Dissertation June 14
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LISTENING BACKWARD LISTENING BACKWARD: QUEER TIME AND RHYTHM IN POPULAR MUSIC PERFORMANCE By CRAIG JENNEX, BA (Hons.), MA A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Craig Jennex, May 2017 McMaster University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2017) Hamilton, Ontario (English and Cultural Studies) TITLE: Listening Backward: Queer Time and Rhythm in Popular Music Performance AUTHOR: Craig Jennex, BA (Dalhousie University), MA (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Susan Fast NUMBER OF PAGES: ix, 314 !ii ABSTRACT Listening to music has the capacity to connect us with others. In a society structured by the stultifying logic of heteronormativity, patriarchy, white supremacy, and neoliberalism —ideals that usher all of us into normative and limiting modes of relations—musical listening serves as a bastion of collective queer potential. Music can enhance queer collectivity particularly when it offers us experiences of non-normative temporality. In this dissertation, I argue for a form of music participation that I call listening backward: the act of listening closely and collectively to past musical moments in which alternative worlds were once possible. This form of listening, I argue, encourages resistance to normative signifiers of progressive linear temporality and interrogates notions of progress in both musical sound and society more broadly. Listening backward is important for building queer collectives—in the present and for the future—that can develop and sustain coalitions and resist homonormative impulses and neoliberal claims of individuality and competition. In this dissertation I analyze a variety of music performances that vary in their genre markers, the historical moments from which they come, and the forms of participation they encourage. These disparate performances are bound together by the ways that they that render audible a collective participatory ethos and challenge musical and broader social notions of progress and normative temporality. Listening backward is informed by a history of popular music participation in the late twentieth century and encourages an ear toward liberatory and revolutionary politics—it is attuned to hope in the face of limiting and conservative politics of the present. Past musical moments remain rife for the potential for collective experience—we just need to listen backward. !iii For Sheilagh LeBlanc, my Junior High School band teacher, who first taught me to listen. And in memory of José Esteban Muñoz, a friend and mentor who I miss everyday. !iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Department of English & Cultural Studies at McMaster University for their generous support of this project. This dissertation has been a collective endeavour. And while the mistakes are mine alone, the best parts of what follows were animated by the conversations I have had with others and the critiques I have received along the way. Elizabeth Gould, who served as an external examiner on this dissertation, came to my dissertation defence equipped with stimulating questions and critiques, and offered many paths forward for future directions this work will take. I have been fortunate to participate in a number of communities of knowledge during the writing of this dissertation. The International Association for the Study of Popular Music - Canada (IASPM) has been a welcoming and encouraging academic society for me to think through the arguments I make in this work. The collective conversations we had in Halifax, Regina, Montreal, Hamilton, Ottawa, and Calgary guide these pages. The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA) has been a constant site of intellectual inspiration and friendship. My time at the CLGA has also reinforced for me the importance of telling stories of alternative worlds. Alan Miller and Colin Deinhardt have been ideal stewards at the archives, and even better pals at the pub. The musicians who have welcomed me onto their stages have kept me excited about and invested in music performance and listening. Tara Thorne—one of Halifax’s best kept musical secrets—is someone I admire as both a performer and a music critic. Scott Taylor & Karen Myatt always pull me back to the drums when I most need to return. In 2013, I served as a research assistant for Stan Hawkins in the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo. While my time in Oslo was relatively short, the friends I made there—both in the department and outside of the university— will remain important to me for a long time. Stan, Jon (Mikkel) Broch Alvik, Eirik Askerøi, Agnete Eilertsen, Kai Arne Hansen, Ingeborg Holmene, Mats Johansson, Helge Klungland, Ola Løvholm, Mari Paus, Birgitte Sandve, Ragnhild Torvanger Solberg, Sofie Vestergaard, Kenneth Warvik, and many others, were welcoming, caring, and kind to this confused Canadian. I have been surrounded by the most wonderful group of oddballs since I arrived at McMaster University. Nandini Thiyagarajan and Jordan Sheridan (whose care and friendship kept me going during difficult moments), Phanuel Antwi, Samantha Balzer, Alice Cavanagh, Natalie Childs, Rebecca Flynn, Ben Gallagher, Nicholas Holm, Pam Ingleton, Milé Komlen, Eleni Loutas, Alix MacLean, Simon Orpana, !v Ben Prus, Marquita Smith, Zeina Tarraf, Jessie Travis, Carolyn Veldstra, and many others have made my experience at McMaster memorable. I am fortunate that I was able to do graduate studies in the company of such diverse thinkers doing varied and intellectually-stimulating work. Faculty members at McMaster —Nadine Attewell, Sarah Brophy, Chandrima Chakraborty, Melinda Gough, Catherine Graham, Susie O’Brien, Mary O’Connor, Liss Platt, Lorraine York, and others—have all played an important role in shaping my thinking. I would not have gotten through if Aurelia Gatto, Sophie Goellnicht, Antoinette Somo, Ilona Forgo-Smith, and Bianca James did not have the answer to every question. Kinley Dowling and I lived together a lifetime ago in Halifax and regularly made music. The sense of pride I still experience when I listen to Kinley play has opened my ears to the intimacy and ecstasy attainable through the act of listening to music. For years now, I have had the pleasure of running all of my ideas—theoretical, personal, political, and otherwise—by two phenomenally wise and kind individuals, Nisha Eswaran and Clorinde Peters. The always-loving, often- hilarious presence of these two doofuses in my life has been wonderfully formative. They are not only among my closest friends, but also two thinkers whose ideas I admire and whose work I expect to be teaching to students for a long time. Meredith Evans has not always been close geographically, but she has remained a central part of this project from its beginning. She came back to Canada just in time to read these pages, offer brilliant suggestions, and witness firsthand the absurdity and exhaustion that manifests in the final months of dissertation writing. Her interdisciplinary ways of thinking and understanding the world, as well as her tireless edits and careful critiques, have shaped this project for the better. I would not have gotten through the final stages of this process if I did not have her constant care and companionship. Maria Murphy has been my closest collaborator throughout this process. She has pushed me and my writing to be more clear and compelling. If queer and feminist scholarship is about imagining more just worlds and performatively bringing them into being through our actions, our words, and our pedagogy, I consider myself fortunate that I get to do this imaginative and political work with Maria—a thinker and a friend for whom I have great appreciation and admiration. Jacqueline Warwick, my first scholarly mentor, took me seriously long before I felt I deserved it. She taught me to listen more closely and think harder about the claims I made as an undergraduate student. She did not just put me on my current path, she continues to point the way and nudge me forward whenever I get stuck. !vi Amber Dean is precisely the brilliant, tireless, and caring confidante a confused graduate student needs. She has shown tremendous care and modelled the type of advocate and mentor I one day hope to be—her generosity, intellect, and pedagogy are models on which I will forever build my own. Christina Baade has consistently pushed me to complicate my questions from another perspective. I have benefited a great deal from her ability to navigate seemingly disparate discourses and to find connections in my work that I did not know existed. I am lucky to have her as a model of the type of thinker I am working to become. Susan Fast has been my closest advisor in all things musical, academic, and life, for seven years (and counting…). She has given me more time, care, energy, and credit than I ever deserved (and far more than most graduate students receive). Susan constantly affirmed, rather that stifled, the bizarre directions this project took—and always pulled out my best work. She has been an inspiration and a mentor for a long time, but at some point over the last few years she became one of my closest friends and confidantes. I hope that I can someday manifest for one person something similar to the profound effect Susan has had on me. I consider myself very lucky that Adam Kuhn showed up in the middle of this project. He has responded to my thinking and writing with more enthusiasm than I have ever mustered and provided the consistent encouragement necessary for the completion of this dissertation. On our first date, we discussed musical theatre and disco. He has been the perfect partner ever since. Lastly, my family. At some point during the past seven years my siblings became two of my closest friends.