2015

This bibliography indexes music scholarship that features material on gender diversity, queer identity, culture, knowledge, or practice, or that approaches its topic from a queer, transgender, or anti-oppressive perspective. It does not index reviews or the popular queer press. Because it follows different guidelines for inclusion, it does not duplicate all listings in archived newsletters. I did a substantial expansion of the bibliography in the summer of 2011 (bringing it from 31 to 43 pages). It has been updated by other individuals two times since then (in 2013 and 2015). This is the most recent version of the bibliography.

This chapter considers how gender identities and gendered meanings are explored in popular music. In the evaluation of popular music, supposedly ‘masculine’ qualities – authenticity, originality, innovation – are often privileged over ‘feminine’ qualities – the formulaic, inauthentic, superficial and banal. These hierarchies go back to the aesthetic tradition and the art/entertainment contrast, a contrast that has reappeared in popular music as the hierarchy of rock over pop. Although these conceptual hierarchies create difficulties for female popular musicians, many of them have creatively re-negotiated these hierarchies, amongst them Kate Bush and Madonna, both discussed in this chapter.

This qualitative multiple case study aimed at investigating how gender influenced songs composed by students using popular music processes. High school students simultaneously composed and rehearsed original songs in groups and then were interviewed to understand their perspectives. Student artifacts and audio recordings of rehearsals and interviews were openly coded for emerging themes of gender. The boys’ and girls’ compositions differed with regard to lyrics, as well as the forms and timbres used. Because students did not work in a cultural vacuum, when they borrowed musical styles from their “outside” musical worlds, they also borrowed the social rules that shaped those styles, and gender was one of these. Educators should begin to look at students’ compositions not solely as products of musical knowledge, but as products of cultural knowledge expressed musically, as well as transform popular music pedagogy research and practice by teaching how popular music influences and is influenced by society.

Musical Islands: Exploring Connections …, 2009

Taylor, J. (2009). Spewing out of the closet: Musicology on queer punk. In E. Mackinlay, B. Bartleet & K. Barney (Eds.), Musical islands: Exploring connections between music, place and research (pp. 221-241). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.