Queer Sound: A Natural Phenomenon

Understanding what it means “to queer”

My twin brother has said that he is work-shopping a joke about how planes are incredibly Freudian because when boarding, we enter a tube, walk through a tiny door, sit in a temporary small confined place for a couple hours, and proceed to exit through a similar tube from the one we used to enter – only to find ourselves in whole other location. On my way back to Colgate University from a short trip home to Los Angeles for the holidays, I indulged this Freudian thought that flying is like re-insemination and re-birth over and over again. Now this may sound like a bit of a leap, but I really don’t remember my birth being as loud and as turbulent as my flight had been. To make another small jump – this entire situation had me thinking about sound. When in the womb of the plane, there was a constant hum of engines and snores mixed with the sound waves of media leaking from nearby headphones and screaming plane air conditioners. I was surrounded by loud, violent, industrial, noises and was yearning for quiet natural sounds of this world – like a flowing river, the sound of wind between the branches of trees, or crashing waves of the ocean. So I put on my bluetooth headphones and when the beep let me know of its connection, I pressed my meditation app.

In our ability to sense and take in sounds as beings, noise and sound seems rather optional. To hear something – I open up my ears and listen closely for it. The boring 200 person lectures by my Professors or the juicy gossip from my friends all seem like a process of hearing out of volition. With the rise of critique towards positivist binary thinking, queer theories have come to fruition and have suggested that we think critically about the construction of our world. In this piece, I want combine the epistemology of queer theory and sound to show that there is an assumption that queer sound is actually queer music by the queer community that speaks to the queer community – which would not be entirely wrong to think. However, I argue that, while queer sound can be considered songs produced by queer identifying artists that deviate from the norm, in a world of constructs – queer sound is actually more like the absence of man made, industrial sound. This is because of my belief that queer sound is authentic, genuine, and raw sound that has been untouched or not violated. With the adoption of queer methods, I enter in to spaces to listen to nature – its authenticity as well as tendency to be violated by human kind and discuss my experience and findings.

To understand how one could come to the conclusion that queer sound is a space occupied by queer music, one can look at Francesca Royster’s novel Sounding like a NO-NO: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era. Here, Royster argues that queer music is “a rebellious sprint in a search for offbeat, eccentric, queer, or slippery performances of leading artists influenced by changes in culture during the civil rights, black nationalist, feminist, and LGBTQ movements” (Royster, 2012). The existence of queer music is to deviate from the norm in the slightest or most radical of ways and Royster is assigning a political charge to the action through its association with historical waves of resistance and movements for identity rights. In their investigation of Micheal Jackson, Grace Jones, Stevie Wonder, among many others, Royster sets out to show that queer sound is just as much of a representation of talent, creativity, transgression, and social change as any other form of music (Royster, 2012). Queer music is made by “those who in their embodied voices, movements and gestures, iconography, appropriation of multiple styles, choice of cover songs, and other artists projects blur categories of music genre, as well as race, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of identity” (Royster, 2012). If heteronormative practices within music are the positive and the neutral, Royster sets out to show that the other form of music is considered the negative; therefore, queer music is a visceral reaction to the exclusion of culture, identities, sexualities, and so much more in this world.

With this context, it is clear that queer music goes hand-in-hand with queer sound as the music we listen to is quite literally functioning in ways that create tension with the norms. In present day pop culture, this kind of sound is evident through artists like Lady Gaga and their hit song “Born This Way”. The track talks about embracing one's authentic and genuine identities and committing to the person you are in the most full and proud terms. Anything less would be an act of delegitimizing oneself. Furthermore, there are rising stars like 100 Gecs which is a band where the lead vocalist, Laura Les, is transgender and says that their identity has contributed to the authentic hyper-pop vocals, varying pitches, and imbedded beats. Their identity speaks through the nightcore style music and allows for others to identify with the work they are putting forward. There was also the late and musically talented SOPHIE, who worked alongside Charlie XCX and produced massive billboard hits. They famously say that “transness is taking control to bring your body more in line with your soul and spirit so the two aren't fighting against each other and struggling to survive.” Using music, queer artists are manifesting their identities through their work and feeling more legitimate because of their actions, as well as helping bend boundaries of who is eligible in the business. While there is so much more to be said here, this goes to show that for one to believe queer music encompasses queer sound is not entirely wrong as artists are legitimizing their own identities while also creating space for others to do the same. The music created here  helps to define queer while simultaneously leaving it undefined.

Music created for the queer community by the queer community is most certainly a branch of queer sound; however, with the definition of queer, something changes for me. Queer defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is said to be many things, but one definition is “denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms.” When considering how sexuality and gender are constructs created by society and the idea that for one to embrace queerness - they are committing to their most authentic, uninhibited, and genuine self - I feel that queer sound is sound that removes all constructs of human kind. This means that queer sound is natural, non-mechanical, uninvited by humankind noise.

To understand what this sound looks like, I adopted queer methods that allows me to use creative methods of research. This could function as collecting photographs, creating art pieces, and so much more. For my application of queer methods, I simply tried inserting myself into nature. I wanted to know – what can I hear surrounded by deep woods with towering trees or running rivers off the sides of roads? I traversed Colgate University’s campus and indulged my curiosity in whether other sounds would impede on my nature listening sessions. More properly stated, by using the “Voice Memos”' application on my phone, I entered natural spaces (spaces created through nature itself) with the intention of recording and listening to the sounds that I heard. I listened and recorded four ways. 1) simply listening and not moving as nature did its thing, 2) listening while walking through nature focusing on what it sounds like with footsteps, 3) listening while nature and mankind fought over space with noise, and 4) walking from natural noises to man made noises. Finally, I recorded all of these experiences with the intent of re-listening and analyzing them later in order to write this piece and discuss my findings on how queer sound is natural, untouched, authentic noise.

The first method that I took on was embracing nature with zero interrupting outside forces. In my first recording “Trees by the River,” one can hear the rain dropping through the trees, and the little sounds of water hitting the rocks on the banks of a river. Furthermore, there is a bird that is singing with zero infringement of any man made objects. For another recording, I found space deep in the Colgate woods and sat for a while listening and recording the sounds I heard. In “Colgate Woods 1: Sitting in Silence,” you can hear raindrops falling on the trees above me with large amounts of wind pushing the branches back and forth. Both of these recordings highlight the peace and tranquility that one can find when placing themselves in nature and listening; however, they also show that natural noise is incredibly authentic. The sounds that the wind, rivers, and birds combine to make are all noises that came to fruition without the help of humans. Nobody made the wind blow, the birds sing, or the river flow the way they did and in doing so they take on queer noise because of the authenticity, genuineness, and natural expression of sound.

My next method was listening and recording the noises I heard while actively walking through nature and representing my presence with the sounds of my footsteps. In “Colgate Woods: Walking for Miles,” one can hear the sound of wind hitting branches and ruffling the leaves still hanging to the trees in upstate N.Y. winter. You can hear the sound of gravel underneath my boots transition to leaves, grass, and back to rocks. Towards the end of the recording, there is a crow that loudly cries out and pierces through the wind and shortly thereafter I end the recording. For this piece, I wanted to capture what noise sounds like when I am embracing it by moving one place to another. It may have felt no different from just sitting and listening to the sounds I hear; however, in hearing the recording play out, I cannot help but listen to the sounds my feet are making on the earth below me. The natural noises are beautiful and the sound of my boots on the ground are satisfying to hear, but they are intrusive and remove from the genuine natural noises heard. This is because I am the one who created the noises and infringed on the natural sounds heard. In doing so, I felt like an invasive spectator in the symphony and construction of queer sound – I was taking away from the authentic of nature producing its own noises.

To show how nature and mankind fought over space with the production of noise, I started off by recording my footsteps on concrete with the wind in the background. In my recording, “Thunder Road,” one can hear the sound of my boots sharply hitting the concrete road with the wind in the background. Listening to this piece, I began to understand how the production of noise by non-natural constructions leads to the drowning out of natural sound. In this scenario, noise is produced, not precisely, but just enough for the authenticity of nature and the noises it creates to be violated. Furthermore, in “Woods Invaded by Machine” the sound of wind brushing through the trees mixed in with the hum of machinery from a nearby facility can be heard. Quite literally, these sounds are fighting over space. The act of focusing on listening to one would lead to silencing the other; however, the machinery is too loud to drown out. This further highlights the in trepidation that machinery has in invading the production of sound produced naturally. The invasion of machinery on natural noise takes away from the genuine queer sound that is naturally and in its isolated state – natural sound. It is functionally produced noise more than it is innate.

To solidify how queer sound is invaded by man made sound, my last method of listening and recording focused on walking from natural noises to the sounds artificially produced by society. In the recording titled “Walk of Shame: the Violation of Man,” one can hear the sounds of nature in the beginning and then the onset of man made noises like language, machinery, and even my own footsteps becoming more and more prominent in the recording. The very end of the track projects the sounds of a vehicle coming to a stop, someone opening and closing the car door, and the vehicle proceeding. The sounds of nature are no longer able to be focused on as artificial noise is too pervasive. Queer noise in other words is unable to be heard as there is no natural, genuine, authentic sounds to be heard.

While my research gets across the point of the multiplicities of queer sound, the reality is it is rather limiting. The technology that I used to record the noises I heard was a small hand-held phone. This device does not even come close to some of the more expensive devices that can record sound thoroughly. To use one of these devices would have benefited me greatly as I would have been able to hear noise more precisely. Furthermore, I feel that I could have added the method of sitting entirely in artificial sound in order to represent the difference between natural and man made noise. Finally, with a post structuralist view, my experience is subjective and only creates my truths. For me to view queer sound as nature and queer music – only makes up a piece of the pie that is the entire truth of what is queer sound.

If to live by the definition of queer is to authentically live in a natural state of identity, then the natural state of sound in this world is sound produced by nature. For one to think that queer sound is queer music is not entirely wrong as artists such as Lady Gaga and SOPHIE show these truths; however, it does not take into account how sound itself can also be authentic. This is why I believe that queer sound is the root of sound – sound untouched and naturally produced on earth. It is the wind on the trees, the water in a river, and the animals in the wild. With my research method, one can see how natural sound is impeded upon by artificial sound produced by constructions of society. By starting with the essence of noise and moving on to portraying how it is violated, one can see how we have lost one aspect of queer sound to industrial and societal growth. For one to find queer sound again, we must find ourselves quiet, silent, and lost within that natural scenes of this planet.

Bibliography

Royster, Francesca T.. Sounding Like a No-No : Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era, University of Michigan Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/colgate/detail.action?docID=3415117.

Discussion Questions / Presentation

Introduction:

  1. Present your topic on queer sound to the extent that you want to
    1. Reference your introduction to the paper and maybe share the same thing that you wrote on
      1. My twin brother likes to say that he is work-shopping a joke about how planes are incredibly Freudian because, when boarding, we enter a tube, walk through a tiny door, sit in a temporary small confined place for a couple hours, and proceed to exit through a similar tube from the one we used to enter – only find ourselves in whole other location. On my way back to Colgate University from a short trip home to Los Angeles for the holidays, I indulged this Freudian thought that flying is like re-insemination and re-birth. Now this may sound like a bit of a leap, but I really don’t remember my birth being as loud and as turbulent as my flight had been. To make another small jump – this entire situation had me thinking about sound. When in the womb of the plane, there was a constant hum of engines and snores mixed with the sound waves of media leaking from nearby headphones and screaming plane air conditioners. I was surrounded by loud, violent, industrial, noises and was yearning for quiet natural sounds of this world – like a flowing river, the sound of wind between the branches of trees, or crashing waves of the ocean. So I put on my bluetooth headphones and when the beep let me know of its connection, I pressed my meditation app.
  2. Ask what sound means to people?
    1. What are some of your favorite sounds? And Why?
      1. Could be cheesy, could be legitimate.
        1. Music, water, footsteps, etc
  3. Do you think the sound you chose could be identified as a queer sound?
  4. My argument
    1. In our ability to sense and take in sounds as beings, noise and sound seems rather optional. To hear something – I open up my ears and listen closely for it. The boring 200 person lectures by my Professors or the juicy gossip from my friends all seem like a process of hearing out of volition, processing, and responding. With the rise of critique towards positivist binary thinking, queer theories have come to fruition and have suggested that we think critically about the construction of our world. In this piece, I want combine the epistemology of queer theory and sound to show that there is an assumption that queer sound is actually just queer music by the queer community that speaks to the queer community – which would not be entirely wrong to think. However, I argue that, while queer sound can be considered songs produced by queer identifying artists that deviate from the norm, in a world of constructs – queer sound is actually more like the absence of man made, industrial sound. This is because of my belief that queer sound is authentic, genuine, and raw sound that has been untouched or not violated. With the adoption of queer methods, I enter in to spaces to listen to nature – its authenticity as well as tendency to be violated by human kind and discuss my experience and findings.
  5. Method
    1. More properly stated, by using the “Voice Memos”' application on my phone, I entered natural spaces (spaces created through nature itself) with the intention of recording and listening to the sounds that I heard. I listened and recorded four ways. 1) simply listening and not moving as nature did its thing, 2) listening while walking through nature focusing on what it sounds like with footsteps, 3) listening while nature and mankind fought over space with noise, and 4) walking from natural noises to man made noises. Finally, I recorded all of these experiences with the intent of re-listening and analyzing them later in order to write this piece and discuss my findings on how queer sound is natural, untouched, authentic noise.
  6. Findings
    1. The first method that I took on was embracing nature with no outside forces interrupting. In my first recording “Trees by the River,” one can hear the rain dropping through the trees, and the little sounds of water hitting the rocks on the banks of a river. Furthermore, there is a bird that is singing with zero infringement of any man made objects. For another recording, I found space deep in the Colgate woods and sat for a while listening and recording the sounds I heard. In “Colgate Woods 1: Sitting in Silence,” you can hear raindrops falling on the trees above me with large amounts of wind pushing the branches back and forth. Both of these recordings highlight the peace and tranquility that one can find when placing themselves in nature and listening; however, they also show that natural noise is incredibly authentic. The sounds that the wind, rivers, and birds combine to make are all noises that came to fruition without the help of humans. Nobody made the wind blow, the birds sing, or the river flow the way they did and in doing so they take on queer noise because of the authenticity, genuineness, and natural expression of sound.
    2. My next method was listening and recording the noises I heard while actively walking through nature and representing my presence with the sounds of my footsteps. In “Colgate Woods: Walking for Miles,” one can hear the sound of wind hitting branches and ruffling the leaves still hanging to the trees in upstate N.Y. winter. You can hear the sound of gravel underneath my boots transition to leaves, grass, and back to rocks. Towards the end of the recording, there is a crow that loudly cries out and pierces through the wind and shortly thereafter I end the recording. For this piece, I wanted to capture what noise sounds like when I am embracing it by moving one place to another. It may have felt no different from just sitting and listening to the sounds I hear; however, in hearing the recording play out, I cannot help but listen to the sounds my feet are making on the earth below me. The natural noises are beautiful and the sound of my boots on the ground are satisfying to hear, but they are intrusive and take away from the genuine natural noises heard. This is because I am the one who created the noises and infringed on the natural sounds heard. In doing so, I felt like an invasive spectator in the symphony and construction of queer sound – I was taking away from the authentic of nature producing its own noises.
    3. To show how nature and mankind fought over space with the production of noise, I started off by recording my footsteps on concrete with the wind in the background. In my recording, “Thunder Road,” one can hear the sound of my boots sharply hitting the concrete road with the wind in the background. Listening to this piece, I began to understand how the production of noise by non-natural constructions leads to the drowning out of natural sound. In this scenario, noise is produced, not precisely, but just enough for the authenticity of nature and the noises it creates to be violated. Furthermore, in “Woods Invaded by Machine” the sound of wind brushing through the trees mixed in with the hum of machinery from a nearby facility can be heard. Quite literally, these sounds are fighting over space. The act of focusing on listening to one would lead to silencing the other; however, the machinery is too loud to drown out. This further highlights the in trepidation that machinery has in invading the production of sound produced naturally. The invasion of machinery on natural noise takes away from the genuine queer sound that is naturally and in its isolated state – natural sound. It is functionally produced noise more than it is innate.
    4. To solidify how queer sound is invaded by man made sound, my last method of listening and recording focused on walking from natural noises to the sounds artificially produced by society. In the recording titled “Walk of Shame: the Violation of Man,” one can hear the sounds of nature in the beginning and then the onset of man made noises like language, machinery, and even my own footsteps becoming more and more prominent in the recording. The very end of the track projects the sounds of a vehicle coming to a stop, someone opening and closing the car door, and the vehicle proceeding. The sounds of nature are no longer able to be focused on as artificial noise is too pervasive. Queer noise in other words is unable to be heard as there is no natural, genuine, authentic sounds to be heard.
  7. Limitations
  8. Takeaways?
    1. Do you think queer sound can be anything else
      1. Can it be sexual?
      2. Can it be mechanical?
      3. What else can it not be?