Unpacking Providence's Queer Underbelly

 If there’s anything my experience in the queer underbelly of Providence revealed to me this semester, it’s that the sites of conflict embedded in the human experience become stark and in-your-face when boys, girls, and erotic desire are thrown into a hot space with thumping bass and strobe lights.  Understanding the way queers operate after dark in a smallish city like Providence sheds light on the social schisms that happen elsewhere in our nasty world.  

Which is why, even in the little capital city of the littlest state, there are quite a few places to be “queer” when the sun goes down.  Doing my project on the “queer” scene here in Providence was, admittedly, an oversized undertaking.  Not all queers are created equal.  The fact is, twinky gay boys and clunky leather barons don’t always wanna rub shoulders.  The girlz need their spots too.  So my attempt to hit up these identity hubs was certainly a challenge, but I’ll do my best to document some findings.

I entered these clubs as a participant, determined to document the way clubs operated and understand my own role as a white, twinky male in spaces that are racialized, gendered, and constructed around ideals of body image.  I came out of this project with an amplified knowledge of aspects of club culture I have suspected, plus a few surprises.  My experiences at Mirabar and other gay clubs in years past have equipped me with some understanding of the aesthetic that is celebrated in those spaces.  But I have never really thought about the music that undercuts clubbing, the variety of queer spaces available in a given city, and the spatial fragmentation that occurs within clubs along lines of race, class, age, gender and body type.   These are findings that became clear to me as I navigated three very distinct queer spaces over the semester.  I also feel that as a gay male, my understanding of Mirabar as a space and my comfort entering it led me to document it more thoroughly and with less hesitation.  My unfamiliarity with the bear scene and with fetish subcultures was in itself a site of knowledge; I can now say that I have cruised at a bear club (minimally), and hit up a fetish party.  Beyond that however, I have not developed the layers of understanding that come across as I analyze the dynamics at play at Mirabar; I feel that this imbalance, while inevitable considering my subject position, shines through in this ethnography post. 

In cities big enough to handle variety -- and Providence is one -- queerness is a fragmented ordeal whose boundaries correspond loosely with the clubs and bars available in the city.  I took on three very different models of the “queer” club space.  I frequented Mirabar over the last few months to document a boy-heavy dancefloor, rocked Fetish Night at Club Hell on a recent Wednesday, and spent a few minutes cruising around the Eagle with some big badd bearz.  

DISCLAIMER--->In this post, I’m using “queer” to describe any sexual identity that doesn’t fit squarely in the framework of normative sexualities.  I’m a fan of UrbanDictionary’s definition #5 (scroll down a little after the jump), which doesn’t place “queer” as the opposite of “straight” like UrbanDictionary’s definition #4.  Clubs in which non-normative sexual behavior like BDSM (Club Hell’s forte on Wednesday nights) is visibly performed and advertised are “queer” in the context of this essay, even if their participants may sometimes identify with a “straight” label as well.

Queer Identity and the Regulation of Sexual Desire

My first time ever stepping foot in Mirabar, a tight-muscled tight-jeaned alpha-twink greeted me with shotglasses filled with scarlet liquid I’m too young to drink.  “Welcome,” said his seven-and-a-half abdominal muscles, while the bulge in his boxer briefs whispered a salacious “Have fun tonight.”  

This guy looks like a Mirabar shotboy
n.d., n.a., <http://www.helloken.net/other/Cel/twink/twink%20(21).jpg>

The barboys who are hired at Mirabar symbolize the regulation of aesthetic desirability promoted at the club.  In Mirabar’s case, the muscular-blonde-twink aesthetic is celebrated both on and off the dancefloor, and this is the inglorious irony of queer nightlife.  Damien Ridge writes that, in the case of gay men, “they are not necessarily excluded from...the rituals around performing masculinity and displaying muscularly developed and fat reduced bodies are prized” (Ridge 2006: 507).  Social spaces dedicated to homosexual pursuits (among men and women alike) have long been in existence since at least the 1890’s, when saloons and dancehalls catered to otherwise invisible queer peoples (Mumford 1996:399); these spaces existed because more “mainstream” spaces were not inviting to homosexual lifestyles, and this trend has evolved into a modern-day queer scene that exists for many of the same reasons.  Yet despite the ethos of inclusion that drives the existence of these clubs, they are both socially and physically constructed to uphold aesthetic values.

Here’s a rough sketch of Mirabar’s geography with regards to race, body type, other characteristics.

 This is an especially daunting reality in smallish cities like Providence (pop <180,000), where those that identify squarely with a coherent queer demographic have access to one or two clubs each (skinny boyz flocking to Mirabar, thick boyz to the Eagle, girls to the Alleycat or Friday night at Club X and BDSM-junkies to Hell).  In Richard Parker’s ethnography of queer nightlife in Brazil, he notes that queer subcultures exist “to provide an alternative to traditional or dominant sexual cultures...because the provide a source of sexual freedom [and] suggest alternatives in a world that has been so powerfully structured around social distinction” (Parker 1999: 118).  But when new axes of desire, such as models of masculinity that favor bigger muscles at Mirabar or the privileging of what my Chicana-queer-womyn friend describes as “the white femme butch” at a lesbian nightspot in her native L.A., are inscribed into these subcultures, new “social distinctions” are produced, creating methods of exclusion from the fantasy-world that is the queer nightspot.

My conversation with Ash reveals a good amount of racialization that goes down in Clubland.    Providence’s positioning as a hub of the nation’s 37th largest metropolitan region  brings faces from a wide cross-section of cultural communities across Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts.  My time at Mirabar and Hell brought me in contact with a wide variety of people from distinct cultural backgrounds and locales.  So the use of white, muscular shotboys as ambassadors of a central gay aesthetic is a skewed representation of the folks who actively inhabit these spaces.  Understanding the role of race in a club reminds me of Maira's comparison of Desi club dynamics to a "caste system" that privileges slender light-skinned Desi women over darker skinned clubgoers.  I was reminded of this system of racialization in observing male structures of desirability at Mirabar (Maira 1999:39).

For example, Ash’s assertion that at Mirabar black men can often be rendered invisible is one I observed as a participant; apart from the corner of the club where most of the black and Latino men were clustered, I found that sexual activity, and the physical elevation of individuals on the elevated dancefloor, privileged men with bodies similar to the shotboys.  The performance of masculinity and the celebration of certain body types over others is an issue I’ve been stressing in my blog, and race is a very critical physical characteristic that helps construct the idea of “body type.”  Ash’s assertion that the wide variety of clubs in his native New York allows queers of color more opportunities to observe the celebration and acknowledgement of less whitewashed forms of desire highlights a broader concern: how can queer identity, or even gay identity, be packaged into an exemplary space?  In Providence, factors of population size and economics limit the capacity for queer nightlife.  So at the token institutions where queerness can be on display, there are evident divisions and conflicts in whose queerness deserves the spotlight.  When a club owner chooses to hire a shotboy as an ambassador to a queer aesthetic, and he pick a white male body to fill this role, this has a profound impact on both the club’s identity and the images associated with “queer” identity in a community.

For what it’s worth, my experience at Hell seemed like a less racially fragmented and weightest space.  Underlying the “fetish night” theme I observed was a certain affiliation with leather-bound and sex-toy-heavy aesthetics, but the race and heft of its participants seemed less divisive than that of Mirabar.  I attribute this quality to the way Hell sells the experience it offers: while the Eagle is unabashedly a haven for thick hairy men, and Mirabar openly places its shotboys on its [Facebook page] to bring the boyz downtown, Hell is organized less explicitly around gender and body type, and rather sells its queer experience based on fetish and kink to anyone who wants to celebrate their wildest desires.  For this reason, I did not encounter the same spatial segregation within the club, nor did I notice any quintessential body type chosen to represent the club.  

All of that said, the fashion and outrageousness of one’s presentation is extremely critical to how Hell separates itself from the gay venues I observed; there was a very clear privileging of leather wear and the vibe recalled the goth aesthetic that marked certain sections of my high school’s cafeteria.  Racially, the clubgoers were largely white, but there seemed to be much more integration between clubgoers of different racial backgrounds.

What Does This Have to Do With Music Yo

My experiences at Hell, Mirabar, and cruising outside the Eagle were sonically wildly different.  The moods conveyed in these spaces are simply not the same, and therefore they require distinct soundtracks.  

For example, bears that flock to the Eagle tend to follow what Hennen dubs a “back-to nature masculinity...and escape from the perceived feminizing forces of civilization” (Hennen 29) that manifests itself in a much less dance-focused atmosphere than Mirabar or Hell.  The Eagle is a man cave.  It’s a watering hole, with TV screens playing football games and men cruising outside.  There are no strobe lights and absolutely no disco blasting out of the speakers.  I never got a chance to enter the bar, but I definitely heard Brad Paisley’s song “Alcohol” from the alleyway outside the club door.  Eagle’s music is a soundtrack to drinking and manliness, and the soundtrack of spots like the Eagle seem to construct lifestyles of hypermasculinity and male camaraderie that, within these spaces, can swiftly turn into erotic encounters (Hennen 43).

In contrast, Mirabar is a dance club.  It is built to sustain dancing on the ground floor, with a panopticon-bar on the second floor in which clubgoers can observe the scene that unfolds below them.  The entire experience is constructed around dancing, and the remixed and disco-fied sounds of Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and other Top 40 bigshots predominate on the speaker.  Alice Echols writes that a “gay glitterball culture” emerged in the mid-70’s as the popularity of disco covers by Donna Summers, Diana Ross, and other R&B legends coincided with the visibility of gay men in New York City and Los Angeles nightlife (Echols 128, 134).  The “danceability” of music is necessary for any dance-based venue, but at gay clubs like Mirabar the historic association of certain sonic qualities -- fast-paced thumping bass, female lead vocalists, lyrical constructions of sexual fantasy and illicit love -- with gay male lifestyles are all the more relevant to these clubs’ existence.  In my three visits to Mirabar this year I have heard at least three versions of Rihanna’s “Only Girl in the World” and Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” but DJ’s also tend to spin old-school dance club faves like Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls”.

The scene at Club Hell was soundtracked to a lot of thumping house music and less widely recognizable remixes than was the case at Mirabar.  Less of the clubgoers seemed to flock to Hell to dance (many were there to perform a black-clad, leather-bound aesthetic but didn’t come to shake their bodies).  That said, the bumping bass and fast-paced beats that reverberate there are certainly conducive to the casual dance atmosphere on display on the fetish-party interwebz.  

The Point

My first gay club adventure was at age 18, in Ferndale, Michigan.  It was there that I discovered the glory of basking in a sea of testosterone and dancing my heart away amidst the almost caricatured ambassadors of “male beauty” that had surrounded me throughout my coming-out stage. 

But only through fieldwork, blog posts, interviews, and most importantly conversations with queer friends and colleagues throughout my time at Brown that I have been able to think critically about how my own perceptions of beauty have been shaped by the spaces I enter and the imagery those spaces celebrate.  In keeping focus with the theme of my project, I’ll end on a strictly local and strictly resigned note: The queer scene in Providence is a microcosm of the fragmented state of our world, where divisions, -isms, and axes of exclusion turn safe spaces into dangerous ones.

Word Count: 2,222.

Works Cited

Echols, Alice.  Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture.  New York: W.W. Norton and 

         Company, 2010.

Hennen, Peter.  "Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinities: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat?"  Gender and Society (19.1), February 2005.

Maira, Sunaina.  "Identity Dub: The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth."  Cultural Anthropology (14.1), 1999.

Mumford, Kevin.  "Homosex Changes: Race, Geography and the Emergence of the Gay." American Quarterly (48.3), 1996.

Parker, Richard.  Beneath the Equator.  New York: Routledge, 1999.

Ridge, Damien.  "Remaking the Masculine Self and Coping in the World of the 'Gay Scene.'"  Culture, Health & Sexuality (8.6), November-December 2006. 

Interview with Drew

Drew is a gay-identified junior at Brown who is in a fraternity that takes twice-monthly trips to Club Hell's Wednesday fetish nights.  Here's a transcript of my Interview with Drew.

Ben: "Why do you go to these clubs and who do you go with?"

Drew: "I go to dance with friends, because there isn't much of a dancing culture on campus, so dancing defnitely takes place more often in clubs than parties on campus.  I go with friends, mostly"

Ben: "Do you ever meet boys in these spaces?"

Drew: "No."

Ben: "Often these clubs are very whitewashed.  As an Asian male, do you feel judged or racialized in these spaces?"

Drew: "I think you began your question assuming...that I share that same perception, but I don't necessarily agree...From what I remember, i don't think they're that whitewashed.  ... I definitely have noticed guys of different races at the clubs that I've been to.  Another thing is that I don't pay attention to the racial breakdown within the clubs, so I don't feel that I'm being judged for my race within the space....THat said, I know that regardless of your race you are going to be judged."

Ben: "Are there other sites of judgment...within these spaces?"

Drew: "What you're drinking, how old you are, what you're wearing, where [in the club] you're dancing, whether you look flirty or if you're having a good time.."

Ben: "Do you notice distinctions within the queer community within clubs that cater to the queer community?...Does everybody have a spot there?"

Drew: "I think I don't see different axes of identity are...a factor of discrimination in terms of my tastes.  Secondly, I think a lot of these spaces are self-discriminatory, like people assume that, say, because one club caters to a particular type of person, and they exlude themselves from spaces because of this, then it perpetuates the type of people that go to those clubs."

Critical Review Set 2, Post #4 (Simonett)

Simonett’s article describes the rise of a distinctly Chicano music craze in the 1990’s.  The quebradita’s hype involved a variety of factors unique to Mexican Ameircan youth circles in Southern California; for one, it was a site of reclamation of Mexican identity during a time when many youth were addicted to more “American” styles like rap, rock, and house.  Banda music offered an opportunity for youth to dance to music rooted in their largely Chicano communities, that celebrated Mexican sound and vaquero fashion.  Interestingly, one major component of the quebradita is its use of el caballito, a “little horse” dance that involves “breaking in” a woman on the dancefloor (“quebrar” means “to break” in Spanish).  This reminds me of how Puerto Rican youth pioneered the “perreo” dance style in the 2000’s as part of reggaetón subculture, using a hypersexualized dance style to express themselves with regard to the music they consumed.  A final point I found fascinating is that clubs catering to the quebradita craze “carried out similar functions as gangs” in that they catered to specific segments of the Chicano community, often according to the regions of Mexico from with youth’s families originated.

I am curious as to how contemporary youth subcultures are able to re-appropriate the styles and sounds of their cultural homelands when most youth within that subculture understand these styles from a strictly diasporic standpoint.  For example, growing up in East LA definitely exposed youth to elements of Mexican culture, but the ability of quebradita to place them in spaces of cultural celebration less available in rock and rap frameworks is a particularly interesting theme that seems evocative of a range of other diasporic or racialized styles (bhangra, reggaetón, Afro-Punk).

Field Notes Set #3 (Mirabar Part II)

Fieldnotes #3

So after getting rejected at the door of the Eagle, my friend and I decided to bro out at Mirabar.  This was my first time going with just another guy--usually I’ve gone in groups, including with some girlfriends of mine.  My friend, like I said in the last post, could be placed in the “twink” box - cute face, toned muscles, but overall a skinny/pretty-boy type.  We came in wearing tight jeans and tight-ish shirts, which are very generic at Mirabar

This trip was REALLY different than the last one in that my intention was more to let loose than it had been when i was with my other friends.  After five minutes and a vodka tonic (yes I paid a 25-ish guy sitting by the bar to give me alcohol, although he didn’t want to dance), I got on the elevated dancefloor-component of the club, which is a see-and-be-seen platform.  Like last time, most of the guys at the club were white but a lot were not...that said, it seemed that the platform was completely dominated by what appeared to be white gay men.  Absolutely no women were up there and neither were the men of color I saw that evening in the club, with maybe a few exceptions.  My friend, who is Asian American, joined me and started dancing with another guy we recognized as a Brown or RISD gay, and I let them do their thing so I started to go aroun the club for more possibilities.

Every corner of Mirabar is like a different pocket of queer identity/experience.  In one were the thicker veteran-Mirabar-goer boys (maybe 40-60 yrs old?) who could probably fit in pretty well at the Eagle.  Lots of these men sit on the balcony overlooking the elevated dancefloor, scanning the crowd for cute guys.  I figured that this is a research project, so I approached one (very nervously...this is crazy and I kinda regret it!) and asked “what exactly are you looking at?”...The guy, probably in his early 50’s? told me : “I’m looking at you now, sugar” and put his hand on my chest.  Okay, so in all due respect I wasn’t into that, so I moved on and tried to identify the Mirabar experience in action without getting groped by men twice my age.

Anoher corner of the club was the gay boys-with-their-(mostly straight)-femalebodied friends.. I found a SUPERRRRRR cute guy in this pocket who was dancing with his friend and he gave me the eye, so I went in and we danced for a minute.  He told me he goes to Mira every Thursday night because there’s karaoke sometimes before the club rolls in at 10.  He was 21 (but looked younger), appeared Latino, came from New Jersey but went to Johnson&Wales... anyway we ended up on the dancefloor but after 20 minutes he ditched me

The black men in the club were clustered in what could more-or-less be called another corner...there were not many there, and like Ash told me in the interview there seemed to bea  a pecking-order in place whereby the twinky white boys did not dance with the black men let alone hang out in the same nook of the club.  Segregation was very evident along racial lines...also there seemed to be a class component as the well-dressed, fancy-looking queers (mostly between 20 and 40) hung out by the bar drinking expensive-ish booze together

A final thing to discuss is the shotboy dynamic.  Mirabar hires 10-20ish shot boys to staff the club every night, and all these guys are lean-muscled, usually short white men.  I think shot boys serve as ambassadors of a certain image or fantasy identity that the club attempts to generate, and it’s interesting to note how the whitewashed dynamic at play among the club’s employee plays into the segregated dynamic of the dancefloor as well as the sense of undesirability that many darker skinned folks, like Ash, have assumed given these facets of the Mirabar experience.

Critical Review Set 2, Post #2 (Duany)

Duany’s article highlights the progression of Puerto Rican musical traditions that culminated in salsa’s rise, tracking the development of a racially complex boricua identity that straddled both the island and mainland USA (particularly New York).  While the island of Puerto Rico was defined by loosely racialized regions and areas (ie. the heavily black sugar-rich flatlands near the southern coast that sustained bomba music, versus the largely white and Spanish mountainous interior that conceived more folksy seis music), New York offered a site of syncretization of the styles that had emerged among racially specific groups on the island, and also borrowed heavily from Afro-Cubano styles that had also migrated to the Big Apple.  The “gritty” and “metallic” nature that, Duany says, makes salsa the “voice of the Puerto Rican ghetto” seems to connote a ghetto sound rooted in both the island and its satellite cultural enclaves on Manhattan and the Bronx.  

How is diaspora conceived of when we’re talking about a U.S. Territory, and does this influence how we talk about “American” music that stems from “transnational” cultural dialogue?  Is salsa conceived of as a transnational art in this article, despite Duany’s articulation of its special relationship to the U.S?  

Field Notes Set #2 (The Providence Eagle)

FIELD NOTES SET #2 (My attempt at the Providence Eagle)

This set of field notes is going to put together my 4 encounters with queer nightlife that I have had over the last month, which has made me VERY aware of just how fragmented the “queer” label means when it comes to going out in Providence.

I’ll start with the Eagle.  I went there with my friend, a slightly thicker/more-muscular dude who is still a little bit “twinky” in gayboy lexicon (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=twink).. The eagle is generally known in Providence as the go-to spot for leather, bare chested, hairy “bear” guys.  But my project is on Providence Queer Nightlife so I gave it a shot.

FAIL.  The bar was pretty packed on a Thursday night, but the bouncer didn’t need us to join the crowd.  He asked my friend for ID and didn’t even bother with me (my friend is 20 as well but more mature-looking I guess)..  I’ll describe the scene outside the Eagle since I couldn’t get in::

#1 ~ LEATHER.  More leather than hair.  If you go to the eagle, you strap on a leather vest, leather pants, boots, etc...it’s a dress code.  

#2 ~ lots of big boys cruising outside.  My friend got hit on by at least 3 of the dudes leaning up against the wall in the alleyway where the eagle is situated.

#3 ~ based on what I heard from the outside, the music in the Eagle is totall different than that of a club like Mirabar (where we’d end up, since it’s just 2 blocks west of the eagle!).  Sounded a lot more country-ish, rock-ish, and less expressly gay.  I associated it with a sports-bar aesthetic.  Guess I’ll never know for sure, but it was definitely not the prototypical “gay club” soundtrack Ash told me about in my interview with him.

I also didn’t see any men of color, but that was based on a very outward-looking-in impression of the Eagle that only encompassed a glimpse of the dudes cruising outside.  MEH so on to Mirabar (see my next post!)

Response to the Jungle documentary ("All Black: Jungle")

One aspect of the video I found fascinating was that new nodes of the “Black Atlantic” not mentioned in the Back article were celebrated by jungle DJ’s.  For example, MC Lenny mixes an Anita Baker soul track, presenting a take on Afro-Diasporic fusion music that is distinct from the reggae and hip hop flair that we have observed thus far.  

Also interesting is the parallel between rap criticism and jungle criticism.  For example, gangsta jungle is perceived as a purely negative influence on British youth in the same way that gangsta rap has been pitted as a negative influence among American youth.  

The film portrayed an almost entirely male cast of singers and rappers associated with jungle.  This matches up with Back’s assertion that “men dominate the sound systems” of dub, reggae, and even bhangra in the sphere of British popular music.  It’s interesting that DJ Rap, the first woman interviewed in the film, is very light-skinned, and harkens back to Maira’s assertion that a caste-system in many Desi communities, among other diasporic communities whose members encompass a wide variety of skin-tones, is an entrenched component of female desirability and the mobility of women within the cultural economy.

I am curious as to how the very heavily multi-diasporic nature of jungle influences the way race and gender is complicated within the genre.  The people portrayed in the film encompass a wide variety of racial backgrounds, corresponding with the high level of transcultural musical production implicit in the genre.  How does this variety influence the way women are inscribed as sexual objects in many jungle tracks, or their lack of participation in the genre’s production? 

Critical Review Set 2, Post #2 (Back)

Back’s article asserts that the diffusion of music across and within cultural diasporas occurs horizontally, along the geometry of a rhizome through which “connections can be developed between thins that have no necessary relation with each other” (185).  Examples highlighted in this article include the ways in which features of reggae sound system technology (the use of mixer boards, operators/selectors, turntables) have permeated other forms of diasporic popular music (soul, funk, hip hop).  The axes of diffusion and connectivity between musical cultures are manyfold: diffusion of musical ideas can be conceived of as between national scenes that are both part of a broader diaspora (American hip hop <--> British hip hop), or between scenes within a nation (London reggae technology <--> punk and hip hop scenes in smaller British cities), etc.  The “rhizome” model works in these cases because while many aspects of these musical traditions fall under the broad umbrella of the African diaspora, they have emerged and developed under disparate geographical, cultural, and local conditions and therefore the spread of these ideas is complicated by their greater containment within the “same” diaspora. 

Back describes soul, R&B, hip hop and reggae as “parallel” scenes throughout the article, and emphasizes the distinctions between how and why technology was implicated in the creation of these ‘distinct’ genres.  Given that Back also discusses the level of “horizontal” transmission of sonic ideas and their ideological underpinnings across cultural boundaries within the black diaspora, when do musical elements become shared or common enough to qualify as intersecting...when does the parallel nature of musical ideas become parallel no more?  When does the diffusion and extension of musical concepts beyond their derivative ‘communities’ create musical landscapes that are too integrated to contain parallel movements and trends?  

Interview with Ash (Transcript)

Ben: What makes queer nightlife?  Obviously music is important to any nightlife scene…is there a such thing as queer music?

Ash: I wouldn’t say there’s necessarily queer music.  I think there is music that appeals to many queer people.  Certain artists like Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Beyonce…these are figures many queer males can relate to in terms of the messages in their music and things like that.

Ben: Tellme about how these clubs seem racialized to you?  Are there dynamics of race that play out?  How do those issues intersect with issues at large

Ash: These clubs are definitely racialized.  People – even though they may be uninhibited, never leave their preferences at home.  If somebody is generally attracted to twink – a definitition of a twink would be a skinny white male, as opposed to an average black male or something like that.  I think those thoughts are never absent from the club…in general, the clubs are mostly white male dominated. 

Ben: How have you felt affected by those conditions?

Ash: Occasionally, it’s sort of annoying.  Especially when I go with friends, and people hit on them, it can get sort of annoying.  For a while, I stopped going to those sorts of clubs, but after a while…I realized I was only there to dance, so it stopped affecting me.

Ben: You mentioned a pecking order based on body type.  Could you expand on that theme?

Ash: I would say there’s a general atteraction to certain men, like twinks, as opposed to … the term “chubbychasers,” which means someone looking for a larger person.  In general, people have ideals of what the perfect guy looks like, and he’s generally not overweight, just because of certain standards in the gay community and in the media…favor males that are sort of the epitome of masculinity, are cut in terms of their muscles, have lots of abs, are kind of tal.  I would say that the people that flock to these events are looking for “that guy”

Ben: You’re from NYC.  Have you experience queer nightlife in the city?  How would you describe the scene there?

Ash: It’s much more diverse in New York.  Obviously NYC is WAY larger than Providence will ever be, so in terms of ethnicity and race it’s a much more mixed crowd, and because of that there’s a more diverse pool of attraction to people in those sorts of clubs.  Here in Providence, since the clubs are mostly white males, I feel like in seeing somebody that doesn’t fit that model, …people won’t be attracted to them here, but in NYC people are more conscious of race and diversity and more open to being attracted to minority people.

Ben: How are clubs distinguished in NYC?  Are they appealing to as broad a demographic as Mirabar, for example? 

Ash: Although NYC has a large queer scene, it’s a little different.  There aren’t many gay clubs in NYC, as in dance clubs.  There are lots of gay bars in NYC.  There’s a bit of a difference…one’s more catered to dancing and music, but one’s a place to drink an meet people.  Because of the limited number of places to go [here], I think it’s not too different.

Community, Movement, and Song in Action: An Ethnography of the Imani Jubilee Singers’ Family Weekend Service

Benjamin Gellman

Professor Miller

Musical Youth Cultures

1 November 2011

Community, Movement, and Song in Action: An Ethnography of the Imani Jubilee Singers’ Family Weekend Service

“People, look to the ceiling and clap your hands!  This is the Lord’s hour!”  

Those were the first words that seeped from the pulpit at Manning Chapel on a cool Sunday evening in mid-October during the weekly Imani Jubilee service.  The young woman who uttered them, a petite young black woman with a deep Southern accent reflecting her roots in suburban Memphis and a silver cross glittering on her neckline, prompted a cascade of clapping from the 50-strong audience as the choir began to hum its homegrown rendition of Israel Houghton’s “Lord You Are Good.”  The young woman sitting next to me, who grew up in Port-au-Prince, whispered along with the words.  Then she turned to me and asked, “do you know this song?”  My blank face indicated a no; she smiled and nodded along with the music.

Born in 2010 from the desire to infuse Brown’s weekly black nondenominational Christian prayer service, Imani Jubilee, with musical fervor, the Imani Jubilee Singers are a community of black students from disparate geographical, cultural, and even religious backgrounds; what guides them, and the audience that follows them each week, are their musical narratives of faith in the divine and affirmation of shared black identity; these forces are embraced through a musical repertoire that pervades the ninety-minute service almost without pause.  In this ethnography I will posit three key conditions that mark the Singers’ performance and render their following on campus particularly significant.  The Singers’ positioning in a predominately white and largely secular campus community, use of clapping and vocal gestures that bridge their performance with their audience’s worship experience, and their reliance on a holistic perspective of black religious life that incorporates a variety of languages and musical techniques into their performance, are pillars of the musical experience at Imani Jubilee and indicators of the group’s significance and versatility as a cultural institution within the Brown community.

The positioning of Imani Jubilee as Brown’s only service designated explicitly as “a contemporary worship service in the Black Church Tradition which Celebrates the Faith as Believers in Christ” (http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Chaplains/Communities/imanijubilee.html) at a predominately white university with a largely secular student body is imperative in driving the spiritual fervor of this service.  Okize, the young man who organized the Singers last academic year, explained to me before the service that “lots of black students here [at Brown] are accustomed to hearing gospel choirs, listening to their pastor’s sermons, shoutin’ in the crowd, but they get to Brown and realize how there isn’t that much God here after all” (Okize).  Okize’s comment underscores a campus vibe in which many students do not utilize religious resources when they come to Brown. Furthermore, while many black students at Brown were raised in communities and worshipped in churches whose racial composition was predominately black, here at Brown the trappings of black neighborhood life, let alone the fervor of predominately black religious spaces, are rendered slim by the relatively low concentration of black students.  These factors render the need for a space for black Christians to gather especially pertinent for those students who wish to maintain Christian traditions at Brown.

Music, Okize explains, was “truly at the heart of the church experience for many of us [black students] growing up,” and the insertion of a musical component into the Imani Jubilee experience through the creation of the Singers was, in another student’s words, “imperative to bringing back the religious experiences of our childhood Sunday mornings” (York).  This constitutes a variety of stylistic qualities that could be easily perceived at the Family Weekend concert that are typical of black Christian musical traditions as a whole.  For example, the Singers’ (and audience’s) use of clapping was a cornerstone of all the songs they performed at the concert.  On the first verse of their rendition of Kirk Franklin’s “My Life, My World, My All,” Okize ushered the audience to “clap along with us, let the Lord hear your hands come together!”  The ritualized clapping that accompanied the choir’s performance allowed unschooled participants, like me (I was raised in a Jewish household and had only been to one black Christian service before) to join in the experience.  During the Franklin piece, I felt at least marginally integrated into the performance; that said, considering the significant level of physical interaction with the Singers’ performance, juxtaposed with my religious upbringing amid emotionless recitations of Hebrew prayers, I recognized that my background inscribed a sense of disengagement with the performance.  This sense of being out of place within the service was probably evident, as the Reverend later asked, “how did you like the way we do things around here?”  

Midway through the Kirk Franklin tune, two members of the choir entered the aisle that ran between the rows of pews in Manning Chapel, shouting “stand up for the Lord!”  As everyone stood up, an element of togetherness among the crowd became visible in this moment of shared group movement.  Once the choir ended that selection, its members spread out along the aisle and sustained a harmonic humming sound as Reverend Mathis begun reading a verse from the New Testament.  This delicate hum of voices remained as the sermon continued, uniting the Biblical content coming from Mathis’ mouth with the affirmation of this content through the Singers’ harmony.  This choir’s power in creating new dimensions of sound alongside the Reverend’s voice allowed a message of faith to extend physically throughout the crowd, mediated by the Singers’ dispersal across Manning Chapel.  

As Reverend Mathis finished his reading from the Bible, the Singers sprinted to the stage, rearranged themselves, and began singing a song called “Oh Mon Dieu” in Haitian Creole.   It dawned on me that, despite the shared black identity of the Christians involved in the Imani Jubilee experience, there was tremendous diversity in their cultural and religious backgrounds, and the very makeup of the Singers attests to this heterogeneity.  A Haitian-American Catholic from outside Boston taught the Singers this piece, and the group was simultaneously learning an African-inspired hymn from a Nigerian-American Singer.  The performance of a multilingual and multicultural gospel repertoire demonstrates the importance of a holistic vision of black Christian life in a university community that features a phenomenally diverse range of national and religious identities among its black students.  This is both a necessary and versatile feature of the Imani Jubilee experience, as it proves that the musicians’ capacity for building community around collective identity recognizes the nuances within black Christian experiences and helps foster a spirit of togetherness among a highly nuanced black Christian demographic.

The service ended with the Singers’ round of “Betelehemu,” a Yoruba round loaded with opportunity for the audience to clap along.  As the Singers filed out, my friend Jessica slipped into the pew next to me and whispered, “I’m glad to see you here! God bless!,” gave me a peck on the cheek, and slipped back into the aisle.  There I stood, enmeshed in a spiritual energy unlike any I had seen growing up, a visitor rendered welcome by the power of a collective spiritual energy and a magnificent soundtrack.

WORD COUNT: 1198

Critical Review Set 2, Post #1 (Rose)

Rose’s article touched on some critical issues in hip hop that interested me, but I’d argue that some of her claims feel a little forced.  Rose asserts that hip hop is organized around the notions of “flow, layering and rupture in line” (82), and applies this logic to the flow and movement of muscles and joints in breakdancing, the three-dimensional design of graffiti lettering, and the more obvious presence of flow in the creation and execution of lyrics.  These seem like cool examples of the imagery she’s pushing, but are these really the principal notions that bind the many angles of hip hop together?  I am attracted to the idea of postmodern urban space, in its many tangible forms, serving as the roots from which hip hop emerged (the rumble of MTA trains through Bronx as a soundtrack for gritty lyrics, or the emergence of electronic turntable technology), but again it seems funky when Rose credits these disparate elements of the postindustrial city as the root of hip hop culture.  

Rose’s assertion that “hip hop developed as part of a cross-cultural communication network” also doesn’t wholly underscore the ways in which hip hop created divisions between the communities of color (Hispanic, Afro-Caribbeans and African-Americans) in which many principles of hip hop were conceived (84).  I would like to see more analysis of how the racially diverse nature of hip hop’s terrain in the 1970’s also rendered this terrain more contested?  In what ways to the fact that conditions of urban plight that bound many communities of color together during the era of hip hop’s conception also serve as divisive influences among these very communities?

Field Notes Set #1 - Queer Nightlife

field notes on queer nightlife

Clubs!! ---> Mirabar (“the twink underwear party place plus straight girls”) ... Club Hell (Zetes go on fetish night... “watch out it’s lots of leather”)...Dark Lady (“lesbians”)...Eagle (daddiez, hair hair hair, won’t let me in)

-My time at Mirabar last year involved a 4 hour adventure with two straight friends, both of them women of color who are Brown students...they were hit on each by at least three different men who wanted to take them home...presence of straight women with their guard down-->attracts nongay boys

-Most young-ish gay men were not Brown students I think...I think i’d know them if they were

-racially mixed...about 50% of men appeared to be men of color and 50% white....women much more homogenously white demographic

-

-ZONING PATTERNS WITHIN CLUB---->twinx in corner, daddies by the bar, more daddies upstairs

-Mirabar is a vertical club, you can look down from the balcony and watch dancers

-Who gets employed by clubs? Bartenders, Busboyz, Ticket salespeople...largely white and super skinny..

-THIS IS A MUSIC YOUTH CULTURES CLASS...what is the music associated with queer nightlife?

-Oliver:: fetish night at Hell conflates kink with goth soundtrack

-Mirabar=club mixes of popular music, lots of Britney & Rihanna

-video bar---->i don’t get this concept...

Adam Green (jstor)...-->there’s a pecking order based on whiteness and economic status to access of ownership in queer neighborhood life...but is this remotely relevant in clubland?...clubs as capable to level these things’

connections with readings::

-Goth as a site of sexual freedom, boundaries as fluid applies to capability of transcending sexual limits 

-Maira->describes caste system based on notions of desirability as it relates to race...is this skin-tone-based pecking order a gendered thing as it is among men/women in Desi scene?

-Is queer nightlife implicitly a subculture and separate from mainstream?...THORNTON...mainstream’s boundaries are fluid, but don’t queer venues exist in opposition to a homophobic or generally an antiqueer mainstrem?

My New Project Proposal: QUEER NIGHTLIFE IN PROVIDENCE

For my project, I am going to study the queer nightlife scene in Providence.    As a culturally diverse city that serves as a nightlife hub for the state of Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, and with its high concentration of college and university students, Providence serves as a locus of interaction between individuals and groups that occupy distinct racial, socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic, age, and (most centrally in my research) sexual subject positions. 

This semester I will attempt to document how the presence of clubs and venues that cater to queer communities influence these patterns of interaction.  The presence of an organized queer nocturnal economy, mediated through clubs like Dark Lady, Mirabar, and the Eagle, bring together a cross-section of individuals and link them to a network constructed by social and often sexual experiences unavailable elsewhere in the city.  I will track how variations in sexual orientation play out on the often sexually charged atmosphere of the dance club, and try to notice how tropes of desirability trace racial, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of the participants in this subculture, and take note of the gendered quality of this scene.

Who goes to these clubs, and how far do they come to experience a queer social/sexual  atmosphere (and to what end?)  How does the presence of Brown, RISD, Johnson & Wales and other colleges and universities inform the queering of Providence nightlife?  How are bodies judged, rethought, and adorned within spaces set aside for queer expression and sexualization?  And how do gender, race, and weight issues intersect with queer identities to make this scene especially complex?

I intend to analyze these trends from the perspective of a participant in Providence nightlife.  I will experience the club aesthetic firsthand this semester, and analyze my subject position as a white gay male to figure out how my subject positions embed me into queer-clubland.  I look forward to going about this project.  READY.SET.GOOO <3 

Field Notes Set #1

field notes on dancehall

D A N C E H A L L

-digitalized reggae/”ragga”...faster paced than more standard reggae music

-riddim----->playing old tracks on new rhythms; reconfiguring old-school Jamaican sound in Kingston’s dancehalls...1970’s-90’s

-Violent lyrics, heavy bassline, womanizing lyrics

-Homophobia (Buju Banton most controversial)...gay rights groups vs. dancehall artists

-HAILE SELASSIE always mentioned in lyrics-->Ethiopian, messiah in Jamaican/Rasta tradition

-ghetto youth in Kingston ..advancement? diaspora-->changing aims of genre

-hybridization (hip hop/reggae)..USA/Jamaica interchange

-clothes/materialism..chains “jeans & fitted” look but expensive stuff ..gold shades

-videos-->women thick hips, tight jeans, navels showing...

-cake soap/skin bleach/skin color-power dynamics...why women bleach faces

*straight, pointy noses>kinky/nappy hair in jamaican ideals of desirability..Brown>black skin

• “Browning”--a woman with skin the color of brown sugar idealized (kinda like Maira/caste system narrative?) 

Dancehall party on campus-October 7, 2011

-Mostly Brown University students, some from Tolman HS in Pawtucket 

-wall dances...both men & women utilizing wall for gyration on Sean Paul song, Rihanna rmx.

-mostly black and latino students, most students dancing come from east coast (pawtucket/pvd, boston, nyc area)

-dress-->not unlike any typical party apparel...v necks/jeans for boys, some fitted caps, very little  overly expensive garb... women dressed more modestly than in dancehall video circuit

-soundtrack-->heavily mixed between dancehall and hip hop, some remixes that blur the lines significantly...

-2 songs have the same riddim-->prompt the same choreography despite having distinct creators/musicians..

-dutty wine circle-->men and women thrash heads around in middle...same as what I’ve seen at orientation dances

-nobody on the ground...”winin” limited to wall and to each other...sexualized dancing was limited to men on women although some “reverse grinding” (men grinding on women, women “receiving”)

-

Field Notes Set #1

field notes on dancehall

D A N C E H A L L

-digitalized reggae/”ragga”...faster paced than more standard reggae music

-riddim----->playing old tracks on new rhythms; reconfiguring old-school Jamaican sound in Kingston’s dancehalls...1970’s-90’s

-Violent lyrics, heavy bassline, womanizing lyrics

-Homophobia (Buju Banton most controversial)...gay rights groups vs. dancehall artists

-HAILE SELASSIE always mentioned in lyrics-->Ethiopian, messiah in Jamaican/Rasta tradition

-ghetto youth in Kingston ..advancement? diaspora-->changing aims of genre

-hybridization (hip hop/reggae)..USA/Jamaica interchange

-clothes/materialism..chains “jeans & fitted” look but expensive stuff ..gold shades

-videos-->women thick hips, tight jeans, navels showing...

-cake soap/skin bleach/skin color-power dynamics...why women bleach faces

*straight, pointy noses>kinky/nappy hair in jamaican ideals of desirability..Brown>black skin

• “Browning”--a woman with skin the color of brown sugar idealized (kinda like Maira/caste system narrative?) 

Dancehall party on campus-October 7, 2011

-Mostly Brown University students, some from Tolman HS in Pawtucket 

-wall dances...both men & women utilizing wall for gyration on Sean Paul song, Rihanna rmx.

-mostly black and latino students, most students dancing come from east coast (pawtucket/pvd, boston, nyc area)

-dress-->not unlike any typical party apparel...v necks/jeans for boys, some fitted caps, very little  overly expensive garb... women dressed more modestly than in dancehall video circuit

-soundtrack-->heavily mixed between dancehall and hip hop, some remixes that blur the lines significantly...

-2 songs have the same riddim-->prompt the same choreography despite having distinct creators/musicians..

-dutty wine circle-->men and women thrash heads around in middle...same as what I’ve seen at orientation dances

-nobody on the ground...”winin” limited to wall and to each other...sexualized dancing was limited to men on women although some “reverse grinding” (men grinding on women, women “receiving”)

-

Critical Review Set 1, Post #4 (Miller, due 10/11)

Questions for Professor Miller:

This might not be a legit question for the purposes of the Critical Review...but I’m curious to know what prompted this interest?  I feel like professors at Brown tend to leave the answers to this question out of their work in the classroom, which is fine and understandable.  But I am asking you what energized you to examine Guitar Hero competition on the ground in 2009 and how your research interests have developed in general?  

Another question that I want to ask you but isn’t as vague and holistic is how race and class dynamics impacted the Guitar Hero and Rock Band world you accessed in 2009?  When Mike talked about the mystique attached to seeing his black female friend perform a grungy Metallica joint, the topic of racial subjectivity entered this analysis.  In general, is this scene diverse enough racially to produce moments of musical irony like this a lot?  Also, how does class, and childhood access to virtual games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, impact the way this scene is created and the concept of access to events like the conventions (ie. GameUnicorn) and competitions you experienced that summer?

Question for the Class:

In her article Professor Miller observes the often “frantic” physicality associated with participants’ adrenaline-spiked Guitar Hero bouts, a physicality that is mediated by whatever must be done to achieve a high score and master a virtual percussive or musical arrangement.  In class we have discussed the concept of a listener’s orientation toward music (this is often a physically reactive orientation) in the context of the “countermemory” associated with whites listening to “Midnight Hour.”  How does the fact that Guitar Hero engages participants with a score-based, virtual screenplay that accompanies their musical performance affect their physical relationship/orientation with/towards the music at hand?  Furthermore, how can we use McClary’s logic that music’s resistive and sociopolitical power rests in its ability to transform and influence the body to trace the evolution of virtualized performative stuff like Garage Band?

Dancehall: an Introduction

My first encounter with dancehall happened on my first night on the East Coast, in the basement of Faunce Campus Center at Brown University.  There, during a pre-orientation dance for the Third World Transition Program, a DJ spun tracks by new-school Jamaican legends like Vybz Kartel and Assassin.  As “Dutty Wine” by Kingston-based Tony Matterhorn emerged from the speakers, so did a circle of female students, who proceeded to gyrate and whip their hair forward as the song’s chorus sounded. 

Dancehall, whose name reflects its origins in the musky taverns of Kingston and Montego Bay, is a bass-heavy, electronic brand of reggae that emerged out of more traditional reggae cultures in Jamaica during the 80’s and 90’s.  As electronics’ impact on the genre has grown, and as it has been fused with hip hop and adopted by contemporary performers like Sean Paul, its association with the reggae of Bob Marley’s generation has been questioned.  Dancehall has spawned a youth culture rich in high-energy dancing, which often includes intense gyration, hip rolls, and writhing movements on the floor that may seem more heavily influenced by a contemporary hip hop aesthetic than that of traditional reggae, calypso, and other West Indian styles.  With heavy waves of immigration from the West Indies, and particularly Jamaica, to urban nodes on the East Coast, has come the transmission of a dancehall culture to these spaces.  Furthermore, the presence of many students of Caribbean descent on college campuses such as Brown has brought consciousness of this genre to fraternity basements, orientation dances, and the Brown University radio station, among other spaces.   

This semester, I aim to dig into dancehall, using the Internet, Brown University, and greater Providence to examine the social, racial, and sexual politics of this genre.  When a dancehall track comes on at a Brown party, who enters the circle and spins their heads?  Does the scene look different at a venue off College Hill than it does on campus?  How do male and female bodies become sexualized in the performance of a “hot wuk,” a “dutty wine,” or other dances embedded in the dancehall canon?  How has dancehall’s migration to the United States impacted its identity as a musical and subcultural entity?

Seeking answers to these questions will be a fulfilling endeavor this semester.  In the meantime…here’s the song that has gotten my blood thumping and my head spinning, ever since that glorious night in the basement of Faunce. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg0qluaxpOo

Critical Review Set 1, Post #3 (Maira, due 9/27)

Maira, Sunaina.  1999.  “Identity Dub: The Paradoxes of an Indian American Youth Subculture (New York Mix).”  In Cultural Anthropology (14.1), Feb. 1999.

Maira’s article deconstructs Desi youth musical culture with respects to its hybridity, its melding of styles and aesthetics associated with hip hop rooted in black American communities and with a variety of regionally distinct South Asian genres, particularly Punjabi bhangra.  Throughout the article, Maira questions this hybridity and interrogates its power as a subversive tool; she examines the “logic” of this melding by claiming that through the Desi dance party network, second-generation youth can “mediate between the expectations of immigrant parents and those of mainstream American peer culture by trying to integrate signs of belonging to both worlds” (37), in short that the multiple dimensions of this scene (where parties are attended by a largely Desi crowd that includes men and women that often share commonly held cultural values or regional and linguistic lineage) satisfies both a familial rootedness in South Asian community, as well as a subcultural identity that is distinctly American.  The result is the formation of a subcultural capital, a “hipness” as Maira observes, that is neither distinctly American nor distinctly South Asian, but rather distinctly South Asian American.  Maira also observes the splinters within this distinct Desi youth culture, noting the tensions between regionalist attitudes expressed in club culture (Gujaratis might scoff at the prevalence of Punjabi music), as well as the power dynamic that arises from typified Desi ideals of beauty based on “fair skin” perpetuated by Bollywood and an entrenched caste system, and a counter-femme culture of machismo under which many Desi men operate.      

In reference to the “culturally hybrid style” associated with South Asian American youth cultures, Maira cites the “juxtaposition of hip-hop fashion with Indian-style nose rings and bindis” (32) and later asserts that the melding of Indian and African American musical and aesethetic traditions “symbolically juxtaposes Indian and urban American popular cultures” (37).  If we trust Maira’s assertions that many second-generation Indian American youth have commodified “hip hop culture” to construct distinct, “hybrid” identities, does this relationship with established American art forms really represent one of “juxtaposition?”  When is it appropriate or valid to deem two cultures or communities “disparate” or oppositional so as to validate this “juxtaposition?”  As styles and traditions are appropriated and absorbed by certain groups, how does this further deconstruct the notion that traditions that are fused together are simultaneously juxtaposed?

Critical Review Set 1, Post #2 (Cohen, due 9/20)

Cohen, Sara.  "Ethnography and Popular Music Studies."  1993.  In Popular Music (12.2).  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Cohen’s article tackles the delicacy of ethnographic research, namely the fine line between respecting a community’s values and uprooting that value by immersing it in Western research methodology, classical theories, and other ethnocentric vehicles for framing it.  But beyond the scope of ethnographic research, Cohen describes the imposition of “global processes of homogenisation or diversification,” mediated by a vast commercial enterprise (namely, the music industry), as a threat to the preservation of culturally rooted art forms, noting the “theft” of these forms as they are beaten and folded into a contmporary, “schizoid” musical agenda (126-7).  Cohen’s musing on identity and locality go a long way in articulating these concerns; she notes, for example, that since identity is “not a fixed essence...[but] always in the process of being achieved, negotiated, invented” (132), music and its relation to networks of individuals within a place or community (or, a locality) are constantly in flux as well.  These fluid boundaries harken back to the notion, as Thornton outlines, of “subculture” and “mainstream” as unfixed and relationally shifting entities (if the identities that construct subcultures are perpetually changing, so then does the relationship between these subcultures and the “mainstream”’s that they do(n’t) stand in opposition to; and furthermore, the flexible (or nonexistent) boundaries of identity allow music to ooze between the pores in groups and communities, making way for the socially contested but meanwhile celebrated fusion of musical styles in genres such as punk.  

My questions address Cohen’s bit on technology, namely her assertion that, within academic discourse, the idea that “new technologies...have supposedly resulted in the plundering of different cultures or eras” (126) predominates.  I question the notion that technology, and the melding and “homogenization” of “disparate” styles, enforces notions of placelessness in music, and I ask how can these processes actually give power and credence to communities and places that create them?  In what ways can “playing” with traditional ideals of music, and simmering a diverse gumbo of styles mediated by modern technology to produce a new sound,   re-define but preserve the strength and unity of this sound’s creators and visionaries?  (I look to my hometown of Detroit, the birthplace of electronic music and techno, as a locality that exemplifies the association between place and a new sound that may not initially seem like a “native” one...could we say this about punk in London as well?)

Critical Review Set 1, Post #1 (McClary; due 9/12)

McClary, Susan.  1994.  "Same As It Ever Was: Youth Culture and Music."  In Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, eds. Tricia Rose and Andrew Ross.  New York: Routledge, 1994.

McClary's article asserts that it is not the lyrical or overtly “political” value of a piece or genre that is at the heart of music's sociopolitical power, but rather the mind-body "correspondence" (34) -- the physicality associated with music at large, implicit in any genre or piece -- that informs music's capacity to deconstruct standing social conditions, gender roles, and systems of marginalization.  McClary writes that “the musical power of the disenfranchised...resides in their ability to articulate different ways of construing the body” (34), highlighting what I perceive as the most powerful reality captured in her text: that music activates movements of the body sculpted by racial, sexual, and gendered identities, and that the dispersion of music through commerce has produced a terrain in which these physical expressions are constantly contested.  Plato’s fear that music promulgates a “thirst for liberty” and “sensuousness of body” (29) comes on behalf of this terrain, and furthermore reflects similar anxieties as those who criticized Pickett’s “Midnight Hour” or the Ciaccona -- anxieties produced on the basis of uncomfortable freedoms, of physical and expressive liberties that push cultural envelopes.

In the article McClary observes that “white audiences have often come to black music to experience vicariously the body they otherwise deny themselves, then have castigated black musicians for indulging in physicality” (34).  I’m curious to know how the appropriation of physical expression rooted in the musical traditions of marginalized communities simultaneously serves to destabilize standing systems of marginalization.  How would these white listeners’ “indulgence” in jazz, or maybe even Plato’s indulgence in a Classical dance-craze that he publicly abhorred, complicate and deconstruct the very prejudices from which some of the most infamous and popular traditions have emerged?