Queer Musicology

In this article I consider musical and other sonic constructions of queer identity in the television film, Angels in America (HBO, 2003).  I outline various queer strategies in the music and sound of the film, demonstrating how music and sound contribute to unfixed and unstable identities. The readings of the selected scenes in the film reveal the ways in which queer strategies operate, and how film music symbolises identity in flux.

In this chapter, I turn to Mina Caputo, the vocalist of the long-running alternative metal band Life of Agony, as a case study to discuss how transgenderness is negotiated in contemporary heavy metal music. Taking my point of departure from queer musicology and transgender studies, I aim to first develop transgender music research as a field that examines music in a transgender-conscious and transgender-empathetic way (Välimäki 2013a, b); second, to contribute to the queering of heavy metal music (Smith 1997; Sarelin 2009; Gregory 2013; Clifford-Napoleone 2015) and, third, to contribute to heavy metal studies with a transgendered perspective.

By practicing reparative reading (Sedgwick 2003), my focus is on how Caputo communicates transgenderness, and gender in general, to a larger audience, and how transgender subjectivity, meanings and pleasure finds its space, even under the pressures, strictures and effects of the heteronormative culture. My research materials are mixed, ranging from audio and audiovisual recordings to ethnographic observation materials and public media texts, including websites and online discussion boards related to Caputo, Life of Agony and heavy metal culture. I am particularly interested in heavy metal culture, where (supposedly) straight and queer scenes intermingle. Because of this overlapping of straight and queer scenes in the same space (Clifford-Napoleone 2015), normative conceptions of gender are effectively undermined.

Este artículo busca demostrar que la homofobia marcó no solo las vidas de los artistas de la Nueva Canción Chilena, sino también los discursos que los investigadores posteriores hemos construido al escribir sobre el movimiento. Por una parte, abordo la homofobia que existía durante el periodo de auge de la Nueva Canción Chilena, tanto en el sociedad chilena en general como dentro del movimiento. En cuanto a esta homofobia histórica, el objetivo es relevar el impacto que esta tuvo en las vidas de los artistas y las estrategias que ellos desarrollaron para sobrellevarla. Por otra, documento los modos en que la homosexualidad fue, y en buena medida, sigue siendo ocultada en las investigaciones sobre la Nueva Canción Chilena. Argumento que esta homofobia historiográfica se traduce en un archivo con importantes imprecisiones e incoherencias. Mi objetivo último es demostrar que tenemos más que ganar que perder si reconocemos la diversidad sexual que existió dentro de la Nueva Canción Chilena.

Celem artykułu jest analiza Eurowizji jako jednego z narzędzi europejskiej soft power. Główny nacisk został położony na prześledzenie najnowszej historii konkursu pod względem polityki seksualnej. Postawione zostały pytania o polityczny wymiar Eurowizji i tożsamość seksualną konkursu oraz problem przydatności użycia kategorii kiczu i kampu do jego interpretacji. W głównej części tekstu nakreślono strategie przyjmowane przez osoby nieheternonormatywne występujące w konkursie w kontekście idei reprezentacji narodowej. W podsumowaniu artykułu nakreślone zostały wyzwania i problemy związane z wygraną Conchity Wurst w ostatniej edycji konkursu.

While the American composer John Cage is often classified as an influential figure in the realm of modernist music, the controversial nature of Cage's work has proven to be more far-reaching than many had initially contended. Through a process of re-examining the work of Cage through a postmodern lens, this thesis rejects the notion that Cage was confined to the realm of modernism, and demonstrates that the composer not only exhibited postmodern tendencies through his ideas and concepts, but also aesthetically in his compositions. By illuminating these postmodern compositional practices and postmodern-influenced belief systems expressed by Cage as an artist, a reinterpretation of the composer and his work is carried out, while also addressing criticisms leveled toward Cage as a postmodernist. Through this contemporary reanalysis, the thesis demonstrates that Cage was a composer that transcended genres and classifications to ultimately resonate as a viable figure of postmodern music.

When/where does sound become queer? The authors argue that sound – understood as a force encompassing a dynamism of waves, forces, intensities and affects – is inherently queer, rather than possessing a queer 'aspect' or requiring an appendage of queerness to be conceptualised separately. Sonic queerness is not a set of nebulous signifiers or aural hieroglyphs that have yet to be deciphered by semioticians, nor a 'gay sensibility' inscribed into the fabric of certain musical works that arouse suspicion, whose composers apparently need 'outing' or emancipating from the closet. The capacities and potencies of sound to emanate and evoke prepersonal affectations is expunged by writers who search longingly for metaphysical traces of a queer authorial voice, which we argue obfuscates a queerness inherent in the ontology of sound itself. Reworking contributions from queer theory both inside and outside of musicology and the systematic study of sound at a theoretical level, 'queer' is defined as that which disturbs, reframes, and distorts the boundaries between what is normal/knowable and abnormal/ unintelligible. Sound is a transient kind of movement, vibrations that resonate through space and time. If we try to approach an absolute understanding of what sound is, it calls us to its inchoateness. The ambiguity of this transience – the disturbance that haunts the willingness to interpret – will be discovered to be queerness, the 'essence' of sound itself.

In this dissertation I study musical, sonic and multimodal representations of sadomasochistic erotica in films, music videos, stage performances, and popular music. The study consists of an introductory chapter (1), a theoretical chapter on sadomasochism (2), three chapters discussing six case studies (3–5), as well as discussion and conclusion chapters (6 and 7). The examples investigated are the films Secretary (2003) and Duke of Burgundy (2014), Leonard Cohen’s song ‘I’m Your Man’ (1988), Elvis Costello’s song ‘When I Was Cruel No. 2’ (2002), Rihanna’s song and music video S&M (2011), and a filmed operatic production of W. A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni focusing on the character Zerlina (1787; dir. Claus Guth, 2008). In the conclusion, I briefly discuss the film Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) as an example of post-feminist, neoliberal sadomasochism occurring at the time of writing.

This study introduces a new conceptual tool for interpreting music with specific regard to eroticism: kink reading, or kink listening. My research is informed by three main areas of inquiry and methodologies: cultural musicology, queer musicology, and close reading. I theorise sadomasochism in a resolutely multifaceted and critical way using theory on performative materialism, which emphasizes both the lived experience of sadomasochism and the social power structures informing practices.

My findings indicate that there are certain strategies through which SM erotica has been depicted in music, which often include a mixture of humorous musical language and semiotic signifiers of the Uncanny, or the unsettling. This combination is distinctive of depictions of SM sex scenes. The music is often encoded as multisensory, and transforms perceptions of time and place. While sadomasochist representations can reflect cultural imbalances, SM can also be utilized as a queer, critical tool for empowering non-normative bodies, genders, and sexualities by making practitioners sexual agents rather than victims. SM can also broaden the concept of sex from a genital-oriented, procreation-directed activity to a state of mind combining suspended time and space and a mixture of sexual pleasure and sexualised pain.

Διπλωματική εργασία, Π.Μ.Σ. «Φύλο, Κοινωνία, Πολιτική», Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο Κοινωνικών και Πολιτικών Σπουδών

Στην παρούσα εργασία γίνεται μια προσπάθεια για την ανίχνευση των πτυχών της αντρικής ομοερωτικής επιθυμίας στην ελληνική μουσική, εξετάζοντας τους τρόπους με τους οποίους η επιθυμία αυτή διαπλέκεται με τις κατηγορίες του φύλου και του έθνους. Λαμβάνοντας ως άξονες της ανάλυσης τις παραπάνω κατηγορίες, δηλαδή το φύλο, τη σεξουαλικότητα και το έθνος, εστιάζει στους τρόπους διαπραγμάτευσης της ομοερωτικής επιθυμίας εντός του λόγου, συγκεκριμένα σε μουσικά έργα και δημιουργούς του 20ού και 21ου αιώνα, και στο δημόσιο λόγο γύρω από αυτούς και αυτά. Με την ομοερωτική επιθυμία ως «σταθερά» εξετάζονται οι ιδιάζουσες πολιτισμικές της παραλλαγές στην Ελλάδα, η εξέλιξή της μέσα στον 20ό αιώνα, μέσα από τα παραδείγματα του Δημήτρη Μητρόπουλου, του Μάνου Χατζιδάκι και του Σταμάτη Κραουνάκη, και η θέση που αυτή λαμβάνει εντός της εθνικής αφήγησης και της διαδικασίας εθνικής κατασκευής. Στη συνέχεια τίθενται στο επίκεντρο της ανάλυσης πιο πρόσφατες μουσικές παραγωγές και εκφράσεις της ομοερωτικής επιθυμίας, οι οποίες φανερώνουν πιο ανάγλυφα την ανάδυση μιας διακριτής ομοφυλόφιλης ταυτότητας στην Ελλάδα μετά το '90 και την πολιτισμική της γενεαλογία. Μια υπόθεση που διατρέχει την εργασία αυτή είναι ότι η ομοερωτική επιθυμία και τα υποκείμενα που την εκφράζουν μέσω της μουσικής έχουν ιστορικά συνεισφέρει στην διαμόρφωση του εθνικού φαντασιακού, δημιουργώντας νέες μορφές ελληνικότητας. Μια ακόμη παρατήρηση στη σχέση έθνους και ομοερωτισμού είναι πως αυτός, ενώ εξοστρακίζεται από τα κεντρικά εθνικά ιδεώδη ως εχθρός της ετεροκανονικότητας, ουσιαστικά παρεισφρύει και «σφραγίζει» κατά κάποιον τρόπο τη διαμόρφωση αυτών των εθνικών ιδεωδών, τουλάχιστον στην περίπτωση της μουσικής παραγωγής. Τέλος, όσον αφορά τις πιο πρόσφατες εκφράσεις του ομοερωτισμού στη μουσική, η αδιάφορη ως εχθρική στάση απέναντι στο έθνος υπογραμμίζεται από την ανάδυση μιας ομοφυλόφιλης ταυτότητας και μιας πολιτικής που φαίνεται να έρχεται σε ρήξη και με εθνικούς λόγους, αλλά και με το παιχνίδι του υπαινιγμού και της αποσιώπησης που διαδραματίζεται στην ομοερωτική μουσική των προηγούμενων δεκαετιών.

Ned Rorem's setting of 2 Samuel 1, "Mourning Scene," and Diamanda Galas's incorporation of verses from Leviticus in her Plague Mass are two examples of musical queerings of biblical texts. Such musical queerings are an element of the ongoing interpretation of the Bible that is constitutive of Protestant spirituality and identity. Because liberal Protestant theology takes the historical contingency of and ideological division within the Bible seriously, this process of continual reinterpretation of the Bible can critically engage both queer affirmative and heterosexist aspects of the Bible and its reception. After investigating how Rorem and Galas use music to make biblical texts express homoeroticism and denounce homophobia, I place their interpretations in dialogue with three Protestant theologians: Georgia Harkness, Carter Heyward, and Marcella Althaus-Reid. One can trace a historical development from Social Gospel liberalism to Indecent Theology among these theologians that roughly parallels the span of time in which Rorem and Galas were active. Because the theologians under discussion wrote at different historical stages and with different ideological commitments, the extent to which specific musical queerings align with different theological perspectives varies widely. This variety in the current conversation continues the perspectival approach to theology that liberal theology recognizes as mandated by the biblical texts' heterogeneity.

The chapter discusses audiovisual communication and the construction of transgender subjectivity in the film Transamerica (dir. Duncan Tucker, 2005), which portrays a male-to-female transgender woman’s journey of self-discovery and parenthood while driving with a teenage son across America. Combining audiovisual analysis with queer and transgender studies, the film is interpreted as a queering—or more precisely, a transgendering—of the standard road movie format, adopted as the means of depicting the culmination of the protagonist’s gender transition. The analysis focuses on how the journey trope of transgenderness is constructed in the film music and sound. Special attention is devoted to the use of American country music to symbolize an identity in transition, the use of music encoded for ethnic identity to highlight transgender people’s social status and create a potentially progressive space of intersectionality and multiculturality, and gendered play in uses of the human voice.

Guided by socio-musicological perspectives, this article contends that Toya Delazy and Nakhane Touré grapple with issues pertaining to love and sexuality in their music. This is against the background of South Africa being hailed as a progressive country, especially relating to its constitution that acquiescently protects the rights of sexual minorities. Notwithstanding such constitutional protections, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) continue to be victimised particularly in the impoverished townships of this country. Although they celebrate same-sex love, this article contends that such celebration is based on guilt and shame. Singing against such guilt and shame is a significant element in the construction of their sexual identity and acceptation of their same-sex love. The article concludes that Toya Delazy and Nakhane Touré's songs are pioneering in South Africa for their open depiction of queer love in a socio-cultural milieu that considers such identities and modes of self-expression as unnatural, deviant and taboo. This music can thus be considered as a transgressive space that seeks to rehabilitate the manner in which same-sex love is perceived.

In the present article I propose a transgender reading of the film Boys Don’t Cry that differs from previous interpretations in two ways. First, my reading is a listening, based on analyzing the film’s soundtrack. Second, my purpose is to listen to the film reparatively by emphasizing the dimensions therein that construct a safe space for transgender subjectivity (cf. Sedgwick 2005). I claim that it is through music that the film Boys Don’t Cry succeeds in constructing, in an effective way, transgender subjectivity and transgendered meanings, including a transgender vision of a more progressive future.

In my analysis, I will concentrate on four musical strategies in the film’s communication of transgender subjectivity. First, I will discuss the use of country and rock-based music as establishing the story’s milieu and the hegemonic masculinity inherent in the heteronormative culture of that milieu. At the same time, this music expresses Brandon’s feelings as a young, heterosexual man. Second, I will consider the use of psychedelic, punk, and new wave rock as a critique of hegemonic masculinity that makes way for alternative masculinities, including Brandon’s trans masculinity. Third, I will discuss the ambient-like, experimental music heard in the film as an auditory form of transgender
utopia. Fourth, I will examine how Brandon and Lana’s love story is narrated musically by means of a country ballad, The Bluest Eyes in Texas, and how this music evolves into a representation of transgender utopia as well.

ABSTRACT IN FINNISH

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan transsukupuolisuuteen liittyvien merkitysten rakentumista Boys Don’t Cry -elokuvan (ohj. Kimberly Peirce, USA 1999) musiikissa. Metodologisesti tutkimukseni ammentaa audiovisuaalisen musiikin ja transsukupuolisuuden tutkimuksesta. Keskityn tarkastelussani aikaisemmassa tutkimuksessa ohitettuun näkökulmaan: musiikin merkityksiin ja reparatiiviseen tulkintaan (vrt. Sedgwick 2005). Reparatiivisen kuuntelun myötä korostan elokuvassa niitä ulottuvuuksia, jotka rakentavat tilaa transsukupuoliselle olemisen tavalle jopa väkivallan, sorron ja trauman esitysten keskellä.

Analysoin tarkemmin transsukupuolisuutta rakentavia mekanismeja, joita ovat esimerkiksi (1) amerikkalaisen valtavirtakantrin ja kantrirockin ilmentämä hegemoninen maskuliinisuus, (2) vaihtoehtorockin, kuten psykedeelisen rockin, punkin ja uuden aallon rockin, viestimä vaihtoehtoinen maskuliinisuus, (3) transsukupuolista olemisen tapaa kaksijakoisen sukupuolijärjestelmän tuolla puolen rakentava kokeellinen ambientmusiikki sekä (4) kantriballadi The Bluest Eyes in Texas, joka toimii johtoaiheena elokuvan päähenkilöiden väliselle rakkaudelle.

Mexican Sonideros are sound systems that organize popular dances in the poor neighborhoods of Mexico City. hey also operate in other Mexican cities and parts of the USA, where many Mexican immigrants live and work. In some aspects, they are very similar to other Latin-American sound systems such as Brazilian Tecnobrega and Funk Carioca, and Colombian Picoteros. However, Mexican Sonideros have some features that make them quite unique. Mexican Sonideros stand out for DJ performance: he DJ constantly talks over the music, adjust its speed and adds sounds efects that contribute to make a bridge between tradition and modernity. heir repertoire includes Cuban music hits of the forties, salsa and cumbia, from the classic to these days. One of the most unique elements is the new bodily practice introduced by dancers. he common gender markers of this kind of music disappears and new corporalities emerge in the bosom of gay and transvestite community.

Crowned by many as one of the immortal composers, George Frederick Handel (1685 – 1759) was the central figure in forging England's cultural identity amongst its European neighbors during the late 18 th and early 19 th century. The identity Handel forged in the crucible of the early English nationalism movement was not that of a German composer, but one of a robust, refined, altruistic, righteous, straight, Protestant Englishman. Despite numerous character flaws by 18 th century standards, this was the identity he ardently upheld in the public eye. How did Handel – a German-born, bad tempered, gluttonous, and possibly homosexual man –transform himself from a Hanoverian writing Italian opera to a true " British-worthy " through the power of his musical entrepreneurship?

The norms of the classical music concert, familiar from the twentieth century onward in European and United States contexts, favor an apparently uniform practice of attentive, silent listening, the audience seated in rows with a uniform visual focus. However, within this appearance of quiet conformity, listeners have diverse, intense experiences. The discontinuity between experience and demeanor reflects powerful cultural oppositions between inner and outer, public and private. The discontinuity is particularly stark in light of the erotic qualities of music, as described in brilliant work by Susan McClary (Feminine Endings, 1991) and Suzanne Cusick ("On a Lesbian Relationship with Music", 1994). My essay returns to their work, expanding their accounts to consider a broader range of sexual subjectivities, including "bottom" subjectivity as described by Trevor Hoppe and "femme" subjectivity as described by Ann Cvetkovich.

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.

Released in 2013, Nakhane Touré’s debut album, Brave Confusion, is innovative
in grappling with questions of race, sexuality and religion. Enveloped in a
beguiling honesty and replete with layers of complexity, this album captures
the arduous journey towards the acceptation of a gay identity. Drawing on the
theoretical work proposed by Judith Butler in her essay, “Critically queer”, this
paper argues that music offers a space that allows Touré to negotiate his gay
identity. Centring on the concepts of identity construction, race and spirituality,
this paper explores how through broaching gay sexuality in his music, Touré
shows that gender and sexual identity are neither fixed nor predetermined
phenomena. Actively performing his own sexual and gender identity allows
him to construct his being particularly within a sociocultural space that appears
intolerant of the sexual orientation and gender identity of lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender individuals.

As manifestações que tomaram as ruas do Brasil em 2013 mostraram não só o descontentamento da população com o cenário político, mas também com a violência
sofrida por certos grupos, como mulheres, negros e LGBTs. Essas lutas ganharam visibilidade e temas como a descriminalização do aborto e o casamento gay voltaram
a ser novamente discutidos pela sociedade. Com isso, a arte queer começou a ocupar um pouco mais os grandes veículos de comunicação, como a Internet e até os grandes canais de televisão. Este artigo busca analisar o cenário atual da música a fim de contribuir para a produção musicológica queer brasileira, que ainda dá seus
primeiros passos.

The book discusses ecological and queer themes in contemporary audiovisual culture, especially in American ”mainstream independent” films, by concentrating on  sound and music. Close listenings are offered on the following audiovisual works: Angels in America (HBO, 2003), Transamerica (2005), The Hours (2002), The New World (2005), The Tree of Life (2011), and The Unknown Soldier (a theater piece, directed by Kristian Smeds, 2007).

ABSTRACT IN FINNISH

Tiede ja taide ovat tapoja tutkia todellisuutta. Molemmat etsivät vastauksia siihen, mitä olemassaolo on ja miten elämää tulisi elää. Tiede perustuu käsitteelliseen järkeilyyn, taide nojaa kokemuksellisuuteen.

Muutoksen musiikki lähestyy musiikkia, elokuvaa ja teatteria filosofisina hankkeina, jotka sysäävät ajattelumme liikkeelle ja saavat meidät hahmottamaan maailmaa uudella tavalla. Tarkastelun kohteina ovat ihmisen luontosuhdetta sekä sukupuolista ja seksuaalista toiseutta käsittelevät 2000-luvun audiovisuaaliset teokset: elokuvat Elämän puu, Transamerica, Tunnit ja Uusi maailma, televisiosarja Angels in America sekä Kansallisteatterin teatteriesitys Tuntematon sotilas. Kirjassa opetellaan kuuntelemaan kulttuuria tarkasti ja toiveikkaasti mielensisäiseen ja yhteiskunnalliseen muutokseen virittyen.

Narratives of Brandon Teena (1972-1993), a young trans man who died as the victim of a hate crime in Humboldt, Nebraska, in 1993, abound in transgender arts and culture. It can be said that Brandon Teena has become a central figure in work on cultural trauma that deals with transphobia and anti-transgender violence.

In this article I discuss the music of two films that have significantly influenced how the story of Brandon Teena has circulated, both in mainstream and transgender culture: the drama film Boys Don't Cry (1999) and the low-budget documentary The Brandon Teena Story (1998).

I am interested in the musical means by which Boys Don't Cry and The Brandon Teena Story convey the story of Brandon Teena. More specifically, by drawing on transgender musicology, cultural film music research, and cultural trauma studies, I will focus on how the films communicate transgender subjectivity and narrate the traumatic subject matter via music.

This paper proceeds from the knowledge that important voices were lost during the US AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. Edmund White (2001) characterized this period as one of “loss within loss”; that is, the loss of visionary and creative voices, the loss of potential, and the overwhelming loss of ordinary people whose names most of us never knew. For gay communities, AIDS produced a combination of trauma and exhaustion that led to what Castiglia and Reed (2011) call “degenerational unremembering.” Here, I trace the history of one such lost voice, that of singer-songwriter and activist Michael Callen (1955-1993). Callen’s contributions to the art and activism of HIV/AIDS should have secured his position in queer history. One of the first gay men diagnosed with immune deficiency in New York City, he played a role in the popularization of the notion of safe sex and other lifesaving healthcare interventions, and his work as a solo artist and with The Flirtations brought HIV/AIDS to the concert stage. However, Callen’s life is more than a story of a lost AIDS activist. On his 1988 album Purple Heart, Callen chronicles urban gay male life from the end of the 1970s through the first years of the AIDS epidemic. This paper invites us to listen to Callen’s voice as a corrective to two decades of  “degenerational unremembering” using a combination of interviews with Callen’s family and musical collaborators and previously unavailable archival documents.

Η μουσική είναι ένα από τα πεδία διαμόρφωσης της σύγχρονης υποκειμενικότητας, στο βαθμό που μέσω του ήχου και της σύμπραξής του με το λόγο σχηματοποιούνται και τίθενται υπό διαπραγμάτευση οι έμφυλες, εθνικές και σεξουαλικές ταυτότητες. Εξετάζοντας περιπτώσεις αντρών μουσικών που έδρασαν στην Ελλάδα και εξέφρασαν με κάποιο τρόπο μια ομοερωτική επιθυμία, η παρούσα εισήγηση επιδιώκει να διαλευκάνει τους λόγους που παράγουν υποκείμενα με συγκεκριμένα έμφυλα και σεξουαλικά χαρακτηριστικά, και τον τρόπο με τον οποίο τα υποκείμενα αυτά αναπαράγουν-αλλά και αντιστέκονται-στην επικρατούσα εθνική αφήγηση. Λόγω της ιδιάζουσας σχέσης του ομοερωτισμού με το δίπολο κοινοποίηση/αποσιώπηση, η εξέτασή του στο πλαίσιο του δημόσιου λόγου, μέσα στον οποίο εντάσσεται και η μουσική, είναι εφικτή μέσω μιας «επιστημολογίας της ντουλάπας», μιας ψηλάφισης δηλαδή των τρόπων συγκάλυψης, αποσιώπησης, υπαινιγμού και επιλεκτικής αποκάλυψης της ομοερωτικής επιθυμίας. Κεντρική υπόθεση της εισήγησης αυτής είναι πως η ομοερωτική σεξουαλικότητα δεν λειτουργεί στο ελληνικό συγκείμενο μόνο ως απειλή προς την εθνική συνοχή, υποσκάπτοντας τη σταθερότητα της ετεροκανονικής οικογένειας, αλλά συχνά συμμετέχει στην παραγωγή μιας αφήγησης για την ελληνικότητα αρκετά κοινής και διαδεδομένης στο δημόσιο λόγο. Επιχειρείται δηλαδή η ανάδειξη της σύνθετης σχέσης του ομοερωτισμού με την εθνική αφήγηση στην Ελλάδα, έτσι όπως αυτή αποτυπώνεται μέσα και γύρω από τη μουσική και στους λόγους που τη διατρέχουν.

Homoeroticism and nation in Greek music: Νew forms of greekness and sexuality

Μusic is one of the fields wherein contemporary subjectivity is formed, insofar as gender, national and sexual identities take shape and are negotiated through sound and the latter's interaction with language. This presentation's main aim is to investigate the discourses which produce subjects with specific gender and sexual characteristics, by examining the cases of male musicians who acted in Greece and by any means expressed a homoerotic desire, but also to discuss the ways in which these subjects reproduce-and also resist-a dominant national narrative. Bearing in mind the peculiarity of the relation between homoeroticism and the binarism of disclosure/secrecy, the examination of homoerotic desire in public discourse, in which music also partakes, must draw from an "epistemology of the closet", that is, a careful inspection of the ways with which this desire is suppressed, silenced, implied, and selectively disclosed. The central hypothesis here is that homoerotic sexuality in the Greek example does not function only as a threat towards national coherence, undermining the stability of the heteronormative family, but often participates in the production of a type of narrative about greekness, very common and widespread in public discourse. This analysis is also an attempt to point out the complex relation between homoeroticism and national narrative in Greece, and the way this relation is reflected in and around music and the discourses traversing it.

“It’s gay pride, not black pride”—a spectator’s claim during the 2016 Toronto Pride Parade as quoted in the Globe and Mail—is emblematic of the vitriolic response to a brief sit-in by Black Lives Matter-Toronto (BLM) that halted one of the world’s largest Pride Parades for thirty minutes. Before ending their protest, BLM made nine demands of Pride’s organizers. Although over-shadowed by the more sensationalized request to curb police participation in Pride, six of BLM’s nine demands relate to fostering sites of music participation for LGBTQ people of color, including a call to reinstate a stage for South Asian music performance and additional funding for Blockorama, a dance music party for queer African diasporic people.

Such requests underscore that many queer people of color consider participation in music cultures to be vital to recognizing themselves as part of a larger community. To be sure, bodies listening and moving together on the dance floor can be evidence of queer lives and queer power. Historically, underground dance venues are spaces where queers can explore ideas of identity and community (see, for example, Fikentscher, Lawrence, Echols, Dyer).

BLM’s requests, then, seem to fit into the broader theme of the parade, in which participants honored the victims murdered at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando by carrying placards bearing the names and ages of victims and halting at 3PM to observe a moment of silence in their memory.

Unfortunately, public reactions to BLM’s demands suggest that music spaces in which queer people of color gather are understood as inconsequential to larger projects of LGBTQ politics—and that many Canadians still think of gayness as necessarily coupled with whiteness. Sue-Ann Levy, of the National Post, argued that this year’s parade was “in memory of the victims of the Orlando massacre” not “allowing one loud group to make a political statement.”

Published responses, which ignore the intersection of race and sexuality and reify the hegemonic whiteness of LGBTQ narratives, are unsurprising given that these BLM activists comprise part of a long lineage of queer activists of color who have been erased from the stories we tell about LGBTQ politics. In fact, many attendees and participants at Toronto Pride may have been unaware of the fact that most people killed at Pulse were racialized Latinx queers.

What is lost in this discourse is that BLM’s protest is precisely what the massacre at Pulse requires of us: to make an aggressive stand for spaces in which queer people of color can amass as a collective under the pulsing rhythms of dance music and to recognize the political potential of such gatherings.

And as music scholars we must also teach the erroneousness of claims that these spaces can ever be disconnected from the social politics articulated by people of color.

The affective charge of queer collectivity is regularly predicated on black and latinx musical traditions and forms of social dance that come out of communities of color. Moments of togetherness on the dance floors at Toronto Pride 2016 were undeniably made possible by the labor, traditions, and genealogies of black and brown bodies. This should alter our understanding of these pasts, change how we conceptualize LGBTQ experience in the present, and enable more just collective visions for the future.

Queer music scholarship must lead this initiative and teach, widely and voraciously, how to hear these politics.

This project seeks to develop a gender criticism of recorded music informed by both Anglophone and Latin American gender scholarship, and applicable to the critical examination of a wide range of recorded music performances. Its core research questions are how do musical performances create constructions of gender and how do these produce meaning. The questions are addressed in an interdisciplinary manner, by bringing together epistemologies from Musicology, Performance Studies, and Gender Studies.
    Methodologically, the project is representative of what has been labeled a “performative turn” in musicology, a shift that stands on the notion that meaning is created in the act of performing. An important implication is that scholars are turning away from the study of music as score and exploring music as performance. One successful model for such an approach is the study of music captured in audio recordings, what Cook calls a musicology of recordings (Cook 2010).
    Like McClary and other feminist musicologists, I am committed to a gender criticism that engages the music itself (McClary 2002). Yet musicological gender criticism, from McClary to Keenan, has focused largely on hermeneutic analyses of scores (Keenan 2010). What distinguishes this project from McClary’s, and what is novel about it, is that I seek to develop a gender criticism for a musicology of recordings, not scores. It will be the first systematic study of music and gender undertaken in Chile, and it seeks to be the first step towards establishing it as a new line of scholarship within Chilean musicology.
    If the gender criticism of recordings proposed here is to make a lasting contribution, it needs to be applicable to the study of recordings across periods and music styles, most notably of both classical and popular musics. This project proposes to test the gender criticism of music as performance in two contrasting case studies: Claudio Arrau’s recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and recordings of twenty-first century Chilean indie pop.

Music plays a crucial role in the construction of identity and subjectivity, and particularly in sexual and gender constructions. A possible approach to understand this interactions is to dig through the different types of relationships between music and the narratives through which people built their identities and subjetivities. Following Kramer's model (1995), I want to propose as a initial hypothesis that music works at three different narrative levels: narrative, narrativity and narratography. Taking this as my framework, and also the distinction between performative performance and the performatic performance, I will analyse some case studies from queer tango, Cuban timba and reggaeton and Méxican sonideros.

Partiendo de una metodologia potenciada desde la musicología cuir, con c, en el siguiente articulo reflexiono sobre la estetización del cuerpo queer y el potencial expresivo de los afectos desde el trabajo y la música de tres artistas trans mexicanas. El imaginario sonoro desde donde construyen sus proyectos musicales me permite reflexionar sobre los afectos y las sensibilidades que entran en constante diálogo y negociación y que operan desde un exceso estético donde lo simbólico, lo auténtico y lo vernáculo están en constante dialogo artístico y epistémico.

https://musicologynow.org/harry-hay-the-mattachine-society-and-musicologys-role-in-the-early-u-s-gay-rights-movement/

We are used to thinking of musicology as having come late to queer studies, but if we expand our definition beyond the academy, we see that musicology — that is, researching and teaching music history — played a small but important role in the origins of the modern American gay rights movement. Musicology, it turns out, helped inspire the Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, the first gay rights (or in the parlance of the time, homophile) organization in the United States after WWII. This musicology took place in the adult education programs of the American Communist Party, and specifically in a course at the Los Angeles People’s Educational Center taught by Harry Hay.