music – Page 7 – (en)gender

August 4, 2012

Kiki

This Scissor Sisters video is making the rounds & I’m amused as now Urban Dictionary is filled with people defining kiki as a small private party in someone’s apartment, & that is definitely not the way it’s been used (historically) in queer communities.

“Kiki” was used to describe lesbians who were not butch or femme when butch-femme was expected, back in the 50s, and it was also used to describe someone who had been “flipped” – that is, a butch who made another butch her femme, sexually speaking, and it was the “flipped” butch who was referred to as a kiki. So the shorthand often just meant someone who didn’t accept a distinct sexual role, or who played both sides; in lesbian communities of color, it’s often referred to women who might just be described as bi. It wasn’t a compliment or even neutral but was (at the very least) a snide label that commented on someone else’s “confusion” or “indecision”.

(& Much thanks to Jacob & Drew for the heads up.)

July 17, 2012

Boys.

Bowie, Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias on SNL back in ’79. This was one of the first live performances I ever saw on SNL – I think a sibling let me stay up when mom & dad were out – and it blew my 10 year old mind.

Ah, the late 70s. I’m still not really a Bowie fan, but I do of course appreciate his genderiness back in the day. Klaus Nomi is still a loss, as far as I’m concerned, & I’ve seen Joey Arias perform quite a lot of times.

July 1, 2012

Pay for Your Music

No, really, do it. Buy your stuff – don’t just listen on Spotify and don’t just grab it from whatever bit torrent you can find.

Let’s just pretend for your sake the record company isnt simply the artists imprint and all record labels are evil and don’t deserve any money. Let’s just make the calculation based on exactly what the artist should make. First, the mechanical royalty to the songwriters. This is generally the artist. The royalty that is supposed to be paid by law is 9.1 cents a song for every download or copy. So that is $1,001 for all 11,000 of your songs. Now let’s suppose the artist has an average 15% royalty rate. This is calculated at wholesale value. Trust me, but this comes to 10.35 cents a song or $1,138.50. So to ethically and morally “get right” with the artists you would need to pay $2,139.50.

Musicians need health insurance and homes like everyone else.

June 26, 2012

Two Tune Tuesday: Kimbra

This is one of those songs that’s going to be entirely misunderstood, much like “Every Breath You Take Was”. I’ll put money on it showing up at weddings, even.

And don’t miss some of the coldest lyrics about marriage I’ve ever heard:

i want to settle down
It’s time to bring you down
on just one knee for now
let’s make our vows

But it’s critique of marriage, competition between women, and that mannequin-like man spouse: It’s so spot on, no?

June 19, 2012

Two Tune Tuesday: Gotye

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing
I don’t even need your love,
but you treat me like a stranger And that feels so rough

I can’t stop listening to it.

(it’s pronounced something like “Got E.A.”)

May 27, 2012

Treated Like a Woman (Or a Young Black Man)

My friend Lena pointed out this short article on Think Progress by Alyssa Rosenberg about the return of D’Angelo to me, which talks about how D’Angelo was undone by the pressure to strip – and maintain an exacting and desired physique for his fans – and Rosenberg talks about how he was, effectively, treated like a woman.

Which, well of course: women have to be beautiful to be considered talented, but if beautiful have to work against type to be considered smart, or artistic.

Yet there is this long, long history of treating young black men as a stereotype too, of the young black buck: known for their bodies, and brawn; assumed to be hung, sexually provocative and yet also sexually and physically objectified. In a culture where well hung or athletic or both is often also assumed to mean small brained, or non/anti-intellectual, young black men are up against a lot of stereotypes women are up against as well. Both too are demonized for their apparent sexuality: women for having any, and black men for having their assumed and expected expertise “threaten” white men’s power and self-image.

So in a sense he wasn’t treated like a woman at all; he was treated as many young black men are treated, and have been: expected to be nothing more than their physical, sexualized, and objectified bodies.

May 19, 2012

For Pops.

Because today would have been my father’s 84th birthday, some Louis, who he loved.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

It is sometimes reassuring to think of all the people who knew him – and he knew a lot of people, some for a second, some for decades – and to know he probably got to tell them a dumb joke, or complimented them in some old-fashioned way, or even just smiled at them as they went by. It’s the jauntiness, the joy of him, that I miss the most now; there are very, very few men who can tell me a dumb joke that will actually make me laugh, & who think it is important enough to try, & he was the first and the last. You getta you papers.

Pops, I miss you. I wish I could pick up the phone so you could tell me every last detail of your most recent conversation with the guy about the extra charge on the cable bill right now.

He found joy in almost everything: in the photos taken around the same time as this one, there’s one of my mother worried about her electric scooter; my nieces are splitting a cotton candy; my sister was probably counting tickets or finding a map or some something for my mother, and my nephew was waiting to see what ride next. Rachel volunteered to go on any ride the kids would go on, even the ones that made everyone else sick and dizzy, and I took pictures. But my dad just watched and smiled: at a toddler taking a step, at his beautiful wife, at the ice cream stand, at this small part of his assembled family. He’d tell a story about a guy he knew growing up in Brooklyn, or about the guy he knew in the service, and the funny thing is, not all of his stories ended happily. A lot of them didn’t. But he just told them, because they were relevant or because something had reminded him of the person or that particular story. They rarely had an ending, or a moral; he wasn’t that kind of guy who is always trying to impart wisdom or experience. In almost the same breath, he could finish a story about not having his number called during the Korean War, and then wonder out loud where to get ice cream.

Stories and ice cream. I thought I’d get to share a lot more of both with him, but I’m glad, at least I managed to snap this photo: you may not be able to see his eyes, but you can’t not see the twinkle in them, too.

May 18, 2012