Happy Pride season! Pride is typically celebrated between June and September and highlights the lives of queer people around the world. We are so excited to bring you materials related to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community from our collection. These materials cross time and genre and tell interesting and unique queer stories in music.

Queer geographies of music

Queering Kansas City jazz: gender, performance, and the history of a scene by Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone looks at the case study of Kansas City, Missouri, to demonstrate the ways that queer identities played out in the city through the lens of jazz. Recommended chapter: “Queering Dante’s Inferno.”
Do you remember house?: Chicago’s queer of color undergrounds by Micah E. Salkind is based on extensive research and illustrates the importance of house music to queer culture historically. Recommended chapter: “Are You Ready to Get Your Life? Performing Neostalgia and Wildness in Chicago’s Contemporary Queer Club Scenes.”
Dancehall: a reader on Jamaican music and culture edited by Sonjah Stanley Niaah traces the beginnings and expansion of dancehall as a genre and its impact on culture globally. Recommended chapter: “Out and Bad: Toward a Queer Performance Hermeneutic in Jamaican Dancehall.”
Performing antiquity: ancient Greek music and dance from Paris to Delphi, 1890-1930 by Samuel N. Dorf studies the modernist period and the way that scholars of Greek antiquity collaborated with performing artists to bring their work to life. Recommended chapter: “Performing Sappho’s Fractured Archive, or Listening for the Queer Sounds in the Life and Works of Natalie Clifford Barney.”
Wild dances: my queer and curious journey to Eurovision by William Lee Adams is the story of queer journalist William Lee Adams interviewing Eurovision participants and fans across Europe. Recommended chapter: “Wild Dances.”
Queering freedom: music identity, and spirituality: (anthology with perspectives from ten other countries) edited by Karin S. Hendricks and June Boyce-Tillman blends queer theory with spiritualty to encourage a holistic musical experience, using examples from around the world. Recommended chapter: “Queering the space: community music work with LGBT groups” by Catherine Pestano.
Leisure as black survival: ballroom, vogue, and black queer and trans+ embodied activism in Canada by Janelle Joseph and Naomi Bain is an article about the ballroom scene in Toronto for Black queer and trans+ folks and the importance of this scene for self-expression.

Queer stories

Queer arrangements: Billy Strayhorn and midcentury jazz collaboration by Lisa Barg looks at Black queer history through the lens of the story of composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn. Recommended chapter: “Working Behind the Scenes: Gender, Sexuality, and Collaboration in Strayhorn’s Vocal Arrangements.”
The Bad Bunny enigma: culture, resistance, and uncertainty edited by Sheilla R. Madera, Nelson Varas-Díaz, and Daniel Nevárez Araújo analyzes Bad Bunny’s impact on culture and music, with a particular focus on amplifying marginalized voices. Recommended chapter: “Bad Bunny and the Queer Trans-formation of Reggaeton” by Carlos Rivera Santana and Omar Ruiz Vega.
The Purple One: Prince, race, gender, and everything in between edited by Judson L. Jeffries, Shannon M. Cochran, and Molly Reinhoudt deep dives Prince’s impact on history through a series of glimpses into his career. Recommended chapter: “Educating to Empower: Gender Performativity Pedagogy Using the Artistry of Prince and Sheila E.
David Bowie made me gay: 100 years of LGBT music by Darryl W. Bullock chronicles recorded music history made by and for the LGBT community and how music has evolved. Recommended chapter: “Once Upon a Time in a disco far far away.”
Rocking the closet: how Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace, and Johnny Mathis queered pop music by Vincent L. Stephens focuses in on these four pop icons and how their performances have continued to influence musicians to today. Recommended chapter: “Visibly Hidden: Postwar Disorientation, Queer Community, and Queer Ambivalence.”
Cabin boys, milkmaids, and rough seas: identity in the unexpurgated repertoire of Stan Hugill by Jessica M. Floyd investigates gender, sexuality, and identity in a previously unpublished manuscript of sea chanteys. Recommended chapter: “Looking queerly and the pleasures that defy category.”
Imagining musical pasts: the queer literary musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson by Kristin M. Franseen explores these three scholars’ work and also the role of gossip in queer music histories. Recommended chapter: “The Old Queer Musicology.”
Felicita Vestvali: Rebellious prima donna, charismatic actor, and LGBTQ icon by Piotr Szarota and Aneta Markuszewska recounts the story of Felicita Vestvali and her role as a queer woman working as a prima donna in the 19th century.

Queer genres

Queer theory and research

Music

Two pieces from The Wreckers by Ethel Smyth
Urban spring: for chamber orchestra by Gilbert Galindo, commissioned by the Queer Urban Orchestra for Pride 2021
Take all my loves: 9 Shakespeare sonnets by Rufus Wainwright

By Sabine O'Donnell, TALint Student, Music Library

Queer music : celebrate Pride with us at the library!

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