An Exploration of Music’s Role for Queer Visibility in Any Other Way
Photo by Teddy Österblom on Unsplash
Photo par Teddy Österblom sur Unsplash
Philippe Haddad
(FR) Dans An Exploration of Music’s Role for Queer Visibility in Any Other Way, Philippe Haddad examine le rôle de la musique tel que présenté dans « Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer », un ouvrage qui porte sur une multitude de disciplines de la culture queer. Bien qu’il tient le nom du single de Jackie Shane, l’icône transgenre des années 60, « Any Other Way » n’explore que très peu le rôle que la musique a joué tout au long de l’histoire de la communauté queer, dans la célébration et la promotion de la visibilité de ses membres. Haddad illustre comment la musique a servi comme plateforme pour les artistes canadiens queer, à partir de la seconde moitié du 20e siècle. Pour cela, il utilise des réactions du public à la carrière de Jackie Shane et à « High School Confidential » de Rough Trade, afin de faire preuve du manque de recherches académiques sur la musique LGBTQ+, et sur ses effets chez la culture populaire.
As a modern and extensive collaborative effort between several prominent historians of sexuality, Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer seeks to advance queer historiography to reaches that have yet to be seen. It conducts a thorough exploration of many fields in the history of sexuality in Canada. These include the study of gay spaces, records of emergence and self-discovery, the origins of the queer community and examples of resistance against regulation placed upon it. However, as a collective work named after an iconic song from one of the 1960s’ most prominent queer artists in Jackie Shane, Any Other Way seldom explores the importance of music to queer culture and its role in improving LGBTQ visibility in Canada. In only a few instances, including Steven Maynard’s article entitled “A New Way of Lovin’” as well as Farrow and Lorinc’s interview of new wave band Rough Trade’s Carole Pope, are we able to see the exploration of the queer music scene and gay contributions to popular trends. Despite the lack of exploration presented on the topic in Any Other Way, the importance of music to queer Canadian culture from the mid 20th century to the present is shown to lie in its ability to act as a platform for the gay community’s visibility in hetero-majoritarian popular culture.
In an exploration of music’s ability to act as a platform for the gay community’s visibility in pop culture, it must be recognized that an important characteristic of music in providing such visibility lay in its capacities as a messenger. Music in the mid 20th century signified the beginnings of the expression of a wide variety of emotions and sentiments over radio waves. As described by queer historian Jodie Taylor: “Music's capacity to construct, express, stimulate and channel sexual urges and desires […] renders it [...] a dynamic mode of sexual signification"[1]. Traditional heteronormative sentiments were not the only ones explored and expressed through the spread of music as minority cultures began to popularize the expression of their own emotions through song. Popular musics have been recognized by many as “a dynamic site of gender and sexual oddity, and a productive site of queerness, providing numerous opportunities for people to explore alternative forms of self-presentation and to seek definition”[2]. Superstardom, a fragile status attributed only to individuals who could ride the wave of popular trendiness for more than a fleeting moment, began to find gay musicians who have left large impacts on pop culture to this day. Individuals such as Freddie Mercury, the lead vocalist of legendary rock band Queen, bisexual David Bowie with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, and Sir Elton John who continues to produce music, have consistently broken musical records and reshaped popular music to their liking. In doing so, they have set an example for all artists as they seek to do the same. As described by musical historian Aaron Lecklider: “Popular music, particularly from the turn of the 20th century onward, has provided an arena where marginalized voices can be heard and sexual identities shaped, challenged, and renegotiated"[3]. In this basic understanding of music as an expression of identity, it can be further explored as a platform for the gay community’s visibility in hetero-majoritarian popular culture.
In the exploration of music and its role in the gay community, it is important to recognize not only its appeal as a broadcaster of popular culture, but as a political voice which can be used to further the vision of a cause. In the gay community, such an instance could be found in the growing spread of lesbian feminism during the 1960s and 1970s. Lesbian feminism is a term assigned to a wave of feminism based in the increase of gender separatism in gay liberation efforts in the mid to late 20th century [4]. In this time frame, lesbians found an “increasing supremacy of the misogynistic and anti-feminist agendas of gay liberation", pushing them to create a new political position to counter the male-oriented liberation movement [5]. Lesbian feminism took to the radio waves in order to further its own notion of gay liberation. Members of this movement believed in defending “their right to express anger towards a patriarchal hegemony that continues to quash assertions of femininity, femaleness and woman-centre sexuality, and they have conveyed these expressions through various forms of popular music-making employing music as forum of self-expression and self-experience” [6]. This allows for the examination of an instance of gay visibility not only within the LGBTQ community, but also while pushing for social reform from federal governments.
In the exploration of music as a platform for the gay community’s visibility in hetero-majoritarian popular culture, there is a clear argument to be made of music being a not only for visibility but for intersectionality as well. Such intersectionality can be seen through several instances including the experience of non-white queer artists and the push for feminism through music. The term intersectionality represents an analysis of the way oppressive institutions can affect certain groups of people and the way those groups deal with them. An example of Canadian intersectionality in the popular music scene can be found in Jackie Shane’s bright career. As explained by sexual historian Steven Maynard in his writings on Jackie’s career:
[The story of Jackie Shane] is a story that begins in Toronto's Black and racially mixed R&B clubs and dance halls, centres on a fierce femininity, even proto-feminism, and embraces chicken, working-class trade, fat Black street queens, bad-ass women, and burly white bikers. Jackie's is truly a trans history - in the original meaning of the term - across genders, sexualities, classes, and races, a scrambling of boundaries that, in our own time, often seems impossible to cross.[7]
Jackie Shane represented one of the better possible experiences given to queer black artists in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. Her experience transcended that associated to either a black or gay icon in popular culture, as social status led to her following a unique path. She was a star that illuminated the Torontonian musicscape starting with her hit single after which Any Other Way was named. Unfortunately, she left the music scene early, not to be heard from again until a few years ago. Despite being used as a focal point for intersectionality in this collective work, the reader is unable to understand whether her experience was truly as good as it seemed or if it was somewhat more negative.
A second instance of intersectionality that can be witnessed in the exploration of music as a platform for the gay community’s visibility in hetero-majoritarian popular culture lies in the experience of feminism through music. Artists already established in popular culture made the most of the spotlight opportunities they were given and did their best to push for their own intersectional representation. As explained in an interview with Rough Trade’s Carole Pope:
Carole Pope: In public, you know, I was blatantly out. I was making out with women [...] Also, in the 1970s, I totally got into radical feminism and read a lot of books. I was just in a fury about women in society.
Jane Farrow: You were a very sex-positive feminist.
Pope: That's correct. Sexuality is beautiful. I always believed that. I was going to keep on pushing and pushing and pushing.[8]
Rough Trade’s 1980 hit single, “High School Confidential”, challenged traditional social norms and helped further the exploration of female-centered sexuality, reflecting Pope’s own beliefs. Through this use of music as a platform, Pope was able to push for the exposure of feminism through her own music.
In the exploration of music as a platform for the gay community’s visibility in hetero-majoritarian popular culture, one can also notice that visibility is divided into both external and internal; we see visibility both for and within the gay community. Both sexual and musical historians agree on the idea that “through music, queers have made and remade worlds” [9]. As explained by Taylor in her work Playing it Queer: Popular Music, Identity and Queer World-making:
Through music, queer bodies, subjectivities, desires and social relations are frequently constructed, affected and performed, and queer coalescence around particular musics has made space for, and temporally mapped otherness in, aggressively heteronormative cultural landscapes.[10] Taylor describes a phenomenon that has occurred repeatedly throughout the history of popular trends and cultures as individuals seek to reshape society either in their image or to their liking. In certain instances, such phenomena were incidental, as artists illustrated conflict in both song and while addressing the public.
For example, Jackie Shane is described as having “dramatized some of the distressing and enduring dilemmas of transgender experience, perhaps especially the public's prying and persisting demand to know – ‘is he or isn't she?’” [11]. According to people close to her, Jackie was openly out and to some was their introduction to the gay community [12]. There also exists intentional instances in which one can find the promotion of the gay community such as Rough Trade’s “High School Confidential”:
Farrow: So along comes 'High School Confidential' in 1980, on the Avoid Freud album. It's a huge moment for so many people, queer or straight. The lyrics are so explicit, and there's really no denying what you're singing about. Yet it was on mainstream radio [...]
Pope: Oh my god, it was very liberating [...] Everyone - straight, gay - just totally related to it for whatever reason. Straight people were like 'Yeah, high school, yeah'. And gay people were like, 'Yeah, you're talking to me.'"[13]
Carole Pope and Rough Trade didn’t look to hide themselves from popular culture, but rather to change it in their own image. What astonished them most was that much like Jackie Shane who “didn't hide that he was gay”, people were falling in love with them knowing they were gay"[14]. Within the gay community, however, both Jackie Shane and Rough Trade prompted reactions of self-discovery and celebration. Elaine Gaber-Katz recounts her first experiences of self-exploration in conjunction with one of Jackie Shane’s performances:
I profoundly sensed, that first time I saw him perform, that Jackie's queer, in-your-face presentation expressed that part of me that would never fit well in the straight world. Jackie spoke to a side of me that I didn't yet understand and that my 'then' world wouldn't have easily accepted. [15]
Rough Trade’s own “High School Confidential” brought a flurry of emotions upon its audience as many reacted to inflammatory lyrics such as “I want her so much I feel sick, /The girl can't help it, she really can't help it now/.../ It makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way"[16]. Some referred to the song as “scorching-hot lesbian visibility” or “pansexual catnip”, all while others interpreted the song as being “about a guy lusting after a female schoolmate” or “a girl with the hots for another chick” [17]. No matter the interpretation, nobody could deny that it was sensual and reactive. In this manner, one can understand how visibility both for and within the gay community can be seen in the exploration of music as a platform for the gay community’s visibility in hetero-majoritarian popular culture.
Following a thorough evaluation of Any Other Way, it can be said that this collective of scholarly works does not cover the role of music to the queer community in the capacity that it should. This conclusion is the result of a few factors, namely the lack of material to support any sort of argument in this area and the lack of depth in the presented evidence. The field of study relating music and popular culture with LGBTQ visibility is currently extremely narrow and holds large academic potential in its expansion. Further research on this topic can provide a greater image of the effects of sexuality on popular culture while also furthering our understanding of music’s power as a catalyst for social amelioration.
(EN) Philippe Haddad is a student at Queen’s University in Kingston completing a Bachelor of Arts Honor Degree while majoring in History and minoring in Politics. Haddad specializes in North American social history as well as contemporary Middle Eastern history and policy. He hopes to pursue a career in the fields of academia or legal studies.
(FR) Philippe Haddad est un étudiant à l’Université de Queen’s à Kingston qui souhaite compléter son Baccalauréat ès arts d’honneur avec une spécialisation d’études en histoire et une mineure en sciences politiques. Haddad se spécialise en histoire sociale nord-américaine ainsi qu’en histoire et politiques contemporaines du Moyen-Orient. Il espère poursuivre une carrière dans le domaine universitaire ou légal.