Much Taboo About Nothing
In Newsweekly provides this write-up of Big Taboo, a gay men's music festival that happened in Provincetown last weekend while I was handing out Gatorade (for a good cause). The article raises some of the same red flags that I've noted previously with artists who identify strongly with a gay niche market. The festival's organizer, Peter Donnelly, feeds a common stereotype: "it's definitely been a big taboo for gay men to come forward as out in music, whereas women have found audiences more easily." The stereotype I'm addressing isn't that lesbians love guitar-toting folkies singing about tea and vaginas (even the str8 ones like Dar Williams), but that of gay male performers having a harder time in the music industry -- or at least in what Donnelly refers to as the "folk" or "acoustic" fields, which I thought we all agreed we could just call the "singer/songwriter" genre because we like how redundant and flaky it sounds.
The danger with that whole stereotype is that the singer/songwriter/folk/acoustic amalgamation is itself one with a limited and difficult market. There is no easily identifiable trend in the artists who have successfully entered the mainstream from this genre. (Can anyone explain Lisa Loeb's success to me? Please?) So the argument that gay men have it especially bad just sounds self-victimizing and belittling. If we as gay men have our own music festival, I would like the aim to be a collaborative exploration of how far the queer perspective can push the music envelope -- not to claim we're being left behind.
True, queer musicians still suffer from audience homophobia, but not to the dramatic extent the article contends. In News' claims that mainstream gay musicians "have the luxury of being able to remain detached from the gay world." If you've ever been to one of the many Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright tours, the Folds frat boys who sit through Rufus' set usually act like a Red Sox fan at the Gardner museum: you're confused about how they wound up there and they're just angry because the beer is too far away. It's clear that Rufus hasn't exactly left Gay World for good. Still, the last time I saw him, he was playing the Bank of America Pavillion, so it would be a hard sell to convince me Rufus is feeling the homophobia where it hurts (the bank account).
The danger with that whole stereotype is that the singer/songwriter/folk/acoustic amalgamation is itself one with a limited and difficult market. There is no easily identifiable trend in the artists who have successfully entered the mainstream from this genre. (Can anyone explain Lisa Loeb's success to me? Please?) So the argument that gay men have it especially bad just sounds self-victimizing and belittling. If we as gay men have our own music festival, I would like the aim to be a collaborative exploration of how far the queer perspective can push the music envelope -- not to claim we're being left behind.
True, queer musicians still suffer from audience homophobia, but not to the dramatic extent the article contends. In News' claims that mainstream gay musicians "have the luxury of being able to remain detached from the gay world." If you've ever been to one of the many Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright tours, the Folds frat boys who sit through Rufus' set usually act like a Red Sox fan at the Gardner museum: you're confused about how they wound up there and they're just angry because the beer is too far away. It's clear that Rufus hasn't exactly left Gay World for good. Still, the last time I saw him, he was playing the Bank of America Pavillion, so it would be a hard sell to convince me Rufus is feeling the homophobia where it hurts (the bank account).
posted by Ian at 9/19/2006 07:03:00 AM
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