Olivia Records

2015

This bibliography indexes music scholarship that features material on gender diversity, queer identity, culture, knowledge, or practice, or that approaches its topic from a queer, transgender, or anti-oppressive perspective. It does not index reviews or the popular queer press. Because it follows different guidelines for inclusion, it does not duplicate all listings in archived newsletters. I did a substantial expansion of the bibliography in the summer of 2011 (bringing it from 31 to 43 pages). It has been updated by other individuals two times since then (in 2013 and 2015). This is the most recent version of the bibliography.

Redefining Mainstream Popular Music (Baker, Bennett, Taylor eds.), 2013

"In general terms, heterosexuality is mainstream; queer sexualities, on the other hand, are not. The anecdotal evidence is unequivocal: whether tuning your radio to the weekly Top 40 countdown, watching the chart-toppers on MTV, or browsing the ‘most downloaded’ listings on iTunes, images and narratives of heterosexual love and desire dominate mainstream popular music. With few exceptions, the repetitive performances of hetero-norms manifest as qualities that contribute to the potential mainstream appeal of popular music artists. Following this, the natural province of queer music and those who make it is the cultural fringe. Given the marginalisation of queers within the mainstream, a phrase like ‘mainstream lesbian music’ is likely to be read as a contradiction in terms—dubious at the very least. Yet, a quick scan of the music forum pages on the lesbian pop culture website AfterEllen (afterellen.com) reveals that ‘mainstream lesbian music’ is clearly a ‘thing’; to what, or to whom the phrase refers, is less clear. On many of the publically accessible music forum pages I looked at, members would frequently refer to loving or hating various kinds of ‘lesbian music’, insisting that some lesbian music was more mainstream than others. For example, in a specific thread dedicated to the topic, one member commented: “… I’m not a fan of mainstream, stereotypical lesbian music … there is a thriving, underground music scene of queer musicians that get overlooked … because they aren't being [sic] in the mainstream spotlight” (posted February 11, 2011). Such a comment begs numerous questions, not least, what is lesbian music and how it is positioned in relation to categories such as the mainstream and, what this forum post terms, the ‘queer underground’? However, answering these questions is not a straightforward matter because the parameters of ‘the mainstream’ itself is all too commonly ill defined. Music simply described as ‘mainstream’ (not unlike describing music as ‘lesbian’) eludes identification of explicit musical characteristics, a discrete style or genre of expression. Rather, the mainstream is a value-laden category that frequently—and problematically—derives its meaning in association with its multiple corollaries such as counterculture, subculture, underground, indie, folk, alternative, experimental and avant-garde. When situated in binary opposition to the politically resistant stylised rituals of a potent subculture (e.g. Hebdige 1979), the mainstream garners negative connotations, unhelpfully implying a lax association with an inauthentic, commercialised, normative and depoliticised form of cultural hegemony (Huber 2007). What’s more, incorporating this figuration of the mainstream into lesbian music, which I do in the last section of this chapter, takes us quite some distance from the notion of mainstream lesbian music referred to in the above forum post. As Alison Huber argues in this volume, for a nebulous term like mainstream to function critically in studies of popular music we must first acknowledge that the, or rather, a mainstream is always an historically situated, contingent and contested term. In this chapter, through the lens of lesbian and queer feminist musicalities, I draw further attention to the limitations of the binary structuration of the mainstream vis-à-vis its subcultural Other. I argue that lesbian identity is (re)produced across multiple sites of popular music, concomitantly revealing the multiple strategies, politics, communions and contentions that figure in the musicalised representations of queer female intimacies. Furthermore, I consider the various ways that these representations are positioned in relation to notions of the mainstream, thus revealing the multiple discourses and connotations of the mainstream within lesbian and queer female music cultures, as well as particular abstractions of lesbianism with mainstream pop music. Progressing chronologically, I begin this chapter by outlining the emergence of womyn’s music in the 1970s. I then consider how select lesbian artists situated themselves within the mainstream during the late 1980s and early 1990s, enshrining their status as mainstream lesbian musical icons. To follow, I discuss the riot dyke critique first propelled by post-punk feminist musicians in the mid-1990s and ornament this discussion with localised ethnographic data, which illustrates the contemporary polychromatics of lesbian and queer musicalities. Finally, I will point to what some have termed ‘celesbianism’ or ‘fauxmosexuality’ in the mainstream pop arena of the 21st century. "

Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 2006

Electronic Musicological Review, 2002

A record, in both historical documentation and biographical reclamation, of the struggles and sensibilities of homosexual people of the West that came out in their music, and of the [undoubted but unacknowledged] contribution of homosexual men and women to the music profession. In broader terms, a special perspective from which Western music of all kinds can be heard and critiqued.

"Music is an expressive mechanism of gender and sexual signification, capable of arousing and channelling sexual urges and desires. It is often through music that we express and make sense of our life-worlds, our bodies and our emotions; in music we give meaning to sound and give meaning to self. From the perspective of a queer female musician and music scholar, this chapter examines musical and musicological performances of queer identity and queer life-worlds—that is, the context and conditions of being and doing queer in and through music practice and scholarship. Using autoethnography, I reflect upon my intimate relationship with musical practice and scholarship, exploring how and why I have used music to express my non-normative gender and sexual identity. Moreover, I reveal the personal processes that led me to finding a space for my queer sexuality within music and how these processes have enriched my understanding of other queer musical practices and practitioners. Through a willingness to be vulnerable—to lay bare my ways of loving—I have found new ways of knowing myself, of knowing others and our musics. Taylor, J. (2009). A way of loving, a way of knowing: Music, sexuality and the becoming of a queer musicologist. In B. Bartleet & C. Ellis (Eds.), Music autoethnography: Making autoethnography sing / making music personal (pp. 245-260). Bowen Hills, Qld: Australian Academic Press."

Critical Studies in Improvisation Etudes Critiques En Improvisation, 2008

Introduction to the special issue of Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 19 (2015), guest edited by Emily Wilbourne, in honour of Suzanne G. Cusick.

In this article, I listen closely to Rae Spoon, Vivek Shraya and Kaleb Roberston's (as Ms. Fluffy Soufflé) cover performance of " Insensitive, " a song most commonly associated with Jann Arden. Through their cover, Spoon, Shraya and Soufflé work to fissure linear progressive temporality— often and aggressively associated with certain queer experiences in Canadian culture—both in the sense that their cover itself is a musical return and in its specific musical details. I show that there is political potential in listening experiences that open alternative temporal experiences. Their collective project simultaneously renders audible an unlikely musical geneal-ogy and encourages listeners to glean a sense of queer plurality in a national context that increasingly privileges individualism. Their re-imagining of " Insensitive " allows us to hear a type of musical virtuosity when vocal performance is untethered from strict heteronormative gender performance and transforms the popular tune from a solo lament into a collective queer anthem. Dans cet article, j'analyse les reprises de la chanson « Insensitive », le plus sou-vent associée à Jann Arden, par Rae Spoon, Vivek Shraya et Kaleb Roberston (Ms. Fluffy Soufflé). Les nouvelles versions de la chanson par Spoon, Shraya et Soufflé brisent essentiellement la progression linéaire temporelle – très fortement associée à certaines personnalités queer canadiennes –, car la reprise comme procédé musical est en soi un retour et, car certains détails des oeuvres rejoignent ce thème. Je montre que certaines expériences auditives renferment un potentiel politique : celui d'ouvrir des expériences temporelles alternatives. Leur projet collectif rend audible simultanément une généalogie musicale inattendue et encourage les audi-trices et auditeurs à tirer un sens de pluralité queer dans un contexte national d'individualisme grandissant. Leur reprise de « Insensitive » fait par ailleurs mon-tre d'une certaine virtuosité musicale quand la voix est libérée des strictes normes genrées hétéronormatives pour transformer une chanson mieux connue comme complainte solo en hymne queer.

2009

Across ages and cultures, music has been associated with sexual allure, gender inversion and suspect sexuality. Music has been theorised as both a putative agent of moral corruption and an expressive mechanism of gender and sexual signification, capable of arousing and channelling sexual urges and desires. This research examines musically facilitated expressions of queerness and queer identity, asking how and why music is used by queer musicians and musical performers to express non-normative gender and sexual identities. A queer theoretical approach to gender and sexuality, coupled with interdisciplinary theories concerning music as an identificatory practice, provides the theoretical landscape for this study. An investigation into queer musical episodes such as this necessitates an exploration of the broader cultural milieu in which queer musical work occurs. It also raises questions surrounding the corpus of queer musical practice—that is, do these practices constitute the creation of a new musical genre or a collection of genres that can be understood as queer music? The preceding questions inform an account of the histories, styles, sensibilities, and gender and sexual politics of camp, drag and genderfuck, queer punk and queercore, as well as queer feminist cultures, positioning these within musical praxis. Queer theory, music and identity theories as well as contemporary discussions relating to queer cultural histories are then applied to case studies of queer-identified music performers from Brisbane, Australia. A grounded theoretical analysis of the data gathered in these case studies provides the necessary material to argue that musical performance provides a creative context for the expression of queer identities and the empowerment of queer agency, as well as oppositional responses to and criticism of heterosexual hegemony, and the homogenisation and assimilation of mainstream gay culture. Resulting from this exploration of queer musical cultures, localised data gathering and analysis, this research also supposes a set of ideologies and sensibilities that can be considered indicative and potentially determinant of queer musical practice generally. Recognising that queer theory offers a useful theoretical discourse for understanding the complexities and flexibility of gender and sexual identities—particularly those that resist the binary logics of heteronormativity—this project foregrounds a question that is relatively unanswered in musicological work. It asks: how can musicology make use of queer theory in order to produce queer readings and new, anti-oppressive knowledge regarding musical performance, composition and participation? To answer this, it investigates the history of resistance towards embodied studies of music; the disjuncture between competing discourses of traditional and ‘new’ musicology; and recent developments in the pursuit of queer visibility within music studies. Building upon these recent developments, this work concludes that the integration of queer theoretical perspectives and queer aesthetic sensibilities within musicological discourse allows for a serious reconsideration of musical meaning and signification. In the development of a queer musicology, a committed awareness of queer theory, histories, styles and sensibilities, together with an embodied scholarly approach to music, is paramount. It is through this discursive nexus that musicology will be able to engage more fully with the troubling, performative and contingent qualities of gender, sexuality and desire.

Journal of Popular Music Studies, 2019