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‘Keep the best of you, “do” the rest of you’: passing, ambivalence and keeping queer time in gender performative negotiations of popular music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2013

Rachel Devitt
Rachel Devitt*
Affiliation:
2732 N Sawyer Ave #3N, Chicago, IL 60647, USA E-mail: redevitt@u.washington.edu
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Abstract

This article considers the integral role music plays in drag in general and ‘femme’ gender performance (or queer performances of femininity) in particular. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with performers and observations of their performances, I delineate some of the purposes music can serve in these contexts: a tool for character development, a musical lingua franca with which to establish a dialogue with the audience; a part of a nuanced intertext that troubles the cohesiveness of a musical plot or ideological discourse; a fan strategy for staking ownership over a beloved song or genre. I argue that femme gender performers critically stage their own consumption of the popular music they enjoy, interrupting its narratives and rhythms with their choreography and reterritorialising it with their dancing bodies.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , October 2013 , pp. 427 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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