Click, says the kettle as it stops boiling water. I make a cup of tea, then sit down at my small IKEA-brand dining table, laptop in front of me, and settle in for a Zoom call. It’s 7pm here on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera Country, on the east coast of so-called Australia, and the middle of summer. A small pedestal fan beside me brings the relief of a steady stream of air that breaks through the suffused humidity. I don’t know it yet, as I search through my emails for the Zoom link, but from this initial call will emerge (spoiler alert!) the sharing of so many stories of so many queernesses, a s ..read more

Modern band deviates from normativity by virtue of being a pedagogical tool that lies outside the Band-Orchestra-Chorus (BOC) lexicon. This North American music pedagogy trifecta is rooted in Western Art traditions that are dated and overwhelmingly white, gender-, and hetero-normative. Arts administrator Joe Panganiban (he/him/his) and modern band director Jamie Schoffstall (she/they) are both queer, Chicago-based artists who became involved with modern band through the organization Little Kids Rock. While living authentically queer was not meant as an act of rebellion per se, they still chall ..read more

Kael Reid, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow, Children, Childhood and Youth Studies Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies York University, Toronto, Canada http://www.kaelreid.com/ We resonate in music. Music enters our bodies and reverberates inside us. When entwined with people’s lived experiences of difference, song can make a difference in people’s lives—in the life of the storyteller and the listener. We encounter one another through song. This is music’s power. This blog post is about a robust musical research creation method I have developed called “collaborative ethnographic songwriti ..read more

Sex work is an LGBTQ+ issue. Sex work is a race issue. Sex work is a class issue. Sex work is a migration issue. Sex work is a disability issue. Sex work is a feminist issue. Sex work is a capitalist issue. Sex work is a legal issue. In Sex Worker’s Opera, music takes many forms and tells many stories. What unifies it is the implicit and explicit demand it makes of audiences to listen to sex workers. I am so many things you cannot see, Listen to me, Listen to me. Mother and brother and daughter and lover, Listen to me, Listen to me (‘Listen to Me’, Sex Worker’s Opera) It takes more tenacity fo ..read more

Modern band deviates from normativity by virtue of being a pedagogical tool that lies outside the Band-Orchestra-Chorus (BOC) lexicon. This North American music pedagogy trifecta is rooted in Western Art traditions that are dated and overwhelmingly white, gender-, and hetero-normative. Arts administrator Joe Panganiban (he/him/his) and modern band director Jamie Schoffstall (she/they) are both queer, Chicago-based artists who became involved with modern band through the organization Little Kids Rock. While living authentically queer was not meant as an act of rebellion per se, they still chall ..read more

What does it mean to do queer musicology? In the introduction to a memorial volume of Philip Brett’s articles and essays on Benjamin Britten, Susan McClary noted that the title of the pioneering anthology Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (which Brett coedited with Elizabeth Wood and Gary Thomas) “contains several Brettisms, including…the implication in the subtitle that there was an old gay and lesbian musicology—as of course there was, even if it dared not speak its name” (2006). My dissertation research, which I recently completed at McGill University, was in part an ex ..read more

Thomas Hilder, Chair of Kor Hen (Trondheim) and music researcher of LGBTQ+ music ensembles in London and Rome. As news of lockdown precipitated suddenly in Norway on Thursday, 12th March, I cancelled, with a mixture of concern and reluctance, the weekly rehearsal of Trondheim’s LGBTQ+ choir, Kor Hen, of which I am chair. A week later, we moved rehearsals to Zoom. By May, once the snow had melted, we began to meet and sing in the back garden of one of our members. While the Norwegian government granted permission for indoor choral activity again in June, we have only just received the all clear ..read more

Sex work is an LGBTQ+ issue. Sex work is a race issue. Sex work is a class issue. Sex work is a migration issue. Sex work is a disability issue. Sex work is a feminist issue. Sex work is a capitalist issue. Sex work is a legal issue. In Sex Worker’s Opera, music takes many forms and tells many stories. What unifies it is the implicit and explicit demand it makes of audiences to listen to sex workers. I am so many things you cannot see, Listen to me, Listen to me. Mother and brother and daughter and lover, Listen to me, Listen to me (‘Listen to Me’, Sex Worker’s Opera) It takes more tenacity fo ..read more

What does it mean to do queer musicology? In the introduction to a memorial volume of Philip Brett’s articles and essays on Benjamin Britten, Susan McClary noted that the title of the pioneering anthology Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (which Brett coedited with Elizabeth Wood and Gary Thomas) “contains several Brettisms, including…the implication in the subtitle that there was an old gay and lesbian musicology—as of course there was, even if it dared not speak its name” (2006). My dissertation research, which I recently completed at McGill University, was in part an ex ..read more