s external
appearance and inner voice, Fong foregrounds various kinds of “bothness:” human and
alien, public and private, male and female, mainstream and resistant reader.27
If the term “queer” is to be a site of collective contestation, the point of departure for a
set of historical reflections and futural imaginings, it will have to remain that which is,
in the present, never fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered
from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political
purposes….41
I have chosen to use the word “queer” quite casually throughout the course
of this chapter often with little explanation, notably by eliding the notion of
slash with queerness. What I want to do now is demonstrate how the
activity of vidding itself—the act of appropriating and repurposing elements
of mainstream material culture—can itself be understood as decidedly
queer. If one reconceives the above citation and imagines vidding as “a site
of collective contestation” [italics mine] in which vids are “never fully
owned,” “but always and only redeployed [and] twisted…from a prior
usage”42 one comes fairly close to describing what it is, using the infinitive
of the verb, “to vid.” In essence, vidders use repurposed footage and
repurposed music to create a myriad of musico-kaleidoscopic
recombinations that yield results as yet not seen or heard, “futural
imaginings” that, as we have seen, also have a herstory. Most productively,
one can refuse to understand queer as oppositional to seemingly stable
identities—gay, lesbian, straight, bi—and use it instead to continually
critique preconceived notions of identity that depend, for their efficacy, on
the stakes of inclusion and exclusion, including the seemingly more
inclusive term queer. In sum, central to both queering and vidding is the art
of critique.
I opened this section with a citation drawn from Judith Butler’s article
“Critically Queer,” written some 25 years ago now. While the selected
citation articulates, in part, a Butlerian notion of queer, it is also radically
decontextualized for the purpose of recontextualization in the present
chapter. I omitted the broader context of Butler’s argument even within this
small section of her essay; in other words, I chose to use the parts of her
text that best served the interests of my own argument—as a vidder would
do—at the same time as excluding other parts of the source material. As a
productive intervention, Butler would no doubt approve of this
(mis)appropriation of her work; in essence what I chose to exclude was her
broader discussion of identity politics, which I now cite:
As much as it is necessary to assert political demands through recourse to identity
categories, and to lay claim to the power to name oneself and determine the conditions
under which that name is used, it is also impossible to sustain that kind of mastery over the
trajectory of those categories within discourse. This is not an argument against using
identity categories, but it is a reminder of the risk that attends every such use.43
During the 1980s and 1990s, women began making vids by using patch
cords and two VCRs. Chosen clips were edited by transferring material
from one VCR to another. As Jenkins notes: “The biggest [technical]
challenges artists faced were rollback and rainbow lines.”44 Rollback
occurred because pushing the pause button to make an exact cut resulted in
the tape rolling back by a few seconds, or a delay in starting the next
recording point. In addition, as Coppa notes, rollback had a crucial impact
on the relationship between the audio and visual components:
[R]ollback wasn’t standard from machine to machine, so vidders had to learn the
idiosyncrasies of their particular equipment. Worst of all, in the early days of vidding, the
audio track [which required the use of a stopwatch for accuracy] could only be imported
once all the clips had been laid down on tape, so a vidder who wanted to edit to the beat or
who wanted internal motion synchronized with the music had to be extremely meticulous.45
“I feel cheated! What is Bad Girls? And where can I find it?”
“Have you found it out yet, Will? Bad Girls was a British TV show begun in the late 1990’s.
It ran 8 seasons/series. The show is about a womens prison in South London. When the
show started, Helen was a Wing Governor (Warden) and Nikki was a prisoner. Helen’s job
changed during the three years she worked there. Helen and Nikki’s relationship during
those three years is the focus of hundreds of videos and fan fiction.”
Responses by willtynellyworth and blazerliz, respectively, to Bad Girls vid by nikkhele set
to Melissa Etheridge’s “I Take You with Me” posted on YouTube on September 10, 2006.53
“jesus sweet christ where the hell have i been? who th ehell are nicki and helen ?”54
Response by torndenim1 to fanvid by Masque101 set to LeAnn Rimes’s “The Right Kind Of
Wrong,” posted on YouTube on July 16, 2006.55
Unlike its airing in the US on LOGO (the “gay” cable channel) 8 years
later, Bad Girls originally aired on Britain’s main commercial network, ITV,
on primetime television. To quote Mandana Jones: “We broke down
barriers, portraying things the public didn’t normally have in their front
room at 9 o’clock on a Tuesday evening.”59 A women’s prison drama,
though hardly stereotypical, the relationship of inmate Nikki Wade and
prison worker Helen Stewart (N/H) was fleshed out over the course of 3
years.60 Thus, British viewers witnessed a long and subtly-evolving
relationship with the typical vicissitudes that such long-term relationships
entail, and by necessity waited each week for the next installment. And
although it is probably true to say that the N/H relationship constituted the
central dramatic thread during series one to three (although the couple’s
airtime was comparatively minimal), BG was a commercial hit for
numerous reasons, and the viewership was by no means limited to a lesbian
one.61 It was the lesbian fan community, however, that picked up on the
N/H relationship in particular, spawning discussion lists, websites, fan
fiction, vids, and so on.
H L F
K A R A O K E , Q U E E R T H E O RY,
QUEER PERFORMANCE
Dedicated to José Esteban Muñoz
K ARE N TONGS ON
These lines belong to Lord Henry Wotton in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of
Dorian Gray (1890). Wotton waxes about influence as echo while an artist,
Basil Halward, paints Dorian’s infamous picture. The more Wotton says,
the more Dorian Gray squirms and breaks his pose, interrupting the scene of
aesthetic production, of imitation. This irks Basil whose aesthetic labor, in
this instance portraiture, requires his subject’s stillness. Basil Halward in
turn interrupts Wotton’s diatribe by commanding Dorian’s physical
restraint: “Just turn your head to the right, Dorian, like a good boy.”33
Indeed, it seems the content of Wotton’s speech is enough to incite Basil to
prohibit Dorian’s movements to ensure he remains a “good boy,” and in this
instance a good subject of art, for Wotton’s words are literally moving
Dorian Gray.
Yet, it is not Lord Henry Wotton’s endorsement of self-development
through self-indulgence that provokes Basil’s regulations and excites
Dorian’s imagination. It is how Lord Henry says what he says that threatens
to inform, infect, and shape Dorian Gray. Lord Henry’s musicality—his
“low musical voice,” his graceful hands that “moved as he spoke, like
music and seemed to have a language of their own”—resonates and
reverberates in Dorian’s body, “touch[ing] some secret chord in him that
had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and
throbbing to curious pulses.”34 In short, Wotton speaks and gesticulates
“musically,” according to Wilde’s narrator, and musicality interrupts the
scene of visual discipline.
Long ago, and oh so far away, I endeavored to make a case for studying
musicality in Victorian literature with Wilde’s/Wotton’s lines about
becoming “an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not
been written for him” as the project’s keynote. Fast forward a few years
later, and I invoked these lines again in my first book, Relocations, as a
means for understanding our stubborn attachments to improper objects, to
the cultural detritus of imperialism in the so-called suburban “wastelands”
of the Inland Empire. And here I am once more, repurposing the same old
song, only its music is no longer incidental, but has crescendoed into my
main theme. To become an “echo of someone else’s music” is at the heart of
my reflections on criticism and aesthetics, on queer theory, and on karaoke
itself as a mode of criticism. To become an echo of someone else’s music is
to surrender to a mild form of madness activated by something outside of
one’s self that has burrowed its way, parasitically, within (in your head, in
your gut, in your ear). It requires capitulating to the compulsion to repeat
the same lines over and over again from the chorus, verse, refrain. And yet
this form of psychological disturbance has also been upheld as the
penultimate form of training the cultural critic before and after
psychoanalysis. We could turn, for example, to Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s
essay on “The Echo of the Subject,” which declares that the tune lodged in
one’s head primes (in his words) “the autobiographical gesture: that is, the
theoretical gesture.”35 I already wrote about this at some length in the
conclusion to my chapter on the Inland Empire in Relocations, when I used
Lacoue-Labarthe’s remarks to aggregate disparate scenes of queer, suburban
media encounters, as well as queer suburban theoretical confession by Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick and some of her pupils.
Instead of languishing in this echo chamber, I want to revisit briefly
another framework for repetition, or perhaps more appropriate to earworms,
regurgitation. In his classic 1977 retort to New Critics and theorists of
influence and form such as M. H. Abrams and Harold Bloom, J. Hillis
Miller recontextualizes what it would mean to be a “parasitic critic”
threatening the formal and literary historical univocality of the “primary”
text. With “The Critic as Host,” Miller (on behalf of the practices of
deconstructive reading), describes the filial intimacy forged by the prefix
“para”:
A thing in ‘para’ is…not only simultaneously on both sides of the boundary line between
inside and outside. It is also the boundary itself, the screen which is at once a permeable
membrane connecting inside and outside, confusing them with one another, allowing the
outside in, making the inside out, dividing them but also forming an ambiguous transition
between one and the other. Though any given word in ‘para’ may seem to choose
unequivocally or univocally one of these possibilities, the other meanings are always there
as a shimmering or wavering in the word which makes it refuse to stay still in a sentence,
like a slightly alien guest within the syntactical closure where all words are family friends
together…. Parasite was originally something positive, a fellow guest, someone sharing the
food with you, there with you beside the grain.36
And so, in this oldie but goodie, in this hoary chestnut I was forced to digest
in the required entry-level critical theory seminar in my first semester of
graduate school, we find a refrain we’ve heard many times since (and many
times before), albeit processed differently through something akin to an
emulator; with a different texture, in a different key and octave, from voices
located elsewhere. Although many of us now, queer critics forged in a post-
post-structuralist world, take for granted the mutual dependency between
text and critic, subject and object, original and copy(ist), we are prone to
forget how many times over we were compelled to repeat the same mistakes
out of fear of derivation itself. Critics—to get a bit Barthesian, Berlantian,
Paterian, and Platonic on you—are like lovers who, despite their full
awareness of the folly inherent in a commitment to the other, who, in many
instances is just a fantasy of the self projected into a gorgeous vessel, are
consigned to surrender to the same forms over and over again, the same
imaginary that sutures wholeness to severance, and severance to an a priori
and divine wholeness, which we already know, but choose to forget, is
fantasy.
Having arrived at this impasse, there is nowhere to turn except to turn on
the song in one’s head in the hope it might drown out the inevitable doubt
that creeps in at junctures of realization when a fissure appears in the
fantasy. The ear worms its way back to where we began our encounter with
the “empty orchestra,” with Selena Gomez’s “Love You Like a Love Song.”
To “love like a love song,” is to “keep hittin’ repea-pea-pea-pea-peat,”
despite the fact that “it’s been said and done” and “every beautiful word’s
been already sung.” It is to surrender compulsively to a kata: to regimented
patterns of repetition and copying. Gomez’s love song offers a convenient
coda for revisiting the queer critic as artist, as host, as lover, as karaoke
crooner.
Elaborating on the vocality of criticism itself, J. Hillis Miller reminds us
that “Both readings, the ‘univocal’ one and the ‘deconstructive’ one, are
fellow guests ‘beside the grain,’ host and guest, host and host, host and
parasite, parasite and parasite. The relation is a triangle, not a polar
opposition. There is always a third to whom the two are related, something
before them or between them, which they divide, consume, or exchange
across which they meet.”37 J. Hillis Miller (not to be confused with D. A.
amongst the piano bars), transposes this “triangle” into the metonymic
chain that becomes deconstructive criticism’s formal signature. He says,
“The relation between any two contiguous elements in this chain is that
strange opposition which is of intimate kinship and at the same time of
enmity.”38 I ask us to linger instead on the triangulation. It is, at once, the
shape René Girard attributes to narrative in Deceit, Desire and the Novel,
and, thanks to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, a foundational form for
understanding queer theories of desire.39 Since Sedgwick’s Between Men
(1985), queer theory in the Sedgwickian vein has “repaired” the idea that
triangulation merely gives shape to unidirectional flows of power between
subjects objectified, and objects subjectified to desire; the desire of the
critic, the lover’s desire. We might think about this in relation to the
transnational crosscurrents of karaoke, of the flows of influence actually
muddied by knowing its origins in Asian nations such as Japan and the
Philippines, and fixating on its subsequent popularity in the US.
To illustrate this subjective objectification further, we might return again
to one of my favorite lyrics in Gomez’s “Love You Like a Love Song”
(which already transposes the subject “you,” into an object, “a love song”):
“You are beautiful/like a dream come alive incredible/centerfold, miracle,
lyrical.” Centerfold. Miracle. Lyrical. A set of three things, first mundane (a
commodity), then magical, then poetic. As any student of poetry remembers
about “the lyrical,” or the lyric and in particular the Romantic lyric: it is as
much about the fantasy of an “I” speaking, as it is about say, some
mountains (P. B. Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”), a bird (Keats’ Nightingale), or
even a feeling-as-object (Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode”). As Lauren
Berlant remarks in Desire/Love, “without fantasy, there would be no
love.”40 Karaoke as a critical mode creates an absorptive, magical, lyrical
fantasy, a repetitive, yet genuinely reparative one that allows us to obfuscate
the very repetition to which we surrender so that we might love again, sing
the same old songs again, with the hope and promise of another outcome.
As Carly Rae Jepsen sang in the smash summer hit of 2012, “Call Me,
Maybe?”: “Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad.” In this
anticipatory remark, the rest of the narrative has already been scripted and
loss has already announced itself: “I missed you so bad.” And yet all of this
echoes in one’s head prior to the action, and therefore is also saturated with
possibility, with the off-chance of fulfillment—maybe—this time.41 We
copy ourselves, echo ourselves, and in so doing, end up echoing everybody
else. We know where this all goes. We’ve heard it all before. And yet we
keep falling. Falling for karaoke and its abundance of love songs; for love
itself despite—or is it because?—of our queer capacity for repetition, our
predilection for copies, our affection for an empty orchestra awaiting a
voice to fill the void.
N
1. Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love (Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2012), 13–17.
2. Dubravka Ugresic, Karaoke Culture, Trans. David Williams (Rochester, NY: Open Letter Press,
2011), 104.
3. Ibid., 11.
4. My initial exploration of karaoke’s apparatuses for this volume is part of a larger project-in-
progress, Empty Orchestra: Karaoke in Our Time, which centralizes karaoke in a critique of
prevailing paradigms of originality and imitation in aesthetics, critical theory, and media
economies, while at the same time exploring the form’s cultures, histories, technologies, and
techniques.
5. Christine Yano, “The Floating World of Karaoke in Japan,” Popular Music and Society 20, no. 2
(1996): 1–17.
6. Pico Iyer, “Daisuke Inoue,” Time (August 23, 1999). There is some dispute, however, about who
is technically the “inventor of karaoke,” since the first patent global patent holder of what we
refer to more commonly as the karaoke machine, is Roberto Del Rosario, a Filipino piano
manufacturer who created his sing-along machine using “minus-one” technology (literally
subtracting the vocals from extant musical tracks), between 1975 and 1977. See Xun Zhuo and
Frances Tarocco, Karaoke: The Global Phenomenon (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
2007). I discuss the colonial and postcolonial dimensions of the Inoue vs. del Rosario
controversy in “Empty Orchestra: The Karaoke Standard and Pop Celebrity” in Public Culture
27, no. 1 (January 2015): 85–109.
7. See Pico Iyer, “Daisuke Inoue,” Time (August 23, 1999).
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Karen Tongson, Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries (New York: New York University
Press, 2011).
12. Rob Drew, “‘Once More with Irony’: Karaoke and Social Class,” Leisure Studies 24, no. 4
(2005): 371–383. Drew’s article takes as its central premise the degree to which karaoke was
first shunned, then ironized by an urban, upper-middle class in the US, because of its
associations with lower-middle class and working class sociability. As Drew writes, “it becomes
clear that there are subtle contrasts in style between middle-class and working-class karaoke
performers, and that these contrasts serve as the basis for social distinction an exclusion. In
particular, middle-class participants are consistently more likely to experience karaoke within a
comic or ironic frame” (381). For more on the concept of temporal drag in queer aesthetic
practices, see Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2010).
13. For more on the queer aesthetics of bottoming, see Tan Hoang Nguyen, A View From the Bottom
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
Music writer Rob Sheffield explores karaoke repertoires of mourning in his memoir, Turn
14. Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke (New York: Harper Collins, 2013).
15. See Yano, “The Floating World of Karaoke in Japan;” Casey Man Kong Lum’s ethnography, In
Search of a Voice: Karaoke and the Construction of Identity in Chinese America (Mahwah, New
Jersey: Lawrence Elrbaum Associates, Publishers, 1996); and Christine Bacareza Balance’s
essay, “On Drugs: The Production of Queer Filipino America through Intimate Acts of
Belonging,” Women and Performance 16, no. 2 (2006): 269–282, as well as Balance’s
forthcoming work on karaoke as an improvised technique of aesthetic training in Filipino
America.
16. Drew, “‘Once More with Irony’: Karaoke and Social Class.” With the notable exception of Rob
Sheffield’s nuanced, and rather sensitive take on karaoke’s relationship to ’80s music in Talking
to Girls About Duran Duran: One Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut (New York:
Dutton, 2010), most mainstream accounts of karaoke, particularly in the US, render the activity
as a sad substitute for broken, musical dreams, or as a drunken pastime for frat guys and
bachelorettes. Indeed, it remains a standard insult in reality vocal competitions to assess a bad
performance as “karaoke-like.”
17. D. A. Miller, Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical (Cambridge and London: Harvard
University Press, 1998).
18. Debates about recording technologies replacing the “liveness” of musical performance have
circulated in academic discourse and the popular press since the incipience of the phonograph,
with Theodor Adorno’s extensive writings on the subject providing the most enduring
philosophical critique in pieces such as “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of
Listening” in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, eds. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt
(New York: Continuum, 1982), 270–300. See also works that have engaged more explicitly the
legal and technological ramifications of these shifts in ways that are more open to the interplay
between recorded and live music, such as Simon Frith, “Copyright and the Music Business,”
Popular Music 7, no. 1 (1989): 57–75 and Jon Frederickson, “Technology and Music
Performance in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” International Review of the Aesthetics
and Sociology of Music 20, no. 2 (1989): 193–220.
19. Both Yano and Drew allude to the hobbyist’s zeal in their ethnographies of karaoke in Japan and
the US, respectively. In the informal conversations I’ve had with KJ’s at various venues, both
queer and mixed, in the US and beyond, most KJ’s are paid entirely through tips, even if they
provide some of the karaoke equipment themselves (including additional song discs, books,
mics, and in certain instances, peripherals like laptop or iPad delivery systems). Some venues,
especially those geared to rotating participants and festive parties instead of regulars, require a
fee or tip per song (usually $1), although most rely on the participants’ preexisting knowledge of
an unspoken karaoke etiquette in which singers tip the KJ a small amount after each song as a
sign of appreciation.
20. Inoue never actually profited from his invention, since he failed to file a patent for the karaoke
machine. See Iyer, “Daisuke Inoue,” Time (August 23, 1999).
21. A Toronto alternative weekly reported, in 1995, how a local rock club strapped for cash had
“succumb[ed] to what many say is a fate worse than disco…the final frontier of live musical
insult—the karaoke machine.” Stoute, L. “Curtains for Clintons: breeding ground for new talent
switches to karaoke format” in Toronto Star, December 7, 1995, H7 (cited in Drew 2005).
22. Prior to his untimely death in early December 2013, José Esteban Muñoz was collaborating with
Nao Bustamante on an anthology and artist catalogue of her work, titled, Amateur: The Work of
Nao Bustamante. Bustamante plans to continue this work with some of the volume’s other
collaborators. See also Munoz’s “Impossible Spaces: Kevin McCarty’s The Chameleon Club,”
GLQ 11, no. 3 (2005): 427–436, which argues that amateurism in both punk and queer
performance “signal a refusal of mastery.”
23. Yano, “The Floating World of Karaoke in Japan,” 2–3.
24. See, for example, Wayne Koestenbaum’s enduring work on The Queen’s Throat: Opera,
Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993).
25. Miller, Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical, (1998), 34. Miller writes, “Like old bits
of rubbish transfigured by the significance they acquire from having been the implements of an
ancient rite, the looks and tones before without rhyme or reason are now necessitated as the
requisite mediations—or simply the inevitable consequences—of a practice as central to the
piano bar as any rite can have been to an antique cult. And though this practice consists of
nothing more than putting the words of songs into certain vocal italics, the metaphoric force of
the latter is so radical that, whether being putatively sung in the Middle Ages or the South
Pacific, by a courting cowboy or a cloistered nun, every lyric now becomes a figure for present-
day metropolitan homosexuality, which no lyric has ever cared, or dared, literally to mention.”
26. Samuel Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (New York: New York University Press,
1999).
27. Yano, “The Floating World of Karaoke in Japan,” 3.
28. This signature phrase of Gestalt psychology is often mistranslated as “The whole is greater than
the sum of the parts,” which redirects its emphasis on the totality that produces a more profound
coherence, rather than simply distinguishing between a whole as something other than its
constitutive elements. See Allen R. Barlow, “Gestalt-Antecedent Influence or Historical
Accident,” The Gestalt Journal 4, no. 2 (1981).
29. Deborah Wong, “I Want the Microphone: Mass Mediation and Agency in Asian American
Popular Music,” The Drama Review 38, no. 2 (1994): 152–167.
30. For the Chinese American version of this story, see Lum, In Search of a Voice: Karaoke and the
Construction of Identity in Chinese America.
31. In Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Rob Sheffield offers one compelling answer for why
’80s music would be within karaoke’s wheelhouse: “There’s something inherently karaoke-like
about the ’80s musical style—the overproduced drums, the beer-commercial sax solos, the
keytars, the leather-lung vocal melodrama. Eighties songs do not belong to the singer…They
don’t sound like a person expressing a feeling—they sound like a gigantic sound machine
blowing up this feeling to self-parodic heights” (135).
32. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Peter Ackroyd (London and New York: Penguin
Books, 1985), 23.
33. Ibid., 22.
34. Ibid., 24.
35. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, “The Echo of the Subject,” in Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy,
Politics, ed. Christopher Fynsk (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 139–207.
36. J. Hillis Miller, “The Critic as Host,” Critical Inquiry 3, no. 3 (1977): 439–447.
37. Ibid., 444.
38. Ibid., 444.
Renee Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (Baltimore:
39. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English
Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
40. See Berlant, Desire/Love, (2012).
41. Here I am not only singing along, karaoke-style, with the Canadian pop wunderkind, Carly Rae
Jepsen, but also with the joyful (and adulterous) sentiments of Peter Coviello’s essay, “Call Me
Morbid,” The Journal of Popular Music Studies 23, no. 4 (2011): 381–393.
R
Adorno, Theodor. “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening.” In The
Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Edited by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, 270–300. New
York: Continuum, 1982.
Balance, Christine Bacareza. “On Drugs: The Production of Queer Filipino America through Intimate
Acts of Belonging.” Women and Performance 16, no. 2 (2006): 269–282.
Barlow, Allen R. “Gestalt-Antecedent Influence or Historical Accident.” The Gestalt Journal 4, no. 2
(1981).
Berlant, Lauren. Desire/Love. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2012.
Coviello, Peter. “Call Me Morbid.” The Journal of Popular Music Studies 23, no. 4 (2011): 381–393.
Delany, Samuel. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. New York: New York University Press,
1999.
Drew, Rob. “‘Once More with Irony’: Karaoke and Social Class.” Leisure Studies 24, no. 4 (2005):
371–383.
Frederickson, Jon. “Technology and Music Performance in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 20, no. 2 (1989): 193–220.
Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Historie. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2010.
Frith, Simon. “Copyright and the Music Business.” Popular Music 7 no. 1 (1989): 57–75.
Girard, Renee. Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Iyer, Pico. “Daisuke Inoue.” Time, August 23, 1999.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054546,00.html.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire. New
York: Da Capo Press, 1993.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. “The Echo of the Subject.” In Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy,
Politics, Edited by Christopher Fynsk, 139–207. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Lum, Casey Man Kong. In Search of a Voice: Karaoke and the Construction of Identity in Chinese
America. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Elrbaum Associates, Publishers, 1996.
Miller, J. Hillis. “The Critic as Host.” Critical Inquiry 3, no. 3 (1977): 439–447.
Miller, D. A. Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical. Cambridge and London: Harvard
University Press, 1998.
Muñoz, José Esteban. “Impossible Spaces: Kevin McCarty’s The Chameleon Club.” GLQ 11, no. 3
(2005): 427–436.
Nguyen, Tan Hoang. A View From the Bottom. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Sheffield, Rob. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler
Haircut. New York: Dutton, 2010.
Sheffield, Rob. Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke. New York: Harper
Collins, 2013.
Tongson, Karen. Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries. New York: New York University Press,
2011.
Tongson, Karen. “Empty Orchestra: The Karaoke Standard and Pop Celebrity.” Public Culture 27,
no. 1 (2015): 85–109.
Ugresic, Dubravka. Karaoke Culture, Translated by David Williams. Rochester, NY: Open Letter
Press, 2011.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Edited by Peter Ackroyd. London and New York:
Penguin Books, 1985.
Wong, Deborah. “I Want the Microphone: Mass Mediation and Agency in Asian American Popular
Music.” The Drama Review 38, no. 2 (1994): 152–167.
Yano, Christine. “The Floating World of Karaoke in Japan.” Popular Music and Society 20, no. 2
(1996): 1–17.
Zhuo, Xun, and Frances Tarocco. Karaoke: The Global Phenomenon. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 2007.
PA RT I I I
VO I C E S A N D S O U N D S
CHAPTER 12
T R A N S G E N D E R PA S S I N G
G U I D E S A N D T H E VO C A L
PERFORMANCE OF GENDER
AND SEXUALITY
S T E P HAN P E NN I NGTON
I
T scene has been repeated over and over in film and television. A man
approaches a beautiful woman. He makes a pass, and she responds with an
impossibly deep voice, revealing the “truth” that she is “really” a man.
Hilarity ensues. At a time when the relationship between bodies and
identities is ever more complex, the voice is clung to as the locus of
essential, non-alterable gender “truth.” The eyes may deceive, but the voice
never lies.
Despite this fantasy being reinforced by scenes repeated in so many
variations from Mrs. Doubtfire to American Dad, transgender people can,
and do, change their voices. Transgender people and voice therapists and
linguists working with transgender vocality have spent considerable time
and effort studying and codifying exactly how gender is performed vocally
in order to help achieve congruency between gender identity and vocal
presentation. The collected wisdom passed down through tips and passing
guides from trans person to trans person, or the scientific data and vocal
coaching published in speech pathologist and voice training literature, can
help the trans person pass aurally as well as visually.1 Vocal passing can
help alleviate gender dysphoria and lessen a transgender person’s chances
of encountering transphobic violence, but it also puts the lie to the
convenient fiction that while gender might be a social construct, sex,
especially as represented by the voice, is biological and unalterable. Vocal
passing guides illuminate the way in which all people, transgender or
cisgender, perform gender through the voice.2
What use are transgender passing guides, which focus on speech and
gesture, for those who study music? It would be easy to argue that speech
and singing have no connection and one should not use discussion of
gendered speech when looking at gendered singing. But Andrea James and
Calpernia Addams, co-creators of a popular line of passing guides for trans
women, including Finding Your Female Voice, make explicit connections
between speech and music. The DVD Finding Your Female Voice works to
ensure that trans women wishing to pass have strategies they can use to find
a voice that society will read as female. James and Addams link the
strategies they use to train an effectively gendered speaking voice to the
lessons used to train singing voices. James notes in the introduction to the
vocal feminization program, “I have noticed that musical ability seems to
make a positive difference in the ability to achieve a passable voice.…If
you can’t read music or play an instrument, or if you couldn’t carry a tune
with a handle on it, your job is going to be a bit tougher.”3 The booklet has
an entire section called “Pitch: Musical and scientific expressions”
complete with staff notation and instructions on the importance of knowing
where one’s passagio is and how to find it.4 If this connection between
singing and speaking when articulated by transgender people is not
convincing, connections between the two have also been noted by cisgender
scholars. Linguistics and Literature Professor Yukiko S. Jolley points out
that “songs and normal speech are on the same continuum of vocally-
produced human sounds. Both have rhythmic and melodic content, and
represent forms of communication in a linguistic sense” and “indeed it may
be an impossible task to describe the point at which the ‘speech’ of a given
language ends and the ‘song’ categorization begins.”5 Additionally, musical
traditions such as the melodic speech singing of the diseuse Yvette Guilbert,
Vaudevillian Sophie Tucker, or caberettist Claire Waldoff on one hand or
the melodic speaking of actors such as Ernst von Possart, Julia Marlowe,
and Sarah Bernhardt on the other, illustrate the fluid nature of any
distinctions between the two vocal practices.6 As so many trans people use
music to gain insight into crafting a gendered voice, and considering that
speech and voice form a continuum rather than a binary, it makes sense to
reverse the process and ask what passing guides can tell scholars about
musical performances, especially as these passing guides give insight into
not only speech, but also vocabulary and gesture, which can be used when
looking at lyrics as well as the singer’s performing body.
It is logical that Andrea James would refer to classical singing technique
when trying to help people find their female voice as the connection
between vocal gender essentialism and classical singing is very strong.
Singing itself has long been feminized, as evidenced by the 1895 Musical
Times article, “The Strong Man in Music,” which tries to counter “the
commonest of all Philistine objections to the musical profession [which] is
that it tends to effeminacy” by cataloging how athletic and manly various
male singers are.7 The strong association between singing and femininity
carries over into the spoken voice. As Melinda Green notes in her passing
guide for trans women, “Men tend to speak at a single pitch while women
tend to make frequent pitch changes to their speech to the point that they
almost seem to be singing.”8 Indeed, Melanie Anne’s passing guide goes
even further, stating “that in every group of several words a woman will
string together in a sentence, usually no two are spoken at the same pitch.
This is what makes women’s voices sound so ‘sing song.’ In fact, they ARE
singing!”9 However, it is not just that women are expected to speak more
musically than men that connects passing guides and musicology, but also
the way singers themselves are often trained.
Classical singing training often varies by gender, and this differential
training reinforces the societal imagination that men and women have
completely different voices and are profoundly different from each other.
Alfred Blatter explains this difference in classical vocal training, writing
“One of the characteristics that separates the singing approaches of the
trained female singer from the trained male singer is in the use of the chest
voice. The male singer will produce most or all of his vocal sound by using
this chest voice, while the trained female singer uses her chest voice for
only about the lower third to fifth of her range.”10 In contrast to male
singers, Blatter adds that “in trained female singers, this ‘head register’ or
‘light mechanism’ is used for most of the range of the singer,” whereas
men’s head register is often referred to as “falsetto,” reinforcing the idea
that it is an unnatural place for men to place their voices.11 That men and
women would operate in completely different registers is naturalized and
even makes its way into everyday speech habits. The history of singing is
complicit in the maintenance of gender vocal essentialism as evidenced by
the regular evocation of singing as a means to learn how to produce a
“proper” female voice in passing guides for trans women and the regular
warning to trans men that transition will mean never being able to sing
again. However, as the same transgender passing guides show us, such
seemingly essential things as the gendered sound of one’s voice are learned
and in reality are performed by everyone. Linguists Pierrehumbert, Bent,
Munson, and Bailey note, “Young children adopt sex-specific speech traits
even before sex-related anatomical differences begin to appear, and the sex
of children as young as four years old can be accurately identified from
speech. Such differences are clearly learned through imitation of adult
models.”12 Which is to say that while cisgender, heterosexual vocal gender
performance is taught and naturalized early, it is no less a performance.
Although everyone learns how to perform gender for their specific
cultural location (though they certainly can choose not to), it tends to be
literature created by, for, and about transsexuals that theorizes exactly how
those performances work in a practical way. Cataloging the practical
theoretical workings of gendered performance offers an invaluable set of
basic tools for the analyst and interpreter of performance.13 Hegemony
maintains its domination by making its workings invisible, and transgender
passing guides, an important source of experiential knowledge, expose the
hegemony’s naturalized gender presentations as the fiction that they are.
This knowledge is important, but unknown or overlooked by scholars, and
when known, the insight into the performance of gender articulated by
transgender people is rarely turned back onto cisgender people. This chapter
rectifies this lack by turning transgender experiential knowledge back onto
cisgender performance. Therefore, while this chapter is rooted in
transgender-based insight into gendered vocalisms, I purposefully avoid
using transgender-identified people as examples. This is because people on
the transgender spectrum are often used as the representation of the
performed nature or constructedness of gender, which only serves to
delegitimize their gendered identities while simultaneously rendering
invisible and naturalizing the gender construction of cisgender people. To
counter this pattern, this chapter places the gender performances of
cissexuals (both homo and hetero) under the microscope using the
parameters illuminated by transsexuals, rather than the other way around.14
The chapter is in two halves. In the first theoretical section I catalog the
specific parameters that construct the Western gendered voice, drawing
from transgender passing guides and speech research in order to provide
tools for the analysis of gendered voices and gestures in musical
performances. In the second section I use these tools by drawing on musical
examples spanning various times and genres. There, I start by exploring
how cisgender people use vocal gender performance to pass as their
“opposite” gender through Ella Shields’s “Burlington Bertie from Bow”
(1934) and The Honeytraps’ “Wishing” (2006), continue by exploring how
cisgender queer people use vocal gender performance to signal
homosexuality through Byrd E. Bath’s “I’m So Wet” (ca. 1965) and Joan
Jett’s “Bad Reputation” (1981), and finally, explore how cisgender
heterosexual people use vocal gender performance to pass as cisgender
heterosexual people through Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty’s duet, “I
Still Believe in Waltzes” (1981).
P 1: E V G
P
There are many ways in which gendered vocalisms are used in musical
performance, and in life, to convey information to a listener. Gendered
vocalisms can be used sincerely or ironically, they can be used consciously
or unconsciously, they can be used to defuse or inflame a situation. How
they are used can illuminate ideologies of gender in different times, places,
and musical practices. Because I believe theoretical tools should always be
applicable in practice, this second part of the chapter will present a few
brief musical analytic sketches to show the possibilities of these tools in use
for musical and cultural analysis.
Passing as a Different Gender: Narratives of
Deception
Crossgender presentation often carries accusatory narratives of deception
and fraud. The crossgender presenter is framed as “fooling” the viewer in
some way. This connection between crossgender performance and
deception too often carries over into attacks, both intellectual and physical,
against trans people as deceivers and fraudulent. But stage impersonation
framed as a performance dissipates the anxiety about being fooled by,
metaphorically and sometimes literally, pulling off the wig at some point,
exposing “true” gender and reassuring the audience of the immutability of
gender. Because of the transgender community’s struggle to separate their
gender identity from notions of deception, this section looks not at
transgender people, but at two cisgender performers doing crossgender
performance. Both performances raise narratives of deception, but in ways
that have implications beyond gender. “Burlington Bertie” by Ella Shields,
of 1934, adds class fraud, and 2006’s “Wishing” by The Honeytraps plays
with the concept of deception in the manufactured pop group.
For my example of FtM crossgender vocal performance, I examine Ella
Shield’s 1934 recording, “Burlington Bertie from Bow.”74 Shields was one
of the last generation of male impersonators in the vaudeville/music hall
tradition that spanned the mid-1800s to about 1930. Gillian Rodger traces
the male impersonator tradition from its earliest stars like Annie Hindle and
Ella Wesner, who were renowned for their verisimilitude, to later stars like
Vesta Tilley and Hettie King, who generally made sure not to pass
completely. Rodger points to soprano Tilley, who, unlike earlier
impersonators, made little effort to pass, as a catalyst of these changes in
new performers, writing, “Because Vesta Tilley had come to be seen as the
ideal for male impersonation, these women were now more likely to be
soprano or mezzo-soprano than alto or lower.…The pitch of the singer’s
voice ensured that any illusion of masculinity was broken as soon as she
began to sing. Where the singing had once served to prolong the illusion,
particularly in the case of Annie Hindle with her tenor or low alto range, it
was now instrumental in reassuring the audience that they were indeed
watching a woman perform.”75
While documenting this newer, less passable generation of
impersonators, Rodger regularly singles out Ella Shields, who patterned
herself after earlier performers like Wesner rather than the newer more
feminine style of Tilley, as the exception. Rodger is not the only one to
single out Shields. Contemporary commenters regularly praised Shields’s
verisimilitude with comments like, “it is perhaps not an exaggeration to say
that in her admirable Burlington Bertie from Bow she brought to perfection,
on individual lines, the art of male impersonation.”76
EXAMPLE 13.1 Ella Shields, “Burlington Bertie from Bow.” Song opening.
EXAMPLE 13.2 Ella Shields, “Burlington Bertie from Bow.” Sung beginning of verse.
EXAMPLE 13.3 Ella Shields, “Burlington Bertie from Bow.” End of song.
Shield’s signature tune was “Burlington Bertie from Bow,” a song about
a homeless Cockney man who affects the manner of an upper class dandy.
Clad in a tattered suit, top hat, monocle, and cane, Shields recounted the
way jobless Bertie would wander along the fashionable parts of London in
the same way aristocratic men of leisure would. The song had great impact
on her audiences, with an obituary for Shields noting, “‘Burlington Bertie
from Bow’ was a real person to her and her audience.”77 In all versions of
the song, it is significant that Shields, known for being “strongest in what
the actors call ‘attack,’” does not sing much at all.78 In the 1934 version I
look at specifically, she performs almost the entire song using heightened
musical speech, singing only on the word “Bert” tentatively in the first line
of the song (Ex. 1), the words, “My pose, though ironical, shows” at the
beginning of the second verse (Ex. 2), and the final line of the chorus
“Burlington Bertie from Bow” (Ex. 3). Recall the association of singing
with effeminacy from The Musical Times; by avoiding traditional notions of
singing, Shields enhances the male-codedness of her performance and
distances herself from femininity. The entirety of the song’s tessitura fits
within a baritone range, spanning A2 (spoken) to G4 (sung), and the
majority of Shields’s heightened speech takes place between the pitches A2
and D3, which is squarely in the male-coded speech zone and below the
155Hz–180Hz gender neutral area. When Shields starts the song, she begins
with some percussive, harsh, guttural chuckle sounds and an improvised
spoken line before beginning the song proper (Example 13.1). Her first line,
“I’m Bert,” drifts down to the A2 (110Hz) that she tries to emphasize
throughout the song, a pitch identified as the average male speaking F0.
The guttural chuckle sound she tosses in throughout the song emphasizes
how she keeps her performance in her chest with posterior and ulterior
intonational emphasis. She foregrounds downward inflections, harsh
attacks, especially on /h/’s, a staccato flow, and a consistently present light
glottal fry throughout the heightened speech sections.
When Shields sings, she does so in two different ways. She sings the
“My pose…” line (Example 13.2) below her break, while continuing to use
many of her preferred male-coded elements. She emphasizes the darkness
of the posteriorly placed /oʊ/ vowel in “pose” and “shows,” belting the line
with increased volume. She further emphasizes downward inflections on
the high notes and harsh attacks, showing a successful integration of male-
coded singing into her male vocal persona. The final line of the chorus
(Example 13.3), with its emphasis on the /i/ vowels in “-ling” and “-tie,”
and its placement above her break, contrasts with the rest of her
successfully male-coded performance. The line, legato with lowered
intensity, is performed with an audible “smile.” The tone is anteriorly and
superiorly placed and creeps into a more modal voice sound. It is here, at
the very end, that Shields’s “deception” is broken, though she brings back
the male-coded vocalisms for the last two words, “from Bow,” which fall
back in her more comfortable belted chest range. Momentarily, Shields’s
metaphorical wig is removed, and trying to put it back on at the very end
does not completely work.
Breaking the illusion serves to comfort an audience that they are seeing
a woman, thus naturalizing gender difference. However, Shields’s move to a
more female-coded vocalism can serve another function in the context of
this song. In her performance of “Burlington Bertie” Shields keeps one
element that is female-coded present throughout: expressive, melodic, pitch
intonational variety. While this form of speech is coded feminine, so is
upper classness, especially upper class Britishness, which is marked as
much by precise speech as it is by money. Cicely Berry notes that “there is
a deep-rooted feeling that a standard [British] accent is to some degree
effeminate, and therefore to remove that [regional or working-class] accent
takes away a certain virility in the speech.”79 The higher one goes on the
class line, the more effeminacy lurks, and working class culture is often
stereotyped as more authentically masculine. Shields can allow hints of
female-coded pitch variation to pepper her performances without
undermining her maleness because the upper class swells she performs are
already feminized. Leaks of female coding don’t mark her failure to
perform masculinity properly, but mark a wink to the working class music
hall crowds that upper class swells do not perform masculinity properly. Yet
perhaps the most important deception in the song is that Burlington Bertie
is not actually a well-off toff, but a Cockney homeless man just
impersonating one. The consistency of Shields’s male vocalisms and the
way she would perform a physicality that included “prowling about the
stage” threateningly enough that “the audience seemed to get uneasy”
allowed for a powerful simmering of class anger to be camouflaged by what
masqueraded as a good-natured ribbing.80
For my example of MtF crossgender vocal performance, I look at a
contemporary reality show. In 2006, British television channel E4
premiered a six-episode reality show, Boys Will Be Girls, in which ex-
members of boy bands participated in a “stunt” that consisted of trying to
pass themselves off as a girl band. The members of the group, dubbed The
Honeytraps—Austin Drage of 5Boyz, Russ Spencer of Scooch, and Martin
Rycroft of the Fast Food Rockers—were given a four-week crash course in
dressing, performing, and singing like women. Their challenge was to
produce a song—a cover of A Flock of Seagulls’ 1982 New Wave song
“Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)”—film a music video, and
perform a live show female-coded well enough to fool industry insiders and
audience members alike.81 Explaining why he chose “Wishing,” the
project’s producer Olivier Behzadi, said, “Melodically, it’s very, very linear.
There’re no bends, there’s no vibrato parts, it’s a linear song that a guy from
a boy band pretending to be a girl would very possibly get away with.”82
The single Behzadi produced, however, contains quite a few bends and
some vibrato, all of which function as the musical version of the increased
intrasyllabic melody that characterizes female-coded speech, increasing the
perception of the vocalists as “singerly” and therefore more feminine.
Behzadi’s way of making over the boys into girls relied heavily on
gendered vocalisms as well as the feminized nature of the pop genre itself.
Among the experts brought in to transform the Honeytraps was vocal
coach Larion Van Der Stolk. Van Der Stolk said of his task, “It’s gonna be
very difficult, because no matter what ranges they are at the moment, I’m
gonna have to…get ’em to sing in completely alien fashion to them.”83 This
alien fashion in singing is everything emphasized by transgender passing
guides. Although we see all three men doing vocaleses to expand their
range upward into head resonance, the vocal training segment in Episode 2
focusing on Russ Spencer shows how much more there is to a “woman”
than pitch. The audience is shown Spencer doing a vocalese on “Mah.” In
the first attempt, his mouth is small, barely opened, the lips neutral,
emphasizing a deep posterior chest resonance. Van Der Stolk says in a voice
over, “You know he has got a lot of bass in his voice, which I’m going to
try and iron out.”84 When we next hear Spencer doing the vocalese, he
sounds much more female-coded, accomplished through Spencer having a
visible smile, adding a great deal of breathiness to his voice, pulling back
on the intensity, and pushing his resonance up towards his head.
The Honeytraps’ performance of “Wishing,” especially compared to the
original Flock of Seagulls’ version, exemplifies female-coded vocal
performance in music. A Flock of Seagulls’ melody barely spans more than
a fifth, and the affectless delivery of lead singer Mike Score conveys male-
coded monotonicity. Austin Drage, lead singer for the Honeytraps, spans an
octave and a fourth (G3 to C5) thanks to some orgasmic head voice moans
encouraged by producer Behzadi during the recording session, presenting
both the expressiveness and sexualization that so strongly marks female-
codedness for women (and especially pop girl bands). Additionally, in
contrast to the fairly straight delivery of Score (see Example 13.4), Drage
adds a lot of scoops and bends, especially upwards bends (see Example
13.5), enacting female-coded intonation and intrasyllabic expressiveness.
While the melodies for the line “there must be something more” in both
versions are the same, ending in a male-coded downward half-step motion,
Score highlights the drop by singing that note a bit flat, with a hard attack
using volume for emphasis, while Drage de-emphasizes the drop by adding
vibrato that ends on a slight upglide and pulling away from the note. The
Honeytraps version even includes, as a musical climax, a long, extended
upward glide leading to the word “wishing,” ending in an upward leap of a
fourth modeling female-coded sexualized vocality (see Example 13.6).
EXAMPLE 13.4 Flock of Seagulls, “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph).” Beginning of verse 1.
EXAMPLE 13.5 The Honeytraps, “Wishing.” Beginning of verse 1.
Byrd E. Bath emphasizes his /s/’s, /z/’s, /l/’s consistently throughout the
song—for example note his pronunciation of the word “silly” in the phrase
“silly dope” (Example 13.7). Both the /s/ and /l/ are elongated and
emphasized (indicated by bolding and italicization). Note how often Bath
elongates his /s/ consonants in the scant eighteen seconds of Example 7.
The final “silly dope” in that example also exemplifies the way in which
Bath uses pitch variety for emphasis, signaling gender variance as a
synecdoche for homosexuality. Bath elongates his vowels to increase
melodicism in phrases like “Let us fly,” and his overall articulation is the
female-coded precise, correct, and soft, rather than the male-coded harsh,
casual, or dull. Bath sings with forward emphasis, especially on /i/ vowels,
allowing him to move out of male-coded posterior and inferior voice
placement, yet he also uses a vocal quality that Addams defines as “The
Drag Queen”: nasal, up in palette, but with a voice too low to pass as a
woman.96 This voice, along with his use of a tenor register with good chest
resonance, keeps his formants low as he sings above and below the gender
neutral zone, allowing him to remaining legible as male. This vocal strategy
allows Bath to aurally signify that he isn’t a normative man without
sounding exactly like a woman. Which crossgender elements Bath or other
speakers of gay speech adopt has larger implications. Pierrehumbert and
colleagues write of their research that, “the gay men in these studies have at
most adopted aspects of female speech that convey social engagement and
emotional expressiveness, such as vowel-space dispersion, and not those
that would convey diminutivity or subservience, such as a higher f0
[fundamental speaking frequency] or overall higher-scaled formants,”
adding that gay men therefore avoid “the adoption of a breathy, feminine,
voice quality [which] would affect this measure.”97 In other words, the men
using this gay voice do so to signal non-normative manhood, but without
ceding male privilege.
Listening to Bath, it becomes clear, however, that he does selectively
adopt some “subservient” female-coded vocalisms like breathiness and
upward inflections. “I’m So Wet” is not directed at society in general, but is
rather an insider conversation meant for gay men set in the relative safety
and privacy of the pre-Stonewall YMCA showers. It deals with sex and
seduction, a context in which signaling “subservience” can be part of sexual
power play. Bath’s breathiness and upward inflections coincide with the
cruising interactions he is most interested in. The more Bath wishes to
seduce the man in question, the more he plays with performing submission.
His strongest vocal response is to the third man he encounters, who sings
“Would you like to make a date?” When responding to that man, whom I
will call “Perfect Boyfriend,” Bath includes more upward inflections and
more breathiness than he does with anyone else (Example 13.8). There are
two potential drawbacks with using so many female-coded vocalisms, the
first that Bath might inadvertently pass as a woman rather than gay and
second that the performance of subservience might be taken as actual
subservience. Bath’s male-coded resonances, lyrical references to himself
as male, and nakedness in the shower reduce the chance he would pass as
female for either listeners or his fellow showerers. As for the issue of
subservience, there is a consensual symmetry and equality in the exchange
with Perfect Boyfriend. When singing with Perfect Boyfriend, both of their
voices come together towards the gender neutral pitch zone, as opposed to
many of the other cruisers who are sonically placed in opposition to Bath.
In Example 13.8 contrast the closeness and convergence of Bath and Perfect
Boyfriends’s voices with the wide gap and divergence between Bath and
“Piece of Soap” or “Wash Your Back.” Bath’s ability to use the more
vulnerably-coded vocalisms without that usage implying a less-than status
evidences a sense of comfort, safety, and attraction with Perfect Boyfriend
as well as expands models of gayness and gay relationships for pre-
Stonewall listeners.
The expansion of gay musical identity happens not just through Bath,
but also through the voices of the other men in the showers. Despite Bath’s
embodiment of a very large number of female-coded vocalisms, flirting
with a stereotype of gay speech, and by extension gay men, as womanly,
Bath is not doing gay things by himself. He is successfully cruising
strangers in the YMCA, and many of those enthusiastic strangers (“I would
like to wash your back” and “Do you have a place nearby?”) have low-
pitched voices, with almost no female-coded vocalisms, implying that men
of all sorts of gender presentations may be queer. Yet I think the most
interesting additional gay voice belongs to the Perfect Boyfriend, the voice
attached to the man who best matches Bath’s desire. Perfect Boyfriend has a
chesty and resonant tenor voice. There is little breathiness and it is not
imbued with the sorts of female-codedness that Bath performs. While this
could reinforce a heteronormative masculine-feminine binary, the song
works to subvert that. Not only do Perfect Boyfriend and Bath engage each
other in the same vocal range avoiding male/female binary sonic spaces,
Perfect Boyfriend is the suitor who is the most “singerly” (a female-coded
quality), and he is the only person to ornament his vocal line. His quasi-turn
on the word “date,” set within an upward melodic phrase using female-
coded grammatical politeness, is ornamental enough to signal an outness
and confidence in his sexual variance that marks Perfect Boyfriend an equal
match to Bath, who waits in the shower “with two towels marked clearly
his and his.” In “I’m So Wet” Bath demonstrates one gay voice with a high
level of female-codedness as an exemplar of an out (enough) gay man of
the 1960s, but the song does not essentialize that voice as the only means of
sounding gay. “I’m So Wet” also offers other ways of incorporating
crossgender vocalisms in order to express a visible gay identity (Perfect
Boyfriend), as well as a wide range of other male voices (some using little
to no female-coded vocalisms) gladly seeking out homo sex. Recorded
pseudonymously, in a time when the closet still dominated gay landscapes,
the song allows those consuming it a pride in aural visibility by using
crossgender vocalisms to construct recognizable gay voices without
naturalizing stereotypes of all gay men as effeminate.
Twenty years later, rocker Joan Jett would also play with the relationship
between queerness and vocal gender deviation. Jett first came to
prominence as part of the all-female rock band The Runaways in the 1970s
before going solo in 1979. Jett has long been a lesbian icon, despite
avoiding definitive declarations of her sexuality. Even though she was
billed as an “Out Lesbian Rocker” when she performed at the 2006 Dinah
Shore Weekend, when she is asked directly about her sexuality, she
typically demurs. Referring to a sex scene between Jett and Cherie Currie in
the 2010 biopic The Runaways, interviewer Evelyn McDonnell asked Jett:
“Are you comfortable if people say, ‘Oh, she was a lesbian,’ or ‘Oh, she’s
bisexual,’ or whatever? When they see this movie, people are probably
going to say that.” Jett responded:
I guess they’ve always said those kinds of things to a degree anyway. Anyone who wants to
know who I am can just read my lyrics—I’ve always written about who I am. Look, in The
Runaways I learned at a very young age, because I could see the looks in the writers’ eyes
when they would ask me questions about the band and our offstage antics, and I could see
from the way they asked the questions that if I answered this stuff, that was all they were
ever going to write about.…But that’s not what I want people to focus on—I want people to
focus on the music. And if they want to know who I am, I write about who I am in the
lyrics, so don’t be lazy—read the lyrics and figure it out for yourself.98
Jett challenges the listener to read her lyrics to find out who she is, yet her
vocal performances do just as much to encourage a queer reading—while
still giving Jett the plausible deniability of the glass closet in a queer-
unfriendly and misogynistic industry. However, it is precisely her position
as a woman in the male-coded genre of rock that complicates and obscures
performances of male-coded vocalisms as queer.
Linguist Janet Pierrehumbert and her team note in their study of queer
speech that lesbian and bisexual women had much lower formant
frequencies than their heterosexual sisters, writing, “LB (Lesbian and
Bisexual) women produced average F1 and F2 values that were
significantly lower than heterosexual females’ values…this effect is
primarily due to the back vowels /ɑ/ and /u/.”99 In other words, the queer
women they studied moved their voices away from the female-coded
forward and upward placement and toward the male-coded anterior and
inferior placement. Pierrehumbert and her colleagues hesitate to identify
this male-coded vocal placement with masculinity. Referring to the work of
Timothy Habick on the rural community of Farmer City, Illinois, they write,
“A back variant of /u/ was associated with membership in a group known
for its ‘tough’ stance. The notion that the LB women were using backness
to convey social identity rather than overall masculinity is supported by our
finding that they did not mimic the articulatory reduction that is typical of
male speech.”100 However, Pierrehumbert and her co-authors minimize the
ways that toughness is itself a masculine-coded trait in our society and that
queer women are not ultimately trying to pass as men. As with Byrd E.
Bath, how far you can go depends on context and, in the context of being a
tough, rebellious rocker, Jett goes pretty far. In one of her first solo hits,
“Bad Reputation” from 1980, Jett uses far more male vocalisms than just
back vowels, including the “articulatory reduction” typical of male
speech.101
“Bad Reputation” is a fast rock song with a punk aesthetic in which
Jett’s lyrical-I proclaims she does not care about her bad reputation, does
not care if people think she is “strange,” and will do whatever she wants
regardless of what others think. Jett does not sing so much as she shouts.
Her range falls squarely in the alto range, and unlike Ella Shields, who was
trying to pass as male, Jett remains above the gender-neutral pitch zone,
even modulating upward higher into her tessitura. Lyrical references to
herself as a “girl” help cement Jett as female in the listener’s mind, though
she adopts few female vocalisms. Jett keeps her voice loud, strained, and
raspy with hard glottal fry and vocal distortion, avoiding all breathiness
(Example 13.9). Although she sings high in her range, she never uses her
head voice, belting throughout and placing her pitches strongly rearward
and downward. Jett’s resonance is chest heavy and gets very deep with her
placement of the “O” in “Oh no.” Additionally, she avoids the forwardly
placed vowel /i/, consistently distorting it from /i/ to /eI/, pronouncing “me”
more like “may.” This is, of course, a regularly used rock pronunciation of
the /i/ vowel, but that pronunciation is meant to convey masculine hardness
and accords with linguistic research showing men use less standard vowel
pronunciation than women.102 Jett avoids upward inflections and
consistently ends phrases with male-coded downward drops. While the
song avoids a sense of monotonicity due to large leaps and drops due to its
staccato shouted and syllabic delivery, it does not sound particularly
melodic either. Jett uses volume rather than pitch for emphasis and
generally stays high intensity for the whole song. Finally, Jett also peppers
the song with the emphasized articulatory reduction and cursing so strongly
related to male-coded vocal performance.
EXAMPLE 13.9 Joan Jett, “Bad Reputation.” End of verse into Chorus.
EXAMPLE 13.10 Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, “I Still Believe in Waltzes.” Lynn’s verse 1.
EXAMPLE 13.11 Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty, “I Still Believe in Waltzes.” Twitty’s chorus 2.
This chapter has cataloged a number of gender vocalisms and then applied
them as analytical lenses to a number of songs while touching on some
intersectional lenses, such as class, genre, and sexuality. This represents
only a few of the ways that the vocal elements cataloged by transgender
passing guides can be used in music scholarship. More intersectional lenses
can be added to the way gender vocal expectations create meaning. For
example, the ways in which dominant white society genders race, from the
masculinization of African Americans to the feminization of Asian
Americans, can be taken into account when analyzing the vocal
performance strategies of performers like Grace Jones or PSY. These vocal
elements can also be used to examine how performers like Boy George or
Kelly Moe craft androgyny within a binarily conceived vocal system.
Comparisons of the different gendered vocal strategies of heterosexual and
queer female rockers as they create spaces for themselves within the rock
industry would add much to scholarship about women in music. The
possibilities opened up by transgendered passing guides and related
linguistic research are numerous for music and voice scholars. Transgender
experiential knowledge offers a rich and valuable set of tools for those
scholars dealing with gender and sexuality performance of both trans and
cisgendered artists.
N
1. It must be noted that not all transgender people care about passing. While this chapter concerns
itself with those texts created by or about transgender people who do wish to pass, my use of
those texts should by no means be taken as an endorsement of passability as necessary.
2. Cis comes from the Latin for “on this side of” and is the antonym for trans. Thus, a cisgendered
person is someone whose gender identity matches their sex. It should be noted that the passing
guides I am using are all Anglophone guides and aim to help the transgender person pass as a
normative subject, which means that they particularly highlight the social constructs that
emphasize the dominant white, middle-class, Western ideas of gender norms. These guides,
many of them available on the internet, do, however, travel globally, and people in many
different parts of the world often learn passing tips from these Anglophone guides. If one wants
to understand hegemonic constructions of gender (which gain their power by obscuring their
constructed nature) either to reproduce them or to subvert them, transgender passing guides that
expose the constructed nature of hegemonic gender performance are an invaluable resource.
3. Andrea James, “Vocal Feminization: Introduction,”
http://www.tsroadmap.com/physical/voice/voice2.html.
4. Calpernia Addams and Andrea James, “Finding Your Female Voice” (Deep Stealth Productions,
2005), 21–23. The main passagio, or break, people usually speak of is where one’s voice
switches from the chest voice to the head voice.
5. Yukiki S. Jolly, “The Use of Songs in Teaching Foreign Languages,” The Modern Language
Journal 59: 1–2 (1975), 11–14. For other scholarly work on the link between singing and
speaking, see, for example: Thomas F. Cleveland, Johan Sundberg, and R. E. (Ed) Stone,
“Long-Term-Average Spectrum Characteristics of Country Singers During Speaking and
Singing” Journal of Voice 15:1 (2001), 54–60; Markus Christiner and Susanne M. Reiterer,
“Song and Speech: Examining the Link between Singing Talent and Speech Imitation Ability,”
Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00874.
6. Mitchell Morris has done some excellent unpublished work on the melodicism of actors of the
nineteenth century, including noting how Julia Marlowe trained speaking on specific pitches
over an octave and a half range. See Mitchell Morris, “Wozzeck, Sprechstimme, and the
Melodramatic Tradition of Acting Style” (master’s essay, Columbia University, Spring 1986).
7. “The Strong Man in Music,” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 36 (1895), 373.
8. Melinda Green, “Passing Glances: A Primer on Passing and Successful Transition for the Early-
Stage Transwoman,” http://superliminal.com/melinda/passingglances.htm.
9. Melanie Anne, “Female Voice Lessons for Transsexuals,”
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112042052/http://heartcorps.com/journeys/voice.htm.
10. Alfred Blatter, Instrumentation and Orchestration, 2nd ed. (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997),
306.
11. Ibid., 305. Note: “Head Voice” or “Head Register” is when the singer feels as if the voice is
resonating in their head, as opposed to “Chest Voice” or “Chest Register,” when the singer feels
as if the voice is resonating in their upper chest or throat. To hear what this sounds like and for a
further explanation, including for the term passagio see Melody M., “Chest Voice vs. Head
Voice,” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnX9DlAQbnc
12. Janet B. Pierrehumbert et al., “The Influence of Sexual Orientation on Vowel Production (L),”
Journal of the Accoustical Society of America 116 (2004), 1906.
13. For important music studies works that look at gendered vocal performance from a critical
theoretical lens rather than the more practical theoretical lens I’m using see, for example, Sue-
Ellen Case, “The Butch White Trash Throat,” GLSG Newsletter 8, no. 1 (1998), 7–13; Suzanne
Cusick, “On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex,” Audible Traces: Gender, Identity, and
Music, ed. Elaine Barkin and Lydia Hamessley (Zürich: Carciofoli Verlagshaus, 1999), 25–48;
John Shepherd, “Music and Male Hegemony,” Music and Society, ed. Richard Leppert and
Susan McClary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 151–172.
14. For important music studies works that look at transgender musicians see, for example, Shana
Goldin-Perschbacher, “TransAmericana: Gender, Genre, and Journey,” New Literary History 46,
no. 4 (2015), 775–803; Elias Krell, “Singing Strange: Transvocality in North American Music
Performance” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2014); Viviane K. Namaste, C’était du
spectacle! L’histoire des artistes transsexuelles à Montréal, 1955–1985 (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2005).
15. Leigh Wilson Smiley, “Cowboy Resonance in America,” Voice and Gender and Other
Contemporary Issues in Professional Voice and Speech Training, ed. Mandy Rees (Cincnnati,
OH, 2007), 18.
16. Ibid.
17. Kathe Perez, “Ask a Voice Therapist” Transgender Tapestry (2008), 10–11.
18. F0 (F-zero) is the shorthand for the phrase “fundamental frequency.” F0 is a standard usage in a
number of fields from linguistics to acoustics to physics. While one can figure out their
fundamental speaking frequency by using linguistics software like PRAAT, one could also find
an approximation of their fundamental speaking frequency by recording themselves speaking,
isolating an average vocal pitch and finding that note on the piano.
19. Pamela R. Hendrick, “Two Opposite Animals? Voice, Text, and Gender on Stage” Theatre
Topics 8 (1998), 116.
20. Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley, Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (Rowley, MA,
1975), 14.
21. Smiley, “Cowboy Resonance in America,” 18.
22. Cecilia Pemberton, Paul McCormack, and Alison Russell, “Have Women’s Voices Lowered
across Time? A Cross Sectional Study of Australian Women’s Voices” Journal of Voice 12
(1998), 208–213.
23. Marylou Pausewang Gelfer and Michelle Mordaunt, “Pitch and Intonation,” Voice and
Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical
Guide, ed. Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt (San Diego, 2012),
192.
24. Lynn Gold, “Voice Training for the Transsexual,” VASTA Newsletter 13 (1999), 105–109.
25. Extrapolated from the two following sources: Jack Pickering and Lauren Baker, “A Historical
Perspective and Review of the Literature,” Voice and Communication Therapy for the
Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide, ed. Richard Kenneth Adler,
Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt (San Diego, 2012), 3, 11; and Rachael Harrington,
“Voice Characteristics of Transgender Speakers” (master’s thesis, George Washington
University, 2011), 5.
26. See, for example, Nat Titman, “Practical Androgyny: Vocal Androgyny in Speech and Singing,”
http://practicalandrogyny.com/tag/gender-cues/.
27. See Cicely Berry, Voice and the Actor, 1st American edn (New York: Macmillan, 1974); Kristin
Linklater, Freeing the Natural Voice (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1976); Michael
McCallion, The Voice Book: For Everyone Who Wants to Make the Most of Their Voice, rev. ed.
(New York: Theater Arts Books/Routledge, 1999).
28. NHS Department of Health, “A Guide for Young Trans People in the UK” (2007), 12.
29. Anon., “Feminine Voice Techniques,” http://www.looking-glass.greenend.org.uk/voice.htm.
30. Harrington, “Voice Characteristics of Transgender Speakers,” 5–6.
31. Ibid., 7.
32. Sandy Hirsch and Marylou Pausewang Gelfer, “Resonance,” Voice and Communication
Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide, ed. Richard
Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt (San Diego, 2012), 231.
33. Reinhardt J. Heuer, Margaret Baroody, and Robert Thayer Sataloff, “Management of Gender
Reassignment (Sex Change Patients),” Voice and Gender and Other Contemporary Issues in
Professional Voice and Speech Training, ed. Mandy Rees (Cincinnati, OH, 2007), 227.
34. There are a number of YouTube videos with examples of formant adjustment for those who
want to hear examples. See, for example, those by singing instructor Karyn O’Connor “Vocal
Formants and Harmonics Explained!” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=D3dFSJ4Hzbs; linguist Moti Lieberman “How Do We Change Our Mouths to Shape Waves?
Formants,” YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4zGRSYqkE; musician and
YouTube personality Justin Omoi, “The Difference Between Pitch and Formant,” YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok0PL_QS2BM.
35. Hirsch and Gelfer, “Resonance,” 232.
36. Ibid., 238.
37. Heuer, Baroody, and Sataloff, “Management of Gender Reassignment,” 227.
38. Hendrick, “Two Opposite Animals?,” 117.
39. Heuer, Baroody, and Sataloff, “Management of Gender Reassignment,” 226–227.
40. Maria Södersten and Per-Åke Lindestad, “Glottal Closure and Perceived Breathiness During
Phonation in Normally Speaking Subjects,” Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research
33 (1990), 601.
41. Anon., “Feminine Voice Techniques.”
42. Mel Churcher, “What Is a Sexy Voice?,” Voice and Gender and Other Contemporary Issues in
Professional Voice and Speech Training, ed. Mandy Rees (Cincinnati, OH, 2007), 262.
43. Lesley Wolk, Nassima B. Abdelli-Beruh, and Dianne Slavin, “Habitual Use of Vocal Fry in
Young Adult Female Speakers” Journal of Voice 26 (2012), e111–e116.
44. Marissa Fessenden, “‘Vocal Fry’ Creeping into U.S. Speech,” Science Now, December 9, 2011,
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/vocal-fry-creeping-into-us-speec.html.
45. Heuer, Baroody, and Sataloff, “Management of Gender Reassignment,” 227.
46. See for example, Joan Boonin, “Articulation,” Voice and Communication Therapy for the
Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide, ed. Richard Kenneth Adler,
Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt (San Diego, 2012), 253.
47. Heuer, Baroody, and Sataloff, “Management of Gender Reassignment,” 227.
48. Jennifer Oates and Georgia Dacakis, “Voice Change in Transsexuals” Venereology 10 (1997),
178–187.
49. Green, “Passing Glances.”
50. Anon., “Feminine Voice Techniques.”
51. Boonin, “Articulation,” 264–265.
52. My choice of the term flow is informed by hip-hop music’s concept of flow, used to describe the
rhythm and speed of an emcee while rapping.
53. Holly Wilder, “Investigating Language Differences between Men and Women” (master’s thesis,
George Washington University, 2010), 4.
54. Anon., “Feminine Voice Techniques.”
55. Boonin, “Articulation,” 254.
56. Cecelia Goodnow, “Speech Therapy Helps Transgender Women Develop a Feminine Sound,”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 12, 2001,
https://web.archive.org/web/20070527214159/http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/transgende
r.shtml.
57. Anthony Mulac et al., “Male/Female Language Differences and Effects in Same-Sex and
Mixed-Sex Dyads: The Gender-Linked Language Effect” Communications Monographs 55
(1988), 315–335.
58. Hendrick, “Two Opposite Animals?,” 118.
59. Ibid., 118–119.
60. Ibid., 119.
61. Ibid., 120.
62. I would like to remind the reader of the disclaimer I made at the beginning of this section. I am
describing hegemonic gendered speech and voice norms, I am not endorsing them.
63. Celia R. Hooper, Sena Crutchley, and Vicki McCready, “Syntax and Semantics: A Menu of
Communicative Choices,” Voice and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual
Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide, ed. Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and
Michelle Mordaunt (San Diego, 2012), 307.
64. Green, “Passing Glances.”
65. Ibid.
66. Wilder, “Investigating Language Differences between Men and Women,” 52.
67. Andy, “Ftm Passing Tips,” http://www.ftmpassingtips.com/passing.html.
68. For some popular discourse on manspreading see: Emma G. Fitzsimmons, “A Scourge Is
Spreading. M.T.A.’s Cure? Dude, Close Your Legs.” New York Times, December 20, 2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-manspreading-on-new-york-city-
subways.html; Eric M. Johnson, “One body, one seat: Seattle’s campaign against the
“manspreading” scourge’, Reuters, January 15, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-
transportation-manspreading-idUSKBN0KQ01120150117; Gabrielle Moss, “Why Do Guys
Spread Their Legs When Sitting on The Subway? My Weekend of Sitting Like a Man” Bustle,
August 7, 2014, http://www.bustle.com/articles/34279-why-do-guys-spread-their-legs-when-
sitting-on-the-subway-my-weekend-of-sitting-like.
69. Sandy Hirsch and Joan Boonin, “Nonverbal Communication: Assessment and Training,” Voice
and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive
Clinical Guide, ed. Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt (San Diego,
2012), 359.
70. Hirsch and Van Borsel, “Nonverbal Communication: A Multicultural View,” 326.
71. Goodnow, “Speech Therapy Helps Transgender Women Develop a Feminine Sound.”
72. Hirsch and Van Borsel, “Nonverbal Communication: A Multicultural View,” 326.
73. Erica Tobolski, “Opposite Gender Monologue: Expanding Vocal Range,” Voice and Gender and
Other Contemporary Issues in Professional Voice and Speech Training, ed. Mandy Rees
(Cincinnati, OH, 2007), 35.
74. This recording can be found on the CD Tipping The Velvet CD41 (2002).
75. Gillian M. Rodger, “Male Impersonation on the North American Variety and Vaudeville Stage,
1868–1930” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1998), 306. For more of Rodger’s work on
male impersonation see: Rodger, Gillian M. “‘He Isn’t a Marrying Man’: Gender and Sexuality
in the Repertoire of Male Impersonators, 1870–1930.” In Queer Episodes in Music and Modern
Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002),
105–133; Rodger, Gillian M. Just One of the Boys: Female-to-Male Cross-Dressing on the
American Variety Stage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018); and her chapter, “Queering
Middle-Class Gender in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Theater,” in this collection.
76. Harold Scott, The Early Doors, Origins of the Music Hall (London, 1946), 211.
77. “Ella Shields,” The Manchester Guardian Weekly, August 14, 1952.
78. Ibid.
79. Berry, Voice and the Actor, 69.
80. Colin MacInnes, Sweet Saturday Night (London, 1967), 60.
81. Both the Flock of Seagulls and Honeytraps versions of “Wishing” can be found on YouTube.
82. “Episode 3,” in Boys Will Be Girls (UK, 2006), 3:55–4:10.
83. “Episode 2,” in Boys Will Be Girls (UK, 2006), 14:00–14:10.
84. Ibid., 15:52–15:56.
85. Heuer, Baroody, and Sataloff, “Management of Gender Reassignment,” 227.
86. “Episode 6,” in Boys Will Be Girls (UK, 2006), 11:30–11:36.
87. Ibid., 9:00–9:09.
88. “Episode 5,” in Boys Will Be Girls (UK, 2006), 13:24–13:29.
89. For more discussion of the regular depiction of women sitting, lying down, or standing off
balance rather than standing grounded see Jean Kilbourne’s documentary series, Killing Us
Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women.
90. The discourse of girl pop groups being manufactured and therefore inauthentic, as opposed to
male rock groups, goes back quite far, and was regularly used against Motown girl groups. The
discourse was renewed again and leveled, most relevantly, against Brit Pop girl group The Spice
Girls. For some information on this see, Catherine Driscoll, “Girl Culture, Revenge and Global
Capitalism: Cybergirls, Riot Grrls, Spice Girls” Australian Feminist Studies 14, no. 29 (1999),
173–193.
91. Ron Smyth and Henry Rogers, “Phonetics, Gender, and Sexual Orientation,” Actes De L’acl
2002/2002 Cla Proceedings, ed. Sophie Burelle and Stanca Somesfalean (Montreal, 2002), 303.
92. The song “I’m So Wet” may be heard on the Queer Music Heritage website:
http://queermusicheritage.com/camp.html.
93. Anne, “Female Voice Lessons for Transsexuals.”
94. Smyth and Rogers, “Phonetics, Gender, and Sexual Orientation,” 309.
95. William Leap, Word’s Out: Gay Men’s English (Minneapolis, 1996), 38.
96. Addams and James, “Finding Your Female Voice,” 10.
97. Pierrehumbert et al., “The Influence of Sexual Orientation on Vowel Production (L),” 1908.
98. Evelyn McDonnell, “Joan Jett,” Interview, March 23, 2010,
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/joan-jett-the-runaways/.
99. Pierrehumbert et al., “The Influence of Sexual Orientation on Vowel Production (L),” 1907.
100. Ibid., 1908.
101. “Bad Reputation” may be found on YouTube.
102. Lesley Milroy, Language and Social Networks (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
103. “I Still Believe in Waltzes” may be found on YouTube.
104. Hendrick, “Two Opposite Animals?,” 114–115.
R
Addams, Calpernia, and Andrea James. “Finding Your Female Voice.” Deep Stealth Productions,
2005. DVD.
Andy. “Ftm Passing Tips.” http://www.ftmpassingtips.com/passing.html.
Anne, Melanie. “Female Voice Lessons for Transsexuals.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112042052/http://heartcorps.com/journeys/voice.htm.
Anon. “Feminine Voice Techniques.” http://www.looking-glass.greenend.org.uk/voice.htm.
Bath, Byrd E. “I’m So Wet,” The Queen is In the Closet. Various artists. Accessed from: Queer
Music Heritage. http://queermusicheritage.com/camp.html.
Berry, Cicely. Voice and the Actor. 1st American ed. New York: Macmillan, 1974.
Blatter, Alfred. Instrumentation and Orchestration. 2nd ed. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997.
Boonin, Joan. “Articulation.” In Voice and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual
Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide, edited by Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch and
Michelle Mordaunt, 249–261. San Diego: Plural Pub., 2012.
Case, Sue-Ellen, “The Butch White Trash Throat.” GLSG Newsletter 8, no. 1 (March 1998): 7–13.
Christiner, Markus, and Susanne M. Reiterer, “Song and Speech: Examining the Link between
Singing Talent and Speech Imitation Ability.” Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2013).
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00874
Churcher, Mel. “What Is a Sexy Voice?.” In Voice and Gender and Other Contemporary Issues in
Professional Voice and Speech Training, edited by Mandy Rees, 260–262. Cincinnati, OH: Voice
and Speech Trainers Association, 2007.
Cleveland, Thomas F., Johan Sundberg, and R. E. Stone, (Ed), “Long-Term-Average Spectrum
Characteristics of Country Singers During Speaking and Singing” Journal of Voice 15, no. 1
(2001): 54–60.
Cusick, Suzanne. “On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex.” Audible Traces: Gender, Identity,
and Music, edited by Elaine Barkin and Lydia Hamessley, 25–48. Zürich: Carciofoli Verlagshaus,
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Driscoll, Catherine. “Girl Culture, Revenge and Global Capitalism: Cybergirls, Riot Grrls, Spice
Girls.” Australian Feminist Studies 14, no. 29 (1999): 173–193.
“Ella Shields.” The Manchester Guardian Weekly, August 14, 1952.
“Episode 2.” In Boys Will Be Girls. UK, 2006.
“Episode 3.” In Boys Will Be Girls. UK, 2006.
“Episode 5.” In Boys Will Be Girls. UK, 2006.
“Episode 6.” In Boys Will Be Girls. UK, 2006.
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http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/12/vocal-fry-creeping-into-us-speec.html.
Fitzsimmons, Emma G. “A Scourge Is Spreading. M.T.A.’s Cure? Dude, Close Your Legs.” New
York Times, December 200, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-
manspreading-on-new-york-city-subways.html.
Gelfer, Marylou Pausewang, and Michelle Mordaunt. “Pitch and Intonation.” In Voice and
Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical
Guide, edited by Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch and Michelle Mordaunt, 187–223. San
Diego: Plural Pub., 2012.
Gold, Lynn. “Voice Training for the Transsexual.” VASTA Newsletter 13 (1999): 105–109.
Goldin-Perschbacher, Shana. “TransAmericana: Gender, Genre, and Journey.” New Literary History
46, no. 4 (2015): 775–803.
Goodnow, Cecelia. “Speech Therapy Helps Transgender Women Develop a Feminine Sound.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (February 12, 2001).
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html.
Green, Melinda. “Passing Glances: A Primer on Passing and Successful Transition for the Early-
Stage Transwoman.” http://superliminal.com/melinda/passingglances.htm.
Harrington, Rachael. “Voice Characteristics of Transgender Speakers.” Master’s thesis, George
Washington University, 2011.
Health, NHS Department of. “A Guide for Young Trans People in the UK.” (May 23, 2007): 1–28.
Hendrick, Pamela R. “Two Opposite Animals? Voice, Text, and Gender on Stage.” Theatre Topics 8,
no. 2 (1998): 113–125.
Heuer, Reinhardt J., Margaret Baroody, and Robert Thayer Sataloff. “Management of Gender
Reassignment (Sex Change Patients).” In Voice and Gender and Other Contemporary Issues in
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and Speech Trainers Association, 2007.
Hirsch, Sandy, and Joan Boonin. “Nonverbal Communication: Assessment and Training.” In Voice
and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical
Guide, edited by Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt, 353–391. San
Diego: Plural Pub., 2012.
Hirsch, Sandy, and Marylou Pausewang Gelfer. “Resonance.” In Voice and Communication Therapy
for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide, edited by Richard
Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt, 225–247. San Diego: Plural Pub., 2012.
Hirsch, Sandy, and John Van Borsel. “Nonverbal Communication: A Multicultural View.” In Voice
and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client: A Comprehensive Clinical
Guide, edited by Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and Michelle Mordaunt, 319–351. San
Diego: Plural Pub., 2012.
Hooper, Celia R., Sena Crutchley, and Vicki McCready. “Syntax and Semantics: A Menu of
Communicative Choices.” In Voice and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual
Client: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide, edited by Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and
Michelle Mordaunt, 297–317. San Diego: Plural Pub., 2012.
James, Andrea. “Vocal Feminization: Introduction.”
http://www.tsroadmap.com/physical/voice/voice2.html.
Johnson, Eric M. “One Body, One Seat: Seattle’s Campaign against the ‘Manspreading’ Scourge.”
Reuters, January 15, 2015. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-transportation-manspreading-
idUSKBN0KQ01120150117.
Jolly, Yukiki S. “The Use of Songs in Teaching Foreign Languages.” The Modern Language Journal
59, nos. 1–2 (1975): 11–14
Krell, Elias. “Singing Strange: Transvocality in North American Music Performance.” PhD diss.
Northwestern University, 2014.
Leap, William. Word’s Out: Gay Men’s English. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Lieberman, Moti. “How Do We Change Our Mouths to Shape Waves? Formants.” YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4zGRSYqkE.
Linklater, Kristin. Freeing the Natural Voice. New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1976.
M., Melody. “Chest Voice vs. Head Voice.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NnX9DlAQbnc.
McCallion, Michael. The Voice Book: For Everyone Who Wants to Make the Most of Their Voice.
Rev. ed. New York: Theater Arts Books/Routledge, 1999.
McDonnell, Evelyn. “Joan Jett.” Interview (March 23, 2010).
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/joan-jett-the-runaways/.
MacInnes, Colin. Sweet Saturday Night. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967.
Milroy, Lesley. Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.
Morris, Mitchell. “Wozzeck, Sprechstimme, and the Melodramatic Tradition of Acting Style.”
Master’s essay. Columbia University. Spring 1986.
Moss, Gabrielle. “Why Do Guys Spread Their Legs When Sitting on the Subway? My Weekend of
Sitting Like a Man.” Bustle, Aug 7, 2014. http://www.bustle.com/articles/34279-why-do-guys-
spread-their-legs-when-sitting-on-the-subway-my-weekend-of-sitting-like.
Mulac, Anthony, John M. Wiemann, Sally J. Widenmann, and Toni W. Gibson. “Male/Female
Language Differences and Effects in Same-Sex and Mixed-Sex Dyads: The Gender-Linked
Language Effect.” Communications Monographs 55, no. 4 (1988): 315–335.
Namaste, Viviane K. C’était du spectacle! L’histoire des artistes transsexuelles à Montréal, 1955–
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178–187.
O’Connor, Karyn. “Vocal Formants and Harmonics Explained!” YouTube.
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Omoi, Justin. “The Difference Between Pitch and Formant.” YouTube.
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Other Contemporary Issues in Professional Voice and Speech Training, edited by Mandy Rees,
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Adult Female Speakers.” Journal of Voice 26, no. 3 (June 1, 2012): e111–e116.
CHAPTER 14
SOUND DESIRES
Auralism, the Sexual Fetishization of Music
JOD I E TAYL OR
A
In a later publication, Stein extends his hypothesis, this time arguing that for
the listener, recorded music can similarly serve as a symbolic means of
repairing and consoling one’s psychosexual neuroses. Recounting a case
example from his clinical work, Stein returns to the topic of aural pleasure
in a later publication in which he describes a practice he names as a “private
listening orgy.” Although Stein offers scant detail regarding the mechanics
of this practice, it is said to “generate an affect-rich sound environment” for
the listener, allowing “the external and voluminously audible expression of
an internal world otherwise banned.”31
The book Smut, by sociologist Murray Davis, also addresses aural sexual
pleasure. Davis provides an intriguing phenomenological analysis of
perverted sex, where he schematizes acts condemned as sexually deviant
according to Jehovanist32 sexual ideology. Featured among the list of
outlawed sexual behaviours charted in what he calls “The Periodic Table of
Sexual Perversions” is auralism, defined as sensory sexual stimulation
taken in through the ears.33 Davis explains that “sex through distant and
contact sense receptors” such as the eyes (voyeurism) and the ears
(auralism) is condemned as a moral abomination and a form of
psychological dysmorphia.34 Where genital stimulation requires partners to
be close to one another, stimulation through these means does not require
physical proximity. This “unnatural” distance results in the subject being
“stripped of all human qualities and reduced to a ‘thing’—a sexual
organ.”35 However, beyond auralism being anathema to Jehovanists, Davis
does not discuss the pleasure that one may gain from the practice itself.
In studies of cinematic representations of sex, Linda Williams’ work
stands as an authoritative example of the representation and affective power
of sound, music, and voice in pornography. Williams argues that a hierarchy
exists between the visual evidence of male pleasure as it is witnessed via
ejaculation—what she terms “the frenzy of the visible”—and the aurality of
female pleasure since female orgasms are most commonly verified by
crescendoing vocalizations. In porn, Williams notes, disembodied
overdubbed ooohs and aaahs commonly stand in as the most prominent sign
of female pleasure, which “seem almost to flout the realist function of
anchoring body to image, halfway becoming aural fetishes of the female
pleasures we cannot see.”36 Following Williams, Corbett, and Kapsalis
discuss the prevalent use of female orgasmic sounds in pop music. They
propose that where male pleasure is accomplished in a moment of visual
frenzy, “female sexual pleasure is better thought of in terms of a ‘frenzy of
the audible’.”37 Furthermore, note Corbett and Kapsalis, as many men
fetishize women’s orgasmic vocalizations, hi-fidelity audio porn, such as
the aforementioned immersive recording Cyborgasm, lends itself to “a
double sex/tech fetishization.”38
A decade after Corbett and Kapsalis made this claim, a new musically-
powered vibrating sex toy called OhMiBod (created by former Apple
employee Suki Vatter in 2006),39 could be read as a further extension of this
double fetishization, but one that was created by a woman and for the
primary purpose of clitoral stimulation. Designed to vibrate to the beat and
rhythm of any musical style, the toy responds to the volume and intensity of
the music by escalating and pulsating accordingly and is optimized for use
with portable MP3 players, but can also be controlled by other audio output
source such as hi-fi stereos, microphones, or electric guitars. The female-
centric nature of this product further indicates that auralistic and
particularly audiophilic tendencies are not exclusive to men.
While the aforementioned literatures implore us to consider the
construction of aural codes of sexuality and fetishism, expanding the notion
of the sexual fetish to include the auditory sphere, scholarly accounts are
primarily situated in psychosexual, gender normative, heterosexist terms
and representations. Moreover, though textual analysis makes explicit
certain fetishized qualities of sound beyond pathologization, in the absence
of empirical data, the ways sound or music function as a
queer/deviant/fetishistic technology of erotic action in quotidian sexual
practices remains ambiguous.
P A S
TRANSCRIPTS
Toward A Queer Phenomenology of the Field
Recording
DRE W DANI E L
LIVES
CHAPTER 16
Q U E E R I N G B R I G H TO N
S HE I L A WH I T E L E Y
A B H
B lies sixty miles south of London and, like the UK’s capital city,
has a rich history; it has been dubbed the San Francisco of Sussex.
Landmark architecture includes the Royal Pavilion, which was conceived as
a monument to style, finesse, and sexual pleasure.1 The iconic Regency
dandy, Beau Brummel (1778–1840) was among its regular visitors. The
town’s notoriety as a haven of promiscuity attracted a growing alternative
sub-culture of homosexuals, lesbians, cross-dressers, and teenage boy and
girl prostitutes as well as a number of so-termed Molly Houses.2 The
Theatre Royal had been given the Royal Assent by the Prince of Wales in
1806 and it opened on June 27, 1807, attracting both royalty and an
audience of cross-dressers and drag-queens, dubbed at the time
“Margeries,” “Mary-Anns,” and “Poofs.” Then, as now, the pink pound was
important. The Victorian period, regarded traditionally as conservative and
overtly moral, was also a hotbed of promiscuity and cross-dressing, and the
landmark trial of “Fanny and Stella” (Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton) in
1870 was indicative of the involvement of the “respectable” middle class in
what was viewed at the time as national degeneracy. As an anonymous
poem from the late nineteenth century tells it, “When they were in the stalls
/ With their low-neck’d dresses and flowing shawls / They were admired by
one and all / This pair of He-She Ladies.”3 Their conquests included the
Duke of Newcastle’s son, Lord Arthur Clinton, as well as the American
consul in Edinburgh, John Safford Fiske. The trial of Oscar Wilde (1854–
1900), a regular visitor to Brighton convicted of “gross indecency” by Mr.
Justice Wills on May 25, 1895, thus comes into perspective as one legal
rebuke among many.
Another famous visitor to Brighton was Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943), the
poet and author of the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness (1928), who
lived nearby in Rye, East Sussex.4 While not sexually explicit, her novel
was the subject of a UK obscenity trial, which ordered all copies of the
novel to be destroyed. The United States allowed its publication only after a
lengthy court case. Edward Carpenter (1844–1929), the socialist poet and
member of the Fabian Society, was a strong advocate of sexual freedom,
believing that homosexuality was innate and not sinful. Carpenter wrote
several pamphlets on sexual freedom. He has a commemorative Blue
Plaque celebrating his place of birth at 45 Brunswick Square, Hove.5 More
recent residents include the poet and author Victoria (Vita) Sackville-West
(1892–1962), the illegitimate bi-sexual daughter of the English diplomat
Lionel Sackville-West and the Spanish dancer Josefa de la Oliva (known as
Pepita). A loyal friend of sculptor Auguste Rodin, she had a house designed
by Edwin Lutyens in Roedean (Brighton) and another for her guests in
nearby Worthing. Her affairs included Violet Trefusis and the novelist
Virginia Woolf, who was one of the first people to be cremated at the
Brighton Downs Crematorium.
The dramatist Terence Rattigan (1911–1977), author of The Browning
Version and The Winslow Boy, the author and journalist Collie Knox (1899–
1977), and the pantomime dame and music hall artist Dougie Byng (1893–
1988) also lived in the Brighton area. The Brighton Hippodrome (1897–
2007) provided a venue for variety theatre, music hall, and vaudeville, and
boasted a flamboyantly decorated interior, with a large horseshoe-shaped
auditorium and Rococo embellishments.6 Local artists included Byng, Max
Miller, and conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, whose vaudeville
career began in their home town in 1911 at the age of three. Other resident
celebrities included the journalist and radio and TV personality Gilbert
Harding (1907–1960), the broadcaster, actor, and producer Alan Melville
(1910–1983), and Sir David Webster (1903–1971), chief executive of the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. More recent Brightonians include the
comedian and novelist Julian Clary (b.1959) and the journalist Julie
Burchill (b.1959). Simon Cowell, of X-factor fame, was born in Brighton in
1959, and Laurence Olivier and his first wife Vivien Leigh lived at the
Royal Crescent, Brighton until the 1970s. Dusty Springfield (1939–1989)
moved to Wilbury Road, Hove with her parents in the early 1960s and
formed The Springfields with her brother Tom before moving into a solo
career. She is commemorated locally on the number 18 Brighton and Hove
Bus. The dramatist Joe Orton (1933–1967), posthumously famous as the
gay British playwright of the sixties, is remembered for his scandalous
plays, most notably Entertaining Mr Sloane and, in Brighton, for Loot,
which was performed at the Theatre Royal in February 1965 and in 1970
was made into a film, with location shots mainly in Brighton. As Rose
Collis writes, “For gay men, as Orton discovered when he visited the town,
‘cottaging’ in public toilets was one way of meeting sexual partners,” and
Orton’s diaries record “in loving detail…the post-coital chatter of men with
whom he had sex.”7 His murder by lover Kenneth Halliwell (August 9,
1967) established him as an enduring queer martyr/icon associated with
aggressive gay masculinity. Prior to Orton’s death and Halliwell’s suicide,
they were looking to buy a house in Brighton.8
I O
My first encounter with Brighton’s alternative culture was during the late
1950s and early 1960s when I discovered the 42 Club. I had been earning
my pocket money playing piano in a hotel lounge and found a kindred spirit
in Tony, who shared my enjoyment of “queering” the lyrics of such popular
songs as “Misty” and the Al Jolson ballad, “Climb upon my knee, Sonny
Boy.” Anther popular ditty in Tony’s repertory was A. A. Milne’s
“Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace.” Tony occasionally played piano
in the cocktail bar of the Argyle Hotel, Middle Street, Brighton, which
included in its clientele the drag artist Danny La Rue. Tony’s particular
favorite was “The Lavender Cowboy,” a ballad in 3/4 time with four
balancing phrases in each verse. Its lilting melody and vocal narrative
parody such traditional cowboy songs as “Home on the Range.” As the
lyrics reveal, to the dismay of his fellow cowboys this cowboy rode “side-
saddle” on “a filly called Daffydowndilly, the prettiest horse in the West.”
The song exhibits the camp approach to gender transgression in its critique
and mockery of the culturally established masculinity of the cowboy.
Hence, he is shot in the last verse, because “You can’t be a cowboy with
only three hairs on your chest!” Originally sung by Vernon Handley in
1939, it was declared a “blue record” by radio stations and banned.9 It was
later recorded by Tom Robinson. Best known for his anthem “Glad to be
Gay,” written for the 1978 London gay pride parade and banned by the
BBC in May 1978, Robinson also wrote “2-4-6-8-Motorway,” which
alludes to a gay truck driver. At the time of his recording, Robinson was the
only well-known gay artist covering “The Lavender Cowboy,” and his
version is close to that of my friend Tony. It was only one of Tony’s
established repertoire of songs, which notably included Judy Garland’s
iconic “Over the Rainbow” and other musical showstoppers of the time. As
our friendship developed he invited me to the 42 Club—at the time the only
gay bar in Brighton.10
Situated on the sea-front, close to the West Pier, the 42 Club offered a
very theatrical experience. Pre-1967, homosexuality was still an
imprisonable crime, and while the customers ranged from somewhat
androgynous boys to extrovert queens, the members I came to know had
assumed pseudonyms that were either feminized versions of their own
name, such as Paulene, or ones they must have felt suited their personalities
—my favorites being Languid Lil, Laureline, and Betsy May (after the
Queen Mother11). Part of the excitement was the secrecy surrounding the
queer scene. It was underground and colorful. Curiously it was also
moneyed, with many of its members living in Kemp Town’s fashionable
listed buildings: Arundel Terrace, Chichester Terrace, and Lewes Terrace.12
As Patrick states in the oral history “Daring Hearts,” “Brighton has always
had a gay mafia—all those expensive queens, you know, throwing cocktail
parties, with art dealers and old actresses. It was a very closeted place, there
was an awful lot that went on behind heavily brocaded curtains.”13 Also
significant is the Lorelei coffee bar in Union Street, part of the intricate mix
of alleyways and winding streets in Brighton’s historic South Lanes. Lorelei
opened on a Saturday night after the 42 Club closed. Characterized as
“camp,” it was famous for its jukebox, bohemian charm, and chips and
cheese (a deep soup bowl of chips covered with grated cheese).
Drag had its origins in theatre,14 and in Brighton it was an established
part of music halls, variety and cabarets. Artists such as local resident
Dougie Byng, mentioned above, became synonymous with pantomime
dames; he was a pioneer of what is now regarded as camp, becoming a
major influence on future drag artists. His songs, such as “Mexican Minnie”
(“all jolly and ginny…Though I’m well off the map, I’m just covered in
slap”) mixed “sophistication, schoolboy humour and double-entendre.”15
He also wrote the words and extra music for the musical Prince Zorpan
where, in one scene, he impersonated a lady violinist singing “I’m the pest
of Budapest that turned the Danube so blue.”16 For an openly gay
performer, being a drag queen was also a political statement, an affirmation
of his sexuality and cultural identity, and another of Byng’s songs, “Doris,
the Goddess of Wind,” was revived in Alan Bennett’s 2010 play, The Habit
of Art. Like Dusty Springfield, he has a Brighton bus named after him.
The Brighton and Hove queer social scene centered largely on the 42
Club, house/cocktail parties, cabaret and the Sussex Arts masquerade ball.
The 1950s and 60s were a time when publicly acknowledging one’s
homosexuality was risky. For the majority it was a period of isolation, fear,
and repression. Not least, the postwar period was “a time of increased
conservatism on many fronts, although there is no consensus about why this
was so,” accompanied by a growing legal persecution of homosexuality,
among other forms of so-termed “deviance.”17 Meanwhile, the Homosexual
Law Reform Society and the Minorities Research Group in the UK sought
to end legal prohibitions, and the 1967 Sexual Offences Acts finally
“decriminalised homosexual acts between consenting adult men (a full ten
years after the government-commissioned Wolfenden Committee’s report
first proposed this change) and, in effect, repealed the repressive
Labouchère Amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, the
very law that had resulted in the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde.”18 However,
as Patricia Juliana Smith points out, “Queer culture did not…begin with
these dramatic moments in time; rather, it had flourished…with an elaborate
and highly developed sensibility, a subcultural vernacular and semiotic
system, and cultural veneration of certain figures.”19 This chapter continues
with two examples reflecting gay culture in Brighton before the legal and
cultural changes of the late 1960s. The first is the BBC radio-comedy
program “Round the Horne,” the second, the alternative language-forms of
Polari, as embodied in a poem by my friend John McCullough.
Q I
The reference to “Round the Horne” underpins the retro nature of Polari.
Poet John McCullough, also a researcher into Brighton’s queer heritage and
author of The Frost Fairs (a 2011 Book of the Year for the Independent
newspaper and the Poetry School, and a recommended summer read in The
Observer32) has written a poem which provides a somewhat nostalgic
glimpse of the lost queer culture of the early to mid-twentieth century.33 As
letters and diaries in the archive at Brighton Ourstory underline, with the
police kept busy, World War II provided homosexuals on the home front
with a unique opportunity for self-expression. John moved to Brighton in
2000 and worked as a barman in a number of Brighton’s queer venues like
The Bulldog and The Amsterdam with their soundtrack of drag cabaret and
house remixes of the latest chart hits. It was only later, however, that he
discovered Polari. He enjoys “the texture and musicality of the language,
the suggestive delight it takes in long vowels, stridents, and lateral
approximants which reveal its origins as an amalgam of Italian, Yiddish,
thieves’ cant and Cockney slang. Its sounds are packed with excess and
excitement, its giddy flourishes married to an earthy, puncturing humor
which ensures no one gets above their station.”34
John has provided a glossary of Polari words to assist in reading this
poem: bona—lovely; martinis—hands; eek—face; aunt nells—ears;
zhooshy—tarted up; trolling—mincing; ogle riahs—eyelashes; omi-palones
—effeminate men; bevvy—drink; dolly—beautiful; feelies—children; bijou
—small; vada—look at.
Georgie, Belladonna, Sid
Paper, scissors, stone. Grinning poster boys
for Winston’s bona home front, the flashing sky
pink as a boudoir. Sid’s craggy martinis thump
The website Queer in Brighton provides insight into the City’s past and
present queer scene.37 Including a picture gallery, biographies, events, and
news, it is an archive of queer heritage. It is but one of the many websites
originating in and serving Brighton’s established LGBTQ community.
Many sites offer information on the clubs, among them “Autostraddle—
Queer Girl City Guide Brighton UK,” which provides listings of events and
“all things queer,” including information on the safest club nights. In
December, 2007, for the first time in the UK, music which encouraged
violence towards minority groups was banned in Brighton’s clubs and
concert venues. Meanwhile, the Brighton & Hove LGBT switchboard offers
support and help for all areas of life and connects queer people in the area
with charities and services. For the under 26, there is also the Allsorts Youth
Project that offers drop-ins and individual support for the LGBTQ
community.
Historically, the current scene can be connected to The Zap Club, which
first opened in 1982. Founded by Neil Butler, Patricia Butler, and Amanda
Scott, The Zap Club aimed to mix radical art with cutting edge
entertainment, and its first shows were presented in a cabaret format mixing
performance art, comedy, dance and theatre. In 1984 it moved to the Kings
Road Arches, finally closing in early 2005. Famous for its radical music
and open-mic nights during the 1980s through to the “Streets of Brighton”
festival events, the collaboration with QueenSpark led to the publication of
its cultural history in the online heritage site, My Brighton and Hove
(2007).38 Julian Clary, performing as “The Joan Collins Fan Club” (which
had only one member), was among Zap’s iconic performers, and his PVC
and rubber-clad persona attracted a substantial following.39 The Zap Club
also ran Club Shame, an influential gay club night founded by Paul Kemp,
two years before Manchester’s Flesh night and London’s Trade. Considered
well ahead of its time, it was heralded as “the blue print of clubbing for the
90s” by Gay Times.40 Kemp is also responsible for producing the
“Alternative Miss Brighton” and building the internationally renowned
Wild Fruit brand, known for its all-inclusive, uninhibited club experience
with DJs including Boy George and Fatboy Slim, also a Brighton resident.
Kemp’s Alternative Miss Brighton Shows have been staged at the Theatre
Royal and the Brighton Dome and included performances by Lily Savage,
Graham Norton, Julian Clary, Rhona Cameron, Nicholas Parsons, and
Michelle Collins. Kemp has been involved with Brighton Pride since its
inception, becoming Pride’s biggest business investor and fundraiser for
eighteen years, and establishing the Dance Big Top, which he produced for
fifteen years.41
Popular music can be considered a social force that constructs both
heteronormativity and resistant queer sexualities and gender identities,
whether gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, or transgender. Thus, social
relations merge with musical performances and invoke a different way of
listening or viewing, a different and alternative engagement with the
performer. Brighton’s Theatre Royal has been the venue for live
performances both by queer icons and by tribute bands that celebrate them.
Justin Hawkins was joined by his brother Dan during a Hot Leg gig at the
Ocean Rooms, Brighton, as part of The Great Escape Festival on May 15,
2009, and was subsequently part of Lady GaGa’s “Born This Way Ball”
tour. The Freddie Mercury tribute band “Killer Queen” is also a regular
attraction, while “One Night of Elvis” with Lee Memphis King, Europe’s
most successful Elvis tribute artist, celebrates his career from his 1950s
rock ‘n’ roll heyday through to his Vegas performing years.
I would also mention resident writer and performer Rose Collis who,
after a career as a journalist and author of ten books, performed with Queer
Ukuleles, the UK’s only queer ukulele band, for eighteen months. She then
joined Brighton’s Rainbow Chorus, performing in the 2011 Brighton
Fringe, before appearing at Paul Burston’s Polari literary salon at London’s
Southbank Centre. She then performed at Shoreham Library as part of
LGBT History Month and then at Brighton’s Marlborough theatre. Her
scripted banjo cabaret-style show “Trouser-Wearing Characters” draws on
the people she has written about,
combining music, stories, vignettes and songs (evergreens and originals) about some of her
favourite, eclectic “trouser-wearing characters,” from 50s media star Nancy Spain to
masquerader “Colonel” Victor Barker,42 cabaret legend Douglas Byng to ‘the f**king lady’
herself, actress Coral Browne.43
( TO ) Q U E E R
“A” Life to Music
E L I Z A BE T H GOUL D
Thus, forever displaced, the “I” that is lesbian is never yet always you. With
no you that is an a priori “I,” there is no “I”; which is to say you, there is no
“I” prior to the repeated iterations of you—not only that, these iterations are
never repeated completely “faithfully”; they are always already enacted at a
distance, a somewhere else both deeply enmeshed and apart from this
displaced, if not exactly lost lesbian “I.”
Butler’s displaced lesbian “I,” however, is forever mute. She is written
on your body, “produce[d] on the skin, through the gesture, the move, the
gait (that array of corporeal theatrics understood as gender presentation), .
…always a surface sign, a signification on and with the public body,”14 that
materializes momentarily, a phantom always already displaced as a function
of melancholic psychic loss. You can see Butler’s displaced “I” if only
fleetingly and uncertainly, but she cannot speak—or more to the point, she
cannot sing.15 The second person apostrophe, however, is the you that you
see clearly, but refuse to hear, as she is becoming-you—on the outside of
language.16
“W A F S A ?”
Exhausted that graduate students don’t just accept the stereotype of feminist
anger, they embrace it. You start over every year, every time they first read
feminist scholarship in music.19 This year, they respond unusually
vehemently to Suzanne Cusick’s essay, “Gender, Musicology, and
Feminism.”20 You think they will identify with it because Cusick actually
writes the words, “music education”; because they can substitute those
words every time she writes “musicology” and not distort her meaning.
Instead, they demand, “Why is Cusick so angry?” That Cusick is not angry,
that she is describing Ruth Crawford’s anger, expressed in Crawford’s
exclamation, “Damn them!” at being deliberately excluded—by the man
with whom she studies composition and later marries21—from the meeting
to organize what eventually becomes the American Musicological Society
—completely escapes them, even after you point it out.
Exhausted by student hostility, a feminist scholar from outside the
United States and Canada, invites you—in 2011—to speak about feminism
and feminist research with her musicology class. Noting the paucity of
feminist scholars in music education (Julia Eklund Koza, Roberta Lamb,
Patricia O’Toole), you describe feminist incursions in musicology and
ethnomusicology (for instance, Jane Bowers, Susan Cook, Suzanne Cusick,
Bev Diamond, Ellen Koskoff, Susan McClary, Pirkko Moisala, Kip Pegley,
Ruth Solie, Elizabeth Wood—and so many more) as robust, if contested—
arguing that as a set of tools of critique and inquiry invoking music and
education values of interconnectedness, creative experimentation, and trust,
feminism opens up otherwise inaccessible and unexplored problematic
fields related to music engagement in terms of passion and lived
experience.22 Presenting an earlier version of this argument in 2008 at an
international philosophy of education conference, you have no response to
an audience member’s dismissal, “Well, feminism doesn’t have much
purchase here,” without specifying whether her comment refers to the
professional organization hosting the conference or to the country where it
is held. It is 2016 when a feminist musicologist in the United States
observes that if she mentions even one composer who is a woman in her
music history class, students complain on teaching evaluations that she only
discusses women composers.
It’s not that I’m angry. I’m incredibly sad .…heartbroken really.24
—virtually all school shooters are white and bullied, most typically for
being gay,33 although none apparently are—“One could say that
homophobia is the hate that makes men straight.”34 Indeed, school shooters
construct identities of violent hypermasculinity through the cultural texts of
music that express anger and violence toward society in general and women
in particular.35 In a profession where pervasive gender, sexual, and racial
stereotyping of music occupations, instrument selection, curricular content,
and materials persist unabated, enforcement of policies that prohibit
bullying, sexual harassment, and assault remains the work of those who
experience it36—instead of those who perpetrate it, or the institutions where
it occurs.
[T]he real question is not why am I angry; the real question is why aren’t you?37
Your entire friendship consists of a few games of pool played after lunch
one day most weeks during the academic year. Nevertheless, you are
stunned in 2000 when he announces that he has asked a troop of Boy Scouts
to present the US flag on stage during the annual Veteran’s Day concert of
the community band that he conducts and for which you serve as utility
infielder, playing tenor saxophone or bassoon as needed. He does not reply
when you remind him that the Boy Scouts recently reaffirmed their policy
banning gays and lesbians; looks away when you insist he would never go
on stage with the Boy Scouts if they discriminated against African
Americans in this way; nods when you tell him that you will not play the
concert, cannot play any concert with a band willing to appear on stage with
an openly homophobic organization. In all the years you know each other,
even when he encourages and conducts Carol’s Symphony for Band, he
never once speaks about your relationship with Carol, the open secret for
which you can be fired without cause or recourse; the secret that your
colleagues and students are only too eager to “unknow.”38
So you construct your gender performance there not as cross-dressing,
but as heterosexual drag, because drag functions as drag only when the
audience “knows” you are not what you perform—when your colleagues
and students know you are not heterosexual:
Drag constitutes the mundane way in which genders are appropriated, theatricalized, worn,
and done; it implies that all gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation.…
[T]here is no original or primary gender that drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation
for which there is no original.39
But perhaps not so much to those who drag the closet. If the “epistemology
of the closet” is unknowing the knowledge, the secret refusing transparency,
drag is the unknowing that announces itself, singing on the outside of
language.
Previously, you invoke the inverted triangle to resist—well, survive—a
school principal’s verbal abuse for your agreeing—not volunteering as you
are a first-year teacher in the school feeling compelled when no one else
moves—to act as union representative for an experienced teacher the
principal attempts to dismiss—for no discernible reason. Your body breaks
out in hives, which you learn to control by smiling politely during the
tirades, applying for doctoral school, resigning, and taping upside-down
cut-out Black triangles over each day on the calendar in your classroom
until the school year ends. You leave for graduate school just as the
acceptance letter arrives. Two and a half years later, you hesitate on the
stairs of your Brooklyn flat, frozen in the terror of the awful power of
authority in schools—at all levels—then push the door open to hear
elementary students that first day in your part-time music teaching position.
The question for you remains: What are you so afraid of? Accepting the
2012 Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award, Lana Wachowski
describes the “mounting fury” she feels toward her mother after a childhood
incident when her mother “rescues” Lana (“Larry” then) from a teacher
who is yelling at and then hitting her for failing to take her place in the
boys’ line on the school playground. Lana’s mother drives her home and
asks what happened. Realizing that she has “no real language to describe
it,” Lana stares at the floor. When her mother demands that she look at her,
Lana resists “because when I do,” she explains, “I am unable to understand
why she can’t see me.”41
Hearing Lana’s words, you nearly break down. Her fury and frustration
describe exactly your experience as a child—an experience that more than
50 years later, she articulates in a way that you finally comprehend. The
realization that you could have died without understanding catches your
breath:
Here in the absence of words to defend myself, without examples, without models, I began
to believe the voices in my head—that I was a freak, that I am broken, that there is
something wrong with me, I will never be lovable. .…Years later I find the courage to admit
that I am transgender and that this doesn’t mean that I am unlovable.…. I dressed as
feminine as I could, wanting to be seen by strangers as Lana. Hoping that waiters would not
call me “sir” or “he,” as if these people suddenly had the power to confirm or deny my
existence.…. Invisibility is indivisible from visibility; for the transgender this is not simply
a philosophical conundrum—it can be the difference between life and death.42
ENDANGERED TENDERNESS
Schubert, Chopin, and Schumann
C HARL E S F I S K
A M S -D
Chopin’s favorite of his waltzes, that in A minor, Op. 34 no. 2, has always
been my favorite as well.16 It is also, arguably, the queerest of them.
Because of the dronelike accompaniment and modal inflections of its
opening section, one might initially mistake it for a mazurka. The left-hand
melody, dolefully rocking at first between E and F, has always reminded me
of a Slavic folk song, thereby evoking for me a lonely, possibly homesick
protagonist (whether Fremdling, étranger, or nieznajomy). In the second
section of the waltz, the melodic line strives upward, as if trying to gain the
momentum of the dance, and begins to glide freely only in the lengthening
of the phrase at the section’s end. If the third section captures the festive,
social mood of the dance, it does so only tenuously, as it sways back and
forth between major and minor, “very much,” as Jim Samson claims, “in the
manner of the mazurkas.” 17 In the fourth, an amorous melody in the tonic
major floats above the gliding of the waltz rhythm, now in full swing. The
once-lonely protagonist seems to have succeeded in joining in. But in the
fifth, that entire melody is echoed in the minor mode, again with
mazurkalike, now Phrygian inflections, as if to capture the mood of the
dancer who comes to the realization that the fulfillment of which he has just
dreamed can perhaps only be imagined, but never attained.
All of the sections but the first then come a second time, in an endeavor
to recover the spirit of the dance, first achieving it, but soon again retreating
from its rapturous flow into lonely reflection. Only now, after this second
cycle, does the longing opening theme return, this time leading to a new
melody, at first in its own low register, but in the end arching upward to be
joined from above by another voice—a real, if fleeting, companion—before
falling back into the melancholy but gentle swaying of the opening theme.
Samson notes another generic mixture at the waltz’s end, where, he claims,
“the nocturne invades the waltz.”18 It is as if this music can only strive to
become a waltz rather than simply being one.
I do not remember thinking consciously, when I first learned to play this
waltz as a ninth grader, of a personal narrative linking it with my own
situation. At the time, I had only recently realized that my sexual longings
were considered pathological. But I clearly sensed in myself a recurring
inner scenario that was mirrored by the emotional trajectory of the piece: a
scenario beginning with a lonely, self-cradling song, from which its
protagonist strives to rise, by joining in the dance, to social acceptance and
even to some form of amorous bliss; but he finds no fulfillment. He tries
and fails again; but in the end, he turns in a different direction—one in
which he can imagine finding, even if he cannot yet realize it, the
fulfillment he seeks.
I don’t wish to claim that Chopin’s waltz tells such a story; I would
rather invoke the story as “telling” the waltz, as translating my queer
experience of it into concrete images. Its protagonist is an outsider who tries
to seek inclusion by transforming the mazurka that comes naturally to him
into a waltz, a dance that anyone can supposedly dance. Although he may
seek, and may even imagine, finding happiness within the world of that
dance, he will never really find it there. In the end, he will have to start a
new song in a voice more fully his own, like the song that comes near the
end. Only then will he find another dancer who enters his own world by
joining in song with him, as happens in the dreamlike passage just before
the opening mazurkalike song returns for the last time. Can one infer
anything about Chopin’s personality from his preference for this waltz
above all the others? Perhaps not; maybe it is simply the most beautiful. But
his preference for it might reflect a self-identification with it that transcends
purely aesthetic considerations.
C ’ “D ”
Of the pieces that I have chosen to consider in this chapter, perhaps the final
one, Schumann’s Kreisleriana, is the queerest in what I have called “an
ordinary, old-fashioned sense.” The first eight measures of its opening
movement, marked äusserst bewegt (extremely in motion), syncopated
throughout, leave their metric framework virtually undetectable. The
contrast between this agitation and the tenderness of the movement’s
middle section is also extreme—so extreme as to make that tenderness feel,
once again, vulnerable. The tempo and expressive indications for every one
except the last of the remaining seven movements are modified by sehr, the
German word meaning “very”: sehr innig und nicht zu rasch (very inward
and not too quick); sehr aufgeregt (very agitated); sehr langsam (very
slow); sehr lebhaft (very lively); once again sehr langsam; and finally, or I
should say penultimately, sehr rasch (very quick). Until the end, the
musical and expressive contrasts continue to be extreme and abrupt, both
within and between movements. But perhaps queerest of all, and most
wonderful, is the way that the bass of the concluding movement, to be
played schnell und spielend (fast and playfully), continually slips away
from the music that it is meant to accompany, making it all the more in-
drawing and mysterious.
Kreisleriana captivated me from the first time I heard it performed in
1968 by another student at the Yale School of Music. I knew immediately
that I had to play it—not just someday, but someday soon. More capacious,
for me, than any other piano piece I had ever heard, it encompassed the
expressive extremes of intimacy and wild abandon. The musical and
pianistic impulses that drew me sometimes to the wildness of Liszt’s first
Mephisto Waltz, Bartók’s Out of Doors Suite, and Copland’s Piano
Variations, and at other times to Schubert’s quieter impromptus and
Moments musicaux, Brahms’s Eb-major and A-major intermezzi, and
Debussy’s Hommage à Rameau and des pas sur la neige, could all be
addressed by studying and performing Kreisleriana. It was a piece with
which I wanted to become intimate, and to which, in a sense, I longed to
“bare my soul” and to be transported wherever it could take me. Because of
its extraordinary commingling of the gentlest and dreamiest music with the
wildest and most powerful, I sensed that in playing it, I could come of age,
in the sense of having well-grounded pride in myself, without suppressing
those aspects of myself that felt most vulnerable and, in that stereotypical
sense, childlike.
As it happens, I performed Kreisleriana for the first time only in 1977,
just a few months after finally accepting and acting upon my own
homosexuality. My grandmother regretted being unable to come to my
performance. But she proudly relayed to me that my Aunt Jinny, her
daughter, had told her that, for the first time ever, I had really “played like a
man.” Of course there is nothing in itself queer about playing this piece;
pianists of all sorts and stripes have performed it without arousing
speculation about their erotic and personal lives. More than with much of
my other repertoire, however, the desire to take possession of my own
queerness is what seems to me to have energized my own absorption with
this profoundly felt, but fanciful music.
Q — N ?
If one does not limit the application of the term “queer” to sexually
dissident individuals or their creations, how then does one determine an
appropriate range of its use? Robert Schumann was clearly in some respects
an odd character. He dreamed up the imaginary characters Florestan and
Eusebius to represent, respectively, the aggressive and contemplative sides
of his personality, and a third character, Master Raro, to mediate between
them. Following his suicide attempt, he was confined for the last two years
of his life to an asylum. Johannes Kreisler, the creation and alter ego of the
versatile, eccentric, but presumably heterosexual E. T. A. Hoffman and the
source of Kreisleriana’s title, might today be classified as a manic
depressive or bipolar personality, as Schumann himself has sometimes
been.22
Schumann aspired to recognition as a public figure, not only as a
composer, but also as a conductor, editor, and journalist, and did not
hesitate to make known some of his most pronounced idiosyncrasies.
Would either Chopin or Schumann, if living today, have been willing to
designate himself as “queer”? Who can say? Too much else has changed.
But I, for one, am more comfortable applying that term to the reclusive
Chopin, who seems to have kept much of his inner life secret, than to the
generally more public Schumann, who aspired to a central position as an
arbiter of aesthetic standards and taste.
As already intimated, I have based my ascriptions of queerness to pieces
of music primarily on the quality of my own relationships with them. There
is much music that I have loved and performed that I am much less inclined
to identify in that way. J. S. Bach is possibly my favorite composer, and
possibly also the one whose music I play best; but I do not regard my
relationship with any of it—even the extraordinary, mysterious, radically
chromatic 25th variation of the Goldbergs—as queer. Nor does any of
Beethoven’s piano music, with the possible exception of his penultimate
sonata, Op. 110, evoke for me the emotional scenarios that I associate most
strongly with my struggles with my own sexuality.
While the expressions of tenderness in these composers can affect me
just as profoundly, I do not experience them—as I do in Schubert, Chopin,
and Schumann—as islands of tenderness. In first becoming familiar with
and learning to play the pieces that I write about here, I rarely if ever
thought explicitly about how they might have reflected my own emotional
and existential quandaries. I simply felt recognized and comforted—and
knew why I needed that solace. But in thinking about them since, I have
recognized that what drew me to them so powerfully, beyond what one
might naively consider their purely aesthetic qualities, were the ways that I
heard reflected in them the vulnerabilities and the sense of alienation that I
associated with my own sexual and emotional life. In writing about them,
both now and in the past, I have sought to identify and describe in these
pieces the qualities through which they could come to hold the same kind of
significance for others in their struggles for self-acceptance and self-
definition.
N
1. David Halperin, How to Be Gay (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 112.
2. Wayne Kostenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire
(New York: Poseidon, 1993), 190.
3. Robert Schumann, On Music and Musicians, ed. Konrad Wolff (New York: Pantheon, 1946),
140.
4. In a poignant and sensitive account that resonates with my own experience, Philip Brett hears in
Schubert’s music “a fluctuation, a vacillation, a carefully constructed undecidability…that
affects the identity of more than notes” (159). See his “Piano Four-Hands: Schubert and
Performance of Gay Male Desire,” 19th-Century Music, 21:2 (Autumn 1997): 149–176.
5. I use the term “citadel” deliberately here. In a Classical sonata in a minor key, the second
thematic area most often occurs either in the relative major (with the same key signature) or the
dominant minor key (whose key signature differs from that of the home key by only one sharp
or flat). The key signature of the major key of the dominant, however, differs from that of the
home key by four sharps, making it a remote key and hence a potential citadel—a safe haven—
in relation to what has come before.
6. For a detailed explication of these passages, see Charles Fisk, Returning Cycles: Contexts for
the Interpretation of Schubert’s Impromptus and Last Sonatas (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2001), chap. 4: “Retelling the ‘Unfinished.’”
7. Fisk, Returning Cycles, chap. 3: “The Wanderer’s Tracks.”
8. Joseph Kerman, “A Romantic Detail in Schubert’s Schwanengesang,” Musical Quarterly 48
(1962), 36–49.
9. Charles Fisk, “What Schubert’s Last Sonata Might Hold,” in Music and Meaning, ed. Jenefer
Robinson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 179–200.
10. With respect, in particular, to Chopin’s sometimes apparent androgyny and sylphlike character,
see Jeffrey Kallberg, “Small Fairy Voices: Sex, History, and Meaning in Chopin,” in Chopin
Studies 2, ed. John Rink and Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 50–
71.
11. George Sand, Correspondance, 25 vols, ed. George Lubin (Paris: Garnier, 1964–1991), vol. 4,
646.
12. For a brief but cogent discussion of Chopin’s apotheoses, see Edward T. Cone, Musical Form
and Musical Performance (New York: Norton, 1968), 84–86.
13. Carl Schachter, “Chopin’s Fantasy, Op. 49: The Two-Key Scheme,” in Chopin Studies, ed. Jim
Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 253.
14. Anthony Newcomb, “The Polonaise-Fantasy and Issues of Musical Narrative,” in Chopin
Studies 2, 100.
15. I am thinking most specifically here of Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy and Fantasy in C Major
for violin and piano, his Piano Trio in Eb Major, his String Quintet, and his last two piano
sonatas.
16. Jim Samson, The Music of Chopin (London: Routledge, 1985), 125.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Charles Fisk, “Chopin’s ‘Duets’—and Mine,” in 19th-Century Music XXXV (Spring 2012):
182–203.
20. Ibid, 201.
21. Ibid., 197–198, for a brief explanation of this relationship.
22. Peter Ostwald, Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1985), xii.
R
Brett, Philip. “Piano Four-Hands: Schubert and the Performance of Gay Male Desire.” 19th-Century
Music XXI/2 (Autumn 1997): 149–176.
Cone, Edward T. Musical Form and Musical Performance. New York: Norton, 1968.
Cone, Edward T. The Composer’s Voice. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1982.
Cusick, Suzanne G. “On a Lesbian Relationship with Music: A Serious Effort Not to Think Straight.”
In Queering the Pitch, edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, 67–84. New
York: Routledge, 1994.
Fisk, Charles. “Chopin’s Duets—and Mine.” 19th-Century Music XXXV/3 (Spring 2012): 182–203.
Fisk, Charles. Returning Cycles: Contexts for the Interpretation of Schubert’s Impromptus and Last
Sonatas. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.
Fisk, Charles. “What Schubert’s Last Sonata Might Hold.” In Music and Meaning, edited by Jenefer
Robinson, 179–200. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Halperin, David. How to Be Gay. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Kallberg, Jeffrey. “Small Fairy Voices: Sex, History, and Meaning in Chopin.” In Chopin at the
Boundaries, edited by John Rink and Jim Samson, 162–186. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1998.
Kerman, Joseph. “A Romantic Detail in Schubert’s Schwanengesang.” Musical Quarterly 48 (1962):
36–49.
Kostenbaum, Wayne. The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire. New
York: Poseidon, 1993.
McClary, Susan. “Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music.” In Queering the Pitch, edited
by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, 205–233. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Newcomb, Anthony. “The Polonaise-Fantasy and Issues of Musical Narrative,” in Chopin Studies 2,
edited by John Rink and Jim Samson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Ostwald, Peter. Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius. Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1985.
Sand, George. Correspondance. 25 vols. Edited by George Lubin. Paris: Garnier, 1964–1991.
Schachter, Carl. “Chopin’s Fantasy, Op. 49: The Two-Key Scheme.” In Chopin Studies, edited by Jim
Samson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Schumann, Robert. On Music and Musicians. Edited by Konrad Wolff. New York: Pantheon, 1946.
Solomon, Maynard. “Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini.” 19th-Century Music XII/3
(Spring 1989): 193–206.
CHAPTER 19
M U S I C A L AWA K E N I N G S : T H E
EXPERIENCES OF A QUEER
MUSIC THERAPIST IN THE
FA C E O F H I V A N D A I D S
C OL I N A NDRE W L E E
Charles came to music therapy with focus and energy. After a previous life
in full-time management and the trappings of an executive life, he found
himself unemployed, acutely ill, and with huge expanses of time. His HIV
diagnosis meant that he was free to explore his love of music and art.
Creating in the face of his illness became an obsession for Charles. It
consumed him and allowed him to fulfill his creative destiny. He attended
art and music therapy sessions at London Lighthouse with the unbridled
passion of a great artist. In music, he exhibited a raw energy that was
driving and colossal. In art, his paintings used huge blocks of dramatic
color that revealed a man with a huge indomitable spirit.
Charles entered the music therapy relationship with sincerity and trust.
Immediately after our work began I knew I would have to be insightful in
my verbal interpretations of his music. The improvisations we shared were
full of energy and pain. At the beginning of our work his emotionally
focused expressions made me feel vulnerable and insecure. With the
guidance of my professional supervisor, I explored how best to help his
extrovert, musically explosive spirit and place it within the duality of our
therapeutic relationship while retaining the safety of my role as therapist.
His improvisations were rhythmically driving. They moved forward
with a granite sense of determination that made them feel as if they had
always been in existence. We had simply caught them in the moment of co-
creative music making. These were more than free improvisations. They
were structured compositions, from their beginnings through to their
complex development and final conclusion. My role was to be imbedded
yet apart from Charles’s musical expressions—to be a therapeutic-musical
reflector.
Charles often spoke at length at the beginning of sessions. There was an
urgency to express verbally that which was burning within him, which then
naturally moved toward music-making, as if his verbal and musical roles
were to begin as separate entities that would eventually merge as the session
developed. His own words best describe the process:
In the beginning, I did not know what to expect, or realize how music therapy could help
someone get better from their illnesses. After a few sessions, however, once the trust
between us had been established, I started to understand the importance of searching within
ourselves. Having the facility to express through music, without the constraints of technical
or learned ability, enabled me to express my feelings in a totally new way. Listening to tapes
from sessions gave me insight into the way I was feeling and the way I interacted with
people, depending on the environment I was exposed to during the week. This additional
facility has helped me to tackle any diseases and difficulties that come my way.7
Charles would often request audio copies of our sessions so that he could
utilize them and connect the feelings from sessions directly into his life
during the week.
Charles and I worked together for nearly two years. During that time, I
came to understand the balance between the musical affirmations of life and
the resolve needed to explore impermanence though co-creative music-
making. When I first met Charles, he seemed emotionally tired and
physically weak. The trauma of his HIV diagnosis was so painfully
apparent that it seemed to jump physically in front of him. Miraculously,
after he began art and music therapy everything changed. Charles’s physical
appearance went through a metamorphosis; he put on weight and his
complexion became clear. Over the initial months of sessions, his demeanor
became one of a man connected to the earth, alive, as if he had been reborn
—as if, through creative expression, a huge weight had been lifted from
him. Our sessions together were always electric. Whether through words or
music, the urgency he bought to our work left me breathless. I felt as if he
were running down the steep side of a valley, and I was running behind
trying to catch up and be alongside him. The exhilaration of his
improvisations and my memory of them are as palpable and vivid to me as
when they were first created.
After our sessions had ended, and a few days before he died, I visited
Charles in hospital, as he had specifically asked to see me. When I entered
into his room, his presence leaped toward me from his bed. Charles
beckoned me to sit near him. For the next thirty minutes, he described the
impact of our work on his life. The affirmation of music therapy for him
had been overwhelming, yet there was a sense that he was not thanking
himself, nor myself as therapist, but rather music itself for being such a
powerful intermediary expression of his life with AIDS. As our time
together ended, he told me that he was not scared of dying but rather that he
was excited that this, his next journey, would be one of continued discovery.
I left our meeting with the understanding that for Charles music had been a
powerful color in his life, not beige or white, but strong burning reds and
blues that enflamed him and gave voice to a creative and fearless spirit.
Before he died Charles gave me one of his paintings from his time in art
therapy. See Figure 19.1; an image of the painting also appears on the cover
of this book. The picture has remained in my life as a constant reminder of
our relationship and the power of creativity to transcend illness.
Colin was a singer, born in Wales. Even though he had no sustained formal
training, his voice had a quality that immediately called for one’s attention.
He sang his living and dying with intense beauty and meaning. Singing for
Colin was like breathing: it was a natural progression from his inner world
to the outer reality of his illness. He used his voice to explore that which
was beyond conscious knowing, moving toward a manifestation of his life
and the difficulties he faced living with HIV and AIDS. For Colin, singing
was not only an artistic escape, but also a time to explore the realities of his
potential decline and death. Colin was one of the few clients I worked with
at Lighthouse who used songs as the core of their therapy.
In sessions, Colin sang Italian arias, songs from musicals, and traditional
Welsh ballads. We did not improvise. The quality of his voice left a marked
impression on me. There was an edge to the emotional quality of his voice
that always left one wondering about the unanswered parts of his life, a
sense that he was holding back from the real trauma that had brought him to
music therapy. As a therapist, I never verbally pressure a client to divulge
more than they are comfortable with. It was my hope that, given time,
Colin’s musical intensities might herald an opening through words. His
choice of songs and the intent with which he sang them were clear
indicators, to me as therapist, that this work was crucial to his life and
subsequent physical decline.
Colin had always wanted to sing and perform in public. At Lighthouse I
would arrange small concerts in the Ian McKellen Hall that would allow
clients, staff, and local musicians the space to perform and play music in a
supportive, informal environment. For many clients music therapy was
intensely private, but for some like Colin the chance to perform was
intensely therapeutic and personally gratifying. Learning music, a process
of growth, while facing death, a process of loss, is an extremely powerful
therapeutic force. Improvisations are of the moment and should never be
taken outside the therapeutic arena. Songs, however, are different, and can
be explored both in the immediacy of an individual session, but also as
potential performances in different community settings. This can be taken
to a level of sensitive performance that will enhance the therapy and
provide a forum for clients to express and share with others. There is in this
progression a sense of accomplishment that is a very powerful therapeutic
tool.
I remember vividly a concert in which Colin sang two Italian arias and
the song “I Dreamed a Dream,” from the musical Les Miserables. I
accompanied him on piano. The quality of his voice resounds in my
memory to this day. It was as if his songs cut through to the core of his
personal yearning, while the lyrics portrayed a bigger picture of a
community in crisis. There was a sharp quality in his voice, tinged with a
depiction of intense emotional longing. His singing spoke to a greater
audience, and I was left with an overwhelming feeling of smallness in my
role as music therapist.
Loss and singing are powerful allies. Both have the ability to portray a
rawness that is at the heart of music and health. My impressions of Colin
are of a human spirit caught in the urgency of his illness. There seemed so
little time to find his true path in the mayhem of his physical deterioration.
Through singing, however, he was able to find stillness. For a short time,
this musical stillness allowed him to move away from the realities of his
illness and find peace.
I remember Colin’s funeral. There was music, of course, and a recording
of him singing. His songs conveyed his life more clearly than anyone could
have expressed through words. At the end of the service, I gave his family
an edited recording of him singing in sessions and in concerts. This was
something Colin had requested, and its content had been discussed between
us before he died. They thanked me for giving them a musical legacy of his
singing and for my time with him in music therapy.
Colin was an intensely shy man, who did not express himself easily
through words. Through music, however, he was able to reflect on his life
with HIV and AIDS. Through singing, he shared a profound sense of the
fragile nature of humanity. I remember Colin with the utmost clarity and
respect. The quality of his voice is a constant reminder of the power of
songs to create a safe therapeutic space that is immediate and tangible. I
remember his smile after he had sung a phrase that was beautifully
measured and that had worked in the context of a song—how it connected
though my playing, as an accompaniment for him, and contributed to our
developing therapeutic relationship. Colin never fully shared why he came
to music therapy or the impact that therapeutic singing had for him. But I
knew that for him, singing was a time of passionate musical awakenings, a
time that allowed him to be healthy and whole.
A : R M
Eddie came to music therapy for three years.9 Our work together formed
one of the major parts of my doctoral research. He was one of the most
innately creative clients I had the privilege of working with. Though Eddie
was musically untrained he exhibited a level of musicality that was equal to,
if not greater than my own. The following description of an individual
session from the final year of our work together is a testament to the power
of music and provides the reader with the opportunity to hear a complete
improvisation from a session.
The day began as usual. I arrived early at London Lighthouse to arrange
the room and prepare myself emotionally for the sessions ahead. At the
front desk candles would be lit in honour of anyone who had recently died.
That morning, noticing there were three candles, I enquired as to the names.
One of the three was a member of staff who had died during the night and
who had worked until recently in Lighthouse’s restaurant. I knew this
person was a close friend of Eddie’s and felt sure he would not know about
the death until he came for our session later that morning.
The previous week we had discussed the possibility of Eddie bringing
his guitar to sessions and how we might improvise together on guitar and
piano. As a self-taught musician he had a great love for modern jazz. We
both had an affinity for Keith Jarrett as well as the freer jazz of such players
as Evan Parker. I remember waiting for Eddie to enter the room, feeling
nervous and unsure about how the session might proceed.
Eddie came into the room with a sense of great intent. He looked
directly at me for a moment and then averted his eyes. He sat down on a
chair near the piano and took the guitar out of its case. Without speaking he
nodded for me to help him begin tuning his guitar. I played an E on the
piano, which is the note of the guitar’s lowest string. After a few minutes he
finished and then sat in silence with his head bowed. The silence felt
unbearable. Eventually he raised his head and said simply “let’s play.”
His opening phrases felt full of reflective sadness. I stepped back from
my emotional responses in order to be effective in my role as therapist. I
responded with equally fluid phrases, allowing his music to speak without
copying or trying to mold his ideas. Our musical dialog was free from any
structured rhythms. We developed our ideas at a musical-emotional distance
from each other. Eventually I saw the opportunity to create a more cohesive
musical figure from which I hoped Eddie would be able to express more
melodically. I played repeated patterns to allow Eddie a more independent
musical voice. After a while our dialog returned to its separate identities.
Following another rhythmically constant section the improvisation became
more relationally complex. Later in the improvisation Eddie offered me the
opportunity to take the soloist’s role by providing a guitar accompaniment,
allowing me to improvise melodically. It is rare for the therapist to be
musically supported by the client but in that moment, it felt right and bore
testament to the depth of our musical relationship. Heading into the final
passages Eddie became rhythmically more determined and for the first time,
I felt, truly expressed his grief. In that moment I wondered if he would lose
control. The moment passed, however, and the improvisation ended quietly
and at peace.
As you listen to Audio Example 1, remember this music was created in
the moment. The aesthetic content of the improvisation and its therapeutic
intent are of equal importance. It is a complete improvisation, not an
excerpt, and is one of the finest examples from my work at Lighthouse. It
bears testament to the inherent qualities of music to express that which
often may seem inexpressible.
Audio Example 1. may be found at https://soundcloud.com/fred-everett-
maus/eddie-with-colin-lee-music-therapy.
C
Working as a therapist with clients who are dying is a highly charged and
volatile experience. In order to be effective, the therapist must know and be
attuned to their own relationship with loss. As a gay music therapist
working with gay clients with HIV and AIDS, it was important for me to
understand that over-identification could potentially be detrimental to the
therapeutic relationship. Indeed, I would often ponder on my own status as
an HIV-negative gay man and how best to address my clients’ needs in an
open and supportive musical environment. Perhaps I could not fully
understand their position as I was not facing death in the same way. What I
could offer, however, was a non-verbal lens through which they could
musically explore their life and future living with the virus.
HIV/AIDS has changed considerably over the last twenty years. It is no
longer a death sentence and as such the need for intense therapy is less
critical. To some extent, the urgency of the work described in this chapter
does not now exist. These narratives come from a time when young people
were dying suddenly, at times from quite aggressive illness. There seemed
little time to grasp their diagnosis before symptoms of the virus appeared
and deterioration began. The mostly gay young men I worked with had only
a few years at best in which to grasp the urgency of their lives. It felt as if a
whole generation of gay men simply disappeared.
In creating Aesthetic Music Therapy, I intended to highlight the need for
musicological thinking to be equal to that of psychotherapy and medicine.
This seemingly simple yet controversial view of music therapy has
continued to elicit question and debate. AeMT advocates that the therapist’s
musical skills be equal to their clinical skills. I am a music therapist because
I strive to know and understand music as a composer and musician, and
because I strive to know and understand the therapeutic process-relationship
as it addresses the needs of my clients.
How can music depict and make sense of the trauma of loss within the
bounds of an illness that was stigmatized as socially unacceptable, and to
some extent still is? From my own experience, I learned that the nature of
music itself took on new meaning when working with expressions of
endings and death. Music became an agent that would allow clients to see
themselves in a new light, to be involved in creative expression that was
healthy when so much around them was illness and decline. For some, the
link between acknowledging loss, and experiencing the hope of music,
became fundamental to their growth in therapy.
Writing this chapter has been an illuminating process. Acknowledging
the role of my sexuality in the therapeutic process has subsequently led me
to reconsider my role in the music therapy relationship and process.
Therapists enter work not only as professionals but also as human beings,
with all our frailties and foibles. The trauma of living and dying with HIV
and AIDS is still laden with complex emotional and physical expectations
and realities. Through music it is possible to understand loss in a different
light, one that is also about hope and healing. As one of my clients
expressed:
It’s almost as if we each have a song to sing. If you sing your song, your life has meaning,
but if that song is either destroyed or not allowed to surface, then you are living very much a
second-hand life. It [music therapy] was very much the recovery of my song. I remember I
said, “I don’t know what to sing. What is my song? Where is my song? I can’t find it. Help
me find it”…I had seriously lacked the means of expression that was linked to my own
feeling and my own emotions—centred in my own creativity.10
N
1. Colin A. Lee, “Reflections on Being a Music Therapist and a Gay Man,” Voices: A World
Forum for Music Therapy 8, no. 3 (2008),
https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/415/339; Colin A. Lee, “Aesthetic Music
Therapy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Music Therapy, edited by Jane Edwards (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016) 515–537; Colin A. Lee, Music at the Edge: The Music Therapy
Experiences of a Musician with AIDS, 2nd ed. (Routledge: London, 2016).
2. Colin A. Lee, The Analysis of Therapeutic Improvisatory Music with People Living with HIV
and AIDS, PhD diss., City University, London, 1992.
3. Kristen M. Chase, “Therapy with Gay and Lesbian Clients: Implications for Music Therapists,”
Music Therapy Perspectives 22, no. 1 (2004), 34–38; Lee, “Reflections”; Lee, “Aesthetic Music
Therapy”; Lee, Music at the Edge; M. Forinash, “On Identity,” 2009,
https://voices.no/community/?q=colforinash290609; Bill T. Ahessy, “Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual
Issues in Music Therapy Training and Education: The Love that Dares not Sing Its Name,”
Canadian Journal of Music Therapy 17, no. 1 (2001), 11–33; Elizabeth York, “Inclusion of
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning Content into the Music Therapy Curriculum:
Resources for the Educator,” in International Perspectives in Music Therapy Education and
Training, edited by Karen D. Goodman (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 2015), 241–166.
4. AeMT considers music therapy from a musicological and compositional point of view. Looking
at theories of music to inform theories of therapy, it proposes a new way of exploring clinical
practice. See Colin A. Lee, The Architecture of Aesthetic Music Therapy (Gilsum, NH:
Barcelona, 2003), 1. See also Lee, “Aesthetic Music Therapy.”
5. John F. Mondanaro and Christine Vaskas, “Music Therapy and HIV/AIDS Related Pain,” in
Music and Medicine: Integrative Models in the Treatment of Pain, edited by John F. Mondanaro
and Gabriel A. Sara (New York: Satchnot Press, 2013), 373–402.
6. London Lighthouse was Britain’s first major residential and support centre for people living
with HIV and AIDS in the UK and was opened in 1988. The centre was committed to providing
the best possible care so that people affected by AIDS could live. (Lee, “Aesthetic Music
Therapy.”)
7. Colin A. Lee, “Music of the Spheres,” in Inside Music Therapy: Client Experiences, edited by
Julie Hibben (Gilsum, NH: Barcelona, 1999), 141–146.
8. A more musicological analysis of this session can be found in Lee, “Aesthetic Music Therapy,”
515–516.
9. The title of this case study was inspired by Michael Tippett’s (1905–1998) composition, The
Blue Guitar (1982–1983).
10. Lee, Music at the Edge, 148.
R
Ahessy, Bill T. “Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues in Music Therapy Training and Education: The
Love that Dares not Sing Its Name.” Canadian Journal of Music Therapy 17, no. 1 (2001): 11–33.
Chase, Kristen M. “Therapy with Gay and Lesbian Clients: Implications for Music Therapists.”
Music Therapy Perspectives 22, no. 1 (2004): 34–38.
Forinash, M. “On Identity,” 2009. https://voices.no/community/?q=colforinash290609.
Lee, Colin A. The Analysis of Therapeutic Improvisatory Music with People Living with HIV and
AIDS. PhD Diss., City University, London, 1992.
Lee, Colin A. “Music of the Spheres.” In Inside Music Therapy: Client Experiences, edited by Julie
Hibben, 141–146. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona, 1999.
Lee, Colin A. The Architecture of Aesthetic Music Therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona, 2003.
Lee, Colin A. “Reflections on Being a Music Therapist and a Gay Man.” Voices: A World Forum for
Music Therapy 8, no. 3 (2008), https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/415/339.
Lee, Colin A. “Aesthetic Music Therapy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music Therapy, edited by Jane
Edwards, 515–537. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Lee, Colin A. Music at the Edge: The Music Therapy Experiences of a Musician with AIDS. 2nd ed.
Routledge: London, 2016.
Mondanaro, John F., and Christine Vaskas. “Music Therapy and HIV/AIDS Related Pain.” In Music
and Medicine: Integrative Models in the Treatment of Pain, edited by John F. Mondanaro and
Gabriel A. Sara, 373–402. New York: Satchnot Press, 2013.
York, Elizabeth. “Inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning Content into the
Music Therapy Curriculum: Resources for the Educator.” In International Perspectives in Music
Therapy Education and Training, edited by Karen D. Goodman, 241–266. Springfield: Charles C.
Thomas, 2015.
CHAPTER 20
TO WA R D A T R A N S * M E T H O D I N
MUSICOLOGY
DANA B AI T Z
T objects that we attend to are enabled by things outside the scope of our
attention. Sara Ahmed recalls Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological
description of a writing desk and considers who is at the desk, what enables
the desk and the activity of writing, and the physical relationship between
the desk and writer.1 I wonder how Ahmed’s phenomenology of “the
woman at the writing desk” can help us reconsider what is seen and heard
in transgender musicality. What could a phenomenology of “the transsexual
woman at the piano” tell us about music, embodiment and experience?
T T W P
Serano and Prosser present an ontology of the subject that includes, and
even foregrounds, the material body. Materiality is a meaningful part of
who we are. It contributes to how we are known to ourselves and to others.
Transsexual lives are easily misrepresented unless material conditions
and subjective experiences are understood as valid sources of knowledge.
Viviane Namaste shows that empirical observation helps prevent the
habitual erasure of transsexual lives. For instance, she points to an
assessment of violence directed toward sexual minorities produced by the
Montreal police in the mid-1990s.14 The assessment implicitly emphasized
commonalities among LGBT people and specifically failed to take into
account the unique social practices and geographic distribution of
transsexual women. This lack of attention to lived experience and material
conditions resulted in a miscalculation of homophobic violence and a
complete overlooking of transphobic violence.
Henry Rubin incorporates transsexual perspectives into his work by
employing phenomenological methods. The trans* men that he interviews
generally reject the queer and universalizing trope of “a world without
gender identity,” instead highlighting the experience of being quite
definitively gendered. Transsexual men often experience their identities as
fundamentally distinct from lesbians, despite the fact that these two
identities shared the category of “sexual invert” until the mid-twentieth
century. Thus, genealogical models of queerness can produce descriptions
of transsexuality that are at odds with actual transsexual experience.
Rubin’s phenomenological method recognizes lived experience as an
important source of knowledge, a valuable complement to objectivist and
discursively focused research.15
Transsexual theorists point us toward the material in multiple ways.
Prosser and Serano show that bodily structures are meaningful and
experientially “real”: they affect psychic integrity and determine how we
understand ourselves and each other. Namaste and Rubin draw attention to
how our bodies and identities emerge through time, and they find ways to
account for these structures and experiences in their research. Describing
these multiple projects as a reorientation toward materiality is a shorthand,
but as we will see, the term opens up important perspectives on our
methodologies in music studies. This investment in material structures
distinguishes transsexual from queer studies and shows how the queer
methodologies that account for Cassata, Freedia, and Blanco cannot account
for trans* music more broadly.
M S M
Clearly, the visceral response (or lack thereof) that music can elicit has no
bearing on how sexual identity is produced, the kinds of identities
facilitated by the music, or the methodologies best suited to investigating it.
By separating the music’s visceral qualities from the ways in which
sexuality is signified, we are able to achieve clarity about the music’s
deeper cultural affiliations and the research methods that it suggests.
F D
QUARE TIMES: AN
I N T R O D U C T I O N TO A Q U E E R
PERSPECTIVE ON
AFROFUTURISM AND A
R E A D I N G O F S U N R A’ S S PA C E I S
THE PLACE
T I M S T ÜT T GE N
The “then and there” of queer utopia is neither escapist nor naive. Instead it
performs a militant critical optimism against the nostalgia of the past and
the limits of a now that will always fail to include all precarious subjects in
the human. “Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not
enough, that indeed something is missing,” writes Muñoz. “Queerness is
essentially about the rejection of the here and now.”5 As Muñoz lays it out,
the domain of the queer is the ornamental, the aesthetic, and the
performative. The performative is “a doing towards the future.”6 The
phenomenon of Afrofuturism as well as the communal practices of quare
free jazz performer and composer Sun Ra and his bigband, the Arkestra, are
at the center of this chapter, mostly through an analysis of John Coney’s
film Space Is the Place (1974; script by Joshua Smith, Sun Ra, and others).
Sun Ra has been described as gay in several publications, mostly after his
death.7 But I want to concentrate on the sonic and performative notions of
his oeuvre, which for me are more quare than his sexual orientation.
A : G N
Afrofuturism stems from minor genres, most notably science fiction, that
have been mostly excluded from the major cultural canon. For Dery, this
reflects the low social positions Blacks had in American life of the
seventies and eighties. But Dery also asks if the area of science and
technology isn’t already a hegemonic one, as scientific advantages such as
modern ships and weapons contributed to the enslavement of Africans. As
he puts it,
Isn’t the unreal estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists,
streamliners and set designers—white to a man—who have engineered our collective
fantasies?11
Kodwo Eshun has underlined how central the idea of alien abduction is for
Afrofuturist visual discourses:
And there’s the key thing…The idea of alien abduction, the idea of slavery as an alien
abduction which means that we’ve all been living in an alien-nation since the 18th century.
…The mutation of African male and female slaves in the 18th century into what became
negro, and into the entire series of humans that were designed in America.…The key
thing…is that in America none of these humans were designated human.18
These icons invented their personas in the sixties and seventies. Today,
contemporary forms of hip hop and soul continue the Afrofuturist legacy.
For example, the rapper Kool Keith has constructed the persona of Dr.
Octagon, an alien gynecologist and surgeon (Dr. Octagonecologist [1996],
The Return of Dr. Octagon [2006]). The doctor crosses humans and aliens
to produce new hybrid species and stems from the planet Jupiter. As “Black
Elvis,” another one of his many alter egos, Kool Keith embodies the singer
who stole the blues from the Black race and sold it to white record
companies (Black Elvis/Lost in Space [1999]).
Futurist Black women cyborgs have become part of the Afrofuturist
kaleidoscope. Janelle Monae performs a feminine cyborg-character called
Cindi Mayweather in her series Metropolis (Metropolis: The Chase Suite
[2007], The ArchAndroid [2010], Electric Lady [2013]). Nostalgic African
references such as armor and earrings connect with the identity of the
futurist cyborg. Monae’s character Mayweather inhabits a tragic love story
with a human. The aesthetic of Monae’s project references Fritz Lang’s
science fiction-cinema classic Metropolis (1927), which also featured a
tragic female robot character.
The Afrofuturist world is embodied by many different characters using
the visual representation for forms of cyborg and alien drag. Their
narratives vary and cannot be limited to a clear exodus, like the mothership
bringing its people back to Africa. On the contrary, along with new links to
the past, visions of the future emerge, moving beyond the framework of the
human and the national. There is no perfect way back or forward for
Blackness, but instead, many paradoxically linked particles of a re-
actualised past and a highly inventive future that might have found its home
in a diaspora that is beyond and in-between nations and times.
B A , B N
The Black Atlantic in both its geographical and ethical implications poses a
radical questioning of the nation, including currents of Black nationalism.
At the same time it remains a space of resonance for what happened on the
many ships moving through the Middle Passage.
As a system that includes historical, cultural, linguistic, and political
communication with roots in the enslavement and deportation of Africans,
the Black Atlantic is a virtual space that addresses historical forms of loss
(like the loss of the homeland) as well as new, hybrid forms of belonging
that see neither the way back to Africa nor any simplified Black
essentialism as the final goal.21
For Gilroy, the age of post-slavery gave birth to a new form of Black
culture, a form that refuses to rely on essentialist notions of Black liberation
movements such as Negritude. The Black Atlantic is not held together
through essence, religion, or tradition. On the contrary, it connects
ungroundedness and dislocation to use them for a progressive perspective
of diaspora:
Diaspora is a useful concept because it specifies the pluralization and non-identity of the
Black identities without celebrating either prematurely. It raises the possibilities of
sameness, but it is a sameness that cannot be taken for granted. Identity must be
demonstrated in relation to the alternative possibility of differentiation, because the diaspora
logic enforces a sense of temporality and spatiality that underscores the fact that we are not
what we were.22
A major inspiration for Gilroy was the story of W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–
1963), a Black author who wrote the pioneering Black liberation book The
Souls of Black Folk (1903).23 As a student, Du Bois had a scholarship that
allowed him to travel to Europe and study in Germany. For him it was clear
that there was no white-versus-Black cultural battle of purity to be fought;
instead, he took from European culture what he found interesting and useful
for the ideal of a Black liberatory enlightenment. Du Bois defined three
phases of Black emancipation that would also play roles for Gilroy: first,
concrete resistance against the institution of slavery; second, further forms
of struggle for civil rights from an integrative humanist point of view; and
third, the right for Black-owned spaces, where Black communities could
produce their own statements and cultural articulations. The third phase,
which after Gilroy is opened towards new forms of community and futures,
is closely associated with music:
Though music plays a significant role in both of the earlier phases, the third can be defined
by the project of liberating music from its status as a mere commodity and by the associated
desire to use it to demonstrate the reconciliation of art and life, that is, by exploring its
pursuit of artistic and even aesthetic experience not just as a form of compensation, paid as
the price of an internal exile from modernity, but as the favored vehicle for communal self-
development.24
Slaves were not taught how to write. So music became the primary space
for Black culture. Record shops, clubs, discos, and radio channels thus
function as archives and future spaces for Black cultural statements and
references. Not even primarily bound through language, Afrofuturist visual
and sonic politics could be called the radical music of the Black Atlantic,
referencing both past traumas and futurist visions of new Black
subjectivities and practices
It is breathtaking, funny, and surprising how John Coney’s film Space Is
the Place intervenes concretely into the linear blaxploitation narrative and
confronts it, through Sun Ra’s spaceship landing on Earth, precisely in the
America of the ongoing civil rights movement.
Already the beginning of the film presents a clip from another world.
Before the audience is introduced to any earthly narrative, we follow Sun
Ra walking through a spaced-out surrealism that seems to represent a
peaceful harmony of nature, but also among non-human figures that could
be spirits or ghosts. Some have no faces, but mirrors where the face should
be; there are plants that have grown out yellow hands. The film seems to
situate Sun Ra on another planet or in a non-human fantasy. While Sun Ra
walks through this fascinating landscape, wearing Egyptian symbols and
headdresses, the strange music of Sun Ra’s Arkestra appears, mixing jazz
trumpets with fragmentary percussion. Then Sun Ra starts talking: “The
music is different here. The vibrations are different. Not like planet Earth.
Planet Earth sound of guns, anger, frustration. There was no one to talk to
on planet Earth.”25
We are not visiting just some other world, but a world which is
presented as an alternative. Earth is only one planet of many, shaped by
white views. Blackness possibly stems from another world, one that seems
not to be shaped by events like slavery and not determined by white
suppression.
Space Is the Place is also a film of an encounter. Two Black genres
meet: blaxploitation film and Afrofuturist science fiction. Sun Ra breaks up
the narrative structure of the film through discrepant time-images, and
directly challenges the narrative through the sounds he produces.
T S B
E
FIGURE 21.1 Sun Ra and the Overseer, from Space Is the Place (1974)
The first round of the mystical card game starts with the question of
mobility. While the Overseer draws a card with a fancy car, notorious from
blaxploitation narratives, Sun Ra draws a card with a spaceship. Soon he
will land it on planet Earth. As journalists and other curious humans await
him, the ship arrives and opens its doors. Sun Ra and his followers, wearing
clothes that both look spacelike and African, set their feet on planet Earth.
The spaceship seems to be driven by sound. We see Sun Ra playing
keyboards inside the ship; his improvisatory sound practice navigates it.
The practice of noisy free jazz improvisation precedes any form of visual
representation. Instead, it even produces it.
While the long history of blues and jazz connects to narratives of Black
suffering and slave songs, and represents another form of “Black
authenticity” through the traditional acoustic instruments, the space sounds
of Sun Ra’s Arkestra clearly break with the tradition—as if the slave songs
were not the real songs of the Black community. Sun Ra experimented with
synthesizers and electronic effects long before it was fashionable, mixing
them with traditional instruments and versions of older, African sound
sources. His hybrid interplanetary Arkestra went beyond any familiar ideal
of a Black sonic tradition. As Paul Gilroy notes, hybridity is an essential
element of the sonic culture of the Black Atlantic:
My point here is that the unashamedly hybrid character of these Black Atlantic cultures
continually confounds any simplistic (essentialist or anti-essentialist) understanding of the
relationship between racial identity and racial non-identity, between folk cultural
authenticity and pop cultural betrayal.…Arguments are still made about the relationship
between authentic jazz and “fusion” styles supposedly corroded by the illegitimate
amalgamation of rock influences or the struggle between real instruments and digital
emulators.31
Kodwo Eshun argues that phenomena like sonic Afrofuturism, using anti-
traditional instruments and producing new posthumanist genres such as
Detroit house music, should inspire a new form of theoretical reflection.
Instead of endlessly repeating narratives of tradition, Black suffering, and
the street, and interpreting everything in relation to the biography of the
artist, Afrofuturism defamiliarizes the notion of any “authentic” root and
location:
Rejecting today’s ubiquitous emphasis on Black sound’s necessary ethical allegiance to the
street.…The mayday signal of Black Atlantic Futurism is unrecognizability, as either Black
or Music. Sonic Futurism doesn’t locate you in tradition; instead it dislocates you from
origins. It uproutes you.32
Sun Ra’s final act in this duel is the organization of a concert with his
Arkestra. But shortly before the concert begins, the audience already
waiting impatiently, Sun Ra is kidnapped by the FBI, an event that links to
the history of slavery. The arrogant agents bind him to a chair, put a
headphone on his head, and play “Dixie.”
No music could be more radically antagonistic to the sound of the
Arkestra. “Dixie” was a popular song by the white Minstrel- and Blackface-
performer Dan Emmett, a star in the US-entertainment industry from his
first performance in New York in 1859. In “Dixie,” Emmett constructs the
perspective of the Black freeman, nostalgically longing to go back to the
South, “in de land ob cotton.” This revisionist fantasy became popular
amongst whites, romanticizing their longing to reinstall the conditions of
slavery. John Lock mentions sadistic situations where Black workers were
pressured to sing the song in front of their white bosses:38
It continues to polarize opinion in the South, its performance at a range of occasions from
state functions to football games still provoking protests from African Americans. “Dixie”
can thus be seen as a song that whites have traditionally used to remind Blacks of their
“place”…, in the land of segregation and inferior status. The figure of the homesick Negro,
wishing “to lib and die in Dixie,” long persisted as a stereotype in American culture.…In the
musical symbology of Space Is the Place, Dixie stands for the false history (his story) to be
found in white misrepresentation of Black life and Black status.39
In the end, Sun Ra is freed by Black kids from the community center, who
seem to understand that Sun Ra is not a traitor, but plays a relevant part in
their cause. Arriving just in time to give his concert, Sun Ra counters the
traumatic loop of the past, “Dixie,” with the energetic performance of the
Arkestra.
T P E : F
Q P
After the concert, attended by an excited Black and white audience, Sun Ra
beams a few of the Black people he has met on Earth onto his ship. The
music opens the space to another Black future and intervenes successfully
in the same old stories both told by white revisionism and the stereotypes of
blaxploitation. The last scenes of the film are an Exodus from planet Earth.
Sun Ra’s proposition reminds one of a radical interpretation of the flight
from slavery and colonial time, an escape route from the Earthly present.
There is no real hope for Earth any more and therefore it explodes. The film
seems to interpret this explosion as a metaphor. We see the spaceship leave,
pieces of the planet floating in all directions of the universe, and a voice
shouts: “In a far out Place / In Space / We’ll wait for you!” The audience
must decide for itself which way to go toward a better another future.
This leaves us with multiple readings of Sun Ra’s multi-faceted and
sometimes contradictory oeuvre. The performative and musical gestures of
Sun Ra’s work are affirmative, posing an alternative to narrow, violent
forms of liberatory struggle. But the radical critique of the Earthly present
may be read as pessimistic.
In any case, for Sun Ra the present is not enough. This reminds us of
José Esteban Muñoz’s arguments about queer time in Cruising Utopia:
“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an
insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”40 Sun
Ra’s alternative is not only post-American or post-national, but also post-
earthly and post-human. The quare assemblage of Sun Ra’s spaceship, one
of many images of the Arkestra and his vital sounds, decenters Earthly
common sense, and with it, straight white time. Space Is the Place
indirectly but consequentially poses slavery as a paradigm that cannot be
fully overcome. This appears not only in the Afro-alien drag performativity
of the Arkestra and the funny but serious narrative of the film, but also the
sonic politics of the music itself, which subverts the notion of the Black
entertainer in favor of the Black inventor—or even the Black messiah.
T A : S E
Already in the Black popular cinema of the 1970s, blaxploitation, the visual
narrative has a special dialogical relation to the soundtrack.41 It complicates
the experiences of the hero and adds another layer of critical discourse to
the story. In Space Is the Place, the free jazz of the Arkestra intensifies this
tendency, breaking with conventional song structures and creating affective
sounds that move toward the limit of what is considered music. In Space Is
the Place, sounds themselves produce interruptions in the story and produce
the magical energy for the spaceship. They signify a different relation to the
cosmos: more in harmony with it while also reflecting its multiple and
creative chaos and complexity. As Kodwo Eshun put it, “In a strange way,
your ears start to see.”42 The sounds of the Arkestra open doors to new
images, worlds, and temporalities. Live concerts (and the Arkestra has
played a lot of them) become the main ritual by which to leave the prison
house of the present. The experimental, non-human, often noisy nature of
the live performance is extra-ordinary in its intensity, through the sheer
volume of the noise produced by sometimes more than a dozen individuals,
affecting the bodies of both band-members and audience, and through the
extreme duration, as these concerts would sometimes go long beyond the
usual convention of one to two hours. Thus, the live performance produces
an affective break with common subjectivities of the present and the
everyday.
The final chapter of Cruising Utopia argues for a form of queer ecstasy,
moving people beyond a “here and now.” The collective improvisatory
practice of the Arktestra, which called one of its albums Out there a Minute
(1989), is the perfect modus operandi for Muñoz’s suggestion:
We must vacate the here and now for a then and there. Individual transports are insufficient.
…We need to step out of the rigid conceptualization that is a straight present.…Willingly we
let ourselves feel queerness’s pull, knowing it as something else that we can feel, that we
must feel. We must take ecstasy.43
Obviously, Muñoz’s statement that “we must take ecstasy” is not limited to
its pharmacological meaning. He translates the Greek term “ekstasis” as “to
be outside oneself,” a perfect description of the effect of the Arkestra’s
practice. (While Muñoz refers to the use of drugs and the music of the
indie-band The Magnetic Fields, Sun Ra is not mentioned in his book.)
C I
Free jazz, with its deep relation to spontaneity and collective dialog, seems
to deliver a world of sounds whose whole goal is to go beyond the everyday
and create something new. This existential dimension of jazz is also present
through its affective level that hits the ear beyond normative effects of
conventional songs and melodies. As Gilroy noted, music and performance
in Black cultures can’t be explained through textuality and narrativity,
because the pre- and anti-discursive components of Black meta-
communication happen on another affective level.44
The multiplicity and power of Black sound is also addressed by the
lyrics of the Arkestra. As June Tyson sings, in one of the few songs of the
Arkestra with lyrics: “The Sound of Joy is Enlightenment!” The sound itself
is supposed to have the power to enlighten the audience. Fascinatingly, the
musicians of the Arkestra, sometimes known professionals, sometimes
autodidacts, not only rehearsed a lot with their leader: their music was also
inspired by his endless speeches about the politics of the cosmos and the
potentiality of Black subjectivity, as if his teachings would translate directly
into the music itself. Sometimes the music was supposed to have
therapeutic power, as the album Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (1967)
makes clear in its title.
In “Becoming-Music” the Deleuzian writer Jeremy Gilbert also
underlines the special dimension of collective improvisation:
Collective Improvisation always involves a non-signifying communication of energies, a
complex dissemination of forces between the performers in the ensemble.…The sociality of
improvising musicians is always constituted by transversal relations which cannot be
understood in terms of any logic or signification.45
This was one of the first chapters submitted for the Handbook, on January
16, 2013. The author died on May 12, 2013, before he could work with the
editors on revisions. The published chapter is a revision by Fred Everett
Maus in consultation with Tavia Nyong’o.
In the most important respects the manuscript was in excellent
condition. The present version follows the manuscript closely. We have not
altered the structure or thought of the original submission. In other respects,
the manuscript reflected the limitations of a non-native speaker with good
but imperfect English, and the status of an intermediate draft. We made
numerous changes for standard English usage and grammar, but these were
superficial.
We made decisions about spelling in cases where the manuscript was
different from our preferred usage or inconsistent. We have capitalized
“Black” and spelled “African American” with no hyphen. In the
manuscript, “quare” usually appeared with capital A. We saw no good
reason for this unusual spelling of what has become a familiar term, and we
used “quAre” only once to reflect Stüttgen’s intention. The manuscript
consistently used “slaveship” rather than “slave ship,” to heighten the
resemblance to “spaceship”; again, we included this only once to allow the
emphasis on the relationship.
Stüttgen’s bibliography listed some German translations of scholarly
texts. We have substituted English-language versions. The manuscript
included numerous full-color images. We have included one of these. We
encourage readers to seek out the other images mentioned, which are easy
to find online.
The editors regret not being able to discuss the manuscript with the
author. It might have developed further. A version of Stüttgen’s dissertation,
the source of this chapter, was published as an issue of a Danish magazine
(Stüttgen 2014). At the time of his death, he was preparing to take a
fellowship to revise the dissertation for a book manuscript. This chapter
represents Stüttgen’s decision about a first publication drawn from the
dissertation.
Of course, further publications on Sun Ra and Afrofuturism have
appeared since Stüttgen wrote; we particularly direct attention to Kara
Keeling, Queer Times, Black Futures.54 The 2014 release of Space Is the
Place by Harte Recordings includes a DVD with both versions of the film,
a CD of music associated with the film, brief contextual essays, and
numerous images.55
N
1. E. Patrick Johnson, “Quare Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I
Learned from my Grandmother,” in E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson, eds., Black
Queer Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 126.
2. Johnson,“Quare Studies,” 126.
3. See endnote 4 in Dwight A. McBride, “Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies,
James Baldwin and Black Queer Studies,” in Johnson and Henderson, eds., Black Queer
Studies, 87.
4. José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New
York University Press, 2009) 1.
5. Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1.
6. Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 3.
7. On Sun Ra’s sexuality see, for instance, Val Wilmer, “Obituary: Sun Ra,” The Independent, July
1, 1993, and John Gill, Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century
Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
8. Mark Dery, ed., Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1994), 180.
9. Kodwo Eshun refers to Sinker and Tate in Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in
Sonic Fiction (London: Quartet Books, 1998), 173–193.
10. Dery, Flame Wars, 180.
11. Dery, Flame Wars, 180.
12. Dery, Flame Wars, 180.
13. Cesare Casarino, Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx, Conrad in Crisis (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2002), 19.
14. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” trans. by Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986), 27.
15. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1993), 13.
16. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 4.
17. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 17.
18. Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun, 192–193.
19. John Corbett, Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1994), 11.
20. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. by Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press,
2008), 204–205.
21. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 13. Jasbir K. Puar gives a contemporary queer perspective on the
“Black Atlantic.” Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley comes even closer to my reading of what I would
call the “Quare Atlantic.” See Puar, “Circuits of Queer Mobility: Tourism, Travel, and
Globalization,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8, nos. 1–2 (2002), 101–137, and
Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage,” GLQ: A
Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, nos. 2–3 (2008), 191–215.
22. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 23.
23. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (London: Longman, 2002).
24. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, p. 124.
25. As far as we know, all quotations from films were transcribed by the author, rather than
transcribed by someone else or taken from a written source–Editors.
26. See http://www.culturecourt.com/Br.Paul/media/SpaceisthePlace.htm.
27. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Is_the_Place.
28. Hortense J. Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics
17, no. 2 (Summer, 1987), 64–81.
29. Michele Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (London: Verso, 1990), 20–21.
30. E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 48.
31. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 99.
32. Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun, 3–4.
33. See the famous “skyscraper performance” in Robert Mugge’s 1980 documentary A Joyful Noise.
34. Quoted in Ajay Heble, Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance and Critical Practice
(New York: Routledge, 2000), 120.
35. Delany interviewed in Dery, Flame Wars, 191.
36. Delany interviewed in Dery, Flame Wars, 191.
37. Interview with Amiri Baraka in Don Letts’s documentary Sun Ra: Brother from Another Planet
(2005).
38. Graham Lock, Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra,
Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 72.
39. Lock, Blutopia, 72.
40. Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1.
41. Kara Keeling, The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common
Sense (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 102–103.
42. Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun, 180.
43. Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 185.
44. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 75.
45. Jeremy Gilbert, “Becoming-Music: The Rhizomatic Moment of Improvisation,” in Ian
Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda, eds., Deleuze and Music (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2004), 124–125.
46. Gilbert, “Becoming-Music,” 126.
47. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 379–381.
48. John Szwed, Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (New York: Pantheon, 1997),
228.
49. Szwed, Space Is the Place, 119.
50. See http://www.eri.mmu.ac.uk/deleuze/on-deleuze-key_concepts.php.
51. Quoted in Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun, 161.
52. Szwed, Space Is the Place, 114.
53. Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun, 185.
54. Kara Keeling, Queer Times, Black Futures (New York: NYU Press, 2019).
55. Sun Ra, Space Is the Place (San Francisco: Harte Recordings, 2014).
B
Casarino, Cesare. Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx, Conrad in Crisis. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2002.
Corbett, John. Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1994.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated
by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Dery, Mark, ed. Flame Wars. The Discourse of Cyberculture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1994.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. London: Longman, 2002.
Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books,
1998.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press,
2008.
Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986), 22–
27.
Gilbert, Jeremy. “Becoming-Music: The Rhizomatic Moment of Improvisation.” In Deleuze and
Music, edited by Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda, 118–139. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2004.
Gill, John. Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Music.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993.
Heble, Ajay. Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance and Critical Practice. New York:
Routledge, 2000.
Johnson, E. Patrick. “Quare Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned
from my Grandmother.” In Black Queer Studies, edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G.
Henderson, 124–160. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Keeling, Kara. The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common
Sense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
Keeling, Kara. Queer Times, Black Futures. New York: NYU Press, 2019.
Lock, Graham. Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke
Ellington, and Anthony Braxton. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
McBride, Dwight A. “Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies, James Baldwin and
Black Queer Studies.” In Black Queer Studies, edited by Patrick E. Johnson and Mae G.
Henderson, 68–89. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York
University Press, 2009.
Puar, Jasbir K. “Circuits of Queer Mobility: Tourism, Travel, and Globalization.” GLQ: A Journal of
Lesbian and Gay Studies 8, nos. 1–2 (2002): 101–137.
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17,
no. 2 (Summer, 1987), 64–81.
Stüttgen, Tim. In a Qu*A*re Time and Place: Post-Slavery Temporalities, Blaxploitation, and
Afrofuturism between Intersectionality and Heterogeneity. Max Jorge Hinderer, Liad Kantorowicz,
Nicolas Siepen, and Margarita Tsomou, editors. Special issue of SUM Magazine. Berlin: b-books,
2014.
Sun Ra. Space Is the Place. San Francisco: Harte Recordings, 2014. Recording.
Szwed, John. Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra. New York: Pantheon, 1997.
Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle
Passage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, nos. 2–3 (2008), 191–215.
Wallace, Michele. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. London: Verso, 1990.
Wilmer, Val. “Obituary: Sun Ra.” The Independent, July 1, 1993.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sun-ra-1482175.html.
CHAPTER 22
MUSICAL ABJECTS
Sounds and Objectionable Sexualities
JE NN Y OL I VI A JOH NS ON
H I S TO R I E S
CHAPTER 23
A first glance, Western European culture between 1200 and 1500 might
seem neatly compartmentalized, with everything in its proper place.1
Structures of governance included the Catholic Church and the feudal
system, two complex patriarchal hierarchies within which the general
population experienced its sense of identity. Men and women were also
deeply aware of the strict divisions between differently gendered bodies and
social roles, pursuing the idealized presentation of the biblical Book of
Genesis in which Adam and Eve were created as complementary, but
different, types of individual in the image of God.2 As Goldberg has
commented, “Medieval people wanted to live in an ordered society, and
hierarchy was integral to the way they thought about order.”3 The related
hierarchies of status (those who prayed, fought, or worked), gender, and age
formed a recognizable framework for everyone from king to peasant. But to
look more deeply, the lives governed by those systems of categorization—
rich/poor; lay/religious; male/female—can be seen as fundamentally queer,
as it was obvious to all that the lived experience of any individual contested
such neat boundaries at every turn.
Given that medieval society based its central ideology of power on an
idealized Christian masculinity, many groups were implicitly marginalized;
these groups included women, Jews, Muslims, the physically or mentally
impaired, witches, and sexual deviants of all types (including those
practicing same-sex partnering).4 Practices—sexual or otherwise—that
subverted the social order of man’s dominance over woman and the natural
world were perceived as socially threatening, and were frequently marked
out as heretical. Marginalized identities and practices are not as historically
invisible as one might imagine. In fact, imagery of such is ubiquitous in the
border decorations of medieval manuscripts and other material objects
(including, but not limited to, the partially obscured carvings on
misericords, decorative motifs on the edges of stained glass, and masonry in
architectural spaces barely visible to the naked eye). The present chapter
examines visual evidence that elides sexually marginalized identities,
“queerness,” with their prominence in music-related images found in the
physical margins of devotional books created by clerics. What can such
musico-sexual iconography tell us about queer understandings of the human
body before 1500?
W Q M A ?
FIGURE 23.4 Naked ape-man playing a drooping trumpet in the Macclesfield Psalter ©
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. MS 1-2005, f.223r.
Symbolically, the trumpet has been used for comic effect in terms of its
association with the pseudo-musical sound and experience of farting.28 As
Emma Dillon notes in her discussion of Dante’s Divina commedia, the
sounds of hell included a devil signaling to the devil army by making a
trumpet of his arse (de cul fatto trombetta).29 Such jokes work on two
levels: they reverse the place of the buzzing lips from those of the mouth to
the anus; and they also subvert the bright tone of the fanfare trumpet,
associated with pageantry. The fart is a poor musical alternative to the
nobility of courtly fanfares. If there is one visual joke that might exemplify
medieval humor as found in the margins of devotional books (as well as in a
wide range of satirical literature of the same period) it is that of the
substitution of the head for the butt, or for things that would normally be
done by the head being done with the butt, or vice versa.30 Clerical scribes
and illuminators were fixated on bodily functions such as pissing, farting,
and shitting; these were central pillars in their humor. Within this tradition,
depictions of trumpets reveal a further layer of anal fixation in the minds of
illuminators, since one can easily find numerous examples of trumpets and
other instruments being “played” in odd, impractical, or downright lewd
ways, conflating the musical with the primary physiological functions of the
human body. What such images have in common is their apparent
acknowledgement that the most extreme images were those showing
musical expression—reserved in the liturgy for the praise of God—as part
of a queer sensibility, a visual and sonic sin against nature and order.
Margins, quire ends, and other divisions in medieval books of
polyphony have been identified as queer spaces, a natural and literal home
for the marginalized.31 The images of trumpets found in devotional books
frequently emphasize that which is contra naturam, and do so playfully.
Although women do occasionally feature playing trumpets in manuscript
illumination, they are usually exceptional in some way in their gendered
identity. Figure 23.5 shows a marginal image from a fourteenth-century
Missal, a liturgical book for use in the celebration of Mass. At the base of
the page, two mermaids are shown with long trumpets. Mermaids are an
aquatic form of the siren, a hybrid creature found widely in the imagery of
the Middle Ages, whose music “positions her in the flowing spaces between
the human, animal, and spirit worlds.”32 Sirens and mermaids were more
often female than male, but they were also ambiguously gendered. Here, the
mermaids’ sex is signaled by their bell-like, pendulous breasts, and by their
long hair (a feature signaling their lascivious nature), but the presence of the
trumpets signals masculinity.33 The gender-queer nature of the image is also
enhanced by the mermaids’ poses. On the left, one mermaid appears to hold
the trumpet as an oar, rather than sounding it; the mermaid on the right-
hand side plays to her companion, but holds the instrument awkwardly,
unnaturally. As an image, the presence of the trumpets serves to emphasize
the sexual liminality of the figures in the margin.
FIGURE 23.5 Mermaids with trumpets. Den Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 78 D 40, f.129r.
Amiens, Garnerus de Morolio (scribe), Petrus de Raimbaucourt (illuminator). Missal, Use of St Jean,
Amiens, illuminated by Pierre de Raimbaucourt (1323).
FIGURE 23.7 Naked man playing trumpet. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, MS 404, Rothschild Canticles, f. 134r.
FIGURE 23.8 Prayer Book of Charles the Bold (Ghent and Antwerp, 1469) The J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 37, fol. 32v (detail).
C M
The images used in this chapter mainly emanated from a clerical production
context, rather than a monastic one. Clerical identity, by the later Middle
Ages, was defined by its celibacy as well as its learnedness, although even
after the reforms of the eleventh century and further interventions, secular
clerics sometimes maintained domestic arrangements with a partner or
children even into the thirteenth century.37 The waves of legislation during
this era were symptomatic of a crisis in clerical identity in which
masculinity was fundamental, as the increased focus on celibacy threatened
the clear distinction between men and women; in effect, the celibate clerk
occupied a third gender, in which gendered signifying acts of militarism or
childbearing were replaced by pseudo-chivalric battles of the flesh.38 The
clerical circles from which manuscripts such as Psalters, Missals, or other
decorated codices emanated were thus heavily conflicted in terms of sexual
identity, so it is little surprise that alongside the central page in which
religious or moral texts dominated, artists would choose to explore subjects
that reflected that liminality.
Illuminated manuscripts were typically commissioned by noble, lay
patrons, from a professional craftsmen each with his own unique
combination of imagery, symbolism, and humor. What did the makers and
users of the manuscripts featuring the sexual and musical body understand
from the designs in their books? Although it is possible that users employed
images simply to distract them from the duller parts of liturgical ritual,
arguably this idea misses the rich potential for social commentary in
pictures that represented the sounds of society, real and imagined. The
musical and sexualized images in the margins of medieval books blurred
the apparently stable categories of medieval society. Such images were
created by, and in turn commented on, human experience on the margins of
lay culture. Manuscript margins allowed readers to engage with the
fantastic, and with the queer. Many images are also shockingly obscene, “a
category that demands that we rethink our own assumptions and
preconceptions of the Middle Ages.”39 The shock engendered by such
obscenity does not necessarily suggest that the medieval reader would have
had a singular response, such as moral outrage or laughter. Instead of being
bound by the limits of standard hierarchies, marginal images encouraged
speculation of their opposite: the experiences, relationships, and acts that
were defined as being against nature, the God-given natural order. In short,
musico-sexual bodies allowed the reader to be involved in a queer
sensibility that lay outside of what was usually permitted in terms of the
norms of gender, class, or profession.
Music, at its most basic level, can be made without any instrument other
than the human body; the body is also the site for the perception of sound,
and where music is felt in terms of pleasure. As such, musical expression is
reflexive and circular: a singer conceives of what she might sing, performs,
experiences its vibrations in her body, and hears and understands its effects.
The medieval mind understood the sensual associations of music and the
instruments that produced it, and how the human body itself was inherently
musical in ways that could be fit equally for singing divine praise in
worship, or demonstrating mankind’s more base instincts. A fixation on the
body as instrument, and on the (mis)use of trumpets and bagpipes in
relation to the anus, is a frequent trope of manuscript imagery from 1200–
1500. Instrumentalists in marginal images amplified notions of the obscene
body. With bagpipes, “the offence…quite literally amplified by reference to
the wheezing wail of one of the noisiest and most unsettling sounds of the
period”; with trumpets, the protrusion of mouthpiece or bell into private
parts of the anatomy lampooned the highest forms of Christian, masculine
display, even satirizing the angels in heaven.40 The effect of such images
was to blur the divinely ordained categories of society, reveling in the
queering of traditional hierarchies by music and by the sounding sexual
body.
N
1. Notwithstanding the inherent problems of periodization—not least as understood in disciplines
such as music and art history—the period 1200–1500 will be understood as the later Middle
Ages within this chapter.
2. It is important to recognize that the Galenic, one-sex model of sexual identity was commonplace
in the period under discussion; within this one-sex model, men and women were expected to
have separate gender roles, and some social groups (notably monks and nuns) were sometimes
conceptualized as neither fully masculine nor feminine. On medieval gender and sexuality
before 1600, see especially Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to
Freud (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1990).
3. P. J. P. Goldberg, Medieval England: A Social History 1250–1550 (London: Bloomsbury, 2004),
3.
4. Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London
and New York: Routledge, 1991).
5. Philip Brett’s work on Benjamin Britten’s music can be seen as typical of his pioneering
approach to understanding the role of studying the relationship between sexuality and music;
Music and Sexuality in Britten (Berkeley and London: Routledge, 2006). On the relationship
between music and sexuality, see also Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary Thomas, eds,
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (London and New York: Routledge,
1994) and Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell, eds, Queer Episodes in Music and Modern
Identity (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
6. For an excellent study of the use of biography, historical context, lyric, and tonal language in
relation to sexuality, see Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
7. For an argument that writers of medieval music theory in fact saw “sensuous pleasure” as “the
ultimate goal of music,” see Frank Hentschel, “The Sensual Music Aesthetics of the Middle
Ages: The Cases of Augustine, Jacques de Liège and Guido of Arezzo,” Plainsong and
Medieval Music 20 (2011): 1–29 (quotation from p. 1). Medieval music theory texts are
explored in order to elucidate cultural attitudes in Elizabeth Eva Leach, Sung Birds: Music,
Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
2007).
8. Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
9. Judith Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identities from Homer to
“Hedwig” (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2006).
10. Elizabeth Eva Leach, “Gendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Note: Fourteenth-Century
Music Theory and the Directed Progression,” Music Theory Spectrum 28 (2006): 1–21.
11. Melanie L. Marshall, Linda L. Carroll, and Katherine A. McIver eds, Sexualities, Textualities,
Art and Music in Early Modern Italy: Playing with Boundaries (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014).
12. Warren Johannson and William A. Percy, “Homosexuality,” in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality,
ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York and London: Garland, 1996), 155–189
(at p. 156).
13. James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and London,
1987), 399.
14. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 399.
15. See Jacqueline Murray. “Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible: Lesbians in the Middle Ages,” in
Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 191–211.
16. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 474.
17. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, 536.
18. Peraino, Listening to the Sirens, 5.
19. On the associations between women’s vocality and their sexual availability in medieval song,
see Lisa Colton, “The Articulation of Virginity in the Medieval chanson de nonne,” Journal of
the Royal Musical Association 133 (2008): 159–188.
20. For a full discussion of these texts, see Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, 157–168.
21. John of Salisbury’s Polycraticus, cited in Elizabeth Eva Leach, “Music and Masculinity in the
Middle Ages,” in Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, ed. Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 21–39 (at p. 30).
22. Leach, “Music and Masculinity in the Middle Ages,” 30–31. See also Elizabeth Eva Leach,
“‘The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly as the Fowler Deceives the Bird’: Sirens in the Middle Ages,”
Music and Letters 87 (2006): 187–211. Further exploration of hybrids can be found in Margot
McIlwain Nishimura, Images in the Margins (London: The British Library, 2009), 46–50.
23. Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion, 1992),
160.
24. A variety of Cantate Domino initials is explored in Christopher Page, “An English Motet of the
Fourteenth Century in Performance: Two Contemporary Images,” Early Music 25 (1997): 7–32;
see also a response to this article in Lisa Colton, “Languishing for Provenance: Zelo tui langueo
and the Search for Women’s Polyphony in England,” Early Music 39 (2011): 315–326.
25. Jeremy Montagu, “Musical Instruments in the Macclesfield Psalter,” Early Music 34 (2006):
189–203 (at p. 202). The full shelf mark is Macclesfield Psalter, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam
Museum, MS 1-2005. A colour facsimile with commentary is available ed. Stella Panayotova,
The Macclesfield Psalter (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008).
26. On medieval listening and the embodiment of sound, see Emma Dillon, The Sense of Sound:
Musical Meanings in France, 1260–1330 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2012).
27. Montagu, “Musical Instruments in the Macclesfield Psalter,” 189.
28. Valerie Allen, On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave,
2007).
29. Emma Dillon, “Representing Obscene Sound,” in Medieval Obscenities, ed. Nicola McDonald
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 55–84 (at p. 56).
30. On anal erotics in liturgical music, see especially the discussion of Parisian organum in
Holsinger, “Polyphones and Sodomites: Music and Sexual Dissidence from Leoninus to
Chaucer’s Pardoner,” in Music, Body and Desire, 137–187.
31. Peraino makes this point in reference to a fascicle of the Montpellier Codex in “Monophonic
Motets: Sampling and Grafting in the Middle Ages,” Musical Quarterly 85 (2001): 644–680 (at
p. 664).
32. Linda Phyllis Austern and Inna Naroditskaya, “Introduction: Singing Each to Each,” in Music of
the Sirens, ed. Linda Phyllis Austern and Inna Naroditskaya (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2006), 1–15 (at p. 3).
33. For an extensive sample of images featuring instruments, see Lilian M. C. Randall, Images in
the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1966).
34. Allen, On Farting, 28.
35. Allen, On Farting, 28.
36. On this manuscript, see Jeffrey F. Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in
Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); and Sarah
Bromberg, “Gendered and Ungendered Readings of the Rothschild Canticles,” Different
Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 1 (2008) [no page]; accessed
http://differentvisions.org/issue1PDFs/Bromberg.pdf.
37. On clerical masculinities, see Michael Frassetto, ed., Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on
Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform (London and New York, 1998); and P. H.
Cullum, “Clergy, Masculinity and Transgression in Late Medieval England,” in Masculinity in
Medieval Europe, ed. Dawn M. Hadley (London and New York, 1999), 178–196.
38. On this point, see Jacqueline Murray, “Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle
for Chastity and Monastic Identity,” in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. P. H.
and Katherine J. Lewis (Cardiff, 2002), 24–42.
39. Nicola McDonald, “Introduction” to McDonald, Medieval Obscenities, 1–16 (at p. 11).
40. Dillon, “Representing Obscene Sound,” p. 75.
R
Allen, Valerie. On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages. New York, Palgrave: 2007.
Austern, Linda Phyllis, and Inna Naroditskaya eds. Music of the Sirens. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2006.
Bullough, Vern L. and James A. Brundage eds. Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. New York and
London: Garland, 1996.
Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion, 1992.
Holsinger, Bruce. Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass, and
London: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Leach, Elizabeth Eva. “‘The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly as the Fowler Deceives the Bird”: Sirens in
the Middle Ages.” Music and Letters 87 (2006): 187–211.
McDonald, Nicola, ed. Medieval Obscenities. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006.
Peraino, Judith. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identities from Homer to
Hedwig. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2006.
Richards, Jeffrey. Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages. London and
New York: Routledge, 1991.
CHAPTER 24
T H E Q U E E R H I S TO RY O F T H E
C A S T R ATO
E MI LY WI L BOU RNE
This theme of sexual ambiguity is one to which I shall return, as have all writers
about castrati.
The Italian term “castrato” is an obvious cognate for the English word
“castrated,” and yet its use refers to a specific historically and culturally
bounded period of the Western European past.5 From c.1550 onward, the
presence of altered male singers is documented in the church choirs of the
Italian peninsula. Their high soprano and alto voices provided an effective
solution to the expansive tessitura of Renaissance polyphony, which had
been jeopardized by rigid theological interpretations of the Pauline dictum,
mulieres in ecclesiis taceant—women should keep silent in church.6 As
Giuseppe Gerbino has made clear, castrated men were not a new component
of the Italian cultural landscape. While bodily mutilation of any stripe was
frowned upon under church law, the operation was widely regarded as a
cure for several ailments (including hernias, gout, and epilepsy), and, in
some jurisdictions, was exercised as a form of corporal punishment.7
What was new after 1550 was the widespread use of prepubescent
castration as a means to manufacture a high male voice—castration in the
service of song. While some adult castrati were blunt about the deliberate
construction of their voices, others obfuscated the details, particularly
during the later years of their popularity; tragic childhood accidents
necessitating medical intervention were a persistent element of biographies
and personal narratives, and while the details were often vague, wild boars
or unruly horses were frequently invoked.8
By all accounts, castrato voices differed substantially from adult female
voices and from those of unaltered men. Neither did they merely replicate
and extend the boyish voices of childhood. A full-grown castrato retained
the small, flexible vocal folds of a prepubescent boy, coupled with the large,
resonant lungs and chest of an adult male; indeed, some castrati were
noticeably larger in stature than their unaltered counterparts, for the
development of their growth plates and bone lengths were affected by their
unique hormonal makeup. The resultant voices were described using words
such as “delightful,” “powerful,” and “brilliant”—for us, rather opaque
signifiers for a voice that has been irrevocably lost to time.
The loss of that voice has itself become a scholarly issue. There are (by
temporal definition) no living castrati, and the small handful of recordings
—all from 1902 or 1904, all by a single singer—offer an awkward
testament to the legacy of castrato sound.9 While the long musicological
discourse on authenticity should be sufficient to convey the impossibility of
hearing this music with “period ears,” the technological limitations of early
recording devices pose further problems related to timbre and tessitura; the
quality is not particularly good, although the recorded material remains
“pure,” in the sense that the recordings were not edited or improved upon
by contemporary record producers.10 The performing conventions of late-
Romantic vocal technique also serve to render the melodic treatment
foreign by the standards of the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries alike.
Alessandro Moreschi, the only castrato on record, was 44 and 46 years
old during the recording sessions, and his voice was arguably past his
prime.11 Many auditors have found the recordings disappointing—a thin,
grating noise at odds with the lush, virtuosic sound described in
contemporary sources.12 Others wax lyrical about the voice, describing it as
“strong and powerful”; still others stress the “uncanny” qualities of
Moreschi’s voice.13 Two recent efforts offer fresh responses to the extant
material: Martha Feldman (2015) manages to listen past some of the
limitations of the recording medium, comparing Moreschi’s rendition of
Gournod’s Ave Maria to recordings made by female singers during the same
decade; Marco Beghelli and Raffaele Talmelli (2011) have listened for
traces of the castrati in the more-numerous and better-preserved recordings
of the next generation, separating out women and men who trained with
castrato teachers and suggesting that several now-defunct techniques might
be redolent of aesthetic qualities inherent to castrato song.14
Castrated voices remained a feature of Italian sacred music up to the first
decades of the twentieth century, although the broader popularity of castrati
paralleled the trajectory of Italian theatrical song. The earliest experiments
in dramatic monody took place in a courtly, academic milieu where chapel
singers—including castrati—were active participants.15 Early public opera
utilized castrati as verisimilar vocal representations of young, love-struck
men, while opera seria (the dominant operatic genre from around 1680–
1770) relied on the specific technical capacities of castrato singers as a
constitutive element of musical and dramatic structure. The piercing
brilliance, florid dexterity, and vaunted breath control of the best castrato
voices idealized the musical aesthetics of the seria sound, and the preserved
boyishness of the castrati themselves personified the young, noble heroes
and lovers who populated the seria stage. It is this context—sacred and
secular, choral and operatic, but always overwhelmingly musical—that is
invoked by the term “castrato,” setting him apart from castrated individuals
from other eras and places.
The delimitation of a specific period of castrato prominence is not to
imply that the historical reception of castrato singers and their voices was a
unified, consolidated whole—after all, the castrati dominated the Italian
musical landscape for over 200 years. Beyond Italian borders, the practice
of prepubescent castration was typically regarded with some suspicion, and
opinions differed wildly regarding the value of the voices produced, ranging
from celebration to condemnation. Between 1550 and 1770, public culture
changed as drastically as musical style, moving from the humanism of the
High Renaissance to the political citizenship of the Enlightenment.16 For
later generations, the barbaric aspects of castration intensified,
problematizing issues of consent and full political agency. Concurrent shifts
in musical style and individual subjectivity contributed to the decline of the
castrato and the eventual demise of the practice of castration.
S : T C ’ Q H
The second half of the nineteenth century also saw the emergence of the
glamorous female impersonator. While the dizzy dame was characteristic of
a broad range of comic genres and had her origins in pre-modern English
and European theatrical forms, the glamorous female impersonator was
found in just one genre—Blackface minstrelsy—and was an American
innovation not found in English theater until the mid-twentieth century. One
of the earliest prominent glamorous female impersonators was known as
“The Only Leon.” Francis Leon was active in minstrelsy beginning in the
late 1850s, when he was billed as a Master Leon the “wonderful danseuse
and soprano singer.”2 The use of the term danseuse (rather than dancer)
indicates that he was in female character, and he was valued in these roles
not only for his dancing skills but also for his ability to sing in falsetto in
the soprano range. Minstrel companies often presented burlesqued versions
of popular operas as after-pieces, and for this reason needed at least one
actor in the all-male cast who could sing the role of the heroine or prima
donna. Leon was in demand for this skill, and in 1860 he was working with
George Christy’s minstrels, one of the major minstrel companies of the
period. By the following year he had teamed with Edwin Kelly, with whom
he founded his own minstrel company later in that decade.
Minstrelsy emerged during a period in which American theater was
beginning to fracture along class lines.3 The elite audiences that had once
attended theater with poorer classes began to withdraw to their own theaters
during the 1840s. In the old-fashioned theaters that hosted melodrama, box
seats for the social elite dominated the auditorium and brought in most of
the income, but the area of seats on the main floor—the area now called the
orchestra seats—was known as the pit, and was the province of men.
Skilled artisanal master craftsmen mingled with their apprentices and
journeymen in the pit, which was a crowded chaotic space with bench
seating. In the first decades of the nineteenth-century, men of all classes felt
free to comment on the performance, and when they were displeased, the
audience felt free to riot. Theater riots were not uncommon before 1850,
and the riot at the Astor Place Theater in 1849 is now seen as marking the
end to this early period of theater in the United States. During the 1840s,
the elite audience had been slowly moving their allegiance to opera and
more serious spoken drama, and the Astor Place riot, which revealed a
conflict between the men who sat in the pit and gallery seats and the elite
audiences who occupied box seats, marked the point after which elite and
working class audiences no longer shared the same theaters or sought the
same entertainment. It also marked a point at which a myriad of theatrical
forms emerged to cater to different portions of a fracturing audience.
Minstrelsy’s audience was male, and was comprised of the young men
who had once been the scourge of the pit in the old-style theaters. These
young men, increasingly locked out of upward mobility because of the
decline of the apprenticeship system and the emergence of the factory
model of manufacturing, sought meaning in other parts of their life, and
particularly in the all-male rituals of leisure.4 Minstrelsy offered a range of
stereotypical characters that reassured the white male audience of their
superiority, and in the second half of the nineteenth century, the range of
stereotypical characters grew to accommodate new immigrants who
represented further layers of threat. The grotesque female dame was also
present on the minstrel stage, and in that context she often represented a
suffrage advocate or a temperance reformer or was paired with a male
performer in a comic husband/wife routine. Unlike the grotesquely funny
dame, the glamorous female character was not necessarily funny, indeed she
often embodied the feminine ideal and sang sentimental repertory.
The appeal that glamorous female impersonators such as Leon held for
their male audiences seems to have resided primarily in their ability to elicit
emotion. Sentimentality was broadly characteristic of nineteenth-century
American culture, and the function of the glamorous female impersonator
within a largely comic and irreverent entertainment form was to express
sentimentality that would have marked a male character as unmanly. Low
male characters of doubtful manhood, such as Irish characters or African
Americans, also expressed sentimentality, but in those cases the effect was
comic and it affirmed the inferior manhood of these characters; the primary
aim of the glamorous female impersonator, however, was to move his male
audience to tears. One of the role-types favored by the glamorous female
impersonator was the octoroon, a woman who was one-eighth Black, and
was light enough to pass for white but could not guarantee that her children
would not be darker. As a result, she was condemned to be unmarried, and
to serve as a mistress, a woman used and abused by men. In this complex
construction of illicit sexuality tinged with the allure of race, the glamorous
female impersonator also represented an ideal form of femininity in which
women were properly passive and attractive and dependent on men. The
fact that men in the audience may have been sexually attracted to Leon was
not an issue in a period in which, as long as a man was the active rather
than receptive partner in sex, his manhood was not in doubt.5
Leon was not the only glamorous female impersonator active during the
1870s, but he was by far the most successful and best known until the early
twentieth century and the emergence of Julian Eltinge (see Figure 25.3).
Eltinge, like Leon, began his career in an all-male theater form, although in
his case it was a male amateur theatrical clubs associated with Harvard
University and with an elite volunteer militia in Boston. He was active
playing young women in dramatic pieces and burlesques, and gradually
moved into glamorous female impersonation. Some reviewers expressed
disgust at Eltinge’s performances, feeling that female impersonation was
distasteful and offensive, although they admitted that there was little about
his performances that was actually obscene. A review in the New York
Times noted: “once the [viewer gets] over the initial unpleasantness of the
idea of female impersonation, which is not easy for people of delicate
sensibilities, there is nothing particularly displeasing about Mr. Eltinge’s
efforts at femininity.”6 Despite the reservations expressed by some
reviewers, Eltinge was hugely successful with audiences and commissioned
a number of dramatic pieces that featured him in female disguise.7 He was
also featured in early silent films, and an appreciative theater manager, who
had made a fortune presenting Eltinge in New York, named his new theater
in his honor.
FIGURE 25.3 Julian Eltinge in female character. Unknown photographer, ca. 1910s. Author’s
collection.
The United States had inherited the British tradition of literary burlesque,
but the form did not come to rely heavily on scantily clad actresses until the
late 1860s, when Lydia Thompson and her troupe of British Blondes toured
the nation (see Figure 25.4).14 Thompson’s troupe was made up almost
entirely of women, except for one male actor who most often performed
“dame” roles. To these she added local actresses to play secondary roles and
hired an all-female ballet corps. Their repertoire included adventures like
Robinson Crusoe, and plays based on mythology, like Ixion. Thompson’s
tour elicited huge opposition from church groups and moral reformers,
because Thompson and her manager were in a romantic relationship but
were not married to each other. Actresses in legitimate theater, and
particularly the feminist actress Olive Logan, also decried this
entertainment; Logan feared that burlesque actresses, whom she regarded as
untrained impostors, would damage the reputations of highly trained
actresses active in respectable theatrical forms.15
FIGURE 25.4 Lydia Thompson in male character. Carte de visite, unknown photographer, ca.
1870. Author’s collection.
Classically trained ballet dancers were also active in variety, and they
were the performers who adhered most closely to middle class standards.
Before the mid-1870s, a number of dancers based in New York City moved
freely between ballet corps attached to the opera company and Barnum’s
theater and variety halls (see Figure 25.8). Ballet dancers, who were
anonymous in the opera corps, performed as featured dancers in variety, and
all of the members of the small corps, comprising four to six women, in
variety theaters were named on the program. Ballet dancers were not the
only dancers active on the variety stage, however. Dancers who performed
jigs, folk dances, or other popular styles such as polkas also appeared in
variety, and like ballet dancers, they were named on the bill. In the 1870s,
dancers were increasingly called on to present sexualized dances associated
with sensational theater and extravaganzas, particularly the cancan, which
certainly defied middle class standards of decency. The cancan and other
forms of formation dancing became crucial in marking the divide between
sexualized and “decent” variety in the late 1870s and 1880s, and this
growing gap between these forms eventually led to the modern theatrical
forms of burlesque and vaudeville in the last decade of the nineteenth
century. By the end of the nineteenth century, managers had begun to
maintain that there was no link between the sexualized and decent forms of
variety, but as late as the first decade of the twentieth century performers
moved between these forms in order to maintain a full performance
schedule during the theatrical season.
FIGURE 25.8 Betty Rigl dressed in a devil-dancer costume worn in the Black Crook. Carte de
visite by J. Gurney, New York, 1868. Author’s collection.
Both men and women presented a wide range of novelty acts on the
variety stage. These varied from feats of daring and acrobatics, such as
those presented by Leona Dare (see Figure 25.9), Marietta Zanfretta, and
the Sanyeahs, to oddities such as players of the musical glasses or
ventriloquists such as Signor Blitz. Children also qualified as novelties,
particularly when they possessed exceptional skill. Baby Bindley, for
example, was a child musical prodigy who performed widely through the
1870s and 1880s, and eventually changed her name to Florence Bindley,
and took roles in musical comedies as she reached her teens. Early in her
career, when she was a very young child, her father, Professor Bindley,
presented her to the audience. Professor Bindley had been active in variety
as a musical performer before his daughter’s birth, but his career had been
eclipsed by that of his remarkable daughter by the time she was four or five
years old.
FIGURE 25.9 Leona Dare in costume for trapeze act. Carte de visite, J. Gurney, New York, ca.
1870s. Author’s collection.
While Hindle and Wesner pioneered this style in the early 1870s, they
were quickly joined by other women, a number of whom were older and
who used this specialty to extend their stage careers. There were almost a
dozen women performing in this specialty during the 1870s and 1880s, and
the singers who succeeded best in it were those who came closest to the
realism of Hindle and Wesner in their acts.22 Both women were fairly slim
in their build and paid minute attention to their costuming and gestures.
They sang in a mezzo-soprano or alto range, which added to their realism.
Hindle was so realistically masculine in her costume that she had been
detained in Michigan in the 1870s when police suspected her of being a
man traveling disguised as a woman. Given that farmers who opposed
government intervention sometimes traveled to meetings to organize
protests dressed in female clothing to avoid detection, the suspicion of the
police was justified. When they failed to find an Adam’s apple on Hindle’s
throat they had to let her go, but the incident was reported in the theatrical
newspaper, as was her marriage to a woman in the mid-1880s. In that case
Hindle was able to fool a Baptist minister in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who
married her to her female dresser, Annie Ryan, in 1886. The scandal of this
event briefly derailed her stage career and she and her wife lived together in
New Jersey until her wife’s death in 1891. Hindle then returned to the stage
as a male impersonator in small-time vaudeville, although she married
another woman about six months after Ryan’s death in 1892.23
Annie Hindle, Ella Wesner and the other early male impersonators active
in the United States during the early 1870s, including Blanche Selwyn,
Alicia Jourdan, and Augusta Lamoureaux, all shared repertoire with male
singers and all specialized in the same kinds of characters. Given their
realism, and given the number of women in sexually alluring costumes on
the stage around them and in other theatrical forms, we cannot assume that
the appeal of male impersonators was primarily sexual. Despite this, both
Hindle and Wesner were among a small number of the most highly paid
performers of the 1870s, able to earn as much as $150 or $200 a week in a
period when most performers were lucky to earn $50 a week. If the appeal
of these women was not sexual, then what made them such firm favorites
with the men in their audiences? An examination of their repertoire
suggests that their appeal for male audiences lay in the way their acts served
to shore up working class constructions of manhood, while also making fun
of middle and upper class manhood. Female performers were better able to
undermine the manhood of their social superiors because, unlike male
performers, they were able to use their audience’s knowledge that they were
really women to depict middle class men as being innately feminine and
therefore less than real men.24
The acts of male impersonators relied heavily on songs in which the
wealthy men they portrayed bragged about their accomplishments and their
irresistible charm to women. Male impersonators offered their male
audience members a guide to fine living and potentially also to upward
mobility; men who did not desire upward mobility could glory in the excess
of the swell, but could also take comfort in knowing that this swell was a
fake. Other songs were less gentle to the swell, holding him up for ridicule
and exposing him as an impotent fop, allowing those men in the audience
who had contempt for middle class men to find solace in the male
impersonator’s depiction of the man about town. All of the songs needed to
allow for multiple and contradictory readings in which praise and critique
co-existed, but at times the criticism could become more pointed, especially
when the audience knew that a woman’s body lay beneath a plausibly male
exterior.
Songs that sang the praise of alcohol were particularly popular with
male audiences of this period, and there are hundreds of songs that praise
specific alcoholic beverages. Champagne was one such beverage, and songs
in praise of this wine first appeared in England in the 1870s as Champagne
makers sought to attract a lower class audience to their product. These
songs quickly came to the United States and were equally popular in
variety. Songs such as Champagne Charlie, or Moët and Chandon for Me,
or Louis Renouf all referenced this beverage. Wesner had a number of songs
about alcohol and drinking in her repertoire, including one in praise of
Californian (not French) champagne.
Wesner and Hindle did not limit themselves to upper class swells; they
also depicted regular men, like those in their audience, through song. They
offered them advice on courting women and on keeping their marriages
happy. They encouraged the men in their audience to maintain a class
identity, even if they should manage to acquire wealth or success. Many of
their songs echo the kinds of articles and commentary found in men’s
sporting and sensational newspapers of the period. Men in variety, both on
the stage and in the audience, treated these women as honorary men, and
like the exceptional women in legitimate theater who took male roles, their
transgressions against the standards of working class femininity were
tolerated because of the service they provided to the men in their audience.
While it is difficult to know much about the off-stage lives of the
performers of this period, both Hindle and Wesner had their primary
emotional and most likely physical relationships with women. Hindle, who
had married two different men most likely for convenience during the
1870s, had had at least one relationship with a female dresser before she
married Annie Ryan, also her dresser, in 1886. Ryan was the only spouse
with whom Hindle co-habited. After Ryan’s death, Hindle married another
woman, Augusta Gerschner. Wesner’s one true love, as reported by the New
York Sun in 1891, was the notorious Josephine Mansfield who had been
involved in scandal and murder in the early 1870s. Wesner had run off to
Paris with Mansfield in the middle of the theatrical season and might have
ended her career then if not for the speedy intervention of her agent and the
variety manager Tony Pastor.
There is no evidence that any of the other male impersonators active in
variety had same-sex relationships, and it was not until the early twentieth
century that there was any suggestion that male impersonation was
unnatural. Unlike female impersonation, male impersonation was never
banned on the stage, and it appears that by the 1910s women were choosing
to not enter this specialty because of their own distaste for it. The most
prominent male impersonators active in America after 1900 were primarily
English imports who were protected by their status as foreigners, but all of
these women had been born in the nineteenth century; apparently even in
England few younger women took on this specialty. The last tour by a big
name male impersonator occurred in 1930, and after that date women were
rarely seen in male character, except in the context of Hollywood films.
It can be seen that in the nineteenth century, cross-dressed performance,
as well as performance that pushed the boundaries of middle class ideals of
gender, was much more widespread than it is today. In most cases cross-
dressing served to reinforce ideas about gender and class, and on occasions
it was also used to undermine hegemonic middle class constructions of
gender. When performed in the all-male context of minstrelsy and
burlesque, cross-dressing operated primarily to reinforce the idea of women
as being inferior to men. Women in the sexualized pants roles of burlesque
were there primarily to titillate men, and there are ties here to the use of
lesbian sex as a part of male pornography. It was only in the context of
variety that male impersonation was realistic and served to undermine
masculinity, but even then, these women performed a service first and
foremost for the men in their audience. Despite the fact that the leading
nineteenth-century performers may now be viewed as lesbian, their
sexuality was not the central issue in their acts. The concern with class
issues, and with constructing models of masculinity that supported the men
in their audience, is evident in the texts of the songs they sang.
T -C D C
D US E
At first, PWAs and their allies utilized extant music to express their feelings
and experiences, especially grief and loss. This is both personal and
pragmatic. Existing songs already carry an affective charge which gives
them a practical utility. Familiar songs with no specific AIDS content can
be incorporated into rituals of mourning, remembrance, protest, and even
fundraising. As a result, new AIDS-related meaning adheres to these songs.
For example, in Bette Midler’s “Friends” (1972), the singer describes
“some friends [who’ve] gone, something came and took them away,” but
ultimately she resolves to stay where she is until new friends arrive.
Already something of a gay anthem due to Midler’s career-making
performances at The Continental Baths, “Friends” assumed new meaning
for gay men who watched friends, lovers, and communities fall ill and die
as the government took no action to intervene. Likewise, The Gay Men’s
Chorus of Los Angeles performed an a cappella arrangement of “Family”
from Dreamgirls in a 1986 Pride Parade, offering the song as a tribute to the
dead and a statement of community solidarity. Finally, well-known hymns,
protest songs, Civil Rights anthems such as “We Shall Overcome,”
“Blowin’ in the Wind,” or “Amazing Grace” have been utilized in response
to AIDS. Their familiarity makes them ideal for communal singing, which
fosters a sense of solidarity. Existing songs provide “a moving tribute to the
deceased and serve as the soundtrack to people’s mourning [in order to
supply] ritualistic closure.”10 As a component of public political funerals,
marches, and private mourning, extant songs functioned in just these ways.
Existing music has also been used to great effect in media
representations of AIDS. In a memorable funeral scene in the 2003 HBO
adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, drag artist Flotilla
DeBarge (Kevin Joseph) interpolates Malcolm Speed’s gospel hymn “I’m
His Child” into a memorial service for one of “the great glitter queens” who
died of AIDS. The performance works on two levels. First, the hymn
expresses sentiments held by Christian LGBTQs, including many people of
color.11 Second, it harkens to Zella Jackson Price’s tour-de-force
performance of the hymn before an audience of gospel icons such as The
Barrett Sisters, The O’Neal Twins, Thomas A. Dorsey, and Willie May Ford
Smith in the documentary Say Amen, Somebody (1982). The funeral scene
turns Price’s performance on its head. Dressed in an afro and long gown
that recall the powerful Black womanhood of 1970s icons such as Roberta
Flack or Gloria Gaynor, Debarge performs, like Price, in a church sanctuary
accompanied by a gospel choir. The audience includes biological family
members, leather fetishists, genderqueers, professional Mediterranean
mourners, New York notables like Lypsinka (John Epperson), and a coterie
of drag queens dressed like Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, and
Mae West. These queer icons stand in for the gospel legends in the original
documentary, and the scene transforms an iconic moment in gospel music
history into a celebration of queerness that refuses to kowtow to the
demands of heteronormativity or dull the sparkle of one rhinestone for the
sake of straight mourners.
Extant music can also be used “to gather people into the space of
performance so that an AIDS intervention—educational, financial, political,
psychological—can materialize.”12 Album and concert ticket sales have
been especially effective in this capacity. In 1985, London-based industrial
rock outfit Coil recorded their version of Gloria Jones’s “Tainted Love”
(1965)—which had already been given a New Wave treatment by Soft Cell
in 1981—as a fundraiser for the Terrence Higgins Trust.13 Coil transformed
“Tainted Love” into a dirge by dramatically slowing the tempo, paring the
musical arrangement to the familiar bass riff played on eerie synth tubular
bells; clangorous orchestral and electric guitar hits; a ghostly choir; and
John Balance’s anguished, half-spoken vocals. This rearrangement of the
music draws attention to the ways that “‘night fever,’ ‘the boogie fever,’ the
‘tainted love,’ and the ‘love hangover’ all seemed to be passing into
literalism.”14 In the accompanying music video, Coil uses a strategy
Andrew Goodwin calls “amplification” to graft a visual AIDS narrative
onto the song.15 That same year, Dionne Warwick gathered her musical
friends Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, and Elton John to record a charity
single for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFar). “That’s
What Friends Are For” was originally written by Burt Bacharach and
Carole Bayer Sager and sung by Rod Stewart on the soundtrack of the 1982
romantic-comedy Night Shift. Its nondescript lyrics are sentimental and
bland, but in the context of AIDS, these reassuring banalities resound with
new significance when staged as a conversation between several friends,
gathered to bid farewell to someone who is dying. Such benefit singles have
raised millions of dollars, and “That’s What Friends Are For” has since
been used in conjunction with other charity causes.
Finally, a New York-based nonprofit, The Red Hot Organization, has
been committed to “fighting AIDS through pop culture” since its inception
in 1989.16 Red Hot released its first fundraising compilation in 1990. Red
Hot + Blue combined Cole Porter’s erudite love songs with new
arrangements by performers such as Annie Lennox, Bono, k. d. lang, David
Byrne, Iggy Pop, and Erasure. A 90-minute cable TV special featuring
music videos by famous directors and a variety of celebrity cameos was
broadcast around the world. The sale of albums and related merchandise
generated millions of dollars for AIDS charities. In her analysis of the
collection, Kathy Bergeron emphasizes the changes between Porter’s lyrical
and musical sensibilities and those of present-day pop idioms. Bergeron is
not particularly concerned with the activist goals of Red Hot + Blue, and it
is these issues that concern me most. Innovative music videos transform
Porter’s songs into songs about AIDS.17 Visual images illustrate, amplify,
or contradict the meaning of a given song.18 The most effective videos in
this collection rely on amplification of meaning through the juxtaposition of
images of activism, illness, and mourning with the song texts. David
Byrne’s “Don’t’ Fence Me In” personifies HIV, speaking from a diversity of
subject positions (young, old, white, non-white, men, women, ostensibly
straight and queer) using digital editing techniques to present “faces of
AIDS” which get torn into pieces then reassembled in a postmodern
bricolage. The titular refrain functions as a double-voiced warning. On one
hand, it cautions listeners that HIV/AIDS can impact anyone while on the
other, it portrays PWAs as more complex and complete human subjects, not
just carriers of disease. For k. d. lang’s glorious rendition of “So in Love,”
director Percy Adlon uses color and lighting to paint a beautiful portrait of
the unsung heroes of AIDS and the important issue of caregiver burnout.
Annie Lennox and director Ed Lachman offer a moving tribute to
filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942–1994) in their video for “Ev’ry Time We
Say Goodbye.”19
While some preexisting music could be used in AIDS activism, the
epidemic required new songs that addressed the particulars of HIV/AIDS.
Original songs soon emerged to document, to comfort, to protest, to
educate, and to incite. Newly-composed works that dealt head-on with
HIV/AIDS appeared by the mid-1980s, although few musicians—especially
mainstream popular artists—were willing to name the epidemic in their
songs. Whether the result of pressure from industry executives, the whims
of individual artists, or AIDS phobia, HIV/AIDS remained the disease that
dare not sing its name. Songs that explicitly name HIV or AIDS appear
most often in musical theater, where the demands of the dramatic scenario
require this level of explicitness. In Rent (1996), perhaps the most famous
of several AIDS-themed musicals, Roger sings about “the virus” taking
hold in his body; Mimi and Roger stop, mid-seduction, for an “AZT break,”
and genderqueer character Angel dies of AIDS-related illness and is then
eulogized on stage. Among popular songs, those which explicitly mention
AIDS such as Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk about AIDS” (1990), Mary
Gauthier’s “Goddamn HIV” (1997), and Canibus’s “AIDS is Gold, HIV is
Platinum” (1998), remain outliers. Typically, songwriters rely on allusion,
metaphor, or suggestive puns. Tori Amos’s “Not the Red Baron” (1996) and
Rufus Wainwright’s “Barcelona” (1998) feature arcane symbolism that
listeners must decode; however, in most examples, the rhetorical veneer is
relatively easy to strip away. For instance, in “Sign ‘O’ the Times” (1987),
Prince sings of a man “who died of a big disease with a little name.”
Likewise, in “Waterfalls” (1994), TLC never sing the words HIV or AIDS,
but in the second verse, the “three letters” which take a male protagonist
with voracious sexual appetites “to his final resting place” clearly spell H-I-
V.
Whether extant or newly-composed, created by a PWA or someone who
is HIV-negative, songs about AIDS participate in the discursive
construction of beliefs, ideologies, and societal attitudes about the epidemic
and those impacted by it. They represent diverse agendas and politics, and
they incorporate a variety of musical idioms, other expressive practices, and
appear in many genres. In thinking about texted musical responses to
HIV/AIDS in popular music, I have found it helpful to distinguish between
five broad categories based on lyric content: elegies, protest songs,
pedagogical songs, confessional songs, and a small category of songs in bad
taste. Any topology is a political tool, and mine is no different. My focus on
lyrics widens the scope of each category beyond the usual generic suspects
and allows musically diverse and seemingly disparate examples to sit
alongside one another. Certain ideas, motivations, attitudes, and
interventions were aimed at different constituencies—the fans or audiences
of any given genre. Rather than produce a definitive taxonomy of songs
about AIDS, my more modest aims are to analyze lyrics and some relevant
musical details in order to highlight what I see as the important uses of
music as a part of the broad arts-based social justice movement that
emerged out of the health crisis and to (re)introduce songs about AIDS into
the history of the epidemic, as writers, critics, and scholars now seek to
preserve this history.
E
The losses of the AIDS epidemic are staggering. Within a few years, the
number of cases grew exponentially from initial reports of a “Rare Cancer
Seen in 41 Homosexuals” and five cases of pneumocystis pneumonia in
1981 to “1,112 and Counting” in 1983.20 By 1990, there had been more
than 31,000 AIDS-related deaths, and these numbers continue to increase.
Globally, there have been millions of AIDS-related deaths. Enumerating the
dead became an important part of AIDS activism. For example, mourners
read lists of names during public presentations of the NAMES Project
AIDS Memorial Quilt. Loss, mourning, and memorialization are central to
art about AIDS, especially in elegiac forms of poetry and song. Melissa
Zeiger argues that unlike the speakers of traditional elegies, “the speakers in
AIDS elegies refuse to deny death by hiding that they are themselves at
risk, are already infected with the HIV virus, or are […] already dying. As
the line between the dead and survivors dissolves, so too does the
customary elegiac politics of subject and object.”21 Dagmawi Woubshet
finds among literary AIDS elegies by Paul Monette, Melvin Dixon, and
David Wojnarowicz a tendency to compound loss, to erase “the governing
binary of the [elegy] between the living poet and the lost object of
mourning” because the lost object is “not only external to the self, but also
includes the self;” the author is also living with AIDS.22 Melvin Dixon’s
poem “And these Are Just a Few…,” lists some of the author’s friends who
have died, and this attenuated list metonymically stands in all of the losses
in the lives of both the poet and his readers. In Larry Kramer’s The Normal
Heart, Tommy Boatwright keeps in his desk drawer a growing, rubber-
band-bound stack of Rolodex cards containing the contact information of
his dead friends, and in the 2011 Broadway revival, names of the dead were
literally scrawled onto the walls of the set.
Some musical AIDS elegies use a similar compounding/enumerating
technique. Tom Wilson Weinberg’s “Obituary” (Ten Percent Revue, 1987)
and “How We Get the News” (Get Used to It!, 1997) express this sense of
compounding loss in acts such as listening to the day’s answering machine
messages, opening the obituary page of a gay newspaper, or happening
upon a friend’s memorial AIDS Quilt panel. In both pieces, an individual
singer begins each verse by intoning the name of a friend or lover who has
died and telling listeners a bit about him. Each stanza of “How We Get the
News” climaxes as multiple singers repeat the titular refrain. The small
cadre of actors stands in for similar scenes around the globe. Lou Reed’s
“Halloween Parade” (1989) offers a variant on this type of elegy by
chronicling the characters and events that perdure after a number of beloved
friends, listed in the song, have died. Things will never be the same for the
singer, in part because of his own private grief, but also because similar
scenes play themselves out throughout the city, the nation, and the globe.
Finally, Tom Andersen’s “Yard Sale” (1998) features an encounter between
the singer and a dying PWA whose life is recounted not in the names of
dead friends but in his most treasured possessions, laden with affect and
memory but bargain-priced to sell and spread out on his San Francisco front
lawn. These elegies share with Dixon’s poem “One by One,” a terror of
“The singularity of death. The mounting thousands./ It begins with one and
grows by one/ and one and one and one/ until there’s no one left to
count.”23
In the 1980s and 1990s, it was not uncommon for obituaries—especially
those made by the straight families of PWAs—to omit AIDS-related illness
as the cause of death and to erase the queer sexuality of gay men. There are
stories of heterosexual families who refused to allow gay partners and
friends to attend funerals and memorial services, and inspiring tales of
brave individuals who disrupted those memorials by insisting that both the
sexuality and cause of death be acknowledged.24 Queer families of choice
also held their own alternative memorial services. In this context, it is
perhaps unsurprising that elegiac songs by pop artists tended to be more
bland and euphemistic, even when written or performed by gay men such as
George Michael (“Jesus to a Child,” 1996) and Elton John (“The Last
Song,” 1991). Sincere yet syrupy ballads such as Karla Bonoff’s “Goodbye
My Friend” (1988), Tiffany’s “Here in My Heart” (1990), and Michael
Jackson’s “Gone Too Soon” (1991) could be about people who died of
AIDS or just as effectively about those who died as a result of injuries
sustained in a car accident or cancer. Janet Jackson’s “Together Again” is
laden with banal reassurances: “Everywhere I go, every smile I see, I know
you are there smilin’ back at me, dancin’ in moonlight, I know you are
free…” The accompanying music video features Jackson and a coterie of
friends in the African savannah and other exotic locales, with no signifiers
that this is an AIDS memorial. The only indication that the song is about
AIDS comes not from the song but from a small red awareness ribbon
printed alongside the lyrics inside the CD booklet. Madonna’s elegy to
personal friends who died of AIDS (“In This Life,” 1993) is
uncharacteristically restrained for the controversial singer. After describing
a young friend who “died before his time […] without a warning” and an
older father figure who “taught [her] to respect [her]self” and that it
“shouldn’t matter who you choose to love,” the singer refuses to name
AIDS in the dramatic half-spoken final stanza. Instead, she refers only to
“this thing” and “it,” leaving listeners to fill in the gaps or ignore the AIDS
subtext. In live performances and interviews, however, she has made the
AIDS connection explicit. Still, many of these mainstream pop elegies
perpetuate the broader cultural tendency to omit, ignore, or otherwise paper
over HIV/AIDS.
P S
While militant protest songs were one tool in the musical activists’ arsenal,
songs with a public health message served an equally important role. Music
is an important pedagogical tool. Programs such as Sesame Street, School
House Rock, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood use song to teach language,
mathematical, and social skills, and behaviors to children. Hymns make
religious principles easier to remember by setting them to a tune. Opera,
popular music, and music video perpetuate ideologies about race, gender,
and sexuality.27 Likewise, music serves a variety of pedagogical purposes
related to the AIDS epidemic. One of these is the popularization and
normalization of safe sex. Prior to the AIDS epidemic, condom use was
largely seen as a heterosexual issue, primarily about pregnancy prevention.
In 1983, AIDS activists Michael Callen, Richard Berkowitz, and Dr. Joseph
Sonnabend published How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach, a
forty-page booklet widely recognized as one of the first safe-sex guides.
Among its novel suggestions was the notion that gay men should use
condoms to prevent the exchange of infectious bacteria or viruses. Although
HIV had yet to be discovered, this was a revolutionary idea and one that
gay men, according to Crimp, were more than ready to adopt, their
openness to sexual experimentation and innovation having already served to
expand the notion of the body’s polymorphous perversity beyond
reproductive or even genitally-oriented sex.28 Callen penned a campy safe-
sex jingle, “How to Have Sex (in an Epidemic),” to coincide with the
publication of the book. The song uses vernacular language and camp
humor to deliver a serious message, evidenced in one of Callen’s most
inspired couplets: “Find a lover, use a rubber. In time you will discover it’s
OK to get laid!”29
Social, political, and economic factors conspired to distort the picture of
AIDS in America, giving most people the lingering impression that it is a
“gay” disease.30 However, from the beginning, people of color, the poor,
and injection drug users were part of the epidemic. By the end of the 1980s,
people of color represented the highest number of new infections.
Basketball superstar Magic Johnson’s retirement followed the carefully
stage-managed revelation that he was HIV-positive in 1991, and this
inaugurated some discussion of HIV/AIDS among Black Americans,
especially heterosexuals.31 Hip-hop musicians 2 Live Crew, Wu Tang Clan,
Ice Cube, and Biz Markie contributed original works to a Red Hot
compilation called AIDS: America is Dying Slowly (1996).32 Although
intended to raise both awareness and money, the album excluded women
artists, and the disfiguringly phallocentric lyrics of songs like Sadat X, Fat
Joe, and Diamond D’s “Stay Away from the Nasty Hoes” reinscribe
misogynistic ideas of women as “the bearers of viral fruit,” playing off
existing sexist associations of women and sexually transmitted diseases.33
Rising infection and death rates among women inspired female artists,
especially non-white women, to respond to AIDS with updated versions of
girl-group “advice” songs that used community-specific vernaculars, irony,
and humor.34 In “Can’t Love You Tonight” (1988), dance diva Gwen
Guthrie dismisses a lover’s advances by acknowledging the dangers of
casual sex: “Can’t love you tonight; love is no longer free. The price is
much too high. Don’t want no AIDS or herpes.” The next year, raunchy
R&B queen Millie Jackson translated the official scientific discourse of
HIV/AIDS into her own idiom, a straight-talking “rap” session called “Sho
Nuf Danjus.”35 Over a funky instrumental vamp, she addresses Black
women directly: “Ladies! Over the years, I know I’ve told you bitches when
to fuck, how to fuck, who to fuck, how long to fuck, and everything.”
Although she admits that she is sometimes “scared to fuck nowadays,”
Jackson encourages Black women to embrace their sexuality and to educate
themselves: “Do you realize the Surgeon General says that the only way not
to get AIDS is not to fuck? Well FUCK THAT! I gotta fuck once a year.”
Recognizing the futility of an abstinence-only approach, Jackson follows
the Surgeon General’s suggestion to use condoms. “Fuck a condom,” she
insists. “Use rubbers! Good Year, steel-belted radials!” She also insists that
women purchase their own condoms and learn how to put them on their
male partners in a hilarious parody of sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
Finally, Jackson shatters myths about women as the sole carriers of disease
by insisting that men can and will give women HIV. “If he’s got one [a
penis],” she declares, “it’s dangerous…There’s no such thing as a little
AIDS…unless it’s welfare!”
Salt-N-Pepa continued the conversation about HIV/AIDS and sexuality
among women of color with the release of “Let’s Talk About Sex” (Blacks’
Magic, 1991). They rerecorded the song as a public service announcement
called “Let’s Talk about AIDS.” This version encourages women and other
listeners to get tested and to seek treatment if they test positive for HIV-
antibodies. Their emphasis on the impact of HIV/AIDS on women of color
continued on their next album. Very Necessary (1993) closes with “I Got
AIDS,” a spoken-word skit performed by Boston’s We’re Educators—With
a Touch of Class! (WETOC), a peer-education non-profit that targeted
young people. TLC made their auspicious debut in 1992 wearing brightly
colored hip-hop clothes festooned with condoms. The trio made safer sex
and HIV/AIDS information available at kiosks outside their concert
performances. By speaking to women of color in candid vernacular, these
artists effectively educated their listeners, empowering them to take control
of their sexual destines in order to prevent new HIV transmissions.
Pedagogical songs about AIDS for children also exist. Peter, Paul and
Mary’s recording of “Home is Where the Heart Is” (1995) encourages
compassion for an ailing neighbor whose lover has died and who now
“roams around his well-stocked kitchen. He knows that fate will soon be
coming.” Peter Alsop’s “Gotta Lotta Living To Do” (1990) models a way
for grown-ups to discuss the complex issues of HIV/AIDS with small
children. The song presents a series of questions posed by a child, whose
father responds with frank, honest, and age-appropriate answers (see
Example 26.1).
Table 26.1 Example 26.1. Lyrics, “Gotta Lotta Livin’ to Do” (excerpt) What
Finally, there are some songs about HIV/AIDS that are frankly in bad taste,
whose lyrics espouse malicious attitudes toward the experiences of PWAs,
their loved ones, friends, families, and partners, or else turn the very real
illness and discomfort of PWAs into the butt of crude jokes. GG Allin’s “I
Kill Everything I Fuck” and Method of Destruction’s “Anal Inflicted Death
Sentence (A.I.D.S)” rank among the most offensive. However, the most
egregious example tiptoes through the two lips of Tiny Tim (1932–1996).
“Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year” is a novelty song, a spoof of
children’s Christmas favorites like “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” or
“Jolly Old Saint Nicholas.” Sung over a fatigued drum loop with accents
from a synth ukulele, the strophic lyrics describe all the yuletide cheer,
presents, and general revelry Santa will not be bringing this year. Instead of
yelling out “Ho, ho, ho,” he’ll be screaming out, “No, no, no!” Surrounded
by doctors and nurses who look at him with pity, Santa tells the boys and
girls, “This is Santa Claus saying I won’t be here this year! I’m sick in bed
with the AIDS! Oh, but I’ll be back next year. Oh, don’t cry for me, a
doctor will cure me!” The song was recorded in the early 1980s but not
released until 1990, and Tiny Tim offered a weak defense of the highly
offensive lyrics. He claimed that the song referred to “Ayds,” a weight loss
product popular in the 1970s but whose homophonic name led to a dramatic
drop in sales and eventual bankruptcy in the first years of the US AIDS
crisis.
A less explicit and possibly more damaging portrait of a PWA comes
from Reba McEntire. “She Thinks His Name Was John” (1994) utilizes the
generic conventions of a country-pop ballad: triadic piano filigree over a
simple chord progression and orchestration that pull at listeners’
heartstrings. The song is an HIV/AIDS allegory that works on two levels.
First, it is a cautionary tale about the dangers of unsafe sex for young
women in the age of AIDS. Second, and more perniciously, it is another
entry in the pantheon of musical morality tales about the “undoing” of
women for transgressive behaviors.43 Songwriter Sandy Knox composed
the song after the AIDS-related death of her brother. “My brother was 29
years old when he died,” Knox said, “and I put myself in his position…I
wrote from the standpoint of all the things he would be missing—having a
child, getting married, all of those things.”44 However, Knox wrote the song
not about her brother but about a young, heterosexual woman. The lyrics
portray the titular “she” as fastidious and sentimental with slightly
obsessive tendencies. She “can account” for her past lovers, their past and
current whereabouts, and their romantic as well as their family lives with
one notable exception: a man she thinks was named John. The verb
“account” is rather odd. It often appears in criminal contexts. Suspects are
asked to account for their actions or whereabouts or to provide an alibi to
clear their names. Similarly, having a “past” is rarely seen as a positive
attribute for a woman by traditional social-sexual standards, and the use of
“John” (a common generic man’s name but also a prostitute’s customer)
subtly reinforces her violation of traditional gender and sexual norms.
The second verse fills in more details, noting that the pair met by chance
at a party. Caught up in his charm and good looks, and perhaps a bit tipsy,
“she let his smile just sweep her away” even though “in her heart, she knew
that it was wrong.” Together, the pair leaves the party. In the dim light of
morning, she cannot remember his name, though she thinks it was John.
The song seems to be about the dangers of drinking and letting an
intoxicating stranger take advantage of your emotions. The third verse
completes the morality tale.
Now, each day is one day that’s left in her life.
She won’t know love, having a marriage, or sing lullabies.
She lays all alone and cries herself to sleep
‘cause she let a stranger kill her hopes and her dreams.
And all her friends say, “What a pity. What a loss.”
And in the end, when she was barely hanging on,
all she could say was she thinks his name was John.
Q U E E R PAT R I O T I S M I N T H E
EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
I VAN RAYKOF F
“ ’ not gay, it’s European!” This slogan announced the launch of the
Eurovision-themed “Europhoria” party at Hardware Bar, a gay bar in New
York City, in December 2012.1 For uninitiated Americans who might never
have heard of the long-running annual televised popular music competition,
Time Out New York explained, “The Eurovision Song Contest is one of
those things—like soccer or Marmite—that people elsewhere in the world
seem to love, yet remains mostly a mystery on these shores.” This festive
party featured Eurovision music videos, drinking and dancing, “and a
crowd eager to wave the flags of their homeland (or whatever flag happens
to be available).”2 Host Gilad Mandelboim noted, “The bar is decorated
with all the colors of Europe. We provide our Europhorians flags to raise
and stickers to wear to get them in the Eurovision spirit.”3 A flexible kind
of patriotism plays out at this celebration, as revelers of all persuasions
demonstrate a devotion to their favorite campy songs and singers more than
their love for any particular country. “Europhoria” embraced both gay and
European identities, of course, but its ironic slogan points to a
conventionally heteronormative and particularly American perspective on
national identity and patriotic feeling. Eurovision seems different, strange,
even queer in this perspective because the song contest plays with notions
of the nation-state in ways that implicate deeply held cultural assumptions
about sexual identity too.
Despite its long history, its immense popularity, and its worldwide
audience of nearly 200 million viewers, the Eurovision Song Contest was
first broadcast live in the United States only in 2016, six decades after it
was established by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).4 Logo, the
American cable television channel owned by Viacom that initially featured
gay- and lesbian-themed programming, acquired the exclusive broadcast
rights for the contest in the United States that year, and aired the contest in
2017 and 2018 as well.5 Even with this easier accessibility, most Americans
remain unfamiliar with the song contest’s structure and intentions. “Why
are they all singing in English?” is a first-time viewer’s typical question.
“Singers don’t have to be from the country they are singing for?”6
“Australia, Israel, and Azerbaijan are not in Europe, so why are they in the
contest?” And perhaps the most frequent conundrum: “Is this music
supposed to be good?”7
Many critics tend to be dismissive of, or at least conflicted about, the
contest’s celebration of Europop music and camp aesthetics. Writing about
“The Olympics of Cheese” in the Village Voice in 2000, Elisabeth
Vincentelli asserts that “the contest shares with the European Union’s
governing body a taste for rules and guidelines shrouded in mysterious
agendas, then adds to the mix even more mysterious issues of regional taste
in crappy pop music. It’s a lethal combination that can only lead to trouble
—and fantastic, gripping live television.”8 Writing in the New Yorker in
2010, Anthony Lane praises “Waterloo” by ABBA, the winning song in
1974, as the show’s great triumph: “Somehow, they took all the ingredients
of classic Eurovision—meaningless English words, infuriating chugs in the
rhythm, outfits that made your eyeballs hurt—and cooked up something
both risible and delectable.”9 Explaining its political implications to
American viewers in 2014, comedian John Oliver notes how “European
countries sublimate thousands of years of ethnic and religious tensions into
a series of bizarre three-minute song-tastrophes.”10 Writing in GQ in 2015,
Freddie Campion (who, like Lane and Oliver, is British) recognizes its
underlying political tensions: “Eurovision was founded as a way to foster
peace and understanding between European nations, but mostly what it does
is breed competition, derision, and resentment.” Still, he admits, “the
cheesiest thing about the competition is the fact that it actually makes me
feel a kind of begrudging reverence for my European brethren.”11
The song contest is often considered a ridiculous “spectacle of
embarrassment,” Stephen Coleman asserts, not because of the quality of its
music or its performances, but because it still enacts a “ritualized
performance of nationhood” in an era of globalization, promoting a clichéd
and outmoded notion of national identity and “the insipid patriotism
through which it is filtered into middle-brow culture.” Meanwhile, the song
contest also promotes the ideal of a community of nations through a
peaceful music competition, but Coleman considers this an “amorphous
internationalism” and “a produced and contained image of universalism.”
He identifies the strategy of “ironic distancing” that critics (such as the ones
quoted above) frequently use to deal with these two Eurovision
anachronisms. Instead of the performative play of (inter)nationalism,
Coleman prefers a “cosmopolitan” dialectic of “simultaneous attachment
and detachment” to “the magnetic pull of parochial identities.” This
dialectic involves a constant negotiation between the local and the global to
engage with “the connecting spaces between places.” Crucially, he asserts,
“It is in these ‘spaces between’ that we present ourselves for the judgment
of others.”12
Considering such in-between identifications, the concept of “queer
patriotism” is helpful for understanding why the Eurovision Song Contest
provokes reactions ranging from fervent enthusiasm to critical disdain, and
why it took 60 years to reach American television audiences. “Patriotism,”
defined as love for one’s country and a sense of national loyalty, derives
from the Greek πατρίς (patris), or “fatherland.” This etymology reveals that
patriotic feeling is closely related to patriarchal figures, and that patriarchal
authority informs the historical and cultural traditions of the homeland to
create an abstraction of group affinity. In the United States, patriarchal
figures such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the “Founding
Fathers” and “Uncle Sam,” and iconic images such as Emanuel Leutze’s
Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) and Joe Rosenthal’s Raising the
Flag on Iwo Jima (1945) point to this masculinist representation of
patriotism.
“Nationalism” can be defined as a more aggressive expression of
patriotism: a culturally and politically motivated attachment to one’s own
country, fueled by a belief that it is superior to other countries in significant
ways, and usually predicated on the assumption of a particular ethnicity
and/or a shared common language.13 The traditional heterosexual family is
a major focus of nationalism, from the imagined “family” of the nation to
the domestic nuclear family that serves to reproduce the nation and its
values. According to Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “national
heterosexuality is the mechanism by which a core national culture can be
imagined as a sanitized space of sentimental feeling and immaculate
behavior, a space of pure citizenship.” Writing in the late 1990s, after the
passage of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (1993) and the Defense of
Marriage Act (1996), Berlant and Warner suggest that “the contemporary
United States is saturated by the project of constructing national
heterosexuality.”14 Queerness, on the other hand, embraces the various
“spaces between” identities as it blurs the boundaries of assumed binaries of
gender and sexuality, such as male/female and heterosexual/homosexual; on
the political side queerness can also destabilize the us/them of nationalism.
Lisa Downing and Robert Gillett assert in Queer in Europe (2011) that “the
notion of nation is bound up with the idea of identity, whereas queer
deliberately interpellates multiple identities. Precisely through this multiple
interpellation, though, queer makes it possible to re-imagine not only the
family and the nation, but also the institutions that support them.”15
The United States has had over two centuries to develop its patriotic
symbols and rituals, among them the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution with the Bill of Rights, the “Pledge of Allegiance,” the Capitol
and White House, the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore, the US flag,
the dollar bill, and the bald eagle. American patriotism also has a musical
repertoire ranging from the national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner” to
traditional songs like “Yankee Doodle” and “America the Beautiful” to
Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your
Land,” as well as other popular songs that have evolved into patriotic
standards, such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” and Madonna’s
2000 cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie.”16 Josh Kun posits “a direct
relationship between musical performance and the formation of national
identity” in the United States, but this aurally informed nationalism has
always involved marginalizing voices of difference.17 Or, in a more
humorous formulation attributed to the American general and president
Ulysses S. Grant, “I know only two tunes: one of them is ‘Yankee Doodle,’
and the other isn’t.”18
Contemporary Europe, in contrast, has had only a few decades since the
end of World War II—and for some East European nations, only a few
years after the fall of the Iron Curtain and after joining the European Union
—to balance centuries-old histories of nationalism with a more
dispassionate feeling of pan-European belonging that attempts to bridge the
needs and desires of the continent’s diverse ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and
religious constituencies. Despite the expanding social, political, and
material collaboration among its countries and regions, however, there is
hardly a comparable “Euro-patriotism” across the continent today. 19 This
ideal held some promise after World War II; in 1948, Winston Churchill
imagined “a Europe where men of every country will think as much of
being a European as of belonging to their native land, and that without
losing any of their love and loyalty of their birthplace.”20 More recently,
after the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” referendum in June 2016, conductor-
pianist Daniel Barenboim wrote that “Europe consists of so many different
peoples, cultures, and languages that [it] requires a much more substantial
unifying idea than simply joint trade and a single currency.…Nationalism is
the opposite of true patriotism, and the further fostering of nationalist
sentiment would be the worst case-scenario for us all. Instead, we need a
unifying, European patriotism.”21
This ideal of unifying patriotism, however, does not have the same
cultural and historical resonance in Europe, or even in individual European
nations, as it does in the United States. The strong patriotic sentiments of
ethnic Estonians, for example, will be markedly different from the feelings
Belgians may have about their culture, heritage, language(s), and place
within the community of the continent’s other countries. In Europe today
the word “patriotism” is usually associated with conservative and right-
wing political movements, among them Pegida (Patriotische Europäer
gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, or Patriotic Europeans Against
the Islamization of the West), a populist party established in Germany in
2014. In June 2016, leaders of Europe’s largest far-right parties (Austria’s
Freedom Party, France’s Front Nationale, Germany’s Alternative für
Deutschland, Italy’s Northern League, and Holland’s Party for Freedom)
held a “Patriotic Spring” conference in Vienna to pursue their goals of
“cooperation for peace, security, and prosperity in Europe.” Reacting to the
ongoing refugee crisis, militant attacks, and economic challenges in Europe,
these Euro-skeptic anti-immigration parties frequently resort to the rhetoric
of patriarchal authority, proclaiming, “We want a Europe of fatherlands”
rather than the European Union.22
There have been attempts to create new symbols and rituals of pan-
European identification, the most familiar being the European Union (EU)
flag of twelve gold stars on an azure background, its motto of “Unity in
Diversity,” and its instrumental anthem, the well-known “Ode to Joy”
melody from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In 1996, the
European Monetary Institute, the forerunner of the European Central Bank,
held a competition for the design of the new euro banknotes, choosing the
work of Robert Kalina of the Austrian National Bank.23 Since there were
twelve euro nations but only seven currency denominations, Kalina’s
drawings of bridges, windows, and gateways for the banknotes were
intentionally generic; instead of depicting nationally identifiable
architectural examples, his imaginary bridges represent different periods of
European cultural history from Greek and Roman antiquity to Gothic,
Renaissance, Baroque, and modern architecture. Commenting on these
“bridges with empty arches, empty doorways, and empty windows,” Emil
Tode realizes that “this is meant to symbolize openness and freedom; but an
identity meant to integrate societies cannot be founded on purely abstract
ideas—it requires real people and meaningful symbols.”24 A decade after
the new euros were released, Dutch designer Robin Stam wittily turned
Kalina’s archetypal bridges into real functional bridges for a new housing
development in Spijkenisse, a suburb of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
These replicas of the “euro bridges” match the shapes and colors of
Kalina’s designs, while Stam also brings a theatrical sensibility to the
project: “I wanted the illusion of a re-created stage set with a touch of Las
Vegas,” he explains.25 The generic pan-European monument, neutralized of
any specific national connotations, becomes a quasi-comic spectacle even
as it tries to inspire a sense of shared belonging that “bridges” the spaces
between nations.
With a comparable idealism, Eurovision strives to promote a
transnational bonding through an annual ritualized performance of new
popular songs. The competition was established in 1956 by the EBU, a
network of national television broadcasters, first with seven participating
West European nations (France, Italy, West Germany, Switzerland,
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), along with three additional
countries (Britain, Denmark, and Austria) receiving the broadcast. The
show was modeled after Italy’s Sanremo music festival, established in
1951, and was conceived as a light-entertainment cultural program to be
shared among member stations through a simultaneous live transmission.26
Marcel Bezençon, the director of the EBU until 1970, considered the
Eurovision television network “an instrument…to build Europe.” But as
Dean Vuletic explains, “instrument” was meant more literally than
figuratively: “Rather than being ideological Europeanists, officials from the
EBU were practical internationalists” focused on the promise and viability
of this new technology of television, with their primary emphasis on the
network’s potential for technical interaction and cultural exchange rather
than some idealistic political European integration.27
Other historians and critics consider the inherent ideological
underpinnings of this international network and its programs. According to
Shannon Jones and Jelena Subotic, the contest reveals that “the process of
Europeanization is fundamentally a process of political imagination.” This
process involves a tension between inward and outward meanings of a
country’s song and stage presentation. “As they Europeanize, states choose
what messages about themselves to send abroad and which secrets to keep
at home.” Since viewers cannot vote for their own country’s song, they vote
for another country’s song in the spirit of a pan-European affiliation that is
supposed to transcend national borders. As a result, Eurovision becomes
“the site of a remarkable ‘hidden transcript’ of European fantasy, identity
contestation, and profound ontological insecurity on the European
periphery” as the contest aims to create “a shared community where people
feel like they belong.”28 Jeroen de Kloet and Edwin Jurriëns assert that in
popular-culture productions such as Eurovision, a “globalized or
cosmopolitan trope of patriotism provides a more displaced logic of social
organization” evident in performances that permit “a double articulation,
one related to locality, the other to sexuality.”29 As Heiko Motschenbacher
discusses, the song contest offers “an interface of the discursive negotiation
of national, European, and sexual identities.”30 This “double articulation,”
the productive tension between inward and outward meanings or fixed and
fluid identifications, is fundamental to the experience of queer patriotism.
Eurovision reifies national identifications as it holds up a queer mirror to
the performance of patriotism. The contest has increasingly provided an
arena for the recognition and the celebration of LGBTQ people, especially
after the establishment of the European Union in 1993 and the expansion of
Western economic and liberal democratic systems to postcommunist East
European nations. Robert Tobin parallels the rise of these supranational
structures with the establishment of rights for sexual minorities, noting that
“various pan-European political institutions have been a driving force in
whatever progress has been made in this situation of queer people in
Europe.”31 In Ireland, for example, the drive to decriminalize
homosexuality was taken up by the European Court of Human Rights,
which ruled against the Irish government in 1988 on the basis of the right to
privacy in personal affairs; the Irish laws were subsequently reformed in
1993. Meanwhile, the country enjoyed an unprecedented series of
Eurovision victories (in 1987, 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1996) alongside these
legal victories for gays and lesbians, plus there was an emerging enjoyment
of the camp appeal of this ostensibly straight, family-oriented entertainment
show.32
This camp aesthetic could be interpreted as a reevaluation of an outsider
status, or marginality, whether it is the marginality of sexual minorities in
systems of national heterosexuality, or the marginality of the newly-
admitted countries on Europe’s shifting eastern borders.33 A number of
English-language plays and shows about Eurovision from the 1990s engage
these camp connotations. EuroVision (1992), by Tim Luscombe, is a play
about two men who find love at the song contest, and Boom Bang-a-Bang
(1995), by Jonathan Harvey, borrows the title of the United Kingdom’s
1969 entry for this farce about a gay Eurovision party night and the
fantasies of its heterosexual guests. In “My Lovely Horse,” a 1996 episode
of the Irish television series Father Ted, two men compose their own
Eurovision entry and fantasize about singing it together while they ride
through the woods on horseback. British camp attitudes toward the contest
came to the fore when the United Kingdom hosted Eurovision in
Birmingham in 1998. The contest’s first openly gay singer, Paul Oscar
(representing Iceland in 1997), appeared in the mockumentary A Song for
Eurotrash (1998), the openly gay Graham Norton hosted another televised
parody of the show titled Eurovision Masterclass (1998), and the BBC aired
Europigeon, featuring the song “Pigeons in Flight” as the hapless British
entry. This camp aesthetic offered a queerly alternative understanding of the
contest for the United Kingdom, a deeply patriotic and Euro-skeptical
nation grappling with the shifting power relations of post–Cold War
Europe.
Sexual and gender diversity became primary topics of discussion around
Eurovision in 1998, when Dana International, a trans woman representing
Israel, won the contest with the song “Diva.” Dana’s selection for the
contest provoked debates about national and religious values among secular
and Orthodox authorities in Israel, to which the singer responded, “I am
part of the Jewish nation.”34 Even before her Eurovision victory, Ted
Swedenburg writes, Dana’s Arab Jewish identity positioned her as an
outsider within Europeanized Israel, while in the conservative Egyptian
press in the mid-1990s, Dana’s “deviant” music and transsexuality were
considered dangerous to the values of the nation and to the virtue of its
youth, because a border-crossing figure such as Dana International
threatened “a nationalism that conceives of Egyptian society as
homogenous, unitary, and self-identical.”35 Yossi Maurey further discusses
how Dana challenged ideas of national and sexual identity within Israel.
The song “Diva” is about iconic women of history and mythology (the
Greek Aphrodite, the Roman Victoria, the Egyptian Cleopatra) from
cultures beyond the Jewish religious and cultural realm, but who also
represent the Jewish nation through Dana’s performance. “By encouraging
fragmentation, ambiguity, and multiplicities,” Maurey writes, “Dana
disputes and resists the ideology of the Nation which presupposes a single,
limited, structured way of seeing its history, present, and future.”36
With her Eurovision win, Dana International became an iconic unifying
figure for diverse constituencies within Israel. In Tel Aviv on the night of
the contest, one fan recalls, “it was the empowering experience to be in a
mixed crowd of gays celebrating Dana’s victory, patriotic heterosexuals
celebrating Israel’s victory, and fans of a local Israeli soccer team who had
just won the championship that same day. Colorful rainbow flags, blue and
white Israeli flags, and yellow soccer flags were all flapping together in
Rabin Square in an intense atmosphere bursting with pride and joy.”37
Amalia Ziv explains how Dana represented a range of contradictions
between what is “International” or universal/global in the Eurovision
perspective and what is patriotic or queer in terms of national and sexual
identity in Israel.38 Borrowing Lauren Berlant’s term, Alisa Solomon
describes Dana as an example of “Diva Citizenship,” a woman who “stages
a dramatic coup in a public sphere in which she does not have privilege”
and “challenges her audience to identify with the enormity of the suffering
she has narrated and the courage she has had to produce, calling on people
to change the social and institutional practices of citizenship to which they
currently consent.”39 In this way, Dana-as-Diva challenged “the prime
national ideal of heterosexual masculinity.”40
While Israel’s state-sponsored promotion of queer identity and rights as
patriotic values can be viewed through the critique of homonationalism,
Aeyal Gross considers Dana’s multiple border-crossings—male/female,
east/west, straight/gay/transsexual, Jewish/Arab, Israel/Middle
East/Europe/international—in a place “where borderlands are always
danger zones.” Gross discusses the image of Dana International on the
Amnesty International campaign poster “Gay Rights Are Human Rights,”
which came out soon after her Eurovision win in 1998. In this photograph
by Erwin Olaf, the singer is holding a candle and wearing a veil, an image
that could be read variously “as Christian, Jewish, or Arab religious
drag.”41 In multiple ways, Dana International embodies a border-crosser
provocatively blurring national, political, and religious identifications (see
Figure 27.1).
FIGURE 27.1 1998 Amnesty International poster with photograph of Dana International by Erwin
Olaf. Reproduced by permission of Erwin Olaf and Amnesty International Nederland.
FIGURE 27.2 Az ő Európájuk (“Their Europe”) vs. A mi Európánk (“Our Europe”). Jobbik poster
for Hungary’s European Parliament elections in May 2014. Unidentified photographer.
When she won the contest, Wurst fervently proclaimed, “We are unity
and we are unstoppable!” She framed the contest win as “a victory for those
people who believe in a future that can function without discrimination and
is based on tolerance and respect.”51 Her proclamation of unity and
tolerance might also apply to the ideals of a united Europe, as Wurst
suggested at the Observer Ideas Festival in London in October 2014,
claiming that Europe represented democracy, diversity, the Enlightenment,
human rights, civil rights, and “the idea of a peaceful together.”52 Wurst’s
political message was further recognized by United Nations secretary-
general Ban Ki-Moon: “What made her win so meaningful was the way she
turned her victory in the song contest into an electrifying moment of human
rights education.” He praised her efforts to promote a respect for diversity, a
“core value” of the United Nations Charter.53 Back in her own country,
Austrian president Heinz Fischer considered her win “not just a victory for
Austria, but above all for diversity and tolerance in Europe.”
Cynthia Weber analyzes Tom Neuwirth’s creation of Conchita Wurst
through the lens of “the queer logic of statecraft,” considering
Neuwirth/Wurst as “a figure who defies traditional understandings of
integration across multiple axes” because she bridges sex and gender, but
also race and religion. Wurst’s early fictional biography describes her as a
child raised in the highlands of Colombia, so her origins are transnational,
transcultural, and transcontinental; this myth provides a parallel to her
integration across Europe’s national and cultural borders as well.54 Within
Austria, Wurst also signifies in the “spaces between” national culture and
gender identity. The photograph by Ellen von Unwerth of Conchita Wurst
posing as an adaptation of Gustav Klimt’s iconic 1907 portrait of Adele
Bloch-Bauer is an apt example of this border-crossing negotiation. This
image was commissioned for the Life Ball, an annual international charity
event to benefit organizations that support people living with HIV/AIDS, in
2015. Three years previously, the lyrics of the Austrian national anthem
“Land der Berge, Land am Strome” (Land of Mountains, Land by the
[Danube] River) were revised to accommodate a more gender-neutral
identification (from Heimat bist du großer Söhne = “home thou art to great
sons,” to Heimat großer Töchter und Söhne = “home to great daughters and
sons”). The poster plays on this alteration with the caption Heimat großer
Töchtersöhne, or “daughter-sons,” referring not only to Neuwirth/Wurst’s
queer identity, but also to the old-fashioned German word Töchtersöhne,
meaning male grandchildren through one’s daughter instead of through
one’s sons—a distinction that historically defined family lineage and
inheritance in terms of patriarchy. In this image, Wurst reframes an iconic
emblem of Austria’s cultural heritage while also redefining a contested
phrase from the Austrian national anthem (see Figure 27.3).
FIGURE 27.3 2015 Life Ball poster featuring photograph of Conchita Wurst by Ellen von
Unwerth. Reproduced by permission of Ellen von Unwerth.
C R O S S - C U LT U R A L Q U E E R N E S S
CHAPTER 28
I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A RY
ENQUEERIES FROM INDIA
Moving Toward a Queer Ethnomusicology
Z OE S H E RI N I AN
I there queer music in India? I have been asked this question by American
LGBTQ friends who know I am a lesbian who has done extensive
ethnomusicological fieldwork in South Asia. Needless to say, the question
and its implied universal constructs leave me troubled. Yet, what should
Western lesbians or queers, or others with minority sex/gender/sexuality
identities ask in order to discover whether there are people “like us” or who
have desires “like ours,” or who behave sort of “like us,” but maybe a little
different, in another culture—and if music has anything to do with the
construction or expression of their identity? Through decades of conducting
research in India my Western sex/gender/sexuality1 concepts have been
deconstructed and expanded, forcing me to realize the need to constantly
review my methodology and interrogate my positionality in order to
understand how Western categories and questions can be inadequate and
limiting. Thus, I begin from the stance that in the development of queer
theory for music, we should scrutinize the Western gaze that tends to
dominate queer scholarship in the West. We cannot assume that the Western
meanings of “queer” will match the ways of living and musicking that exist
throughout the world. The goal of this essay is to conceive of a cross-
cultural queer theory that allows for the consideration of the widest
diversity and inclusive conceptualization of the relationship of performing
arts to human desire, intimate behavior, and identity. Simultaneously, this
would be a theoretical lens that allows for local phenomena and their
potential to expand global understanding of not just difference, but of
human possibility.
G E
E
For my first case study, I turn to Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of
India (1990) by anthropologist Serena Nanda. Nanda presents an
ethnography of what she calls a “third gendered, homosexual” community
of ritual performers who play a vital life cycle role in the blessing of a baby
boy. Her analysis of sexuality and gender expands Western constructions,
dislodges Western sex/gender dualistic conflations, and shows the
complexity of these categories cross-culturally. Although Nanda falls short
of a complete musical analysis that could further reveal the simultaneous
multiplicity of sex/gender qualities in hijras, she provides two important
perspectives for queer ethnomusicological theory. First, she describes a
heterosexual wedding context in which hijras negotiate religious asceticism,
homosexuality, and economic relationships in identity formation through
performance. Second, she emphasizes the ambiguity of “third gendered
people” in this Indian context.27
Hijras are viewed with fear and respect as vehicles of the goddess.28
Most are born with primary male sexual characteristics, but later they
ideally renounce sexual desire and undergo castration, while those
considered the “most spiritually authentic” are intersexed.29 While the ideal
is to be an ascetic, some engage in sexuality with hetero-cis men called
pānthis30 as prostitutes and/or in the context of living as a social “wife”
with a male “husband.”31 The hijra’s special religious powers, derived from
their alternative gender role, legitimate their function as ritual performers
who bless or curse a baby boy’s life. Thus, it is believed that hijras, who do
not possess male privileges themselves, give boys the masculine power to
create life, have sons, and carry on the family (and caste) line. This vital
religious role of a person without masculine privilege or identity having the
right to endow another with masculine/male gender/sex characteristics
forms the core of hijra identity and positive collective self-image.32
Dressed in female clothing, hijras perform at weddings and baby
blessings, singing, clapping, dancing, and playing the dholak barrel drum in
an exaggerated feminine style to popular film songs and regional folk
music. Nanda leaves little doubt that performance is crucial to hijras’ ritual
identity formation. She fully describes the performance structure, lyrics,
and stylistic significance of the dholak drum and the way hijras clap. In a
context where musical performance is so important to inscribe their
accepted social function, an ethnomusicologist will want more analysis of
the music than Nanda provides. I wonder whether the hijra’s musical gender
is ambiguous or “third?” For example, is gender “play” heard in their vocal
range? Do hijras sing songs associated with women such as those drawn
from the genre of thumri33 or those that consciously use female ragas
(melodic modes) such as bhairavi?34 Do hijras change the lyrics of songs,
or use particular songs to define themselves as “neither man nor woman”?
Ethnomusicologist and filmmaker Jeff Roy’s recent work on hijras
provides answers for many questions about the hijra’s musical gender or
queer musicality.35 Roy analyzes the hijra anthem called “Asha Natoru” to
show the importance of unity and equality within the hijra community. As
Roy demonstrates, the music contributes to the hijra’s embrace of a
diversity of shifting and sometimes contradictory gender expressions in a
single performance. Roy sees this performance as a model of gender
inclusivity, totality, or multiplicity. While Nanda’s description of hijras
sex/gender/sexuality also shows an inclusive range of elements considered
masculine, feminine, and androgynous, I prefer Roy’s use of “inclusive” or
“multiple” as opposed to Nanda’s “third,” which reinforces categorical
distinctions instead of flow. According to Roy,
The beautiful ghazal singer in the Jalsa performance envelops and gets a rise out of all of the
ritual participants. She mixes and shifts gender codes. Her song is a female genre, or a
conversation between women. She wears a sari [appearing feminine], but her vocal range
does not push the boundaries of male cis-gender, instead it remains baritone. The idea is that
out of this inclusivity or “allness,” hijras get strength through unity and diversity.
Multiplicity brings that allegiance to an identity. The hijras’ intent is not to break the
[heteronormative] rules or legitimize the gender dichotomy. Hijras are not about subverting
or ignoring the rules, but positioning themselves in a space that comes before them. They
are there to make the rules. While some may have a particular reverence and joy, a longing
to participate in that binary [to pass] through being perceived as woman and having a
husband, the gurus and ascetics say, “You might have this longing but remember who you
are.” “You are holier than that. You come before that.” Longing is part of the material world
—what heteronormative people do. Through badi and gender performance hijras dictate
what works and what doesn’t [in heteronormativity].36
Thus, Roy’s musical and religious analysis helps us interpret hijras’
typically male baritone or tenor vocal range as part of an inclusive, holistic
package of multiple gendered performance elements that also includes
exaggerated as well as normative feminine expressions. This package
ascribes an original, holistic spiritual asceticism in hijras from which binary
heteronormativity derives.
Nanda also surveys other cultures with institutionalized “third genders”
where music plays a significant role in the process of identity construction.
Among people in Oman, the Native American Mohave, and the Mahu of
Tahiti she finds the similarity that music is performed either by the
community during rituals, or by the “third gendered” people who sing along
with women as accepted members in a gender segregated performance. The
Mojave sing “transvestite songs” during the ritual that determines whether a
boy will be confirmed as an alyha, which Nanda defines as a male
transvestite homosexual. One female or mother role they perform is to wail
as a woman would for her “ritual” stillborn child.37 The Mahu of Tahiti she
describes as a third gender role; they dress as women and dance and sing
with women.38 In Oman, the Xanith who have characteristics of both men
and women join the women in singing and dancing on festive occasions and
have access to women where men are not allowed.39 Further
ethnomusicological study of these cases of third or multiple gendered
phenomena through performance will help us understand the broader range
of sex/gender/sexuality, religious, and other identities.
M
I suggested in correspondence with Dr. Flueckiger that this may mean the
girls are looking at each other lovingly. She responded that the bhojali plant
is equated with friend and goddess, so one could read homosocial attraction
into this gaze. But she did not feel that the participants, if asked, would give
homoerotic connotations to the songs or rituals.42 Whether we sexualize
this loving gaze or not, can we call it queer? The following lyric was even
more telling:
I sowed the field with mung lentils, my friend.
Seeing you, girl, I felt desire.
The mung crop will be good, my friend.
The mung crop will be good, my friend.
When I asked about this lyric, Flueckiger said “the ‘I’ implies a male voice,
even if sung between two girls—at least on the surface.” The word for
“desire,” “cahana,” means “to want” and definitely connotes sexual
desire.43 Did Flueckiger assume that because the word “desire” is sexual,
the subject had to be male?44 Does the performance context of the
friendship ritual not matter in the interpretation of meaning? I believe we
should consider the use of these lyrics in this ritual context as, at the least,
creating ambiguity in the direction of desire.
Flueckiger analyzes the interactive song forms used by the girls as
“give-and-take repetition between friends [which], reinforces the
relationships formalized through the ritual.”45 This homology of the value
of equality reflected in the music structure and social structure is key to my
queer ethnomusicological analysis, even if we do not interpret the lyrics as
homoerotic.46 In a society where kinship relationships are extremely
hierarchical, could a deep, homosocial friendship founded on equality
across the hierarchy of caste be considered “queer,” even if potentially
temporary and non-sexual? This practice seems to provide an important
fulfillment of homosocial attraction and emotional bonding for women, few
of whom expect physical and emotional fulfillment in heteronormative
Indian marriage.
In traditional South Asian cultures, one’s choice of marriage partner is
not ideally based on sexual desire for the spouse, but on his or her potential
as a parent and productive member of an extended family household. The
ideal in marriage is affectionate love, not sexual love. Although sexual
fulfillment in marriage is articulated in oral traditions and literature,
Flueckiger confirms that it is rare for village women to talk about this
expectation in “life on the ground.” If married women hold few
expectations of sexual and emotional fulfillment in their relationships,47
perhaps pre- and post-marriage friendships may be the only context in
which women, in particular, can expect to fulfill desire—emotional or
possibly physical. Thus, we can conclude that mahaprasad defines
institutionalized, ritualized homonormativity for women in rural Central
India. The only way to further understand these practices is to do
ethnomusicological fieldwork with a broader consciousness of the variety
of intimate sexual and emotional relationships possible in humanity. That is,
to queer our observations or carefully and openly attune ourselves to local
specificities through an aural lens that both acknowledges the
ethnographer’s (potentially) “queer” Western world view, while grounding
interpretations in local ethnographic knowledge and experience enough to
perceive and acknowledge such possibilities.
C
KUNQU CROSS-DRESSING AS
A RT I S T I C A N D / O R Q U E E R
PERFORMANCE
JOS E P H S . C. L AM
K C -
C C
By contemporary standards, the above lyrics and staged acts are hardly
bawdy. Nevertheless, if one listens to a talented performer singing
sensually, exquisitely accompanied by a small orchestra of flute, strings,
mouth-organ, wood clapper, drum, and gongs, one can see and hear why
“Yearning” is racy. The relatively simple and balanced texture and timbre of
the music renders unmistakable every erotic nuance, the verbal, visual, and
kinetic suggestions of which need sonic confirmation—and vice versa!
Melodies flow sensually, and rhythms shift suggestively. Key words and
acts are highlighted by melodic or rhythmic ornaments, long melismas, and
other musical and performance clues.
Comparing “Yearning” performances by biologically female and male
performers, one readily notices subtle differences. For example, Liu Cheng
and Zhou Xianggeng,29 two currently active young, good-looking kunqu
female impersonators, offer split-second flashes of their biological
maleness, such as angular or heavy bodily gestures, abrupt shifts between
natural and falsetto registers, and affected melodic phrasing and
articulations that invite attention. These flashes do not appear in
performances of “Yearning” by female kunqu master performers, such as
Liang Guyin (b. 1942), Shen Shihua (b. 1941), or young, beautiful
actresses, such as Shen Guofang of the Suzhou Kunqu Troupe of Jiangsu
Province (Jiangsu sheng Suzhou kunju tuan).30
These flashes are dissonances attesting incongruities between the female
impersonators’ yi and the se of their biological selves and enacted
characters. Most critics would promptly dismiss the dissonances as
problems that the young cross-dressers will solve as they become more
experienced and skilled. This conventional dismissal is simplistic and
problematic. It confirms male, heterosexual, and hegemonic views of
womanhood in traditional and contemporary China by assuming that no real
woman would display such manly flashes. Furthermore, it glosses over
queer possibilities and meanings of the cross-dressed performances. When
performed, or allowed to occur, the dissonances can be interpreted as queer
expressions of difference: they constitute expressions that challenge
conventional gender stereotypes, and deliver what some cross-dressing
kunqu performers and appreciative audiences would find elocutionarily
pleasurable and/or erotically desirable. The dissonances are what makes the
performances distinctive and meaningful.
Pleasure in queer difference is readily noticeable at informal kunqu
gatherings (quhui) where amateur singers musically cross-dress. Singing
arias of their idealized woman or man, the participants construct for
themselves a pleasurable soundscape in which they become, or can identify
with, something other than what their sexual bodies are—a fact that I have
observed in my fieldwork trips and personally experienced in my own
limited attempts to sing kunqu.31 When this difference and pleasure assert
the performers’ desire and rights to become what mainstream society does
not condone, they are artistically and sociopolitically subversive.
The subversive potential of kunqu impersonation is noticeable in many
shows. A prime example is “Flee by Night” (“Yeben”). Originally a scene
from the Precious Sword (Baojianji), a Ming drama derived from All Men
Are Brothers (Shuihuizhuan), “Flee by Night” is a perennial favorite. Its
protagonist, Lin Chong, is an icon of traditional Chinese masculinity.32 A
wronged hero, he flees at night, chased by murderers. On the road, far from
the home where his old mother has recently passed away and where his
young wife stays by herself, he finds a temple and decides to rest inside. He
falls asleep, only to be wakened and frightened by a nightmare of his
enemies finding him in the temple. Fleeing again, he tells how he was once
an ambitious, virile military commander, and expresses how he now feels as
a hunted man. Rushing to his destination, the Liang Mountain where a gang
of heroic bandits and male friends have gathered, he vows revenge, and
finally kills the villain who has masterminded his miseries.
Verbally, visually, kinetically, and sonically, the scene projects
traditional Chinese masculinity—with a twist, if one queers it. With a long
soliloquy, and eight arias separated by short exclamatory lines, the scene
takes about twenty-eight minutes of performance time, and affords a stage
for a single man or male-impersonating performer to sing and dance,
enacting the fleeing Lin Chong’s physical appearance and internal
emotions: fright that he is not supposed to feel as a hero, filial longings for
his deceased mother, husbandly desires for the wife whom he has to leave
behind, and the deadly vow to revenge. To kinetically project such a Lin
Chong, performers do a series of atypically extended and strenuous solo
dances while singing, making a spectacle of maleness with acrobatic jumps
and forceful stretching of arms and legs. Unlike the stereotypical Chinese
martial hero, however, Lin Chong also sheds tears publicly, exposing his
vulnerability. This complex but atypical masculinity becomes poignantly
apparent at the scene’s fifth aria, namely the “The Geese’s Descent”
(“Yan’er luo”), the lyrics and illustrative dances/ acts of which unfold as
follows:33
Looking from afar at the road homeward, which winds further and further away. [He looks
at the distant land, and makes hand gestures that symbolizes his traveling over mountains
and hills.]
I ask on whom my mother and wife now depend. [He makes a physical gesture that a
traditional man asking questions would make.]
Here, I do not know if I would live or die. There, there is no telling whether they are alive
or dead. [He pats his own torso.]
Oh! Alarmed, I am soaked with sweat, which burns my body like scalding soup. It also
fries my heart like fire. [He raises his hands high and then pulls them down, as if the hot
liquid is pouring down on his body; he kicks high.]
Where is my own wife? [He makes the manly gesture of questioning and answering for
this and the following lines.]
My old mother, I am afraid, has passed away. I can no longer show gratitude to my
parents, who labored to raise me; I can only sadly and loudly cry! [He makes the gesture of
crying and wiping his tears.]
I lament and ask how I can quench the heroic anger in me? [He acts like he is emotionally
agitated; then he performs a spatially extensive series of energetic jumps, stretching his limbs
high and far, and ending with a martial pose.]
If the lyrics of the aria expose a crying, scared person, and if its acting-
dancing kinetically project a martial warrior, its music reveals a complex
and atypically sensitive man. Indeed, it is the performer’s yi manipulation
of pitch, melody, rhythm and tempo in the aria that sonically defines who he
is, integrating how he looks, acts, and feels. For instance, the high-pitched
fermata sung in the second part of the aria sonically substantiates the
character’s agitated emotions. The contrasts between steady and elastic
rhythms in the aria dramatize Lin Chong’s back and forth thoughts,
anchoring the character’s larger-than-life male se.
Music also tells how individual performers, cross-dressing or not,
exercise their own se and yi to construct the hero they enact on stage. A
comparison of the Lin Chong enacted by Hou Shaokui (b. 1939), a male
specialist of the martial and male role (wusheng), and Fei Yanling (b. 1947),
a male-impersonator of the same role, will illustrate. Both have earned
uncontested admiration for their performances of “Flee by Night.”34 Hou is
nevertheless noted for his resonant voice, large physique, artistic talents,
and familial tradition of performing the Lin Chong character, while Fei is
celebrated for her dramatic and kinetic projection of the wronged man as a
grand and forceful (haofang) male.35 As a matter of fact, her Lin Chong
acts and looks so martial that some casual audiences are shocked to learn
that Fei is a woman. Her critics and fans, however, know that her staged
manhood is more than a show: she also exhibits socially recognized male
attributes and mannerisms in her daily life. She perfectly matches
contemporary Chinese notions of a masculine woman (nühanzi; literally,
woman-tough/good man).
Comparing “Flee by Night” performances by Hou and Fei, one finds
telling differences. Whereas Hou’s biological and dramatic se are totally
supported/delivered by his virtuosic yi, Fei’s rendition shows nuances that
invites alternative readings. Her Lin Chong does not cry as much as Hou’s,
and her singing is sonically less resonant and powerful. As a result, her Lin
Chong strikes some critics as not fully realistic, and her grand and forceful
masculinity appear exaggerated and hollow—there are clear dissonances,
and/or gaps, in the se and yi of her performance. Not all critics and audience
would agree with such an aesthetic assessment, which might or might not
be affected by the public knowledge that Fei is a woman. Debates about
Fei’s se and yi promptly lead to negotiations of Chinese gender and sex. Is
Fei’s grand, forceful Lin Chong an authentic, fake, or queer manifestation
of Chinese masculinity?
There are no simple answers. A kunqu show can be dramatically
androgynous or queer by itself. One such show is “Zither Seductions”
(Qintiao), a favorite scene taken from Jade Hairpin by Gao Lian (1573–
1620).36 The show tells the love story between Chen Miaochang and Pan
Bizheng, two dramatic characters based on historical persons. Chen is a
young woman and war refugee who survives by becoming a reluctant nun.
Pan, a young scholar who has failed his examinations, comes to the same
nunnery, which is supervised by his aunt; he gets permission to stay there
while preparing himself for the next round of tests. Chen and Pan find one
another, fall in love, meet secretly, flirt playfully, and make love
passionately, breaking religious and social taboos. Once their affair is
exposed, Pan has to leave immediately, only to return later as a successful
scholar-official and a faithful lover who embraces Chen as his wife.
In the “Zither Seductions” scene, Pan and Chen accidentally meet in a
moonlit garden and take turns playing the seven-string zither (qin), singing
out their romantic desires and testing their partner’s true intentions. The
scene is an operatic masterpiece of erotic negotiations and gender
performance. As Pan and Chen take turns singing arias and variations
articulated by short utterances, Pan makes bold moves. Bawdily he pushes
the zither table to touch Chen vicariously; calling her indifference to him a
bluff, he taps the table with a fan, making a macho sound that demands that
she confess, or submit.
Caught off guard by Pan’s manly advances, Chen coyly acts out a
womanly protest, rebuking or encouraging his flirting with demure gestures
and seductive exclamations, such as semantically ambiguous words (xuzi)
like “oh, no” (cui), emotive words that Chinese women would say to their
lovers. Knowing that he has transgressed, Pan apologizes, begs mercy, and
leaves somewhat puzzled. As soon as Chen thinks he has left the garden,
however, she confesses her genuine affections for him. Trying to find out
what she really thinks, Pan lingers by the garden exit, hearing every word of
her soliloquy. Finally, he coughs tactfully to announce his eavesdropping.
Their romantic intentions thus exposed, they declare their love, and
privately become husband and wife.
Superficially, the scene confirms traditional Chinese gender practices
with “normative” male or female words and acts. But the soundscape of
“Zither Seductions” is sonically androgynous and conceptually queer, a
condition that cross-dressed performance highlights. Pan and Chen sing
structurally the same arias—the ten arias in the scene are composed
according to three pre-existing tunes, and divide into three sets, with,
respectively, four, two, and four variations. Kunqu arias are composed with
reference to preexisting tunes called qupai, preexisting prescriptive patterns
of musical and linguistic tones and formal structures. Chinese is a tonal
language; to be intelligible, each Chinese word in aria lyrics must be
pronounced with the proper linguistic tones. As literary and musical
compositions/variations, kunqu arias composed according to the same qupai
are largely the results of adjusting and/or developing preexisting melodies
to newly written lyrics/verbal expressions, the constituent words of which
have specific linguistic tones. Connoisseurs are supposed to recognize
superficial and underlying features of specific qupai and their aria
realizations.
Kunqu arias are composed for singers in specific role types played by
man or woman singer-actors/actresses; kunqu melodies are not created with
specific attention to timbre, range, and other differences between the
biological and trained voices of male and female singers. In terms of
timbre, register, vocal ornamentation, and other vocal qualities, kunqu arias
composed for the young male and female characters are similar. Except for
unusually high or low tones, young male and female voices in kunqu share
a basic range of about two octaves, ranging from the G below middle C to
the one an octave and a half above. To sing arias with wide ranges and high
tones, male performers of the young male role have to shift frequently
between regular and falsetto registers. Female performers singing as male
or female characters have to strive to produce the low sounds and timbres
required. Readily audible and recognizable, the performers’ singing efforts
and skills are heard and assessed as revealing indications of their se and yi.
Such singing efforts and skills take on alternative meanings with
impersonators: male impersonators do not need to shift between natural and
falsetto registers so frequently because they can use their biological and
womanly voices to sing high notes; female impersonators can readily go to
the low tones with their biological and manly voices.
Listening to the arias of “Zither Seductions” as se and yi negotiations of
gender and sex bodies, desires, and identities, one confronts a theatrical
soundscape that transgresses against the everyday sound world of China. As
Chen and Pan take turns singing, they create a continuously developing
musical-dramatic soundscape in which they negotiate their love as equal
partners and with essentially the same tunes and tones. Traditional Chinese
women are not supposed to sing like their men; even in contemporary
China, not all women can negotiate with their men as equal partners.
In other words, the erotic soundscape of “Zither Seductions” is sonically
androgynous, sociopolitically egalitarian, and potentially transgressive. The
artificiality or queerness of such a soundscape becomes tantalizing when
the male character is performed by a male impersonator. A prime example
is performance by Yue Meiti, arguably the most senior and celebrated
master performer among current male impersonators; she coaches young
man and woman performers of the young male role.37 As kunqu
connoisseurs enjoy her performances, they would ask what kind of male se
she projects with her virtuoso yi and svelte body, and how she does it like a
man. Hearing a relative lack of deep male sounds in her singing, some
would ask whether her Pan is sonically male enough, and whether the lack
creates a dissonance between her se and yi. The lack becomes poignantly
clear if one compares her performance with those by her mentor, Yu
Zhenfei (1902–1993), and other esteemed male performers, such as Wang
Shiyu (b. 1941). As preserved in audio-visual recordings,38 Yu’s singing
features characteristic shifts between his natural and falsetto registers, while
Wang’s high falsetto tones sparkle. Listening to these sounds that everyday
Chinese men do not and could not make, one confronts a sonic kunqu
reality where genders are more performed than born, and where the
hegemonic heterosexual norms and beliefs of traditional and contemporary
China are being challenged.
C R
The challenge is timely because centuries-old kunqu and its theatrical and
musical cross-dressing tradition are rapidly transforming. Presently the art
of female impersonation is struggling, while that of male impersonation is
thriving, a reversal of fortunes for the two groups of performers. And the
gendered voices of kunqu are changing substantively, a fact to which
comparison of current performance with those preserved in historical audio-
recordings made in the 1920s and 1930s attests. Kunqu performers of
contemporary China do not sing with the high, tight voices that their
predecessors cherished—and that some contemporary audiences hear as
“atypically” womanly. Such changes index not only the genre’s
transformations, but also Chinese theories and practices of gender and sex.
Judging from current performances and debates, kunqu cross-dressing
will continue to serve as a tool, a site, and a process for performing and
queering Chinese gender and sex negotiations. It might also serve as a
comparative reference for other traditions of cross-dressing. If so, kunqu
cross-dressing demands to be examined both comprehensively and in
specific contexts. Toward that goal, this chapter offers two provisos. First,
in contemporary China, theatrical and musical cross-dressing acts are
personal, artistic, and cultural-social-political shows with multivalent
meanings. While the native dyad of se and yi offers an effective tool to
probe the acts, their negotiation of particularized and personalized
meanings of gender, sex, and identity needs to be assessed in context and
case by case. Much hides under the genre’s centuries-old theory and
practice: what is intellectually and publicly said might not perfectly match
what is actually performed and privately communicated; and what was/is
true might not be applicable then/now. Facts and imaginings of kunqu
cross-dressing need to be identified, verified, and coordinated. Second, by
comparing contemporary kunqu cross-dressing with its Asian and Western
counterparts, and by noting their similarities and differences, cross-cultural
perspectives might be developed for future studies on musical cross-
dressing and queerness. Would the Chinese dyad of se and yi offer tools for
musicologists to delve into complex manifests of Western and queer
performance/negotiation of music, gender and sex, as Western theories have
prompted Chinese musicologists to examine cross-dressing beyond native
rhetoric? Is it possible that musical cross-dressing is more a yi performance
of opera and gender and less a se matter of sex?
N
1. This chapter cites mostly publications that general and English speaking readers can readily
access; most publications on kunqu cross-dressing and its relevance to gender and sex in China
are, however, written in Chinese. For a richly illustrated survey of the genre, see Li Xiao,
Chinese Kunqu Opera ( San Francisco: Long River Press, 2005); for an interpretive history, see
Joseph S. C.Lam, Kunqu, the Classical Opera of 21st Century China (forthcoming). For further
bibliographic information, see the booklists appended in the monographs and articles cited here.
To access a wealth of formal and informal writings that kunqu participants publish on Chinese
language websites, blogs, and social networks, search the internet using the Chinese and
romanized words cited in this essay.
2. For a general introduction to queer theories in the West, see Alexander Doty, Making Things
Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
For a Chinese take on queer theory, see Yang Jie, Hao’er lilun yu piping shijian [Queer theory
and cultural criticism] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanse, 2011). For two
representative works that examine Chinese theatre/screen arts with queer/homosexual
perspectives, see Chen Weizhen, Bawang bieji: tongzhi yuedu yu kua wenhua duihua [Farewell
My Concubine: Gay Reading and Cross-Cultural Dialogs] (Taiwan Jaiyi xian dalin zhen:
Nanhua University, 2004), and Siu Leung Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2003).
3. For a performance report on Two Belles of 2010, see Xing Daiqi, “Two Belles in Love,”
People’s Daily Online, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/90873/6976242.html;
posted May 7, 2010. For a scholarly review, see Sarah E. Kile, “Sensational Kunqu: The April
2010 Beijing Production of Lianxiang ban (Women in Love),” Chinoperl 30 (2011), pp. 215–
222.
4. For a review of the 2016 production, see Song Guan, “Lianxiangban reying Zhenyisi, sanda
guandian guanfu qunju chuanqi” [Hot performance of Lianxiangban at the Zhengyisi Theatre,
Beijing: Three attractions of a historical opera about women],
http://www.ifuun.com/a20165143526/, posted April, 2016.
5. For an informative and representative video introduction to the genre and its history, with
English narration, see “600 Years of Kunqu Opera,”
http://english.cntv.cn/english/special/kunqu/01/index.shtml, posted June 7, 2010.
6. For UNESCO descriptions of kunqu, see “Kun Qu Opera,” “https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/kun-
qu-oper-00004”, accessed December 12, 2012.
7. For representative scholarly studies on Chinese drama/opera as history and performance of
Chinese gender and sex, see Sophie Volpp, “The Literary Circulation of Actors in Seventeenth-
Century China,” Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 3 (2002): 949–984; David Der-wei Wang,
“Impersonating China,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 25 (2003): 133–
163; Catherine Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture,
1850–1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006); Judith Zeitlin, “‘Notes of Flesh’
and the Courtesan’s Song in Seventeenth-Century China,” in The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-
Cultural Perspectives, edited by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 75–102; Joshua Goldstein, Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the
Re-Creation of Peking Opera 1887–1937 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2007), and Andrea S. Goldman, Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing,
1770–1900 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). For a description of twentieth century
kunqu as a gender performance and discourse, see Joseph S. C. Lam, “Escorting Lady Jing
Home: A Journey of Chinese Opera, Gender, and Politics,” Yearbook for Traditional Music, 46
(2014): 114–139.
8. Public attention to Cheung’s personal life, already significant, increased after his suicide. See
“Hong Kong Actor Leslie Cheung Dies,” http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/71723/hong-
kong-actor-leslie-cheung-dies, posted April 2, 2003. To access a wealth of Chinese website data
on the actor-singer, google “Leslie Cheung/Zhang Guorong.”
9. For website information about Li Yugang, his cross-dressing performances, and links, visit
http://www.kuwo.cn/mingxing/%E6%9D%8E%E7%8E%89%E5%88%9A/mv.htm, posted July
30, 2016.
10. The English title of Chen’s 2008 movie is Forever Enthralled. Many video clips and discussions
about the movie are available on YouTube and other websites. There are many Chinese and
English books and online writings on Mei Lanfang; see, for example, the recent publication by
Min Tan, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Staged
and Displaced (New York: Palgrave, 2011).
11. On Mei’s role in twentieth-century Chinese theatre culture and gender negotiations, see Joshua
Goldstein, Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-Creation of Peking Opera 1870–1937
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007); see also Min Tan, “Male
Dan: The Paradox of Sex, Acting, and Perception of Female Impersonation in Traditional
Chinese Theatre,” Asian Theatre Journal 17, no. 1 (2000): 78–97.
12. Representative performers of these traditions include, for example, ladyboys (katoeys) of
Thailand, the bissu of the Bugis people in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and female impersonators in
different genres of regional Indian theatres.
13. Ryoko M. Nakamura, “Bando Tamasaburo Revives Tradition of Men Playing Women in China.”
Japan Times, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ft20090313a1.html; posted March 13, 2009.
14. For a formal announcement of the show and its selection of performers by the National Centre
for the Performing Arts, Beijing, China, see “Liubainian kunqu shouci qianshou Hongloumeng”
[Six hundred years old kunqu performs Dream of Red Mansion with a collaborative team],
http://www.chncpa.org/NewsSearchAct/zxxqAct.jspx?id=86226&yc_zx=yczx, posted March
28, 2011.
15. The standard translation of the drama is Cyril Birch, trans., The Peony Pavilion/Mudanting
(Boston: Cheng & Tsui Company, 1994). For an insightful analysis of the drama and its
protagonists, see Tina Lu, Persons, Roles, and Minds: Identity in Peony Pavilion and Peach
Blossom Fan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). For a performance history of Peony
Pavilion, see Catherine C. Swatek, Peony Pavilion Onstage: Four Centuries in the Career of a
Chinese Drama (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002).
16. Two representative monographs on late Ming eroticism are Cuncun Wu, Homoerotic
Sensibilities in Late Imperial China (New York: Routledge, 2004), and Giovanni Vitiello, The
Libertine’s Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2011). For a discussion on music and eroticism in late Ming China, see Joseph
S. C. Lam, “Reading Music and Eroticism in Late Ming Texts,” Nannü 12 (2010): 215–254.
The standard translation for the first work is David Roy, Plum in the Golden Vase or Chin P’ing
17.
Mei, vols. 1–3 (Princeton: Princeton University, 1997–2006). There is no published English
translation for the second work, a modern edition of which is: Jingjiang zuizhu jushi, editor,
Longyang yishi (Taibei: Shuangdi guoji chuban, 1996).
18. For a listing of Qing edicts banning female entertainers, see Wang Liqi, compiler,
YuanMingQing sandai jinhui xiaoshuo xiqu shiliao (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1981), 18–86.
19. See Lindy Li Mark, “Kunju and Theatre in the Transvestite Novel Pinhua baojin,” Chinoperl
Papers 15 (1990): 95–114. See also Keith MacMahon, “Sublime Love and the Ethics of
Equality in a Homoerotic Novel of the Nineteenth Century: Precious Mirror of Boy Actresses,”
Nannü 4, no. 1 (2002): 79–109.
20. For a representative survey of historical changes in Chinese gender practices and theories from
the late Qing to late-twentieth-century China, see Susan Brownell and Jeffery N. Wasserstrom,
eds., Chinese Femininities Chinese Masculinities: A Reader (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2002).
21. For an autobiographical account of her male impersonating artistry, see Yue Meiti, Jinsheng
jinshi: Yue Meiti Kunqu Wushinian (Beijing: Wenhuayishu chubanshe, 2008). For Shi’s
biographic details, see http://baike.baidu.com/view/1398267.htm.
22. See “Yam Kim-fai,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam:Kim-fai, posted. For a translation and
introduction to Ren Jianhui’s most famous and important work, see Bell Yung, The Flower
Princess: A Cantonese Opera (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2010). There are no
informative articles in English on Fan Ruijuan, but a number of video clips of her performances
are available on YouTube and Chinese websites.
23. The dyad regularly appears as “seyi shuangquan,” an aphorism that historical and contemporary
authors regularly use to praise entertainers. For an insightful discussion of the dyad, see Siu
Leung Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera, 173–189.
24. Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine and Leslie Cheung’s performance as the female
impersonator have generated many website postings on the differences and blending of the
female (ci) and the male (xiong). To access the postings, search the internet using the title of the
movie and Leslie Cheung/Zhang Guorong.
25. On music/sound as performance of gender, see Zoe C. Sherinian, “K.D. Lang and Gender
Performance,” in Ellen Koskoff, ed., The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 3, The
United States and Canada (New York: Garland Publishing, 2001): 107–110. See also Wayne
Koestenbaum, The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (New
York: Poseidon Press, 1993), in particular, pp. 154–175.
26. See Jill Dolan, Theatre and Sexuality (New York: Palgrave, 2010), in particular, pp. 3–5 and 13–
19; see also Judith Lynne Hanna, Dance, Sex, and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance,
Defiance, and Desire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
27. This analysis of “Yearning” is based on a representative performance by Madame Liang Guyin,
accessible at http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQwNzU5NDEy.html, posted 2010, accessed
December 31, 2012. See also A. C. Scott, Traditional Chinese Plays, vol, 2, Longing for Worldly
Pleasures/Ssu Fan; Fifteen String of Cash/Shih Wu Kuan, (Madison: University of Wisconsin,
1969): 14–39; Andrea Goldman, “The Nun Who Wouldn’t Be: Representations of Female
Desire in Two Performance Genres of Si Fan,” Late Imperial China 22, no. 1 (2001): 71–138,
and Joseph S. C. Lam, “Musical Seductresses, Chauvinistic Men, and Their Erotic Kunqu
Discourse,” in Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature: Models, Genres,
Subversions and Traditions edited by Mark Stevenson and Wu Cuncun (Leiden/Boston: Brill,
2017): 81–104.
28. The lyric translation is derived from Bin Wang, trans., Laughter and Tears: Translation of
Selected Kunqu Drama (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2009): 225–227. In the video clip
cited in note 27, the aria starts at 6’32” and lasts until 14’16.”
29. A video clip of Liu Zheng’s cross-dressed performance is accessible at:
http://tieba.baidu.com/p/943735862, posted March 27, 2010, accessed December 31, 2012.
Zhou Xianggeng’s performance of “Yearning” is accessible at:
www.tudou.com/.../3JDEXxE5Zck/-China, accessed October 11, 2012.
30. For an audio-visual recording of a performance of “Yearning” by Shen Shihua, see “Sifan Shen
shihua,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm7Lq5fi_zo, posted October 26, 2012, accessed
July 28, 2016. Shen Guofang performed “Yearning” on June 3, 2016.
31. In May 2018, I attended in Wujiang, Jiangsu Province, China, a recital performance of “Zither
Seductions” sung by a female impersonator and a male impersonator. The performers did not
put on any role-specific costumes or facial-makeup, but wore formal Chinese garments
appropriate to the performance occasion and to their physical sex. They sang with musical
“dissonances” discernible only to kunqu connoisseurs. Most of the audience, who were
obviously no connoisseurs, appeared to have been “shocked” by the dissonant performance;
they neither sat quietly to listen to the music sung, nor refrained from making small talks and
bodily movements that revealed their being artistically and sexually challenged. As a kunqu
scholar-fan, I found the performance musically expressive and intellectually—and even
erotically—stimulating. After the performance, I asked the female impersonator, a Taiwanese
man in his early forties, how and why he chose to sing as a woman. His answer was
straightforward: he did not choose to become a musical female impersonator; in fact, he started
his kunqu career learning to sing in the old-male role; his mentor, nevertheless, wanted him to
sing in the young female voice; he learned well and now professionally sings as a “flower lady.”
32. In addition to kunqu, “Flee by Night” has been staged in a number of regional Chinese operas,
movies, and TV shows, each a distinctive imagining of the character and Chinese masculinities.
For further discussions of “Flee by Night,” see Joseph S. C. Lam, “Impulsive Scholars and
Sentimental Heroes,” in Gender in Chinese Music, ed. Rachel Harris, Rowan Pease, and Shzr Er
Tan (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013), in particular, pp. 100–103.
33. The version analyzed here is by Hou Shaokui, accessible at
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQ1OTY2NTI=.html; posted 2008, accessed October 15,
2012. The aria analyzed here lasts from 23’53” through 25’50.”
34. For Hou’s biography, see Hou Shaokui and Hu Mingming, Dawusheng: Hou Shaokui kunqu
wushinian (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006). This publication also includes detailed
descriptions of the music and acting for “Flee by Night” (pp. 157–192).
35. For an audio-visual recording of Fei’s performance, see “Lin Chong Ye Ben Fei Yanling,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shUSePSviN0, posted September 21, 2012, accessed July
26, 2016.
36. For an anthology of articles introducing the drama as it was produced in 2009, see Bai
Xianyong, ed., Sedan baotian yuzanji (Taibei: Tianxia yuanjian, 2009).
37. An audio-video recording of Yue performance is available at
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzk5MDk5OTY=.html, posted March 24, 2009.
38. An audio-visual recording of Yu’s performance of “Zither Seductions” is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAqgtn4G4g, posted November 16, 2008.
R
Birch, Cyril, trans. The Peony Pavilion/Mudanting. Boston: Cheng & Tsui Company, 1994.
Brownell, Susan, and Jeffery N. Wasserstrom, eds. Chinese Femininities Chinese Masculinities: A
Reader. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002.
Chen Weizhen. Bawang bieji: tongzhi yuedu yu kua wenhua duihua [Farewell My Concubine: Gay
Reading and Cross-Cultural Dialogues]. Taiwan Jaiyi xian dalin zhen: Nanhua University, 2004.
Dolan, Jill. Theatre and Sexuality. New York: Palgrave, 2010.
Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Goldman, Andrea S. Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770–1900. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2012.
Goldman, Andrea. “The Nun Who Wouldn’t Be: Representations of Female Desire in Two
Performance Genres of Si Fan.” Late Imperial China 22, no. 1 (2001): 71–138.
Goldstein, Joshua. Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Re-Creation of Peking Opera 1887–
1937. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007.
Hanna, Judith Lynne. Dance, Sex, and Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance, and Desire.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Jingjiang zuizhu jushi ed., Longyang yishi (Memories of Male Sex Workers). Taibei: Shuangdi guoji
chuban, 1996.
Kile, Sarah E. “Sensational Kunqu: The April 2010 Beijing Production of Lianxiang ban (Women in
Love).” Performance Review in CHINOPERL Papers (Chinese Oral and Performing Literatures
Papers) 30 (December 2011): 215–222.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire. New
York: Poseidon Press, 1993.
Lam, Joseph S. C. “Reading Music and Eroticism in Late Ming Texts.” Nannü 12 (2010): 215–254.
Lam, Joseph S. C. “Impulsive Scholars and Sentimental Heroes.” In Gender in Chinese Music, edited
by Rachel Harris, Rowan Pease, and Shzr Er Tan, and Shzr Tan, 86–106. Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press, 2013.
Lam, Joseph S.C. “Escorting Lady Jing Home: A Journey of Chinese Opera, Gender, and Politics.”
Yearbook for Traditional Music, 46 (2014): 114–139.
Lam, Joseph S. C. “Musical Seductresses, Chauvinistic Men, and Their Erotic Kunqu Discourse.” In
Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature: Models, Gneres, Subversions and Traditions,
edited by Mark Stevenson and Wu Cuncun, 81–104. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017.
Lam, Joseph S. C. Kunqu, the Classical Opera of Twenty-first Century China, forthcoming.
Li, Siu Leung. Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003.
Li Xiao. Chinese Kunqu Opera. San Francisco: Long River Press, 2005.
MacMahon, Keith. “Sublime Love and the Ethics of Equality in a Homoerotic Novel of the
Nineteenth Century: Precious Mirror of Boy Actresses.” Nannü 4, no. 1 (2002): 79–109.
Mark, Lindy Li. “Kunju and Theatre in the Transvestite Novel Pinhua baojin,” Chinoperl Papers 15
(1990): 95–114.
Roy, David. Plum in the Golden Vase or Chin P’ing Mei, vols. 1–3. Princeton: Princeton University,
1997–2006.
Scott, A. C. Traditional Chinese Plays, vol. 2, Longing for Worldly Pleasures/Ssu Fan; Fifteen String
of Cash/Shih Wu Kuan. Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 1969.
Sherinian, Zoe C. “K.D. Lang and Gender Performance.” In The Garland Encyclopedia of World
Music, vol. 3, The United States and Canada, edited by Ellen Koskoff, 107–110. New York:
Garland Publishing, 2001.
Swatek, Catherine C. Peony Pavilion Onstage: Four Centuries in the Career of a Chinese Drama.
Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002.
Tan, Min Tan. Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Staged
and Displaced. New York: Palgrave, 2011.
Tan, Min. “Male Dan: The Paradox of Sex, Acting, and Perception of Female Impersonation in
Traditional Chinese Theatre.” Asian Theatre Journal 17, no. 1 (2000): 78–97.
Vitiello, Giovanni. The Libertine’s Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Volpp, Sophie. “The Literary Circulation of Actors in Seventeenth-Century China.” Journal of Asian
Studies, 61, no. 3 (2002): 949–984.
Wang, Bin, trans. Laughter and Tears: Translation of Selected Kunqu Drama. Beijing: Foreign
Languages Press, 2009.
Wang, David Der-wei. “Impersonating China.” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews
(CLEAR) 25 (2003): 133–163.
Wang Liqi, compiler. YuanMingQing sandai jinhui xiaoshuo xiqu shiliao. Shanghai: Guji chubanshe,
1981.
Wu, Cuncun. Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Yang Jie, Hao’er lilun yu piping shijian [Queer theory and cultural criticism]. Beijing: Zhongguo
shehui kexue chubanse, 2011.
Yeh, Catherine. Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.
Yue Meiti. Jinsheng jinshi: Yue Meiti Kunqu Wushinian. Beijing: Wenhuayishu chubanshe, 2008.
Zeitlin, Judith. “‘Notes of Flesh’ and the Courtesan’s Song in Seventeenth-Century China.” In The
Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon,
75–102. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
CHAPTER 30
N O N - O R D I N A RY G E N D E R A N D
SEXUALITY IN INDONESIAN
PERFORMANCE
HE NRY S P I L L E R
There is often only a fine line between ritual and theater. In most
Indonesian contexts, theater almost always involves a seamless melding of
music, poetry, and dance. Many popular forms of entertainment in
Indonesia that involve displays of non-ordinary genders and sexualities
have clear roots in ritual activities. While some have shed almost all
vestiges of their ritual roots, others continue to function as both ritual and
theater.
Topeng Cirebon
One of Java’s richest dance traditions—topeng from the north-coast region
of Cirebon—still exhibits elements of both ritual and entertainment. A
variety of village-specific variants in the area share many common features:
a single male or female performer, called a “dalang topeng,” dominates an
all-day performance, usually as part of a celebration of a life-cycle
ceremony or a community ritual, in which he or she dances four or five
masked characters (depending on the village) to the accompaniment of a
gamelan ensemble.56 Other performers, including dance protégés making
their debuts and buffoons amusing the crowd, give the solo dancer
occasional breaks, as do the various sponsors and hosts, who present the
long-winded speeches that characterize many events in Indonesia. But it is
the dalang topeng’s performance that is the focus of the occasion.
Historically, a dalang topeng was much more than a performer, fulfilling
roles as a teacher, a wise person, and a shaman.57 Male and female dalang
topeng wear the same costume and present the same sequence of characters,
each with a different mask and a different movement vocabulary.58 Some of
the characters are clearly masculine, some feminine, and some
androgynous. The gender symbolism goes beyond the sex of the performer.
The mask of the most refined character (Panji) for example, is white, a
color associated with semen. The final character (Klana or Rahwana) wears
a red mask, denoting menstrual blood, and performs the coarsest and most
passionate dance.59
These gendered associations—white/refined/male/semen and
red/coarse/female/menses—point to a gender ideology that is predicated on
an understanding of male-female complementarity, in which ideal
masculinity is refined and ideal femininity is emotional.60 However, the fact
that a single performer, who can be either male or female, performs all the
dances drives home the dualist notion that masculine and feminine energies
dwell inside everybody, regardless of sex, and perhaps sends the message
that a balance between them is desirable. The insertion of an androgynous
character (Rumyang) into the middle (or end) of the performance, whose
pink mask blends Panji’s white and Klana’s red, strengthens this
understanding.
The relationship of the different character dances to their accompanying
music amplifies topeng’s gender ideology. As in most gamelan music, a
repeating time cycle, demarcated by interlocking patterns of strokes on
gong-type instruments with different timbre, is topeng music’s basic
organizing principle. A stroke on the largest hanging gong marks the end of
the most important cycles. As a general principle, dance choreographies
coordinate their cadences with these gong strokes. Each of the topeng
characters negotiates these cycles in a way that is consistent with its gender
identity.
The Panji character can actually alter the very long musical cycles of the
pieces that accompany his dance—if the dalang performs particular
movements associated with a different part of the cycle, then the musicians
must follow by deleting whole sections of the tune. One interpretation: the
masculine Panji is so powerful that he can alter the cosmic order. In
contrast, Klana exerts very little control over the cycles that govern him nor
over their inexorable acceleration; the dancer can only react to the music’s
unrelenting acceleration, appearing to become more and more out of
control.
Wayang
Gender ambiguity abounds in wayang (Javanese theatrical forms based
primarily on the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata) as well.
Perhaps one of the most compelling illustrations of van der Kroef’s theory
of imposition (in which traces of an older world view persist visibly in
newer forms) is the clown-servant Semar, who appears in wayang kulit
(shadow puppet theater) in central Java and Cirebon, as well as in
Sundanese wayang golek (doll puppet theater) in West Java. Semar is quite
literally an old Javanese god, who, displaced by the deities who populate
the Hindu Ramayana and Mahabharata stories, is now their humble
servant.61 Javanese consider his physical appearance, with pendulous
breasts and round rear end, to be hermaphroditic, hearkening to the kinds of
dualist cosmologies served by bissu and basir on neighboring islands.62
The character Srikandhi, male in the Indian version of the Mahabharata,
appears in Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese wayang as a woman—a
beautiful wife to the hero Arjuna, but also an aggressive warrior who takes
the form of a man to engage in battle.63 Of course, in wayang kulit and
wayang golek, inanimate objects—puppets—represent the gender-
ambiguous characters. A single individual, called a “dhalang” (puppet
master, also spelled “dalang”), who is almost always a man, has the
responsibility to make the puppets come alive. To do so, he must understand
the motivations and embody the behaviors (voices, speech patterns, and
gestures) of a variety of gender and sexuality subject positions.64
Javanese Court Dance
In theatrical dance performances called wayang wong (“wong” is a
Javanese word for “person”), actual people portray the same characters that
appear as puppets in wayang kulit and wayang golek. Such theatrical
productions have been among the core repertories of the royal courts of
Central Java for centuries, indeed, one of the primary tools for establishing
the legitimacy to rule, especially in the royal court Kraton Ngayogyakarta
Hadiningrat.65 In Yogyakarta, it was the convention to have all-male casts
(composed mostly of members of the extended royal family), with all the
female roles taken by men dressed as female characters and affecting
feminine mannerisms. It appears that the primary motivation for the all-
male casts was to avoid an improper contact between the genders in the
formal palace setting. Artists in the Mangkunegaran palace in Solo
innovated a narrative performance genre called “langendriyan,” which
featured all-female casts who portrayed male and female roles through
costume, dialogue, song, and movement.
Javanese dancers’ physical builds determine the kinds of characters they
play.66 Soedarsono states, for example, that the “aesthetic impression of
refined masculinity, the ideal for a Javanese hero,” is best danced by a
performer “of medium height…, rather thin, and with delicate features.”67
Note that Soedarsono does not specify the dancer’s sex, only their body
type. In contemporary Javanese classical dance, female dancers who match
this ideal frequently portray refined male characters. The flexibility of
which sex plays which gender on stage appears to be a reflection, once
again, of a deep-seated dualism in Javanese cosmology that decouples the
concepts of masculine and feminine, in some contexts, from sexed bodies.
At the same time, in modern Java, the casting of female dancers in refined
male roles reflects a gradual feminization of the image of dancers. It also
evinces a change in masculine ideals from the slight, genteel, and spiritually
powerful halus (“refined”) man of Javanese court culture to the more
athletic, physically powerful masculinities of contemporary Indonesian
culture, as exemplified by Indonesia’s first two presidents, Sukarno and
Soeharto.
East Java
Indeed, the legacies of Indonesia’s first two modern presidents and their
administrations have had far-reaching effects on contemporary gender
ideologies in Indonesia. In East Java, there are a variety of dances that
portray masculine and feminine character types that may be performed by
both men and women in genres called “ngremo,” “beskalan,” and “topeng”
(masked dance). Such dances typically serve as opening acts for other kinds
of performances.68 In an examination of these dances, Christina Sunardi
maps changes in concepts of masculine and feminine and their mappings to
male and female bodies, in East Javanese dance. She identifies differences
over three generations, which correspond roughly to the three
postindependence governments of Indonesia: the Sukarno era of “guided
democracy” (1945–1965), the Soeharto “New Order” government (1965–
1998), and the post-Soeharto reformasi (“reformation”) period (1998-
present).
In preindependence Indonesia, cross-dressing dancers are reputed to
have continued their cross-dressing habits off-stage. Under Sukarno,
government ideology promoted rigid ideas of masculinity and femininity,
possibly influenced by both Western and Islamic notions of gender roles,
and dancers modified their approach to performance accordingly: male
dancers enhanced the realism of their cross-dressed performances with
elaborate makeup, padded bodysuits, and plastic masks that smoothed the
appearance of their skin, to conform to the refined and polite ideals of Old
Order feminine beauty, while living as normative men in real life to
conform to masculine ideals. In post-Soeharto Indonesia, in which space for
multiple gender and sexuality subject positions has opened up, Sunardi’s
teachers criticized younger performers’ renditions, which exhibited more
obvious signs of each dancer’s own sex. The younger women’s
performances of ngremo tayub, a male-character dance, were too coquettish
and feminine, they said, and they faulted younger men for presenting
ngremo putri (a female-character dance) with rhythmic/gestural accents that
were too sharp, and thus too masculine.69 Sunardi concludes that each
generation has incorporated the normative gender ideologies promulgated
by the regime in power into their cross-gender performances, and that the
details and significance of gender in performance change with the times.
Bali
Modern Balinese discourses about gender characterization in performing
dances recognize three basic categories: male, bebancihan (androgynous),
and female.70 Since the 1940s, Balinese choreographers have created cross-
gendered dances for men portraying women.71 Catherine Diamond
documents a shift in Bali from the performance of female roles by men
dressed as women to modern performances in which women often assume
male roles.72 In more recent decades, choreographers have created a variety
of dances portraying male characters intended for performance by female
dancers. Among the most popular of these is “Teruna Jaya” (“Victorious
Youth”), choreographed in the 1950s, which draws inspiration from a young
male in the throes of puberty but is performed by a female dancer. Another
popular bebancihan dance, “Kebyar Duduk,” is a dramatic solo performed
by both male and female dancers.
Over the past several decades, inspired by government policies of
women’s emansipasi (emancipation) and modernist movements promoting
the empowerment of women, female Balinese performers have transgressed
long-standing gender boundaries to perform a variety of formerly all-male
music genres, including gong kebyar, arja, and beleganjur, as well.73
Although all-women musical groups, often called gamelan ibu-ibu (“ladies’
gamelan”), have been popular in many parts of Java since the 1950s, for the
most part such groups pursued music as a social activity and often spent
more effort on their appearance than on the sophistication of their musical
performance.74 As a result, they did little to challenge hegemonic notions of
masculinity.
Balinese girls’ and women’s groups, however, in recent years have
attained levels of musicianship that confront traditional ideas about
masculinity and femininity. According to Sonja Downing, modern girls and
women are forging a new kind of gender identity in pursuing high levels of
performance and “take pride in being strong and solid female gamelan
players in style and musicality, not flirtatious and tempestuous androgynes
as depicted in bebancihan dances.”75 These Balinese developments invite a
couple of questions: What does it mean when women performers assume
the qualities hitherto associated with hegemonic masculinity? Do such
activities challenge the gender status quo by empowering women to equal
status, or reify patriarchal notions of masculine and feminine by
overvaluing so-called masculine characteristics? The answer is a work in
progress in modern Indonesia.
West Java
Some contemporary Sundanese76 choreographers probe such questions by
challenging their audiences to confront their gendered assumptions about
dance. In my 2010 book, Erotic Triangles, I described the lukewarm
reception received by a dance that choreographed men (who are
conventionally admired for their individuality and freedom of choice in
dance gestures) to dance in unison (which is valued in group female dances;
e.g., “Tari Baksa”).77 I concluded that such experiments might eventually
foster “significant changes,” despite the initial reception.78 I baldly asserted
in 2010 that “a female kendang [drum] player would wreak serious havoc”
on Sundanese gender ideology,79 yet in the intervening years, I have seen
quite a few all-female versions of a choreographed dance in which the
participants play kendang—often virtuosically—called “rampak kendang.”
The very existence of such works suggests that the landscape of gender
ideology is remarkably fluid in modern Indonesia, and that performing arts
is an important arena for imagining and normalizing changing norms.
M G S
P
T MAXX music festival that took place in Beijing on May 1, 2012, felt
even more regulated than other music festivals in the capital city, such as
the Strawberry Festival. There were multiple mills barriers surrounding the
stage, where we and other audience stood, and the gongan (police) presence
was palpable. Anthony Wong was the closing act of the day. When the
Hong Kong–based pop star entered the stage, rainbow flags, large and
small, here and there, were hoisted, waving and celebrating a sense of
queerness in the Chinese capital (Figure 31.1).1 The performance was just a
few days after Anthony Wong’s coming out, also on stage, in Hong Kong.
Whereas lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities
and practices have been increasingly active in Beijing for the past decade,
they remain by and large invisible to the public eye. Gay and lesbian film
festivals are held discreetly and sometimes are disrupted, while a number of
bars and discos have rapidly opened, closed, or changed location to
survive.2 Destination, a gay club north of the Workers’ Stadium, partied to
celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2015, suggesting a generally more relaxed
atmosphere. Nevertheless, rainbow flags in a public space, at an event not
linked to queer culture, with all the police officers around—that moment in
2012 felt as if mainland China had entered a new phase. It is indicative of
the queer possibilities of popular music. And it is also striking that it takes a
pop singer from another locality, Hong Kong, to facilitate that queer
expression in public space. Moreover, Hong Kong is not and has never been
the queer center of East Asia. In the Sinophone world, Taipei has been
considered the capital of queer politics and pink money. Hong Kong, a
British colony for more than 150 years, is haunted by a disturbing mixture
of Victorian and Confucian values that has for a long time limited sexual
expression.
FIGURE 31.1 Rainbow flags at the MAXX music festival, Beijing.
(Photo by Jeroen de Kloet)
Hong Kong occupies a special place in the recent history of China. Once
part of the British Empire, Hong Kong lives on with a legacy of morality
and laws deeply influenced by Victorian values that, in their validation of
family, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, sit comfortably with hegemonic
understandings of Confucian values. The postcolonial condition of Hong
Kong is highly ambivalent. Not only does Hong Kong lack a strong
precolonial history—it was a small fishing village rather than a city—its
“return” to the mainland was and is still severely contested. Every year on
July 1, to commemorate the handover that took place in 1997, thousands of
people go to the streets to join a march for democracy. The massive and
enduring occupation of strategic downtown areas in 2014, known as the
Umbrella Movement, was another example of Hong Kong’s discontent with
its political integration with the mainland. Hong Kong seems to be caught
forever between colonizers.6 Rather than branding it as the place where East
meets West, as the local authorities do,7 it makes more sense to read it as a
place that is always already in-between, impure and incomplete—a place
where neither East nor West suffice, where both constructs are characterized
by a lack rather than substance. In the wake of the handover, Hong Kong
eagerly started to reinvent itself. In the words of Abbas, Hong Kong culture
“appeared at the moment when something was disappearing: [it was] a case
of love at last sight, a culture of disappearance.”8 Popular culture, including
music, provided one crucial site for the construction of a Hong Kong
identity that seemed to be on the verge of disappearance.
For most of the time during British rule, male homosexual acts were
illegal in Hong Kong, subject to the maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
In 1980, the police inspector John MacLennan was found dead under
suspicious circumstances in his apartment after charges of gross indecency.
The controversial incident and an ensuing official inquiry stirred up heated
debate in Hong Kong, leading to the subsequent decriminalization of sexual
acts between men in 1991.9 With the forthcoming return of Hong Kong to
Chinese sovereignty, the British colonizers demonstrated a slow but
perceptible change of attitude and policies, arguing for more freedom,
democracy, and individual (including sexual) rights. Such a turn provoked
skepticism and downright criticism, attributing the outgoing
administration’s change to geopolitical agendas (namely, imposing
“Western” notions of democracy and human rights upon Chinese territory),
rather than genuine concerns. Regardless of the colonizers’ intentions, the
result was that it allowed more legal, discursive, and performative space for
sexual rights. The years surrounding the handover—the 1990s—were also
the years when processes of globalization went into full swing, allowing a
global proliferation of discourse on LGBT rights.
The reappearance of Hong Kong culture hence came with a surfacing of
sexual cultures that had remained until then largely hidden and censored.
One key moment in this proliferation of emerging sexual cultures in Hong
Kong was the organization of a recurring gay and lesbian film festival, the
first of its kind in the Sinophone world, beginning in 1989. Remarkably,
this festival appropriated an important communist term, “tongzhi” (meaning
“comrade”), as a label for gay and lesbian. The fact that it takes a film
festival to claim a new category attests to the importance of cultural
productions for the negotiation of sexuality.
Since then, the term “tongzhi” has circulated widely among Chinese-
speaking communities with reference to gay and lesbian people and
cultures. Some authors have pointed at a friction between these labels,
arguing that tongzhi stands for a Chinese articulation of “homosexuality”
that is decidedly different from the Anglophone term “gay.” One important
advocate of the assumed virtues of tongzhi is Chou Wah-shan. In two book-
length treatises, On Tongzhi and Postcolonial Tongzhi, Chou argues that the
Chinese attitude toward sexuality, including same-sex acts, has always been
tolerant, nonstigmatized, and nonstigmatizing.10 He mobilizes essentialist
notions of Chinese culture to make his point, claiming that so long as
family obligations (including reproduction) are fulfilled, sexual enjoyments
of all kinds are permitted in traditional Chinese culture. For Chou, Chinese
culture is “a crystallization of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, all of
which do not consider sex shameful, nor is homosexuality treated as a
perverted, sinful act.”11 He consequently argues for a model that is
nonconfrontational, nonverbal, and nonsex-oriented, thrusting forward
tongzhi as a rejection of Western nomenclature and his model as a
postcolonial one transcending the categories imposed upon China by the
West. In other words, calling oneself tongzhi is a political act that radically
reroutes homosexual practices and identifications from the gender and the
sexual—as prescribed by dominant Western forms of gay politics—to the
more tolerant, if only discreet, Chinese culture of sexual enjoyment and
beyond. Being tongzhi underlines solidarity, community, and politics of a
certain kind—a comrade of an unannounced revolution. According to
Chou’s theorization, “‘tongzhi’ is not defined by the gender of one’s object
of sexual desire. It represents the political choice of one’s (sexual)
identity.”12
The problems with such an argument are manifold; not the least of these
is the reification of a monolithic reading of Chinese culture and the
potential conservative implications. The nonconfrontational, nonverbal, and
nonsex-oriented model that Chou proposes corresponds, for instance, to a
conservative preference for harmony, for the status quo, which continues to
privilege certain classes. After all, those who were allowed to enjoy their
sexual freedom so long as they did not disturb the familial, patriarchal
system were men with good backgrounds. Nevertheless, Chou’s gesturing
toward the possibility of an articulation of sexuality that does not rely on
fixed identity positions like “gay” or “lesbian,” and one that integrates local
traditions into globalized narratives, remains valuable. We witness here a
friction between the postcolonial desire to resist the disciplinary hegemonic
workings of labels that have a specific history in the West, thus pointing at
the need to provincialize notions like “gay,” “homosexual,” and “queer,”
and the critical urgency to resist any form of cultural essentialism, as can be
traced in a call for indigenous theory with culturally specific labels. This
requires walking on a conceptual tightrope. Others, including Chris Berry,
Lucetta Kam, Travis Kong, Helen Hok-sze Leung, Song Hwee Lim, Fran
Martin, and Audrey Yue, have pursued that postcolonial direction, but in
more critical and promising ways,13 as we will show later when reflecting
upon the work of Leung.
Before we move on to discuss Leung’s mobilization of another term, we
want to underline the circulation and mutation of tongzhi in the Sinophone
world, the amplification of its meanings and associations that often
contradict and contest Chou’s conceptualization. Indeed, the popularity of
the term tongzhi has helped to shape the gay community in the Sinophone
world over the 1990s and 2000s. It provides a tongue-in-cheek twist to
communist jargon, making fun of a political system that has for a long time
denied the existence of homosexuality. However, while the term continues
to offer an indigenous, ambivalent alternative to homosexual people, it has
also paradoxically lent itself as a postcolonial label to the pursuit of an
LGBT identity politics not unlike its counterpart under the Western model.
Leung observes how the notion of ku’er (literally “cool child”)
proliferated in Taiwan in the 1990s. She argues that “[k]u’er was
conceptualized in explicit contrast to tongzhi: while the former
approximates the theoretical and deconstructive stance of ‘queer,’ the latter
is associated with LGBT identity politics.”14 Leung argues against the
universality and linear progression of gay and lesbian liberation that she
aptly labels “the global gay narrative.”15 To steer away from that narrative,
she proposes to “look for stories half-heard and dimly remembered that
circulate in the nooks and crannies of daily life.”16 Postcolonial Hong
Kong, to Leung, is a city whose story is difficult to tell, a city whose claims
for sovereignty are difficult to make; it is a city that borders on the
unrepresentable while being on the verge of disappearance. This, in her
view, is what makes it so suitable for queer stories, as these are the stories
that cannot quite get told. For her, “it is perhaps no coincidence that some
of the most creative tales about the postcolonial city, and the most visionary
stories of survival under its crisis-ridden milieu, are told through a queer
lens.”17
A queer lens hints at the importance of queer cinema, which has
received considerable scholarly attention18—but what about queer sounds?
Few scholars have probed the connection between sexuality and Chinese
popular music. This is striking, as numerous pop stars in the Sinophone
world, among them Faye Wong, Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, and Anthony
Wong, have transgressed gendered and sexual boundaries for decades. They
did so not in an open and loud voice; on the contrary, like the queer
undercurrents that Leung claims to be emblematic for Hong Kong cinema,
their voices whisper, giving an almost inaudible twist to the
heteronormative flows and sounds of the city.
De Kloet shows in his work on Chinese popular music how Anthony
Wong, in his music, lyrics, and imagery, plays a multivocal game with
gender and sexuality.19 For instance, for one of his album cover images,
Wong, striking a reptilian, narcissistic pose, adorned his face and his hands,
the only exposed and readily gendered parts of his body, with thousands of
crystal beads (Figure 31.2). During the concert that became the occasion for
his coming out, Wong wore heavy mascara, a thick moustache, a phallic
hat, and an outfit with protruding flashlights circling and flickering at
himself, a comment on celebrity and paparazzi culture (Figure 31.3). On the
huge screen behind him played a video of Wong acting as a man and a
woman flirting with, chasing, and finally embracing each other. His campy
outfits, the ambivalent and at times sexually provocative lyrics, his
audacious stage performances, and the electronic soundscape all evoke
sexual ambiguity and fluidity. This can be read not so much as a hidden
claim on identity, but rather as a resistance to surrendering to fixed identity
categories.
Anthony Wong’s choice not to come out, nor to align himself to labels
such as tongzhi or ku’er until 2012 can be read as an act to remain
deliberately ambivalent, as a queer escape route out of fixed identity
politics. In Daniel Williford’s words, Wong can be read as practicing a
politics of invisibility, given that “the visible, sayable, and doable, are the
possible aesthetic enunciations that circulate in a social world which is
already the realm of the political, and every aesthetic gesture is either
allowed or must insist upon its legibility.”20 Hence, a politics of the
invisible, of the undercurrents, may constitute a stronger vantage point for
queer cultures, particularly in the postcolonial context of Hong Kong.
Wong’s choice to remain silent, of course, can also be read as a marketing
choice, driven by a desire not to alienate Wong’s female fan base and
possibly lose money-making opportunities.
FIGURE 31.2 Anthony Wong posing for one of his album cover photos.
(Courtesy of Wing Shya)
FIGURE 31.3 Anthony Wong in his “coming out” concert.
(Courtesy of Dan Ho)
In many ways, what Wong did was not unlike the ambivalence that some
Western performers cultivated; Neil Tennant, Michael Stipe, Boy George,
and George Michael, for instance, all evaded questions about their sexual
identity until, starting in the mid-1990s, they explicitly came out as gay or
queer, invariably after their music careers had reached their peaks. Some
celebrities of the younger generation still go through a period of unclarity
before coming out, such as Mika and Sean Hayes. What differentiates
Wong’s performance and politics from his Western counterparts, however,
is precisely the distinctly local context—the postcolonial underpinnings of
the reluctance or refusal to do the same as the West, which is always there.
And his coming out in 2012 was also embedded in another local condition
—that of paparazzi culture.
We will discuss that point later in this chapter. For now, it suffices to
note that Anthony Wong’s music resonates clearly with a queer aesthetics,
whether in terms of lyrical content or musical style—for instance, in one of
his songs, “How Great Thou Art,” Anthony Wong twisted the Christian
hymn of the same title into a critique of Chinese patriarchy, releasing a
version in a remix of tango and house styles subtitled “Tango in My
Father’s House.” And the duo Tat Ming Pair, to which he belonged prior to
his solo career, has often been compared to the Pet Shop Boys, both for
their common roots in electronic music and their penchant for satirical
commentaries on heteronormative society and culture. Nevertheless,
Wong’s opaque identity politics rendered impossible a clear-cut articulation
between the star and his sexuality.
Among the few studies on queerness and pop music in the Chinese
context, Helen Hok-sze Leung has devoted one chapter to Leslie Cheung,
the singer and actor who committed suicide on April 1, 2003, in her book
focusing on cinema. In the chapter, titled “In Queer Memory,” Leung
explicates the ambivalence of Cheung’s sexuality that, in her view,
precisely constitutes his queerness. His refusal to come out, like the pre-
2012 Anthony Wong, and his reference to his partner as a good friend, are
indicative of another kind of sexual politics—the opaque, the playful, the
ambiguous kind. After his death, the gay movement in Hong Kong hailed
him eagerly as their icon; yet in Leung’s view, “Cheung’s life and work tell
a story that is much less about pride and courage, as the eulogies
emphasized, than about negotiation and foreclosure.”21 The ambivalence of
Cheung’s sexuality allows for multiple readings and identifications; it
encourages a queer audience to look for queer meanings, and as such
engage in a hidden, secret play of queer decoding. For Leung, it “seems
fitting to honour his life’s work not with what we think we know of him but
precisely with what he so persistently compelled us to not know about
him.”22 In short, as with Anthony Wong, it is a politics of invisibility and
opacity that, in the context of postcolonial Hong Kong, allows for queer
undercurrents in popular music culture.
In her book-length study on Leslie Cheung’s “artistic image,” including
a chapter on his gender representation in Hong Kong pop music, Natalia
Chan rebukes the media in Hong Kong for its negative coverage of
Cheung’s suicide and obsession with his sexuality.23 On the other hand, as
Leung argues convincingly in her book chapter, the queer undercurrents of
popular music may also be enabled, if not amplified, by Hong Kong’s
gossip and paparazzi culture. Cheung’s assumed “gender insubordination”
was not so much a lone battle, as Chan claims, but rather “part of a
local/global trend whereby artists’ gender experimentation on stage could
be widely accepted in the mainstream, while their sexual preference off
stage remained ambivalent.”24
Gossip, in this sense, can be considered constitutive for self-making and
queer culture rather than oppositional or antagonistic—in particular, for a
dialectical politics of invisibility and (spectacular) visibility, which is what
keeps Hong Kong’s queer undercurrents going. According to Leung,
gossips are ambivalent, as they are always haunted by the possibility of
dishonesty, deceit, or fabrication. In other words, they may “disclose” a pop
star, be it Leslie Cheung or Anthony Wong, to be gay, but such disclosure,
given its gossipy nature, is never totally trusted. It is in this representational
insecurity and eternal deferral of meaning that the potential for self-making
and queer culture lies. As such, Hong Kong queer culture can serve as a
salient case of the unrepresentableness of queer identity, as a possible
alternative to LGBT identity politics, and ultimately as an alternative to the
Western way of coming out and claiming a sexual self. In other words, the
case of Hong Kong pop stars in such a reading corresponds closely with the
poststructuralist theoretical zeal of queer theory. But then, in 2012, this
queer ambivalence was suddenly interrupted by Wong’s public coming out
on stage.
O Y C O
As some form of postscript to the plea for surprise, we would like to outline
two intertwining strands of queer politics and practices in Hong Kong that
we have observed after the “year of coming out.” First, almost as expected
as it was once surprising, the pop stars who came out in 2012 have
capitalized on the surge of public attention that followed and transformed
rather smoothly and swiftly from queer celebrities to queer activists. As
mentioned, in 2013, Anthony Wong and Denise Ho joined with Gigi Chao,
Raymond Chan, and some other sympathizers to form a new organization
called Big Love Alliance. Their objective, according to their website, is “to
promote the equality of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and queers
and their liberation from all forms of discrimination.” Most of the activities
organized by Big Love can be characterized under the kind of identity-
driven politics known in the West, such as lobbying and fighting for
antidiscrimination and gay marriage legislation.
Given the high profile of these pop stars and Big Love, the post-2012
queer landscape of Hong Kong saw an increasing alliance between this
group and other organizations already active in the city. Wong and Ho have
become indispensable rallying figures for such campaigning events as the
Gay Pride, Pink Dot, Pink Season and IDAHOT HK, attracting thousands
of participants, claiming a new visibility for queer people and issues in the
community at large.
Second, the past few years have also witnessed an increasing and
increasingly visible participation of queer activists, as well as an insertion
of queer politics in the “larger” struggle for democracy and freedom in
Hong Kong. Following his long-term engagement with issues concerning
the future of Hong Kong and the city’s relationship with Beijing, Anthony
Wong became a logical ally for prodemocracy and antiestablishment forces,
especially in his capacity as one of the figureheads of Big Love. It was
hardly surprising, then, that he placed himself at the center of the Umbrella
Movement in 2014. Slightly less expected was Denise Ho’s involvement, as
her music has never really dealt with political issues like Wong’s.
Nonetheless, as visibly as they joined hands in queer events, they occupied
the streets with the Umbrella supporters, stood on the main podium to speak
to them, and disseminated messages on their social media platforms—to the
extent that both Wong and Ho were put on a blacklist compiled by
authorities in mainland China.
While Beijing would not confirm the existence of such a blacklist, it
became apparent that both artists stopped receiving invitations to perform in
mainland China (for some reason). Wong told the authors how his contract
negotiation with a Beijing-based record label came to a suspiciously abrupt
end when he took a high-profile position with the Umbrella Movement. In
2016, Ho found her concert sponsor, L’Oreal, retreating from the Hong
Kong project, as mainland consumers were reported to be angered by the
French cosmetic concern’s support of such an anti-Beijing artist,
threatening to boycott L’Oreal. The intricate overlapping of queer and
prodemocratic politics and activism became one of the “chapters” in Evans
Chan’s documentary Raise the Umbrellas (2016).
Thus, in short, has been the development of queer politics in post-2012
Hong Kong. Turning to queer scholarship, not much has been published
except a review of activist practices in Hong Kong, which marks the post-
2012 years tentatively as a new wave of tongzhi movement; the piece
concluded that “[i]ncreasing queer visibility in the political arena may pose
new challenges for Hong Kong and the tongzhi movement.”45
Interestingly, in tandem with the Big Love Alliance, several teachers and
academics concerned with gender and sexuality issues (including one of the
authors of this chapter) set up a new group called the Hong Kong Scholars
Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, in 2013, “to work towards a
more open and progressive society.”46 We have yet to see how these queer
scholars may further theorize on what has been going on in addition to their
community engagement—perhaps it is too soon, or perhaps they would
rather redo the relationship between queer theories and their subjects before
hastening to reunderstand it. We don’t know.47
N
1. Y. S. Lo, “Anthony Wong: Rainbow in Beijing” [黄耀明北京見彩虹], Apple Daily (2012), E8.
2. Kong (2015).
3. H. H. S. Leung, Undercurrents: Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong (Toronto: UBC
Press, 2008), 4.
4. Sudeep Dasgupta, “Words, Bodies, Times: Queer Theory Before and After Itself,” Borderlands
8, no. 2 (2009): 3.
5. Leung, Undercurrents.
6. R. Chow, “Between Colonizers: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s,”
Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 2, no. 2 (2012): 151–170.
7. S. Y. W. Chu, “Brand Hong Kong: Asia’s World City as Method?” Visual Anthropology 24
(2011): 46–58.
8. A. Abbas, “Cosmopolitan De-scriptions: Shanghai and Hong Kong.” Public Culture 12, no. 3
(2000): 777.
9. P. S. Y. Ho and A. K. T. Tsang, “Negotiating anal intercourse in inter-racial gay relationships in
Hong Kong,” Sexualities 3, no. 3 (2000): 299–323.
10. W. S. Chou, On Tongzhi [ 同志論 ] (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Tongzhi Study Centre, 1995); W.
後殖民同志
S. Chou, Postcolonial Tongzhi [ ] (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Tongzhi Study Centre,
1997).
11. Chou, Postcolonial Tongzhi, 322.
12. Chou, On Tongzhi, 363; see also J. De Kloet, “Gendering China Studies: Peripheral
Perspectives, Central Questions.” China Information XXII, no. 2 (2008): 202.
13. C. Berry, “Asian Values, Family Values—Film, Video, and Lesbian and Gay Identities.” Journal
of Homosexuality 40, nos. 3–4 (2008): 211–231; Kam (2013b); T. S. K. Kong, “A fading
Tongzhi Heterotopia: Hong Kong Older Gay Men’s Use of Spaces,” Sexualities 15, no. 8
(2012), 896–916; H. H. S. Leung, Undercurrents: Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong
(Toronto: UBC Press, 2008); S. H. Lim, Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male
Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
2006); F. Martin, Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and
Public Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003); A. Yue (2000), “What’s So
Queer About Happy Together? a.k.a. Queer (N) Asian: Interface, Community, Belonging.”
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1, no. 2 (2000): 251–264.
14. Leung, Undercurrents, 3.
15. Ibid., 3–4.
16. H. H. S. Leung, “No Wardrobe in Broad Daylight,” [光天化日無衣櫃], Singtao Daily, May 8,
2012. Retrieved from http://news.singtao.ca/calgary/2012-05-
08/canada1336470551d3852285.html.
17. Leung, Undercurrents, 6.
18. Ibid.; Lim, Celluloid Comrades.
19. J. De Kloet, China with a Cut: Globalization, Urban Youth, and Popular Music (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2010).
20. D. Williford, “Queer Aesthetics.” Borderlands 8, no. 2 (2009), 13.
21. Leung, Undercurrents, 88.
22. Ibid., 105 (author’s emphasis).
23. N. Chan, Butterfly of Forbidden Colors: The Artistic Image of Leslie Cheung [ 禁色的蝴蝶: 張
國榮的藝術形象 ] (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2008)
24. Leung, Undercurrents, 90.
25. “Hong Kong Tycoon Recruits Husband for Lesbian Daughter.” BBC News Asia, September 26,
2012. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19733003.
26. For instance, see M. A. King, “Hong Kong: The Come-out Hong Kong Celebrities” [香港: 香港
出 櫃 同 志 名 人 系 列 ], TT1069, January 15, 2013. Retrieved from
http://www.tt1069.com/bbs/thread-1657981-1-1.html.
27. Kam (2013a).
28. A. Tam, “Queer HK—HOCC,” Time Out Hong Kong, December 17, 2012;
http://www.timeout.com.hk/gay-lesbian/features/55079/hocc.html.
29. T. Chang, “We Are Tongzhis.” [我們是同志]. City Magazine 437 (2013, February): 24.
30. Ibid.
31. Leung, Undercurrents, 6.
32. P. Lau, Media Representation and Coming-out Politics in Hong Kong and China (forthcoming).
33. Kam (2013a).
34. Ibid.
35. Anthony Wong, “My Coming Out Represents Hong Kong’s Tolerance and Freedom” [黄耀明:
出 櫃 代 表 香 港 的 包 容 與 自 由 ], May 14, 2012. Netease [ 網易 ]. Retrieved from
http://ent.163.com/special/attitudehym/.
36. L. Lee and H. Y. R. Wu, “Anthony Wong: Let’s Say No to Fear, Thank You.” [黃耀明: 一起向
恐懼說不,多謝.] Rewu [ 人物 ] 13, no. 6 (2012).
37. Ibid.
38. Radio Television Hong Kong. “Friday Host,” [ 星 期 五 主 場 ], August 2, 2013;
http://programme.rthk.hk/rthk/tv/programme.php?d=2013-08-02&p=5929&m=episode#.
39. Lo, “Anthony Wong: Rainbow in Beijing.”
40. A. Lecklider, ed., “Queer Studies of Popular Music,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 18, no.
2 (2006): 120.
41. J. Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York:
New York University Press, 2005).
42. C. Y. Li, “The Absence of Fan Activism in the Queer Fandom of Ho Denise Wan See (HOCC)
in Hong Kong,” Transformative Works and Cultures 10 (2012);
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/325/286.
43. See, for instance, Kam, 2013; Leung, “No Wardrobe in Broad Daylight.”
44. Lecklider, “Queer Studies of Popular Music”: 120.
45. Kong, T. S. K., S. H. L. Lau, and E. C. Y. Li. “The Fourth Wave? A Critical Reflection on the
Tongzhi Movement in Hong Kong.” In Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia,
edited by M. McLelland and V. Mackie, 200. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
46. Retrieved from their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Scholars-Alliance-for-Sexual-
and-Gender-Diversity-
%E5%AD%B8%E4%BA%BA%E6%80%A7%E8%81%AF%E7%9B%9F-139780342877818/.
47. This work was supported by the European Research Council – ERC Consolidator grant under
grant number 616882 (ChinaCreative).
R
Abbas, A. “Cosmopolitan De-scriptions: Shanghai and Hong Kong.” Public Culture 12, no. 3 (2000):
769–786.
Berry, C. “Asian Values, Family Values—Film, Video, and Lesbian and Gay Identities.” Journal of
Homosexuality 40, nos. 3–4 (2008): 211–231.
Chan, N. Butterfly of Forbidden Colors: The Artistic Image of Leslie Cheung [ 禁色的蝴蝶 張國榮 :
的藝術形象 ]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2008.
Chang, T. “We Are Tongzhis.” [我們是同志]. City Magazine, 437 (2013, February): 24.
Chou, W. S. On Tongzhi [ 同志論 ]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Tongzhi Study Centre, 1995.
Chou, W. S. Postcolonial Tongzhi [ 後殖民同志 ]. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Tongzhi Study Centre,
1997.
Chow, R. “Between Colonizers: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s.” Diaspora: A
Journal of Transnational Studies 2, no. 2 (2012): 151–170.
Chu, S. Y. W. “Brand Hong Kong: Asia’s World City as Method?” Visual Anthropology 24 (2011):
46–58.
Dasgupta, S. “Words, Bodies, Times: Queer Theory Before and After Itself.” Borderlands 8, no. 2
(2009): 1–20.
De Kloet, J. China with a Cut: Globalization, Urban Youth, and Popular Music. Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2010.
De Kloet, J. “Gendering China Studies: Peripheral Perspectives, Central Questions.” China
Information XXII, no. 2 (2008): 195–219.
Halberstam, J. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New
York University Press, 2005.
Ho, P. S. Y., and A. K. T. Tsang. “Negotiating anal intercourse in inter-racial gay relationships in
Hong Kong.” Sexualities 3, no. 3 (2000): 299–323.
Hong Kong Scholars Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity. Retrieved from
https://www.facebook.com/Scholars-Alliance-for-Sexual-and-Gender-Diversity-
%E5%AD%B8%E4%BA%BA%E6%80%A7%E8%81%AF%E7%9B%9F-139780342877818/
“Hong Kong Tycoon Recruits Husband for Lesbian Daughter.” BBC News Asia, September 26, 2012.
Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19733003.
Kam, L. Y. L. “Return. Come Out” [ 回 歸 , 出 櫃 ]. Journal of Local Discourse 2012: New Class
Struggle in Hong Kong. Taiwan and Hong Kong: Azoth Books Co. Ltd., 2013a.
Kam, L. Y. L. Shanghai Lalas: Female “Tongzhi” Communities and Politics in Urban China. Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013b.
King, M. A. “Hong Kong: The Come-out Hong Kong Celebrities” [香港: 香港出櫃同志名人系列].
TT1069, January 15, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.tt1069.com/bbs/thread-1657981-1-1.html.
Kong, T. S. K. “A Fading Tongzhi Heterotopia: Hong Kong Older Gay Men’s Use of Spaces.”
Sexualities 15, no. 8 (2012): 896–916.
Kong, T. S. K., S. H. L. Lau, and E. C. Y. Li. “The Fourth Wave? A Critical Reflection on the
Tongzhi Movement in Hong Kong.” In Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia,
edited by M. McLelland and V. Mackie, 188–201. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
Lau, P. Media Representation and Coming-out Politics in Hong Kong and China, forthcoming.
Lee, L., and H. Y. R. Wu. “Anthony Wong: Let’s Say No to Fear, Thank You.” [黃耀明: 一起向恐懼
說不,多謝.] Renwu [ 人物 ] 13, no. 6, 42–47 (2012).
Lecklider, A. (ed.). “Queer Studies of Popular Music.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 18, no. 2
(2006): 117–250.
Leung, H. H. S. Undercurrents: Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong. Toronto: UBC Press,
2008.
Leung, H. H. S. “No Wardrobe in Broad Daylight.” [光天化日無衣櫃.] Singtao Daily, May 8, 2012.
Retrieved from http://news.singtao.ca/calgary/2012-05-08/canada1336470551d3852285.html.
Li, C. Y. “The Absence of Fan Activism in the Queer Fandom of Ho Denise Wan See (HOCC) in
Hong Kong.” Transformative Works and Cultures 10 (2012). Retrieved from
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/325/286.
Lim, S. H. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese
Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006.
Lo, Y. S. “Anthony Wong: Rainbow in Beijing.” [黄耀明北京見彩虹.] Apple Daily, May 12, 2012,
E8.
Martin, F. Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film, and Public
Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003.
Radio Television Hong Kong. “Friday Host.” [ 星 期 五 主 場 .] August 2, 2013. Retrieved from
http://programme.rthk.hk/rthk/tv/programme.php?d=2013-08-02&p=5929&m=episode#.
Song, H. L. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese
Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006.
Tam, A. “Queer HK—HOCC.” Time Out Hong Kong, December 17, 2012. Retrieved from
http://www.timeout.com.hk/gay-lesbian/features/55079/hocc.html.
Taylor, J. “Scenes and Sexualities: Queerly Reframing the Music Scenes Perspective.” Continuum:
Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 26, no. 1 (2012), 143–156.
Williford, D. “Queer Aesthetics.” Borderlands 8, no. 2 (2009), 1–15.
Wong, Anthony. “My Coming Out Represents Hong Kong’s Tolerance and Freedom.” [黄耀明: 出櫃
代 表 香 港 的 包 容 與 自 由 .] May 14, 2012. Netease [ 網易 ]. Retrieved from
http://ent.163.com/special/attitudehym/.
Yue, A. “What’s So Queer About Happy Together? a.k.a. Queer (N) Asian: Interface, Community,
Belonging.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1, no. 2 (2000): 251–264.
CHAPTER 32
H O W TO D O T H I N G S W I T H
T H E O RY
Cultural “Transcription,” “Queerness,” and
Ukrainian Pop
S T E P HE N AMI CO
If the stimulus is a product of the particular music tradition that we carry, we perceive it as
such. If it is a product of a tradition we do not carry, we perceive it as we would a product of
the one we do carry, making such changes as we are accustomed to.1
In the future, there won’t be a conception of “relevant-irrelevant,” in fashion or in music…
people will become stronger and stop conforming to someone else.2
A regular (normal’nyi) person—who is that? Have you met such people? Say where, and
we’ll go and have a look.14
Перчи, шторы, браслеты, узкачи, Gloves, glasses, bracelets, tight jeans, and
и трубы baggy jeans
Мы поймаем грача и поедем в We’ll catch a taxi driver and go to the clubs
клубы Chorus:
Припев: Jacket, hat, powder, lipstick
Пенж, панама, пудра, помада, Hi-hi-heels, kamon, hi-heels, kamon
Ка-ка-каблы, камон, ка-каблы,
камон!!!30
While there may be a reluctance to say what queer “is,” there are assuredly assumptions
circulating about what queer “does.” These concern genealogies, aims, priorities,
interconnections with activism and other theories and fields, and the thorny issue of who
gets to decide all of this.52
Note: Tables and figures are indicated by an italic “t”, “f”, and notes are indicated by “n.” following
the page number.
For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion,
appear on only one of those pages.
IASPM-US. See International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US Branch
Ice Cube 489
IDAHOT HK (Hong Kong) 598
identity
construction of 531
emerging through time 373
fixed 610–611
hierarchical valuation of 605–606
postmodern understanding of 109–110
preconceived notions of 191–192
ritual formation of 530
identity politics 6–7, 192, 234, 589, 592, 595, 597–598
“I” displaced 326
IKEA 516
I La Galigo 564
illuminated manuscripts, commissioning of 437
imitation
karaoke and 212
post-colonial logics of 212
as term 218
imposition, theory of 568–569
improvisation
in music therapy 355–356, 359, 361–362
interpretations of 357
See also collective improvisation
“I’m So Wet” (Byrd E. Bath) 242, 258–260, 258f, 260f
incommensurability, consequences of 617
India
alternative gender expressions in, acceptance of 527
colonial anti-sodomy laws in 529
hijras in 529–531
Indian Penal Code, Section 377 535n.26
mahaprasad in 531–533
queer ethnomusicology and 9
queer identity and behavior in, indigenous constructions of 528–529
queer music in 525
third gender in 529–530
indices 168
Indonesia
cross-dressing in 563
cultural performances in 562
dances in, changing with political eras 570
entertainment in, as both ritual and theater 567
gay and lesbi subjectivities in 573
gender ambiguity in, history of 573–574
gender ideologies in 570
gender pluralism in 563–564
gender roles and sexualities in 559
gender and sexuality understandings in, changes in 575
gender-transgressive performance in 562
history of 561–562, 575
indigenous languages in, designating different gender and sexual practices 560
language in, for gender and sexuality 572
masculinity in 569–570
multicultural makeup of 561–562
performing arts in, duality in 574
performing arts of, in the Western imaginary 560–561
ritual specialists in 562, 572–574
as source of orientalist fantasies 561
theatrical gender-bending in 567–574
theatrical performers in 562
“I Never Saw Another Butterfly” (Davidson) 411–412
influence, nature of 219–220
Informed Consent 284–285
Ingold, Tim 18
Inoue, Daisuke 212–213, 215
In a Queer Time and Place (Halberstam) 447
instrumental music
story-like qualities of 11
traditional, machismo of 101–102
instruments, sexuality and 105n.13
internal difference, as necessary for political effectiveness 615
International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US Branch 5–6, 11–13, 112–113
International Phonetic Alphabet 246–247
Internet, The (hip hop group) 122
interpretation, transsexual style of 20
intersectionality 2, 101, 107–108, 266, 526, 528–529
intonation, gender and 242–244, 243t, 247
Intruders, the 38
inversion, in early 20th-century music 11
invisibility, cultivation of 586–587. See also politics of invisibility
Ireland, sexuality in, neutral experiences around 101
Irish culture
being out in 98
live-and-let-live facet of 98
Irish traditional music and dance
queer performers of 17
selfhood and social identity in 93
See also trad
ironic distancing 504
Israel, Eurovision and 508–509
“I Still Believe in Waltzes” (Lynn and Twitty; Hughes, MacRae, and Morrison) 263–266, 265f, 266f
Ives, Charles 288
I Was a Male War Bride (dir. Hawks) 476
Iyer, Pico 212–213
“Kably, Kamon!!!” (“High Heels, Kamon!!! [Come On?]”) (Kamon!!!) 607–609, 608t
Kably, Kamon!!! (Kamon!!!) 606–607
Kachuck, Beatrice 329
Kalamka, Juba (pointfivefag) 132–135
Kalina, Robert 506–507
Kaling, Mindy 215
Kallberg, Jeffrey 614
Kam, Lucetta 589, 594–595
Kamon!!! 605, 620
audiovisual practice of 606–614
critiquing identity 618
destabilizing convention 607–609
influences on 606–607
members of 606–607
production of 613–614
reappearance of 619
sociopolitical critique by 611–612
status of 618–619
Kapsalis, Terri 282–283
karaoke 17
amateurism in 215–216
amenability of, to weeknight programming 217–218
contact and 217–218
copying and 212
as critical mode 220, 222
cultural, aesthetic, and social functions of, study of 213–214
debased and denigrated, in Anglo-American contexts 213–214
depictions of 214
dissemination of 212–213, 218–219
elements of 211
as entertainment at gay venues 214
existing outside cultural systems 212
as financial venture for venues 215–218
gay globalization and 218–219
global repertoires of 219
as homosexual ritual 214
as homosocial practice in Japan 218
imitation and 212
insults associated with 223n.16, 224n.21
as kata expression 216, 218
love songs and 211
as material set of participatory practices 212
Ndegeocello’s apology to 235–236
origins of 212–213
performance of 217–218
queer aesthetics and 211, 218
as queer theoretical and aesthetic mode 212
repetition and 213
as representational trope 219
social manners of 218
social promiscuity of 217–218
specialized knowledge and participation regimes in 218
as surrender 221
systems for 214–215
Karaoke Culture (Ugresic) 212, 215–216
karaoke nights 214
Kartomi, Margaret 567
kata (patterned form) 216, 218, 221
Katey Red 369
Katz, Zebra 121–122, 137
Kaudern, W. A. 564
Kaye, Danny 462
Kazaky 604
KC and the Sunshine Band 38
Keats, John 222
Kee, John P. 83
Keeling, Kara 233
Kelly, Edwin 457–458
Kelly, Gene 72
Kemp, Paul 318
Kemp Town 321n.12
Kendricks, Eddie 38
Kerman, Joseph 4, 11
Key, Mary Ritchie 249
“Khlop’ia kukuruznye” (“Cornflakes”) (Kamon!!!) 608–609, 608t
Khubchandani, Kareem 49
Killa 191
King, Hettie 252
King, Lee Memphis 318–319
kink 278, 280–281, 283–284
Kinsey, Alfred 8
Kisliuk, Michelle 26n.76
Kitlinski, Tomek 615–616
Kitwana, Bakari 40–41
KJs (karaoke jockeys) 214–215
Kleban, Edward 78n.60
Klimt, Gustav 513–514
Knapp, Alexander 415n.3
Knight, Gladys 483–484
Knight, Marie 82–83
Knowing When to Stop (Rorem) 149
knowledge, queer production of 597
Knox, Collie 312
Knox, Sandy 493–494
Knuckles, Frankie 40
Koestenbaum, Wayne 7–8, 18–19, 146, 340
Koffka, Kurt 218
Kong, Travis 589
Kool Keith 387–388
Koskoff, Ellen 6, 327
Kosmos sisters 606–607. See also Kamon!!!
kothis 529
Koza, Julia Eklund 327
Kramer, Larry 369–370, 485–486, 488
Kreigh, LeeAnn 196
Kristeva, Julia 374–375, 406–408
Kron, Lisa 73
KRS One 301
K/S 187, 190–191
ku’er, as term 589–590
Kuhnt-Saptodewo, Jani 565
Kun, Josh 505
kunqu 21
amateur singers of, practicing musical cross-dressing 541, 548
arias in 551
characteristics of 540
characters in 542
competition in 544
dissonances in 545–546, 548, 550
diversity of dramatic characters in 542
dynamism of 541
as focus of Chinese films 540
future of 552–553
legitimation of 542
lesbian 539–540
male impersonators in 541, 543
as manner of negotiating gender and sex 540
music in 545–546
origins of 540
performance of 546–550
portraying gendered charms, gestures, and voices 545
queer expressions of difference in 548
se and yi inseparable in 544–546
sociopolitical subversiveness of 548
status of 539–540
transformations in 552
See also kunqu cross-dressing
kunqu cross-dressing 539–540
artistic and practical reasons for 543–544
as career strategy 544
as cultural-historical legacy 542
musical 541, 548
Kushner, Tony 483
Kwan, Stanley 539–540
La Babydoll 47
Labouchère Amendment 314
La Cage aux folles (Herman and Fierstein) 74
Lacan, Jacques 280–281, 445
Lachman, Ed 484
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe 220
Lady Gaga 12, 233–234, 318–319
L’Aiglon (Rostand) 462–463
Lalgee, Salas B. 135
Lam, Joseph 21
Lamb, Roberta 327–329
Lambert, Mary 137
Lambkin, Graham 307n.3
La Mission (Berlin) 50
Lamoureaux, Augusta 472–473
Lane, Anthony 504
lang, k.d. 7–8, 108–109, 286, 484
Lang, Paul Henry 445–446
langendriyan 569
language
materiality of 607–608
usage of, gender and 242–244, 243t, 249–250
La Petite Maison Éléctronique 47
Lapine, James 73
Larner, James 179–180
Larson, Jonathan 73
La Rue, Danny 312–313, 315–316
Last Angel of History (dir. Akomfrah) 387
Late Show, The (CBS) 516
Lau, Paris 595
Lavender Country (Haggerty) 107–112
Law, Bonar 315
Leach, Elizabeth Eva 422
Lead Belly 111, 113–114
Leap, William 258
Lecklider, Aaron 596
Lee, Colin 13, 19–20
Lee, Gavin 11
Lee, Joon 374
legibility 368
Leif 121–122, 137
Leigh, Vivien 312
Leitham, Jennifer 369, 371, 373, 375, 377
Le Marais 47
Lemmon, Jack 462, 476
Lennox, Annie 286, 482, 484, 487–488, 499n.42
Leon, Francis (The Only Leon) 457–461
Le Pulp (Paris) 47
Le Rex (Paris) 47
Lerner, Murray 111
LeRoy, Jason 499n.42
lesbian, as term 3
lesbian feminist, as term 3
lesbian roles, iconic 71
lesbians
continuum 152–153
depiction of, in butch-femme roles 17
displaced 326
music of resistance for 487
as sexual intermediaries 257
as sexual inverts 372
speech of 261
lesbian sex, male pornography and 475
Les Ginettes Armées (The Armed Ginettes) 47
Leszkowicz, Paweł 615–616
Lessig, Lawrence 406–407, 409–411, 413–414
Le Troisième Lieu (The Third Place) 47
Leung, Helen Hok-sze 586, 589–590, 592–594
Leung Cho-yiu, Joey 594
Leutze, Emanuel 504–505
Levan, Larry 39–40
“Leviticus: Faggot” (Ndegeocello) 233–234
Lewis, Jerry 462
Lewis, Ryan 137
Lewis, Terry 235
LGBT movement 99
LGBT rights 615–616
LGBTQ culture
hip hop festivals 122. See also PeaceOut listings
mainstream scene for 99–100
uniformity of 100
LGBTQ studies, music and 4–6
Liang Guyin 547–548
Lianxiangban /A Romance: Two Belles in Love (dir. Kwan) 539–540
liberal humanism 229
liberal Protestant theology
characteristics of 152
diversity of perspectives in 147
emphasis on historical change 151–152
perspectivalism in 145
reflection in 147
liberal theology 152, 156
optimism of 153
pluralism at heart of 157
liberation theology 152, 156–157
life, in process of emerging 332–333
Life Ball 513–514, 514f
Lighthouse (London) 359
Li Hongniang 544–545
Lincoln, Abraham 504–505
Lindestad, Per-Åke 247–248
Lin Xi 586
lip-synching 216
Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to “Hedwig”
(Peraino) 11, 422
literary burlesque 463–464
Little Richard 85
liturgical celebration, parody and subversion of 150
Liu Cheng 547–548
Liu Yilong 544–545
lived experience, as source of knowledge 372
Liszt, Franz 342
Li Yu 539–540
Li Yugang 540
Lock, John 395
Lockard, Joe 615–616
Loft, The (NYC) 36–38
Logan, Olive 463–464
Logo (cable TV network) 196, 503–504
Lomax, Alan 111
Lomax, John 111
London
acid-house music in 41–42
raves in 42
warehouse parties in 42
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 457
Loot (Orton) 312
Lopez y Royo, Alessandra 561
Lorde, Audre 481
L’Oreal 598
Lorelei coffee bar (Brighton) 313
Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route (Hartman) 229
Lost in Translation (dir. Coppola) 219
Love Center Choir 85–86
Love Center Church (East Oakland, CA) 85–86
Love Don’t Need a Reason: The Life & Music of Michael Callen (Jones) 13–14
“Love You Like a Love Song” (Gomez; Armato and James) 222
Lowe, Melanie 614
Lucia di Lammamoor (Donizetti) 146
Luhrmann, Baz 181–182
LuPone, Patti 68
Luscombe, Tim 508
Lutyens, Edwin 311–312
L Word, The (Chaiken) 195
Lynch, David 415
Lynde, Paul 462
Lynn, Loretta 263–266
Lypsinka (John Epperson) 483
LYRIC (San Francisco) 133
Lyricist, The (Cyrus) 131–132
lyrics
for music about AIDS 481
reading experience through 481
Q-Formed 133
quare 3
intervening in queer terminology 383–384
pronunciation of “queer” 383
quasi-essentialist inquiry 374–375
Queen Diva (Big Freedia) 369–370
Queen Pen 131
QueenSpark 318
Queen’s Throat, The (Koestenbaum) 146
queer
definitions of 124, 559, 574–575
passing as 257–263
self-naming as 2, 7–8
self-presentation as 10
as term 1–3, 20, 168, 383–384, 526–527
queer aesthetics
in karaoke 211
remote forms of 213
in vidding 185–186
Queer Art of Failure, The (Halberstam) 2–3
queer artists, self-rendering of 121–122
queer arts, imitative nature of 216
queer bars
amusements in 215–216
karaoke nights at 214
queer cinema, scholarly attention to 590
queer of color critique 3, 383–384
queer communities
cross-generational mentorship and cultural transfer in 41
youth of 447
Queercorps 131–132
“Queer Country Quarterly,” 108–109
queer critic, as artist 221
queer culture
hip hop and 122–123
as part of mainstream 527
visceral nature of 375–376
queer dance-music scenes, attention to 37
Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity (Fuller and Whitesell) 287–288
queer ethnomusicology 12, 21
cross-cultural research guidelines for 526–528
fieldwork praxis for 527–528
intersectionality and 528–529
prioritizing indigenous conceptualizations 527–528
See also queer musicology
Queer in Europe (Downing and Gillett) 505
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (Bravo) 2–3
Queer as Folk (Showtime) 2–3
queer hip hop, Golden Age of 130–132
queering
critique and 191–192
politics of, vs. queer politics 605
in Western literature 526
Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology (ed. Barz and Cheng) 9, 13–14
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (ed. Brett, Wood, and Thomas) 7–8, 12,
369–370, 445, 528
Queering the Popular Pitch (ed. Whiteley and Rycenga) 11–12
queer interpretive style 20
queer knowledge, production of 597
queer liberation 146, 370
queer listening 288
queer masculinity, changes in 121–122
queer movement 3
queer music studies 12–14
lacking unified narrative 12–13
narrative interpretation and 11
non-musical thought and 8
state of the field 14
queer musicology 146, 371
castrati and 448
on musical autonomy 148–149
sources for 371
tools of, for Protestant theology 152
See also queer ethnomusicology
queer music theory 8, 11
Queer Music Theory (Lee) 24n.44
Queer Nation 2
Queer Nation Manifesto 1–3
queer negativity 618
queerness
as antithesis to real hip hop identity 121–122
in border zone between sound and music 298
bringing attention to binary thinking 620
cross-cultural 20–21, 528–529
cultural construction of 314
definitions of 613
dynamics of 607
as existential concept 343
for Berlin DJs, as sign of authenticity 36
fulfilling its potential 620
future of 384
genealogical models of 372
hip hop identity and 122–123
linked to Western cultural and academic contexts 613–614
musical, transgression and 424–425
musical theater and 63–64. See also musicals
musicology of 370
nationalism and 20
and “the people,” 615
perception of 375
performative nature of 424
political side of 505
politics of 616–617
potentiality of 396, 406, 414
public representations of 314
queer politics and 616–617
reading in locations outside the site of production 605
as refusal of identity 618
rhetorics of 16
sexually liberating capacities of 369–370
signifiers of 368
sound of 295
temporality of 615
transsexuality as distinct from 371
utopian mode of 384
vidding and 191–192
Queerness of Hip Hop/Hip Hop of Queerness conference 142n.68
queerness of the sonic 302–304
queer nightlife, counterhistories of 43–49
Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Music (Gill) 9
queer patriotism 504–505, 507–508, 510–512, 514–515
queer performance modes 216
queer phenomenology 304–306
Queer Phenomenology (Ahmed) 16, 304–305, 377n.1. See also queer phenomenology
queer politics 3, 123
performativity related to 616–617
vs. the politics of queering 605
queer practices
fused with Christian symbols 157
in context of capitalism and democracy 595
marginalization of, related to monogamy and domesticity 99
queers of color
double transformation of 35–36
drag balls and 44
EDM and 16, 35
unsurprised by resurgent conservatism 51–52
queer sincerity 109–112, 114–115
queer sociability, remote forms of 213
queer studies 2
cinema in 590
knowledge production in 594
music theory and 11
surprise and 597–598
Western approach to 525–527
queer subcultures
considerations for studying 596–597
music within 527
Western attitude toward 527
queer theory 2
on abject sexualities and music 406
applied to music relatively late 422
cross-cultural 525–527
fluidity of identity and 625n.63
poststructuralist response to 586, 593
restrictions on 618–619
risking assimilationist agenda 616–617
subject of 614
triangulation in 221–222
undermining binary logic 615
zeal of 586, 593
queer time 396
Queer Ukeleles 319
queer utopia 618, 625n.64
queer women
music scenes of 46–47
dance scene of, in Paris 35
Quest Pistols 604
qupai 551
Qutb, Sayyid 157
Ya Kid K 231–232
Yam Kimfai / Ren Jianhui 543
Yang Guifei 542
Yano, Christine 216, 218–219, 224n.19
“Yearning for the Secular World” (“Sifan”) 546–548
Yep, Gust 124
Yes 11
yi (art; skill) 544–546, 548–553
Youens, Susan 339–340
Young, Iris Marion 368
Young M.A 121–122, 137
YouTube 185–186, 193–194
Yue, Audrey 589
Yue Meiti 543, 551–552
Yurchak, Alexei 618–619
“Y Us” (Cyrus) 131–132
Yu Zhenfei 551–552