"Gay Sensibility" in music?

kill me now

anyway this article is pretty on target in its skepticism, so i don't know that there's much more to say

James, Everything But The Girl, Dimitri from Paris, India.Arie, Jamiroquai, M People, Michael Jackson, Moloko, Norah Jones, Paul Johnson, Richie K., Terry Mullan, early Bad Boy Bill and DJ Funk

i just bought three cds: heart, the postal service, and the wicked soundtrack. time will tell which one gets the most play.

Patti Labelle, Nina Simone, Missy Elliot, Lil' Kim, Debussey, French Pop, Jazz, R&B, Dance, classical, soul, funk

The Faint, "Annie", Franz Fucking Ferdinand, Scissor Sisters, The Faint, Enon, The Fiery Furnaces, Beethoven's "Waldstein", Dizzee Rascal

Tori, Bjork, SCISSOR SISTERS!!!(ANA IS AMAZING AND DEL MARQUIS IS HOT!), Office, Racheal Yamagata, PJ Harvey, Jason Mraz.

The Replacements, The Magnetic Fields, Tom Waits, The Handsome Family, Leonard Cohen, the Pixies, the Mountain Goats

Flexibility is the heart of gayness and the basis of our difference from straights

Obv all such generalisations are dumb, but this one particularly irks this bi man who has had gay friends struggle with the concept of an out bi man, because bi men are gay men pretending to be straight. Fucking men instead of women is not evidence of flexibility.

-- Martin Skidmore (martin.skidmore...), June 28th, 2002 9:00 PM.

This was a very strange issue of NYT.

Hahahaha!

probably in the context of a review like that he could identify as whatever he wants (within the bounds of taste)

"Speaking as a versatile boot pig, I find Ms. Hubb's argument to be textbook essentialism and to beg the question . . . "

If it's not Hobo, it's a Hobo knock-off.

I mean, had they clearly asserted that this wokred in a cultural/psychological context, I'd agree that there would eb some sort of difference.

But as we're not talking show tunes or that almost indefinable semi-camp Stephen Merritt quality or whatever, but "absolute" music, I really think the whole thing is a possibly dangerous stretch.

I kept thinking about this OUT magazine piece--I think it was OUT--saying, tongue in cheek, (I think), that it was impossible that Joss Whedon was straight, due to Buffy's musical episode and general "gay-ness."

i didn't get that the books were making this argument. what i did gather from the schubert thing, at least, was that the basis for forming the idea that schubert's music was "queer" or influenced decisively by his "homosexuality" (obviously this is a fraught concept when we're talking about the early 19th century) was pretty bogus--the idea that adjectives applicable to certain qualities of his compositions (like you say ian, this is "absolute" music) can simply be transferred to the realm of queer politics (or whatever you want to call it) with no cognitive trouble. (anyhow, there are much likely and proximate influences etc. to explain aspects of schubert's style than his "gay-ness"--especially since "gay-ness" really wasn't a working category then much less something that somehow would describe themself as or knowingly make a structuring aspect of their creative work.)

by which i mean, saying a piece of music employs "dissonance" does not mean you can make the leap and say that the music is therefore dissonant with regard to gender identity, or some such argument. the semantic likeness--the use of "dissonance" in the two contexts--is not a basis for a real argument about the music. especially since a lot of the words employed--i don't think the author of the schubert thing necessarily used "dissonance," but there are other words--are being used in their late-20th century, modish, academic connotations, connotations that didn't exist (CONTEXTS that didn't exist) in schubert's time.

does that make sense?

As to the context of homosexuality being historically unavailable, actually there is an increasing scholarly body of evidence that questions the hardline Foucault claim in The History of Sexuality that 19th century medicine created the identity of the homosexual and that before that there were homosexual acts but not homosexual identities/persons. For examples and an overview of these critiques of the "acts paradigm" see for instance Kenneth Borris' recent and fab introduction to "Same Sex Desire in English Renaissance" (Routledge, 2004). It won't help us about Schubert specifically, but it complicates and fills in the historical picture considerably.

And wasn't Bernstein pretty much defiantly bisexual? And if so, how does a bi sensibility fit into this thesis?

I'm unconfortable with theory that codifies preference into strict parameters that can be 'read.' I *did* like it when the reviewer noted that there were no blurbs from actual musicians.

i'm straight but i don't think my choices and actions can be conclusively explained by recourse to a "straight sensibility"--similarly i think explaining lenny bernstein by invoking a "gay sensibility" is not off base but really tends toward the banal.

i mean, its explanatory power seems really limited. as in: some leftist critics comment that in bessie smith's voice we hear "300 years of oppression"-- but why then did 300 years of oppression produce just one bessie smith?

If I wanted to play psychologist, I could speculate about the tendency of homosexuals to bond with the parent of the opposite sex instead of the same.

In other words, the gay boy sews with his mom while the gay girl plays golf with dad. If this tendency is even real, then it might result in increased cross-fertilization between the distinctly male and female aspects of culture, or it may not.

At this point, I could grasp for other straws, but I'll never lower myself to the po(st)mo(dernist) ramblings of those who claim there is some magical pomo sound in music.

http://www.lovegodsway.org/GayBands

Here it is, everyone! If you want to remain "ordinary," stay away from these bands! You're welcome.

it's a well-known spoof, and there's a thread about it here if you're interested.

Oh, that takes the fun out of it.

Thanks for the heads up.

i have this