Day 5 – Heavy Metal!

Today…. woooo…. Today was an incredibly “electrifying” day. I will be quick on my physical feeling today as I want to continue the topic of gender and sexuality in music. I felt cute and sexy in my dress with leggings and my toms. Around the time of doing a property walk at work, something had changed… or maybe, I had just began to notice but the nerves on my chest had suddenly been lit a flame. As I continued to walk, the fabrics moving against me cotinued to light more and more nerves bringing them to life. I have never felt something so intense before today. The flames dancing all over my body are still going strong many hours later….. I really enjoy this feeling. 

Anyways to the topic at hand. Gender and sexuality in Heavy Metal. In my penultimate semester of my graduate program, I wrote a paper looking at how the German band Rammstein interacts with with hypersexuality and deconstructs toxic masculinty in their performances of the hit song Büch Dich. Available here. I bring this topic up because there is still a lack of access and inclusion for queer musicians. I will continue access and inclusion more deeply in another post. 

Now that you have read the paper, the concept of gendered music and instruments have been amplified profusely throughout the genre and the idea of masculinity became associated to it. I pose a question to you – what traits of an instrument do you define as masculine versus feminine? Additionally, why would your ascribe those genders to those traits? 

I ask those specific questions because there are multiple people in the orchestral world with whom I have had anecedotal conversations with on this topic. For several of them, they had no choice in the instrument that they ended up playing. While it didn’t dampen their journey in the musical world, they were told that flutes are for girls and drums and tubas are for boys. 

I made this detour to show correlating evidence that gendered music is highly pervasive through the musicking process. Like Rammstein, comfort in the status quo needs to be turned  on edge similar to Flake and Lindemann “fucking” on stage. Flake and Lindemann sought the reaction of the audience especially the ones who took offense to the dispay of supposed homosexuality on stage. After the groups arrest, it soured the idea of the “freedom” of America. Rammstein highlighted the issue with America’s puritanical beginnings.

These issues are exactly why I am doing this project. A friend made a comment earlier noting that interactions in the spaces needs more research so that others are better informed about queerness in the daily musical life. I will leave you with thought to mull and stew over. Why is removing these gender barriars important to creating a fully inclusive daily musical life?