Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) music is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.
LGBTQ music spans the entire spectrum of popular music. Lyricism and song content typically express the frustration, anxiety, and hope associated with non-normative sexual and gender identities, offering marginalized groups a vital platform for expression. Recently, popular music has "provided an arena where marginalized voices can be heard and sexual identities shaped, challenged, and renegotiated". Mainstream music has begun to reflect acceptance of LGBTQ musicianship. Some queer icons are openly queer-identifying and have made impactful changes in the world for LGBTQ people. Others are straight allies that have expressed their support for the community.
LGBTQ music can also refer to music that does not necessarily engage with queer themes, or is created by queer composers/producers, but is enjoyed by members of the LGBTQ community regardless. Much of the music created by straight queer icons is enjoyed in LGBTQ spaces, with artists such as Judy Garland, Céline Dion, Janet Jackson, Donna Summer, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, or Cher, among others. Some performers, like Elton John and Lady Gaga, are prominent activists for the LGBTQ community, winning the GLAAD Vanguard Award in 2019, and publicly thanked the LGBTQ community for their development of the house music genre at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
History German sexologists around the turn of the 20th century indirectly revealed that homosexuals were abundant in the music field and profession. The associated taboos regarding homosexuality and the large amount of homosexuals in music at this time led to the development of the idea of music being a method for expression, transcending ordinary life.
Early Black queer artists included Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, who recorded overtly lesbian songs in the 1920s, as well as Little Richard in the late 1950s, with the hit song "Tutti Frutti" as a homosexual reference, but one that was covert enough to be plausibly denied.
Regarding classical music, American composer Leonard Bernstein had many homosexual relations, often with other musicians and composers, despite being in a heterosexual marriage. Many artists like Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Dimitri Mitropoulos were subject to hiding their sexual identities from the public. American pianist Liberace was famously closeted and vehemently denied allegations of homosexuality until his death in 1987, suing a Daily Mirror columnist for insinuating his sexuality. While the entertainment industry now more openly discusses the role of gender identity both in the press and within music compositions, there is still reticence for many in the business to advocate for LGBTQ acceptance.
Broadway and musical theater
Broadway and musical theater have been ways for groups of people to express themselves through music, dance, and drama. As Philip Brett and Elizabeth Wood state, "the musical theater has been a special place for gay identification and expression". Many queer people, but particularly gay men, are not only enjoyers of Broadway, but often have a hand in the production and creation of it. Notable gay men involved in the production of Broadway shows include Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Noël Coward, Marc Blitzstein, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Stephen Sondheim, to name a few. Lesbians also have a hand in contributing to the production of Broadway and theater, like lesbian producer Cheryl Crawford. With this impact from homosexual producers, musical theater was rife with coded messages for homosexual artists early on, moving on to having openly gay themes with musicals such as Cabaret and A Chorus Line in the 1960s and 1970s. Musicals began to focus on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s, most popularly with Falsettoland and RENT. Other musicals with openly trans characters were also popular, including The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Musicals focused on drag or drag queens are also popular still today, such as Kinky Boots.
Timeline
1920s-1930s Blues music made its appearance in the United States towards the late 19th century, but made an impact on queer culture in the 1920s and 1930s. Following the Civil War period, blues music relied heavily on Black vocals. Specifically, Black women who were originally introduced to the entertainment scene due to the influx of economic opportunities. Blues were a way of expression for freed African Americans, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is, simultaneously, a story about how white people 'tore the railroad down' and how Black people still managed to 'build a railroad of their own' within its interests". Becoming entertainers also brought black women bodily and sexual control over themselves and gave them opportunities to express their desires for same-sex relationships. Due to the time period, blues musicians such as Ma Rainey, Gladys Bentley, and Bessie Smith had to keep these relationships hidden but because of the constant nature of moving the involvement they had with same-sex relationships was a lot easier to contain. Despite many of these musicians being married to men, they still sought relationships with other women.
During the 1920s-1930s era, blues music was solely vocals-driven due to lack of variety in materials and instruments. This led to women in the blues industry often having raspy and husky voices that were meant to carry throughout a venue. Ma Rainey was met with controversies regarding her masculine voice. Her southern audience found her vocals to be appealing and nostalgic towards their southern history, but her voice was not enjoyed by her northern audience. Despite the difference in enjoyment, Rainey stuck to her roots and chose to carry on with her natural masculine voice instead of conforming to the swing style that came with northern enjoyment.
Blues music in this time period not only came with a deep background in queer themes, but additionally was built on expressions of anger and rage. Musicians such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey channeled rage towards cisnormativity, racism towards black women in the interwar period, and sexism in their music. The music serves as a vessel for expression in which these women discussed sexuality and same-sex relationships within their lyrics, since they could not publicly speak out or be seen with another woman. These lyrics were analyzed and seen for what they were intended to exert by certain people at the time, but have been further analyzed by the public in more recent times.
Blues musicians such as Gladys Bentley and Ma Rainey were known to border the line of acceptable female behavior in this time period. They often dressed more masculine than what was deemed respectable and acceptable. Their physical appearance challenged the ideal expression of femininity and actively challenged patriarchal concepts put in place.
Their lyrics were a direct connection to their physical display. Famously, Ma Rainey's “Prove It On Me Blues” openly addresses her sexual fluidity and desire towards same-sex relationships. Smith and Bentley similarly have lyrics discussing same-sex relationships.
1960s-1970s Beginning in Europe and making their way over to America, discothèques were dance clubs where prerecorded music, rather than live music, was the main focus. Originating from France and Germany during World War II, where young people met in basements to dance to American swing music, as the Nazis had banned jazz, bebop music, and jitterbug dancing, the concept and culture of disco made its way to the United States by the late 1960s and early 1970s. African Americans, gays, and Latinos who were longing for something other than the rock music met in these clubs, in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Miami. In these clubs, "disco became the pulse of gay liberation on and off the dance floor in the post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS 1970s". In later years, the mass popularity and integration of this counter-culture into the mainstream culture reflected "yet another infusion of homosexual subculture into the cultural mainstream".
The sexual revolution and associated revolutions of the 1960s started to bring counterculture to the mainstream attention, allowing for women, Black people, and LGBTQ minorities to be recognized and treated as human beings. In these revolutions, gender and sexuality became less rigid and more fluid, as evidenced in the performances of musicians like Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Grace Jones, and Prince.
The disco, glam rock, and industrial music cultures offered a multitude of platforms for expression for gender and sexual non-conforming individuals throughout the 1970s. For the queer community, disco was a bridge between all people from all backgrounds through an expression of the body. Disco was not only musical, but cultural as well, and allowed people to form communities. "Disco Pluralism" partly led to the inclusion of different perspectives in the genre, thus creating a category of music representative of the intersectional identities of queer listeners; such as race or socioeconomic status.
Disco remained practically exclusive to underground clubs for a majority of the decade until, in 1977, the movie Saturday Night Fever propelled disco into the mainstream. After the movie's success, disco netted around 4–8 billion dollars and averaged from 20 to 40 percent of interactions on the billboard (1979).
Though disco's foundation lies in inclusivity after the success of Saturday Night Fever its commercial success led to the genre shifting from predominantly black and queer people to white Americans securing a spot for them in the genre's sphere. The influx of upper-middle class white Americans finding success in disco led to several queer people showing animosity towards the genre, believing its capitalistic success tore disco away from what made it culturally revolutionary.
Disco still remained popular in the queer community even with increased criticism on how it derived its success. Authors like Richard Dyer of The Gay Left were able to publish literature in support of disco that the queer community could rally behind.
In scholarship about disco and related genres, most scholarship focuses on white, gay men who were involved in disco, sometimes briefly mentioning "Disco Divas", or the Black women who were involved disco music. Even though disco was instrumental in forming different ways of viewing marginalized identities, specifically femininity, Blackness, and homosexuality, most scholarship focuses on the least marginalized of these groups when conducting research.
Disco was not the only popular element of LGBTQ music in the 1970s; following Stonewall, there was an emergence of lesbian, feminist, and women-identified singer-songwriters. Events such as women-only music festivals and women-only coffeehouses promoted this music, and many of these spaces were feminist separatism or lesbian separatism spaces. Though not occurring in the 1970s, one of the most famous women's music festivals came into controversy in the 1990s, when trans woman Nancy Jean Burkholder was asked to leave the festival. The festival cited their "womyn-born womyn" policy regarding this decision, and was met with much controversy in the following years.