Pop Conference 2025

Tori Vilches, “Young Miko’s Fashion and the Politics of Queer Identity in Latin Trap”

This paper explores the intersection of fashion, identity, and sexuality in the music of Lesbian
Latin Trap/Urbano artist, Young Miko. Fashion has long been an essential medium for self-
expression, but in genres like reggaeton and trap, the portrayal of women often emphasizes
colonial beauty standards. Building on the work of Clarke and Turner (2007) and Schofield and
Schmidt (2005) on queer identity and fashion, as well as Penney’s (2012) study of baggy
clothing in queer hip-hop culture, this research extends the discussion to Latin Trap. Meave
Avila (2021) argues that in Reggaeton music videos, women’s bodies not only enhance financial
gain but also symbolize men’s social power and status. This concept is complicated by Miko’s
positioning within the genre, as she subverts these norms, embodying traditional masculinity
through baggy tracksuits, chains, and placement in front of cars while simultaneously embracing
femininity through makeup, hair, and nails.

Young Miko’s presence in the genre makes space for queer women and their sexual experiences,
taking the traditional place that straight men have for so long. However, she could also be
embodying elements of heterosexual masculinity as a way to “fit” into male-dominated
structures – a concept highlighted by Davies (2021). In this context, we might also consider the
notion that instead of transcending the machismo stereotypes of reggaetón/Urbano/Latin trap,
Young Miko could inadvertently reinforce these values.

Through a decolonial analysis of music videos such as “Lisa,” “Classy 101,” “ID,” “8am,” and
“Castigada,” I explore the ways Young Miko explicitly navigates sexuality and identity
expression through fashion, lyrics, and vocal timbre. Ultimately, Young Miko’s fashion choices
and performance style serve as a dual-edged commentary: advancing representation for queer
sexual experiences while negotiating the gendered power dynamics of “fitting” into a genre that
traditionally uses women’s bodies as visual signifiers of social capital.

Jessica King, “I’m About to Pop Your Music Bubble: Scene Queen’s Hyper-Feminine Bimbocore
Metal Theatrics and Aesthetics v. Metal’s Misogyny”

Scene Queen lauds herself as the literal antithesis to what the misogynistic metal
scene wants to see or hear. From its origins, metal has included women primarily as objects
of heterosexual male desire and fantasy, whether referred to in objectifying lyrics, paraded as
music video props, and/or abused as groupies. The pioneering women in metal were often
reduced to sultry sirens, Xena warrior princesses, or Valkyrie vixens. Those that garnered the
most tolerance, like Warlock’s front-woman Doro Pesch, earned acceptance by adopting more
masculine dress and mannerisms during the 1980s. Then and now, for even the remotest
chance at being taken seriously, women in metal are held to higher standards of genre
knowledge and musical proficiency while needing to rely on what Deena Weinstein terms
“being metal” through masculine-coded physical markers and/or identity acts. Female metal
musicians are expected to strictly adhere to the principal sonic element of the music itself,
sheer power (i.e., volume), accompanied by extreme distortion, electric guitar and bass, riffs,
bombastic percussion, fast tempi, liminal breakdowns, and extended scream vocal techniques.
Scene Queen, however, performs an amplified parody of white, dumb blonde, hyper-feminine
2000s inspired bimbocore that unapologetically exposes and confronts the misogynistic, often
predatory, metal genre and subculture. While the hyper feminine and the Scene Queen
character herself seem at odds with metal, I argue that Scene Queen is in fact a significant
and valid inheritor of metal’s theatrical traditions, aesthetics, fashions, and antics, aligning
her with iconic bands such as KISS, Twisted Sister, GWAR, Slipknot, Ghost, and more.
Unapologetically performing the most amplified version of herself and calling out the scene’s
bad behavior are undoubtedly making the metal scene a safer, more inclusive space. Scene
Queen is more than just her music. Scene Queen is a movement.

Claire Lobenfeld, “Mother Monstro: A Semiotic Reading of Lady Gaga's Meat Dress”

Lady Gaga refuses to deny that her body—and all bodies—are fragile and fluctuating. Using the
meat dress she wore at the 2010 VMAs, I will examine Gaga’s project as a counter-narrative to
the perception of pop stars as flawless and fully able. By wearing a garment made of dead bodies
that actively decomposed on her own, she signaled to her deteriorating flesh and the universal
inevitability of death. The presentation will further investigate Gaga’s grotesque aesthetics—blood, vomit,
the hybridizing of her human body with non-human forms—as a source of beauty and pleasure, providing
catharsis for her own body in crisis. These examinations will be made through the lenses of literary criticism
(Mikhail Bahktin’s carnivalesque and lower-body stratum; Julia Kristeva’s theories of abjection) and Tobin
Siebers’s theories of aesthetics represented by embodied-difference in art and visual culture.

Moderator: AJ Kluth, Case Western Reserve University

Dianne Violeta Mausfeld, “‘Cholo Style’: Origin, Commercialization, and Appropriation of Urban Chicano Hip-Hop Fashion in Los Angeles”

Chicano rap evolved in the late 1980s and early 1990s in L.A. and other urban centers in
Southern California. The predominantly male, second-generation Latino and Chicano rappers,
DJs, and producers uniquely translated their urban migratory background to Spanglish rhymes
over beats that sampled lowrider oldies, funk, and soul. The musical subculture is deeply
intertwined with Chicano gang culture as many of the artists were gang members and/or grew up
in gang infested areas which is particularly visible in the subject matters, artists’ name patterns,
and their clothing style. This so-called “cholo” style entailed baggy khakis, Nike Cortez tennis
shoes, Pendleton flannel shirts, white t-shirts, and bandanas, as well as residual elements of zoot
suit culture such as fedoras. The style was criminalized by schools and law enforcement in the
context of gang injunctions which only contributed to it becoming a signifier of Brown pride and
resistance. At the same time, the portrayal of Chicano youth as “cholos” in the media moved
between authenticity and stereotype. Over time, the meaning of certain style elements changed
through their commercialization and appropriation by non-Chicano youth of color, yet cholo
aesthetics are intrinsically linked with Chicano rap. The style has been appropriated by African
American rappers on the West Coast since at least the 1980s which has led to its popularization
and the misconception that it derived from Black culture. Thus, the style’s history and importance
for L.A. hip-hop and urban Chicano culture at large cannot be overstated.

Drawing on ethnographic interviews with Chicano rap artists and contemporaries from
2019–2023 and critical source evaluation of album artwork, music videos, lifestyle magazines, and
motion pictures, this paper aims to carve out the history, meaning, and commercialization of
urban Chicano clothing styles in L.A. hip hop and popular culture from the late 1980s until today.

Aneliza Ruiz, “Querida América: Willy Chavarria and the Echoes of Latinx Feeling”

This paper examines Willy Chavarria’s fashion show, “América,” at New York Fashion Week
and closely reads the performance of “Querida” by Yahritza y Su Esencia at the show’s opening
in addition to specific looks from Chavarria’s collection. By closely reading the lyrical and
affective qualities of the musical performance and the historical references made in the design
choices of Chavarria’s collection, I suggest that Chavarria is making specific claims about Latinx
labor, desire, and belonging in the United States. Specifically, I trace Chavarria’s designs to the
historical figure of the Pachuco/a, or Zoot Suiter, who emerged during World War II when high
numbers of Latinx youth were employed by factories to manufacture war supplies. In present
contexts, the Pachuco/a is a symbol of ethnic pride and political refusal that emphasizes the
right to beauty and belonging for Chicano and Latinx folks. I argue that Chavarria references
this figure and their style, among other working-class jobs and aesthetics inhabited by Latines,
to demonstrate the echo of calls for justice by previous generations whose feelings are still
relevant in the present. I suggest that Chavarria seeks to add to this echo not only through his
designs but also through his decision to have Yahritza y Su Esencia perform “Querida,” a song
directed at a lost lover where the singer is asking for their sadness, loneliness, and suffering to
be acknowledged. By using the metaphor of the echo, I ultimately demonstrate how these small
traces of history are mobilized in the present to negotiate feelings and continue to imagine what
liberation might look like.

Jacob Sunshine, “Contrabandas y Estampadas: Screen-Printed T-shirts and the Reproduction
of Visual Culture in the Sound Systems of Barranquilla”

Picós are the ribcage rattling outdoor sound systems that animate parties in the largely Afro-
Colombian working-class neighborhoods of Barranquilla and other parts of the Caribbean Coast
of Colombia. Though picós have acquired their reputation in part for playing exclusive, rare
vinyl records of West and Central African guitar music that the audiences on La Costa favor,
since 1967, picós have also fostered a unique visual culture centered around elaborate
paintings on the picós speaker baffles in Day-Glo paint, oftentimes featuring mythical creatures
(El Dragón), enigmatic figures found on the cover of Salsa records (El Gran Pijuan), or war
heroes (El Gran Fidel). This visual aesthetic has launched the fame of artists like William
Gutierrez and Belismath whose visual motifs, unlike the “threatening” sounds that their art
accompanies, have crossed over into elite neighborhoods and have become ubiquitous aspects
of the city’s landscape, appearing everywhere from murals to high fashion. This paper draws
from 14 months of ethnographic research and oral history interviews in Barranquilla and
Cartagena, Colombia. It focuses specifically on the presence of contraband estampados, screen-
printed T-shirts, polo shirts, baseball caps and soccer jerseys fabricated by members of the
scene in Barranquilla’s central market. Donning these t-shirts at events becomes a way for
fanatics to indicate their support for a popular picó. But local celebrities and DJs will also sport
photos of their own faces, boosting their own presence in public space. This paper explores
how this practice of fabricating estampados performs the labor of reclaiming emblems in an
unequal city. This persistent copying of images follows a similar logic to the work that
Champeta producers do in marketing unlicensed, shoddy reissues of African music. In both
cases, the farther the crude copies get from the original, the stronger the allure, and in turn the
social value ascribed to the originals.

Jose Torres, “A Phenomenology of Mexico’s Traje de Charro and its Role in Mariachi Musicality

Music is typically conceived of as solely an auditory experience, with sound perceived as
the central role in how aesthetic meaning is attached. However, in a live performance (or visual
media), a musical body possesses equal potential to generate aesthetic qualities that along with
sound amplify perceptual experience. Embodied qualities of music being are often bound up in
objects like clothing and instruments. The way a musician’s body is stylized and clothed, along
with the vocal/instrumental technical execution, constitutes a “stance relationship” to the
expressive culture of a performance (Berger 2009). In Mexico, the traje de charro (charro suit),
the symbolic attire worn by mariachi musicians, is an insignia steeped in profound images of the
charro figure who exists on two levels. First, as a historic, real participant in the nation’s history
and second, as a re-imagined caricature of nationalist popular culture. Though often conflated,
these deeply entwined dualisms in part materialize a charro ethos (Geertz), made manifest in its
garb by a “semiotic ideology” (Keane 2005:191) mediating the kinds of acted-upon objects of
the habitus (Bourdieu 1984).

Mariachi practitioners in Mexico cite respect for the charro suit as a primary authentic
trait of being “un mariachi digno” (a dignified mariachi). In a musical performance, mariachi
attire, captures the aesthetic totality of Mexico’s historic charro, construed not only by its
materiality, but also in its symbolic amalgam of associated orientations, both real and imagined.
This paper presents a phenomenology of the charro suit, illustrating its role in structuring
socialized cultural imaginari

Emmie Head, “Towards an Aesthetics of Digital Emotion: Examining Emotion in AI Music Composition Process”

“Beatoven.ai uses advanced AI music generation techniques to compose unique mood-based music to suit every part of your video or podcast,” says the slogan for royalty-free generative AI Beatoven. Beatoven, like other music-making AIs, interprets a prompt from the user based on provided key terms that include duration, style, vibe, era, and occasion. After creating a track, the user simply selects the “Create Emotion” button and changes the sonic mood of the track they have generated from a table of sixteen possible options. As generative AI technologies such as this advance, it is necessary to consider who determines what these moods (or emotions) sound like and what sonic markers characterize these determinations.

Using Beatoven as a case study, I evaluate the stylistic markers used to signify mood or emotions. Employing Sara Ahmed’s analysis of affective economies, “where feelings do not reside in subjects or objects, but are produced as effects of circulation” (Ahmed, 2004), I argue that, in its capacity to use a preexisting work as a foundation and alter components to fit a user’s expectation of a mood/emotion/style, Beatoven allows its audience to circumvent circulation and access emotion within an object – that object being the prerecorded music that provides data within which information is stored to create various emotional outputs. Since affective economies exist and since emotions are shaped by contact, an AI’s contact with the prerecorded music it is trained on and the data that alters its aesthetic and affective qualities produces its emotional capacities. As generative AIs become a quick and cheaper alternative for creators who wish to use royalty-free music, it is necessary to evaluate the types of interpretations of emotion and style that these AIs produce to intimately understand who does or does not benefit from this streamlined process of musical composition.

Caleb Herrmann, “Opulent Air: Billie Eilish’s Breath and Post-War Nostalgia”

In 2021, Billie Eilish shocked fans with a new hair color: platinum blonde, a drastic change that accompanied a more comprehensive overhaul of her wardrobe. In appearances at the Met Gala and on the cover of Vogue magazine, the singer rolled out a new celebrity persona that drew upon the post-war opulence of the 1950s/60s. With references to a cluster of iconic figures like Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly, Eilish reactivated a period of American hegemony, unbounded economic growth, and social security for the nation’s middle-class citizens—conditions that today have largely disappeared, especially Eilish’s Gen-Z and millennial fans. Dressed in dreamy pink ball gowns, Her gesture was both melancholic and nostalgic, holding on to a social formation that has largely disappeared.

This paper uses Eilish’s opulent, post-war nostalgia as an opportunity to explore the sonic resonances between the so-called “Golden Age” of capitalism and the singer’s musical vocabulary. Although Eilish references vocalists of the 1950s/60s as influences—Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Julie London—it is ultimately via breath that she most actively engages with the past. Singing in a whispered, airy tone, I consider the role of breath in recalling a time when unbounded economic growth coincided with social and political stability. As a musical resource, breath puts into play a constellation of figures associated economic growth: resource abundance and scarcity, exhaustion and recovery. In a close reading of their award-winning song “What Was I Made For?”, I show how Eilish enlists vocal and studio technique to figure breath as infinite, fabricating a musical world in which resources don’t run out. Ultimately, I argue that cultivating a vocal style that aims at un-bounding breath presents the post-war era of limitless economic growth as a solution to living in a world of stagnating growth.

Kelly Hoppenjans, “‘A Self-Replicating Pop Star?’ Grimes AI and Voicing Humanity”

In the past two years, AI voice clones have advanced rapidly, sparking controversy in pop music circles. These programs, trained on recordings of a particular singer’s voice, allow users to create new vocal tracks emulating that singer’s unique sound so convincingly that listeners struggle to differentiate between them. Enigmatic dark pop artist Grimes has enthusiastically embraced voice simulation technology, developing an AI double of her voice and inviting anyone to use it. She is optimistic that “creatively… AI can replace humans” and describes herself as a “self-replicating AI popstar.” Yet, currently, humans remain essential to this and all other AI projects, as Grimes’s “self-replication” would be impossible without the singers who transform their voices into Grimes, lending their timbres, bodies, and stylistic gestures to the assembled AI voice.

This paper explores Grimes AI from the perspective of singers who transform their voices to highlight the humans behind the AI. I asked singers who had never used it to sing through it with me, interviewed producers and artists who have created songs using Grimes AI, and experimented with my own voice through the clone. As much as singers encounter bizarre, almost totalizing transformations of their voice, they often also detect ways in which their voices are still present, resulting in a vocal hybrid that is a blend of the singer, Grimes, and the technology itself. As they negotiate these multiple identities, they experience ways in which their selves have been erased or displaced by the technology as well as moments where vestiges of their embodied sound and vocal style are still audible in the voice clone’s assemblage. As AI grows more ever-present in society, their perspectives help us understand how we can reckon with our selves, our voices, and our bodies through and despite this technology.

As a performer of 6 years in NYC’s KiKi Scene, I've witnessed & studied first hand the technical
production of black trans woman deejays, commentators, and musicians. Inspired by and invested in
honoring their artistic labor, I launched my own musical career in 2016.

As Queen Green on da Mf Beat, my music is an eclectic soundscape that draws on elements of the vogue
fem genre and samples from 80s & 90s Ballroom classic club hits. My sonic signature is a reformulation of
the voices of the Scene’s iconic transwomen , e.g. Octavia Saint Laurent, Sexy Lexy, Dominique Jackson,
Samantha “Cookie Tookie.” My rap performance, accompanied by their dialogue, highlights my narrative as a
black trans girl who came-of-age in Ballroom and the South Bronx. I also honor my Nuyorican heritage,
often layering vogue fem samples with percussive rhythms from reggaeton & dembow. My music grants me a
praxis of resistance and a site for scholarly inquiry, empowering me in the face of quotidian transphobic
violence, both within and outside of academia.

For Pop Con 2025, I propose to conduct a live production of a vogue fem beat on Logic Pro X
while I discuss the mechanics of Fem Queen Performance as an embodiment of the soundscape. As both
voguer and producer, I showcase my creative process that weaves vogue fem’s sonic elements and patterns,
which I and my fellow Ballroom sisters intuitively respond to in our movement. Some of these elements
include: catchy 4-count kick rhythms, glass-like “Ha” crashes, vocal samples that function as instruments,
upbeat tempos, and silences in the beat that allow for vogue movement. I intend to contextualize these
samples in the evolution of Ballroom’s music history. I’ll explain where these sounds derive from, how
Ballroom producers manipulate them delicately and meticulously, as I spotlight my own unique process of
generating arrangements through Logic’s sophisticated technologies (like the step sequencer, quick sampler,
EQ’ing, plug-ins). I also name and honor trans women deejays at the helm of producing and popularizing this
sound.

Theoretically, I frame my performance around the essence of cunt— a Ballroom colloquialism for the
vernacular of movement that Fem Queens exhibit during FemQueen Performance. In the words of Icon
Sinia Ebony, cunt essence is all about “oozing and flouncing your femininity” through your vogue. This black-
trans-womanly–embodiment inhabits vogue fem music via a series of movement strategies, some of which
include: “sticking-and-landing” handwork—playing with the tension of fluid and fixed motion in one’s
performance in response to the beat pulses, or making “moments”—hiking up the drama in one’s vogue in
response to the rising action of the beat so as to reach a climactic dip. Further, I ground cunt essence in La
Monte Young’s notion of “getting inside of a sound” and Elizabeth Freeman’s theory of erotohistoriography.
Young describes “getting inside of” and “surrendering” himself to sounds within the classical compositions
he produces to invigorate his audiences, while Freeman’s erotohistoriography proposes queer bodily pleasure as a
tool to “effect, figure, and perform” history in the present (Freeman, 95). I pair these two theoretical models
to demonstrate how vogue fem, via sonic production and embodied performance, is a praxis which keeps me
tethered to Ballroom's trans herstory in the present. I conclude the presentation by performing vogue fem to
my own production.

Moderator: Kimberly Mack, University of Illinois

Marcus Clayton, “On the Big White Screen: Interrogating Punk Fashion as a Millennial Black Punk”

The mainstream view of punk fashion is incredibly white and predicated on the idea that the
punk ethos means voluntary abnormality by white suburban youth. In truth, fashion is a symptom
of punk and not requirement. Instead, punk’s foundation is a search for individuality despite
societal norms and a retention of community despite attempted extinction by authority figures
and gatekeepers – ideologies closer to how punks of color see the genre’s mission. The whiteness
of punk, upon even closer inspection, thrives on fashioning the historical usurpation of Black
style, art, and music into a kitsch for white youths who are simply bored of suburban life; styles
that stemmed from Black and brown DIY culture and protest music. This idea is exemplified by
the conversation between Norman Mailer and James Baldwin on “the white negro,” and further
amplified by the punk song “Guilty of Being White” by Minor Threat, whose lead singer I had a
personal disagreement with on the song and how one interprets racialization – blackness in
countercultural communities becomes a costume for white folk that can be taken off when the
going gets tough. In continuing the visceral argumentation of this personal interaction, I offer
this paper though narrative: an exploration of a biracial millennial’s interpretation of punk
fashion, how it feeds into representation and execution in contemporary society, how whiteness
in countercultural movements hinder POC aesthetics. Exploring this narrative through my
personal viewings of the film SLC Punk!, Bad Brain’s Live at CBGB’s 1982 DVD, and through
the 1990 independent film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I wish to deconstruct the “fashion” of
punk, revealing aesthetics that do no celebrate culture and community, rather steals from POC
activism for the sake of gatekeeping oppression within the musical genre.

Michael Yosef Jimenez, “Functions of Style: Constructing the Cloak in Black Hardcore Punk”

How does a music genre constructed by Black musicians in scenes later reimagined to be
inherently white treat and construct the cover of its Blackness? How has the style of such a genre
reconciled with its unique position—faced unavoidably against the popular Black fashions of its
time while simultaneously being forced against the styles of a surrounding white background?
How does it create, through an alteration of style, clothing, and materials, its own cloak to further
its purposes? Black hardcore punk, as traced throughout early punk history in the outlines of
Bad Brains, X-Ray Spex, and Pure Hell, is in the tradition of constant sonic cloaking: amplifying
a sound which is simultaneously deafening and unmissable and, yet, constructed to be
completely unintelligible to many failing to understand it. Living here, on the borders of the
intelligibility of sound and noise, it finds proliferation and sustenance, creating an archive of its
own style which seems to understand what music critic and theorist Daphne Brooks describes as
the ability of archives to stand “in for and as the memory of a people.” In its own visual
appearance, Black hardcore punk performs something unique: its style allows it the privilege to
concurrently blend in, stand out, and recall its own memories of Black stylistic tradition. For
what exact purpose do these proliferators of early Black hardcore punk transform, repurpose, and
reuse the styles of their time? How can Bad Brains’ rastafarian aesthetic, Poly Styrene’s
checkered dresses and fur coats, and Kenny Gordon’s boots “made for walking,” repurposed
from that of Nancy Sinatra, all aid in the construction of this cloak? Why, as Pierce Jordan of
modern Black hardcore band Soul Glo has noted, isn’t there “anybody who’s Black in a punk
band with gold teeth”?

Jordan Brown, “Aesthetics of the Underground: Sapphic Blackness, Posthumanism, and Alternative Culture”

This paper investigates the sonic mapping of Black queer femme underground spaces. I
will use house shows as a case study encompassing Black music and underground politics.
Whether it be DJ Kool Herc’s Bronx house show that birthed hip-hop, the notorious basement
shows of the punk scene, or the late-night disc jockeying of house music, the house show
connects the musical with the political to create an informal community of like-minded people
(Kittler). I propose that the aesthetic regime of the house show, based in underground political
activism and grassroots movement, operates as a posthumanist-political intervention
temporarily absolving its attendees of the hegemonic structures of the “above-world”
(Rancière; Ortiz). As such, the house show curates a safe space for Black queer-femmeness by
relieving the intersectional weight of oppressive colonial structures from their shoulders
(Foucault). Capturing the true essence of this community can be an elusive endeavor, as the
oppressive capitalist forces that have overtaken LGBTQ spaces at the turn of the twenty-first
century have replaced the spirit of queer grassroots organizing with persuasive marketing that
conflates the consumption of queer merchandising with true “acceptance” (Adeyemi). Using
writings from Matthew D. Morrison’s Blacksound (2024), Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg
Manifesto (1984), and W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and music from
Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer (2018), I describe how the usage of aesthetic and sonic
opacity has safeguarded the Black queer femme community from Western hegemony. Under
the guise of Jean Bernabé et. al.'s Creolité, I will prove that the house show is an environment
evocative of the true anti nature of both the punk and Black communities. Forming an
underground railroad of sorts, Black alternative music brings coded Black queer femmeness to
the fore, masking its true intentions to outsiders and revealing its secrets to those who desire it.

From lowrider oldies to rancholo rancheras the soundscapes and styles of Los
Angeles and the Southwest United States have changed with the times and
trends. This gathering of Mexican Regional Music participant scholars will share
research and reflections on paisa and MeXican migrant sensibilities and
aesthetics informed by urban and rural realities in the United States and Mexico.
With Mexican regional music and its over a dozen subgenres breaking records and at
the top of the charts, it is a crucial time and topic to discuss the influence of music on
the clothing, styles, and lifestyle of this bicultural and binational community.
Mexican American and Chicanx subversive youth cultures are instrumental in
shaping cultural trends and politics. Their sound and style detail themes of
immigration, economics, and violence, and tell stories of Mexican heritage, life,
and love. As we witness the globalization of these new and remixed rolas (tracks),
important discussions remain around how gender, class, race, sexuality, and other
positionalities influence representation across geographies and genres– often
blurring borders and crossing lines to impact the consumption and production of
this musical, aesthetic, fashion and overall cultural movement.

This experimental roundtable consisting of Bryan Cantero, Felicia Montes and
Lucero Saldaña will focus on the paisa (Mexican migrant) aesthetics in Mexican
regional music genres such as banda, corridos, norteñas, sierreno, corrido
tumbados, belicos and more. These long-time Paisa participant scholars, artists,
dancers, and fans of this musical culture will gather in a communal conversation
and visual and sonic listening session to show the sounds, steps, and styles
connected to the music. We will discuss the gender and style dynamics that have
birthed brands, trends, and viral sensations across, ranches, rodeos, radio
stations, streets, and social media. A special focus will be on current key artists,
bands, influencers, and designers who are making waves. Caile al baile! (join the
dance)

Moderator: Karlyn King

Emily Lordi, “Homegirl Diva: Whitney Houston's Late 90s”

In 1998, against the odds of her dazzling star image and supposedly advanced age of 35,
Whitney Houston revamped her look and sound on My Love is Your Love, an album of songs
about betrayal and fortitude that initiated her turn toward a new bent-but-not-broken
brand of hip-hop-inflected R&B. That record also established a 90s template for women
artists who would use their personal conflicts to craft edgier, more philosophical personae
(see Mariah’s Emancipation of Mimi, Beyonce’s Lemonade, Taylor’s Reputation). In response
to tabloid accounts of her drug use and the general foolishness of her husband Bobby
Brown, Whitney refashioned herself as a homegirl diva, a wounded warrior who looked
fresher than ever and could still sing her ass off. Hence, the critic Barry Walters, who
profiled her for OUT magazine in 1999—her first story for a gay publication—predicted
that My Love and its club remixes might accomplish what Whitney’s platinum record sales
and Bodyguard world domination hadn’t yet: “She may finally become hip.”
This paper explains how Whitney’s late-90s transformation was facilitated by a new
generation of artists: Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Missy Elliott, Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill
all wrote and produced songs for My Love. Whitney had entered a feedback loop of cultural
influence—working with artists who had grown up idolizing her, but whose immersion in
hip hop helped her develop a new form of diva realness though which she reached and re-
energized fanbases of Black women and gay men. Though she never embraced hip-hop’s
masculinist style (baggy jeans and jerseys for women), she did exchange her gowns for
cigarette pants and camisoles; and her full 80s hair for a sleek cinnamon bob. And because
she at last appeared to be voicing her own well-publicized struggles in song—both through
her deeper voice and though a new form of R&B that combed through the details of
romantic strife—her new music spoke to more than for her constituencies, repping them
more as a queen than a princess.

Johann Pibert, “The Transformative Power of Fashion in Madonna and Her Autobiographical 
Celebration Tour from a Concert-Psychological Perspective”

It is almost impossible to express Madonna’s influence on the fashion world without resorting
to exaggeration. The singer’s biographer Mary Gabriel writes, for example: “By 2002,
Madonna was fashion. Everything she wore became a trend; every designer she worked with
became a star; every fashion show she attended became a media event.” 1 Two decades later,
with the Celebration Tour, Madonna presents her autobiography in concert form, which
Vogue journalist Christian Allaire describes as follows: “Almost better than the setlist,
however, was the Queen of Pop’s epic new outfits for the stage—well, new in a sense. All of
them riff off of her most iconic looks over the years (including, yes, that signature Jean Paul
Gaultier cone bra).” 2 The rebellious cone bra that Madonna introduced in 1990 during the
Blond Ambition Tour was able to define the female body as a self-determined agent, which
some perceived as defiant or even aggressive. 3 Madonna’s social criticism she often conveys
through her outfits has made her a global icon for fans and the object of investigation for
academics in a field of its own: the Madonna studies.

Based on the Celebration Tour, this paper aims to reveal the influence of Madonna’s fashion
on her fans from a concert-psychological perspective. Affective concert psychology is an
emerging transdisciplinary paradigm that posits a precedence of affective phenomena over
cognitive ones and intertwines social sciences with humanities. Methodologically, participant
observation and fan surveys are enriched with insights from Madonna studies. The results
show how important Madonna’s transformative, sometimes rebellious use of fashion has been
in shaping people’s identities worldwide.

Hannah Rosa Schiller, “Madonna’s (Mis)matching of Sonic and Visual Age Markers as 
Chrononormative Disruption”

“Do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized and vilified and definitely not played
on the radio.” Madonna has faced relentless age-related criticism throughout her multi-decade
career. In popular culture, policing women's age is a proxy for enforcing heteronormative
systems more broadly (Lemish and Muhlbauer 2012). This paper considers the relationship
between sonic and visual markers of age across Madonna’s career to interrogate the assumption
that there is something inherently youthful about pop as a genre of music and performance, and
that it is shameful or desperate for anyone not biologically young to try to engage. Through
analysis of Madonna's recorded vocal performance and production techniques across time in
parallel with public discourse regarding her evolving visual aesthetics, I argue that pop music
affords disruptions of chrononormativity through its potential for mismatches between sonic and
visual markers of age.

While existing literature has explored Madonna's aging with a primary focus on her appearance
and her displays of sexuality, this paper offers a new perspective by centering her voice and
musical style. First, by analyzing the sound and production of Madonna's recorded voice
throughout her first two albums, Madonna (1983) and Like A Virgin (1984), in conjunction with
her early visual brand, I argue that pop music is always already a performance of youth. Bearing
this in mind, I then analyze the production of Madonna's voice on her 2015 album Rebel Heart
(2015) alongside recent discourse regarding Madonna’s cosmetic enhancements to illustrate how
Madonna continues to perform youth while simultaneously leaving what I describe as “age
residue.” I end with a discussion of how these examples of (mis)matching visual and sonic
markers of age disrupt chrononormative expectations, and raise further questions about what pop
music is and what it could be.

Andrea Hu, “K-pop Divas: Late 2000s/Early 2010s Girl Groups, Empowerment, and Femininity”

When most people think of pop, their minds go straight to pop queen princess Britney Spears or Lady
Gaga, but in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the genre of K-pop produced styles, music, and fashion that
was an amalgamation of many different sources. It offered empowerment and rebellion—especially for
young girls and women.

Unlike the 5th generation of K-pop today, girl groups of the late 2000s and early 2010s were what we
could now consider as divas. Through their style, music video, lyrics, fashion, and dance, they were
unapologetic about their sexuality, existence, confidence, and how their body is in space. This was also a
time when the girls were debuting older and weren’t being marketed to sell youth. Women in South Korea
were and still are viewed under a conservative lens that follow binary gender roles, and the girl groups of
that time offered an alternative way of being outside of traditional, patriarchal expectations .

For this presentation, I’m particularly interested in looking into how K-pop girl groups of the late
2000s and early 2010s explored empowerment, sexuality, and gender through style, fashion, and music
under a conservative society. I’m curious if the girl groups have had any societal and or personal impact
when they were still actively promoting. On the flip side, were the groups viewed as simply selling lust and
sex? What does confidence/sexual confidence look like then and how does it look now specifically in
South Korean society? These questions beg me to look further into why the past girl groups’ music, style,
and fashion are practically nonexistent today. Mos

Moderator: Andrew Mall, Northeastern University

Abigail Byrd Glidewell, “Aesthetics, Semiotics, and Prophetic Revelations 
in Christian Nationalist Music”

Christians have long been influential in American culture and politics, with 63 percent of
Americans identifying as Christians and about a quarter of Americans identifying as
evangelicals in 2022. Often associated with right-wing and Christian nationalist movements,
evangelicals are a powerful and serially misunderstood demographic. Characteristics of this
group include an emphasis on experiencing a personal conversion to the faith (being “born
again”), associations with Protestant and Pentecostal denominations, and an emphasis on
following the teachings of Jesus in one’s personal life and encouraging others to do the same.
Christian nationalists extend the public sharing of their faith into the political sphere, seeking
to enshrine their standards of Christian morality in the U.S. government. In the past fifty years,
however, a new fringe group of nondenominational Christians, complete with its own
leadership structures and ideologies, has risen to the forefront of the Christian right.
In this paper I will uncover the unique theological, political, and aesthetic tenets of the
New Apostolic Reformation movement and its implications for popular music and politics.
Through vague symbolism and metaphor that can refer to either orthodox Christian doctrine or
the movement’s many “prophetic memes” (as coined by Matthew D. Taylor), the NAR and their
independent charismatic base creates pathways to extremist and nationalist rhetoric for
Christians of all kinds. Through examples from “The Chosen One” by Natasha Owens, “God
Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, and worship songs from a nationalist church service, I
demonstrate through Perciean semiotics how independent charismatics write and rewrite
religious narratives for political gain. Invoking transcendent experiences and the voice of God,
religious leaders mobilize their followers into spiritual armies to fight the demons and
politicians that keep our nation from its destiny.

Dishanka Gogoi, “Farmers on the Stage: Fashion Statement as Rebellion and Ethnic Solidarity
in Live Shows of Cultivators, an Assamese Folk-Pop Band”

This paper is an outcome of attending a live performance of Assamese language folk-pop band
called “Cultivators” 1 in a Bihu Function (an annual Assamese new year celebration concert in
Assam) during my PhD dissertation research ethnography last year in Guwahati, Assam, India.
In the Bihu Function, Cultivators were the headliner. Like most of artists in pop music scene in
the world, Assamese popular musicians have been experimenting with their fashion statement to
construct a distinct brand value among fans and in larger popular music scene of India nationally
as well as in regional music scene. In a night of arrival spring season, the band members of
Cultivators embarked on to the stage with wearing traditional attire of Bodo (one of the largest
indigenous ethnolinguistic communities of Assam), an Aronai, a Bodo traditional weaved
muffler in their necks and Gamsa, a Bodo traditional weaved wrapper in their waist. The bihu
fuction was organized by a collective of Bodo organization in a Bodo dominated locality. This
paper wants to explore how Aronai and Gamsa as a fashion statement in the concert, Cultivators
have constructed a ethnic solidarity with the Bodo audience and how it had created an identity
assertion of Bodo on the larger regional politics of Assam. Along with that, from the vantage
point of Aronai and Gamsa, how the fashion style is engaging and reflecting the inherent
ideology of the band Cultivators collectively and how it is percolating through individual band
members counter ideological viewpoints. The paper will provide a thick description of the
performance of the band and reaction of the audience to offer the politics and poetics of identity
assertion of socio-culturally oppressed, representation and rebellion through traditional attire as
fashion statement or style in a regional pop music scene.

Matt Jones, “Joni Mitchell's Complaint”
This paper examines the politicization of Joni Mitchell, especially in her work from 1985
to 2007. Mitchell rose to prominence in the 1970s with an extraordinary run of albums
that defined the introspective singer-songwriter—a genre whose austere style conveys
authenticity and self-probing sincerity. However, Mitchell’s work also has a political side.
Occasional songs address political themes. “The Fiddle and the Drum” (1969) is an anti-war
chant while “Big Yellow Taxi”(1970) expresses a proto-ecofeminist sensibility. The Hissing of
Summer Lawns (1975) offers a scathing, Didionesque essay of midcentury Los Angeles.

From 1985, Mitchell’s work became overtly political. Dog Eat Dog (1985) is often looked
upon as her nadir. Critics have described it as an “angry” album, largely because of its
themes: environmental destruction, the threat of annihilation, materialism, the rise of a
politicized form of evangelical Christianity, and alienation. Moreover, Mitchell’s use of
synthesizers, drum machines, distorted guitars, and changes in her voice startled critics
and fans. I argue that Mitchell utilized this bold new aesthetic as a form of musical-
social critique to support her critiques of life in Ronald Reagan’s America. Her ironic
inversion of the sounds of 1980s New Wave, synth pop, and rock invites throws the
contradictions of the 1980s into stark relief.

Finally, this paper asks what it means to listen again to Dog Eat Dog in Donald Trump’s
America, when the aesthetics of 1980s synth pop again dominate the charts and the
United States seems to be making a return to trickle-down economics, Christian
fundamentalism, environmental crisis, racial unrest, state sanctioned violence, and
assaults on women’s bodily autonomy. What can we learn from Mitchell’s complaint, a
term I borrow from Lauren Berlant’s work on female public cultures and citizenship, in
the political climate of 2024?

Laura Etemah, “Sartorial Politics: From Fela’s Afrobeat to Contemporary Afrobeats”

Drawing from political philosophy and cultural studies, this study explores sartorial politics
within the Nigerian musical scene, linking its development from the afrobeat era of Fela
Anikulapo Kuti to the afrobeats movement of contemporary times, spearheaded by artists
such as Burna Boy and Flavour, among others. Fashion, as a vital ingredient in the visual
aesthetics of African music performance culture, has over time evolved into an influential
vehicle of self-expression, power and rebellion. Fela’s decolonial aesthetics compared with
the styles of the afrobeats music stars of today highlight the aims of this research, which is to
interrogate the transformation and continuity of sartorial politics as a cultural phenomenon.
Fela’s valiant sartorial preferences, rooted in Pan-Africanism and rebellion against colonial
and post-colonial authority, embodied his revolutionary perspective, using attire as a visual
statement of resistance. To challenge Eurocentric norms and emphasize cultural identity,
Fela’s choice of performance apparel featured traditional elements in conjunction with
provocatively decked modern-tailored outfit. Conversely, contemporary artists such as Burna
Boy and Flavour utilize their clothing styles as tools for self-expression and empowerment,
combining African heritage with cosmopolitan standards. This cultural fusion indicates a
switch in narrative from outright resistance to the celebration of African identity at a global
level. Through a critical analysis of music videos, social media commentary, and interviews,
this qualitative study explores how sartorial politics continual

Both the state and rap fans have policed forms of masculine embodiment in hip-hop culture for
being criminal (Miles 2020), queer (Penney 2012),or otherwise non-normative (Smalls 2022). In
contrast, this panel examines how people have used the unruliness of hip-hop style to express
belonging, identity, and community. Two papers explore how Black people constitute a
community through unique hairstyling practices, from the hair waves that serve as a metaphor
for the expansiveness of Black community (Corey Miles) to the carework of giving haircuts
within hip-hop crews (Antonia Randolph). Another paper shows how Prince forged an uneasy
alliance with gangsta rap through his style during his Glam Slam era (Elliott Powell). A final
paper criticizes the state for criminalizing Young Thug’s style during his RICO trial, rather than
understanding his crew’s distinctive mode of embodiment as an expression of shared
tenderness (Will Mosley). Taken together, these papers show that Black male rappers’ style
communicates their unique position and desires as people who are simultaneously marginalized
within the dominant culture and exalted within hip-hop culture (Randolph 2006).

INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS

Cuts that Bind: Haircuts as Carework in Hip-Hop Crews
Antonia Randolph, antonia.randolph@unc.edu

Jonathon M. Hess Term Assistant Professor
Department of American Studies
University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill

Straight Black men use their personal style, such as their grooming and adornment, to express
desirable masculinity despite being marginalized within dominant culture (Randolph 2006).
Building on that insight, I examine the meaning of shared haircuts within crews, or groups of
three more friends, within hip-hop culture. While the Black barbershop has been studied as a
site of Black male bonding, not enough research has examined the meaning of friends cutting
each other’s hair or paying for a friend’s haircut (Wright 1998). I examine two scenes of shared
barbering in hip-hop culture to argue that the practice is a form of care work and an expression
of caring masculinities (Elliott 2015). In one scene, the members the Wu-Tang Clan pay for the
haircut for rapper Cappadonna who joined the 10 member rap group on tour after being
released from prison (Jenkins 2019). The members’ communal investment in Cappadonna’s
grooming is care that recognizes his humanity after prison’s dehumanization and establishes his
identity as a crew member, not just a carceral citizen (Burton 2021; Miller and Stuart 2017). In
the other example, a photograph shows a shirtless Scoop Lover, a dancer for 1980s rap star Big
Daddy Kane, freshening up Kane’s signature high-top fade haircut before a show (Tobak 2018).
The intimacy of the haircut and the high-top fade hairstyle that Kane shares with his two
dancers is care work that re-enforces the bond among the crew members. Both scenes show
the production of group belonging through acts of physical care among men.

Waves: Black Hair, Hands, and Hearing as Placemaking in the Uninhabitable
Corey J. Miles; cmiles6@tulane.edu

Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology & Africana Studies Program
Tulane University

What does it mean to forge home in a place that is violent and will soon no longer be
inhabitable? This project journeys up and down the U.S. South through Black coastal cities,
specifically to Beaufort South Carolina and New Orleans Louisiana, to capture Black
experiences with hurricanes, policing, and environmental erosion. Through ethnography it looks
at the silent, disquiet, and creative movements of everyday life to hear, feel, and see the small
ways Black southerners survive these multiple registers of disaster in community. No matter
how good young people are at avoiding police contact, they still choke on air that smells like a
paper mill while waiting for their neighborhood to inevitably be underwater. Thinking alongside
southern coastal music artists, barbers, and storytellers, this work theorizes the many ways that
waves allow coastal Black southerners to stay afloat. The way that Black people wave at each
other when they are the only Black people in a space, create sonic waves, move with waves in
their walk, and gel waves into their hair all serve as a frame to make sense of the relational
ways southern Black people gesture towards glimpses of freedom in the face of black death. To
be of and from a place is less about the avoidance of violence, but rather about the beautiful
and creative ways people stay afloat and drown together. It is in the style of living and dying.

Gangster Glam: Prince, Hip Hop, and Black Queer Masculinity
Elliott H. Powell

Associate Professor
Department of American Studies
University of Minnesota

Scholarship on multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger, singer-songwriter Prince has long
explored the ways his music and sartorial styling transgressed norms of gender and sexuality.
From his high heels to his falsetto to his gender nonconforming alter-ego Camille to his makeup
to play with pronouns, Prince reveled in the musical and visual aesthetics of impropriety. Yet,
both in popular imagination as well as academic discourse, much of these Black queer
representations and performances of Prince are situated within his 1980s heyday or his 2000s
popular resurgence. This paper is, instead, invested in the Prince (and artist formerly known as
Prince) of the 1990s. This is a period wherein Prince incorporated more hip hop music and style
into his artistry, selectively appropriating elements of gangsta rap. Thus, this paper asks: in what
ways does Prince’s queer subversion of norms complement and/or compete with the assumed
rigid (if not toxic) formations of gangsta rap of the 1990s? In what ways might gangsta rap
provide Prince a space to further pursue transgressive performance practices? Through a study
of songs and music videos, this paper explores the “gangster glam” era of Prince to illustrate not
only how Prince disidentified with (in the Muñozian sense) the racialized gender formations of
glamor and the gangsta/gangster, but also how such disidentificatory practices provide new
ways for us, as popular music studies scholars, to conceive of the gangsta rap period.

Songs for RICO: Young Thug and the Case against Black Queer Expression
Will Mosley

Assistant Professor
Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
University of Maryland, College Park

When the District Attorney of Fulton County (DA) Fani Willis charges members of the alleged
street gang “Young Slime Life” (YSL), she included Grammy-award winning rapper Jeffery
Williams, aka Young Thug, aka Slime (Thug), with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Across the fifty-six count grand jury
indictment, crimes spanning armed robbery, drug dealing, and murder are corroborated by the
DA’s application of the “overt act,” a feature unique to RICO cases in which non-evidence can
be leveraged against defendants anyway. No longer just enigmatic lyricism, irreverent music
videos, and the provocative Instagram posts of a successful rapper, whose content is
celebrated by fans. No, under the RICO Act, social media posts and music have been
decontextualized to now “constitute acts of racketeering activity” (13). Other scholars have
documented rap music’s history of political scrutiny, in which studies rap becomes a site of
resistance, possibility, freedom of expression, and any charge of deviance is a misreading of
Black art as such. In this paper, I trouble the impulse to recuperate trap culture, to make deviant
Black seem less problematic, to defang it if you will. I do so in order to appreciate trap music as
an

Cowboy hats, boots, and jeans are just a few clichéd garments associated with country music. It’s
a genre whose many styles act as a key part of its identity and performance. Fashion is also a site
where country’s borders are both extended and suppressed. This panel will consider the
influences behind country music’s style and how these fashions have offered inclusive and
exclusive sites of contestation. We consider topics such as the rise of the hunter/fisherman
masculine ideal as performed by artists like Riley Green and Luke Combs, the strict style
boundaries of race and gender played out on the Grand Ole Opry stage, the Mexican origins of
“American” western wear, and what evolving headwear says about country music’s changing
class politics. We consider how country music’s many fashions act not simply as superficial
attire but as key sites where the genre’s shifting race, gender, class, and power politics are
continuously constructed and performed.

INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS 

“Huntin’, Fishin’, and Lovin’ Every Day”: Country Music’s Evolving Masculine Ideal
Will Groff

In 2015, Luke Bryan released “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day,” a twangy ode to his
favorite outdoor leisure activities. In the first verse, Bryan waxes poetic about the pleasures of
being in the woods, singing about being “high on a hill” and “never worry[ing] about the price of
gas.” The music video plays out like a Bass Pro Shops ad, with shots of Bryan sporting various
outdoorsy outfits while partaking in the titular activities.
The song and its video are emblematic of country music’s increasing preoccupation with outdoor
recreation and the central role of the outdoorsman image in reshaping the genre’s ever-evolving
masculine ideal. While the flamboyant Nudie Suits and pearl snap shirts of yore haven’t
disappeared, today’s male country stars often adopt a more casual, “everyman” aesthetic. This
shift mirrors broader trends in the fashion world, where workwear and outdoor apparel have
become prominent in streetwear culture and high-fashion collections.
Accordingly, country’s embrace of outdoor recreation has presented its stars with opportunities
for brand collaborations and marketing opportunities. For example, look no further than Luke
Combs’s Columbia PFG (Performance Fishing Gear) shirts, on sale at his website for a cool $75,
or “duckman” Riley Green’s Real Tree Camo collab.
This paper examines how male country stars are using outdoor apparel to perform masculinity
and curate an “authentic” country image. It places the outdoorsman in a lineage of masculine
country personas, from Jimmie Rodgers’s “Singing Brakeman” to the singing cowboy image that
dominated the genre’s imagination starting in the 1930s. This outdoorsman costume allows
today’s country singers to remain relatable to their audiences by projecting a rugged and vaguely
working-class masculine ideal, even as they push a consumerist fantasy of aspirational living and
turn a profit in the process.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Mexican Origins of Country Music’s “American” Style
Nadine Hubbs

What do corrido, norteño, Tejano, Duranguense, banda, and country music have in common?
They share the hats, boots, western shirts, belts, and buckles that serve as rugged workwear for
the cowboy and have long influenced daily dress for the rest of us. It’s a style recognized the
world over as iconically American, by association with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show,
twentieth-century Hollywood westerns and singing cowboys, and country music stars up to
today. But in fact, it’s a style that started out definitively Mexican and remains so, as ropa
vaquera (cowboy kit) and, in regional music genres, the look of Mexican sound.

Another mainstay of country music style is the Nudie suit. Named for the Ukrainian immigrant
tailor Nudie Cohn, the spangly, embroidered ensemble could well be called the Cuevas suit,
given the importance of Manuel Cuevas’s contributions to the genre. Before moving to the
United States and working as Cohn’s assistant, Cuevas learned his trade as a tailor and clothing
designer in Mexico. There, the postwar Nudie suit appears as kin to the traje de charro/a
(equestrian suit). With roots in the sixteenth century, the elegant, embroidered regalia of the
genteel horseman and horsewoman became a nineteenth-century symbol of Mexican
independence and later, the costume of mariachi and ranchera musicians.

In research for my book project Border Country: Mexico, America, and Country Music, Mexican
American country fans spoke appreciatively on the Mexican aspects of country musical style.
But in mainstream U.S. perspective, country’s Mexican dimensions go unrecognized.
Spotlighting the visual and sartorial, I will argue that some of the attributes of country music
regarded as most iconically American are actually Mexican. And I’ll consider the implications of
such misrecognition for country music’s claims to quintessential Americanness and for social,
and cultural, justice.

“My Own Kind of Hat”: Headwear and Country Music’s Evolving Class Politics
Amanda Marie Martinez

From cowboy hats to ball caps, headwear has always been central to country music’s fashion.
Hats have also symbolized the genre’s evolving class politics, especially when it’s come to
performances of masculinity. When country music was first invented as a marketing category in
the 1920s, it was called “hillbilly” music and was associated with stereotyped, rural southern
attire akin to overalls and a straw hat. In following decades, as the singing cowboy took over
popular culture amid the Great Depression and World War II, country singers gravitated to the
cowboy hat. Not only was this in tune with trends of that era, it also helped the genre battle
classist discriminations that it experienced due to its associations with a white, rural, and
southern demographic. The cowboy was much more respectable than the hillbilly. By the 1960s,
cowboy hats fell out of fashion, especially as bedazzled Nudie suits emerged as the ultimate
marker of country music’s authenticity during that period. By the late 1970s, the cowboy hat
returned—this time in a feathered, straw version as the Urban Cowboy craze dominated popular
culture. In rece

As Prince's influence on popular culture continues to resonate across generations, this multidisciplinary panel offers new frameworks for understanding how his revolutionary fashion and style choices shaped—and continue to shape—visual culture, gender expression, and identity politics in popular music. Kirsty Fairclough examines the stylistic and cultural lineage connecting Beyoncé and Prince, revealing how Beyoncé's fashion and style introduces and reinterprets Prince’s for a new generation. Casci Ritchie proposes "embodied intimacy" as a theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between audience gaze and a star's dressed, moving body, using Prince's electrifying performance of "Hot Thing" from the Sign o' the Times (1987) concert film as a case study. Robin Shumays investigates how Prince's style in the early 1990s innovatively merged Middle Eastern fashion, including belly dance costumes, with expressions of African American identity due to the influence of his future wife Mayté Garcia. Finally, Karen Turman examines Sheila E.'s “long fur coat of mink” in "The Glamorous Life" music video as a symbol of wealth, luxury, and social prestige, while also analyzing the complex socio-cultural and political implications of fur consumption. Together, these presentations illuminate how Prince's fashion legacy transcends mere aesthetic choices to encompass broader discussions of culture, gender, race, sex, class, environmental issues, and artistic influence.

Kirsty Fairclough, “Style as Legacy: Examining Prince’s Influence on Beyoncé’s Fashion and Artistic Expression”

Fashion is integral to the identities of both Beyoncé and Prince, embodying more than aesthetic choice and acting as a vehicle for cultural, political, and gender discourse. Prince’s avant-garde, boundary-pushing style positioned him as an emblem of nonconformity, fluidity, and rebellion. Beyoncé, as one of today’s most influential artists, has similarly harnessed fashion as a medium for storytelling, empowerment, and social commentary. The paper will explore the stylistic and cultural lineage connecting Beyoncé and Prince, investigating how Prince’s distinctive style and performance aesthetics have profoundly influenced Beyoncé's evolving visual identity. By examining both artists' use of fashion as a narrative and cultural tool, this paper aims to reveal how Beyoncé has inherited, reinterpreted, and transformed Prince's stylistic ethos to create a distinct visual language that resonates with contemporary audiences. This study will utilise a multidisciplinary approach, engaging in fashion theory, cultural studies, and musicology, to analyse how Beyoncé’s style pays homage to and innovates upon Prince’s sartorial legacy.

Casci Ritchie, “Embodied Intimacy: Studying Prince’s Dressed Moving Body on Screen”

Carol Vernallis (2004) alludes to the tactile immersive qualities of clothing featured within music videos, ‘we hear the music, follow the body, and feel the cloth’ (p.101). Building on film scholars Jackie Stacey (1994); Laura Marks (2000); and Vivian Sobchack (2004); alongside fashion and cultural researchers Barbara Brownie (2016) and Becky Peterson (2024), I propose the term ‘embodied intimacy’ as a means to allude to the relationship between spectator and the moving dressed star body. Audiences can feel an embodied response to the dressed star and choose to express this sartorially (Lamerichs 2018a; 2018b; 2023, Smith et al. 2020; 2021) but this also shifts beyond a literal visual representation to an unseen embodied sense of style. I also use the term to discuss the visceral bodily reactions experienced by the audience when watching the moving dressed star body. These reactions are often difficult to articulate in words and, as such, require a methodological framework to slow the active viewing process and enable a deeper understanding.

Building on my thesis, I will explore ‘embodied intimacy’ in relation to my connection to Prince’s dressed moving body, in particular, a recorded performance of ‘Hot Thing’ from the Sign o’ the Times (1987) concert film. Using a combination of watching and drawing, I demonstrate how to slow down and become aware of our affective response to the dressed moving body on screen as well as document garments thoroughly in response to the scarcity and accessibility of objects outside museums and institutions.

Robin Shumays, “Bedlah Bedlam: An Exploration of Orientalist Fantasy and Fashion via the Lens of Prince Rogers Nelson”

This paper explores the fusion of Orientalist fantasy, fashion, and African-American identity in popular culture, viewed through the lens of Prince’s artistry. Prince’s encounter with professional belly dancer Mayté Garcia during his 1990 “Nude Tour” led to Prince's designers incorporating elements of Mayté's belly dance costumes into his own fashion, subtly infusing Middle Eastern art and attire into his image during the early 1990s. This stylistic transformation paralleled Prince’s personal journey, including his symbolic name change as a protest against the music industry. That protest mirrored African-American engagement with Islamic aesthetics back in the early 20th century, when the Great Migration brought Black communities into contact with Middle Eastern migrants. Jazz musicians like Art Blakey, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and others adopted Eastern musical elements and attire, sometimes crafting new identities to escape racial oppression. Prince continued this tradition on the 1993 O(+> album and 3 Chains o’ Gold video, crafting a storyline with Mayté as an Egyptian princess and blending elements of fantasy and Orientalist imagery. The resurgence of Middle Eastern sounds and fashion aesthetics in the early 2000s will also be examined through works like Truth Hurts' “Addictive,” Lil’ Kim’s live “Not Tonight” performance with its Egyptian-themed styling, and Britney Spears’ “I’m a Slave 4 U.” The latter video, choreographed by Mayté, echoes Prince's influence, incorporating belly dance attire and movements that further cemented this cross-cultural style in mainstream pop.

Karen Turman, “‘A Long Fur Coat of Mink’: Semiotics of the Fur Coat in Sheila E.’s ‘The Glamorous Life’”

Although credited to Sheila E., Prince wrote the “The Glamorous Life,” which opens with the lyrics: “She wears a long fur coat of mink/ Even in the summertime.” For the music video, Sheila E. recalls in her memoir that “it was a given that I’d wear my long mink coat to match the story line and the lyrics… The off-white-and-gray mink was perfect for the black-and-white sequences.” (p 197). While a seemingly simple choice of wearing a “long fur coat of mink,” this clothing article represents not only a symbol of wealth, luxury, and social prestige in the 20th century, but also a reference to libidinal desire and sexual fetish. In addition, the socio-cultural and political landscape surrounding the consumption of fur extend beyond the limits of projecting and living “the glamorous life,” reflecting the complexities of its semiotics. This paper  will analyze Sheila E.’s iconic mink coat as a symbol in the evolution of fur as a topic of debate in fashion through the intersection of race, class, sex, and of course, environmental issues.

Moderator: Jacob P. Cupps, Washington University in St. Louis
Kim Kattari, “Stylizing Hypnotic and Transformative Musical Experiences”

All of the popular and subcultural musical communities I’ve previously researched
ethnographically – reggaeton, rockabilly, psychobilly, electronic dance music – were strongly
associated with a unique fashion style that defined their particular brand of identity politics …
until now. My current work focuses on drone-based electronic music that produces hypnotic and
transformative experiences for many of its listeners, often designed to engage activist intentions.
There is no common sartorial theme or “look” to which members ascribe. But that doesn’t mean
there isn’t a general “style” reflected within this community. In this presentation, I assess the
ways in which a particular aesthetic framework is created and recreated, despite the perceived
lack of a common fashion style. Comparisons of album covers and social media posts, as well as
ethnographic observations at electronic music concerts, form the basis for this analysis.
I consider the necessary practicalities of style. Durational electronic music is generally
intended to be experienced while lying or sitting down and remaining relatively still and quiet.
Concerts can last several hours, allowing one to fully enter an altered mental state that can lead
to transformative potential. One annual event I’ve documented is a 28-hour long performance of
drone-based music that protests the use of military drones and raises money for victims of the
military industrial complex. Accordingly, most participants dress in comfortable clothes or
pajamas, prepared to spend many hours on the floor in a semi-conscious state, drifting in and out
of sleep.

This paper sheds light on the presence of “functional style” in musical subcultures that
aren’t defined by a discrete fashion style, and considers how it in fact supports the resistant
potentials of the drone-based music community.

Alex de Lacey, “‘Tell Virgil Write Brick on My Brick’: Hip-Hop and Haute Couture”

“Tell Virgil write Brick on my Brick”: Hip-Hop and Haute Couture

Hip-hop and fashion have gone hand-in-hand since its inception. Ostentatious outfits of the 70s made way for Run DMC’s three-stripe theocracy, before the much-fabled “shiny suit era” that closed out the millennium. Krishnamurthy’s Fashion Killa chronicled this latter “ghetto fabulous” flamboyance, with luxury lifestyle brands juxtaposed with tales of adversity (2023: 103). However, a recent turn in rap has resulted in an explicit re-positioning of hip-hop fashion and music as haute couture.

Buffalo-born rapper Westside Gunn founded Griselda x Fashion Rebels (GxFR) in 2012 as a clothing brand.
This soon became synonymous with musical output from his wider rap collective, with physical releases increasingly bearing the hallmarks of high art, accruing substantial sums through surprise limited edition drops and collaborations with the late-Virgil Abloh. 2020’s Pray for Paris solidified this relationship on a larger scale: the cover fashioned by Abloh, its opening skit “400 million plus tax” samples the auction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, juxtaposing renaissance portraiture with bracing lyrics about Buffalo life. This presentation will explore the methods by which artists such as Westside Gunn, and his contemporary Roc Marciano—who works with Josué Thomas of Gallery Dept. for “Art That Kills”—are seeking to redefine the relationship between art worlds in the 2020s.

Luxury brands remain pivotal, but this interface subverts and satirizes tried-and-tested tropes. When Westside Gunn rapped “tell Virgil write brick on my brick” on “Dr. Birds”, he channelled Magritte to offer a critique of artworks’ “reification”, capturing the fickleness with which art gets elevated to a higher status. In contrast to Pharrell Williams’ formalised partnership with Versace, these rappers remix, edit and challenge the aesthetics of the contemporary fashion landscape. Rap and streetwear are at the forefront. In doing so, they are redefining the terrain by which rap and couture enter into conversation.

Cindy Quach, “The Plaza as Paradox: Deconstructing Punk and New Wave Aesthetics”

This presentation is sourced from one section of my master thesis, which examines the aesthetics
and fashion of music goers in Chinatown’s punk scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The
two venues that made up the scene were Madame Wong’s and Hong Kong Café, and public
history has argued that Wong’s venue hosted new wavers, while the café was inherently punk.
The two venues were situated in Chinatown’s central plaza, just merely 90 feet from each other.
Despite the proximity, there was a clear division and distinction amongst the crowds at Madame
Wong’s and Hong Kong Café, their style was a major visual indictor of their music taste, but also
their politics and worldview. In this presentation, I will be giving a brief history of the two music
venues, but I will specifically focus on how punk and new wave fashion/style localized in
Chinatown. Through this, there will be examinations of how counterculture clothing, hair styles,
makeup, and more were reflective of transnational politics, but were also heavily influenced by
Asian and Chinatown’s aesthetics. To showcase this, I will be incorporating archival
photographs, audio clips, and videos to illustrate how punk and new wave style is manifested in
politics, music, and counterculture ecosystems. Drawing from the title, the plaza as a paradox, I
will be pulling in perspectives from punks and new wavers about one another’s fashion, and this
is where I draw on queer theory to expand on their concepts of “posers” to understand what it
means to pose, what is posing, and who is posing, especially within the context of an ethnic
enclave. I also would like to bring in mini-zines for audience members to take, the zine will just
be a collage of fashion, style, and aesthetics of the punks and new wavers in the plaza; the zine
will be less written content and mostly sourced archival materials.

Joseph M. Thompson, “No Shoes, No Shirt: Beach Fashion, Condo Country, and Nashville’s
Vacation Obsession”

Country music hitmakers traded their pearl snap shirts for tank tops and went to the beach in the
early 2000s. In 2003, Alan Jackson released “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” a salute to day
drinking that was christened seaworthy by collaborator Jimmy Buffet’s featured verses. Kenny
Chesney embraced his inner Buffet that same year with the single “No Shoes, No Shirt, No
Problem.” The success of that song pushed the landlocked Tennessean to launch a cabana
industry of beach-themed songs, a “No Shoes Nation” fan club, and his own brand of rum.
Dozens of white male country artists followed suit with songs that indulge in what might be
called “condo country,” the trend that celebrates beaches, boats, bikinis, and beer.
Since the 1960s, the country industry has catered to the white suburban consumer. Condo
country has stayed this course by catching them on the way to the beach. Where once country
music celebrated the dignity of labor, condo country songwriters pen odes to not working.

Because most people must wear shoes and shirts in their everyday lives, condo country comes
with its own clothing that signals the suburban escapism sold in its songs. As these tunes
convinced country listeners to take it easy, brands like Salt Life and Tommy Bahama enabled
consumers to live the purportedly laidback lifestyle one UPF-rated shirt at a time.
Exploring why condo country and beach fashion exploded simultaneously among similar
demographics in the early 2000s offers a window into country music’s gender and racial politics.

Melismas, or vocal runs, feature many notes sung on one syllable of a word, and are found
throughout contemporary popular music. Their most popular iterations have their roots in Black
vocal singing, from the gospel and soul singing of artists like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin to
contemporary R&B of groups like Dru Hill and Jodeci. Melismas are a critical part of Black vocal
technique, but they are not simply a technique or a collection of notes: they are a cultural process, a
mode of constructing and amplifying Black life through sound. We are proposing to engage this
cultural process at PopCon through a game show called Name That Run. This show, conceived of
by Richel Cuyler and produced by the Black Sound Lab at Dartmouth College, is an informative and
engaging exploration of Black melismatic singing. The show will be approximately an hour long (a
90 min session would be best for setup and breakdown) and we will solicit contestants in advance.
The entire show runs out of a Canva presentation and can be done in a room with standard A/V
capabilities and mics for individual participants. The show features explanations of melisma and
related vocabularies, questions on naming artists and songs just by melismas,“melisma moments,”
and “vocal run challenges” for audience members to participate in.

Name That Run is the public engagement component of research the Black Sound Lab has been
doing to study Black melismatic singing. The Black Sound Lab is a research space dedicated to
decriminalizing Black life sound and amplifying Black life through digital practice. The show speaks
to this year’s thematic work with style, as we consider melismas and vocal style as a critical space in
which to learn, play, and build the kind of practices that will sustain us in a world of rapidly
advancing generative AI. The Black Sound Lab is working to slow the datafication of Black life,
thinking towards a time in which large language models will be able to recognize melismas and
melismatic genealogies. Drawing on ethnomusicology, digital humanities, data science, and Black
Studies, the lab considers how we might train these models without flattening elements of contour,
timbre, emotional weight, and more. While we recognize that this kind of work is all but inevitable
in the music industry and will lead to the continued mimicry and appropriation of Black style, we are
working to be on the forefront of these conversations in order to prevent as much harm as possible.
Name That Run is but one way to critically introduce (or re-introduce) listeners to the broad stylistic
universe of Black melismatic singing.

Moderator: Blair Smith, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Ya-Hui Cheng, “The Stylish Red Nationalism in C-pop Culture”

Red has historically symbolized luck and ecstasy in premodern China. In modern times,
socialists have adopted red to represent nationalism across all aspects of the humanities and arts
under red regimes, as evident in propaganda entertainment productions. Red movies, songs, and
literature signify a genre that encapsulates socialist nationalism. Traditionally, those red cultural
productions often draw from folklore, illustrated in the musical The East is Red (1964), which
was produced in China as a tribute to Mao Zedong. After the socialist regimes collapsed in the
1990s, stylish red nationalism faded worldwide, except in China. There, leaders adopted
socialism with Chinese characteristics to push socioeconomic reforms forward. China’s success
in reform has helped sustain and promote the stylish red nationalism that has gradually
permeated the cultural industries. More C-pop musicians now create innovative red music, often
blending elements of folk and theater with pop. Some of this music serves as theme songs for
patriotic movies or television dramas. Unlike earlier red productions that primarily focused on
conveying propaganda, the latest red music captures daily intimate activities, binding audiences
with shared sociocultural recollections while showcasing China’s soft power.

As China’s entertainment industry now shapes Chinese mass culture worldwide, these red
cultural productions also reach and engage audiences in the free world. How can these latest pop-
style red productions, with their nationalist themes presented in music and text, resonate with
global Chinese generations? This paper explores stylish red pop musical productions and the
changing interpretation of nationalism in C-pop culture. By studying and contrasting the sonic
components, textual implications, and the use of red nationalism in music productions from
before the reform to now, I demonstrate how the latest notions of stylish red nationalism in C-
pop connect with ancient Chinese glory, promoting cultural sustainability, which transcends
previous socialist nationalism to garner global support.

Wesley Park, “Y2K Is Back! How NewJeans Grabs K-Pop Fans' Attention with 'Attention'”

NewJeans is one of South Korea’s most popular K-pop groups formed by HYBE
Corporation’s subsidiary, ADOR. Its members, MinJi, Hanni, Danielle, HaeRin, and HyeIn have
been catapulted into global stardom with all their songs totaling at least 100 million streams on
Spotify. Listeners may think that NewJeans are just another K-pop group that follows a typical
formula for success in the industry. However, NewJeans did not follow this typical formula and
instead debuted in a way that was brand new to the industry.

To the shock of K-pop fans, NewJeans released their debut single, ‘Attention,’ without
the usual buildup, teasers, or any type of previously released concept. Without any buzz for the
group, CEO of ADOR Min Hee-Jin knew that she had to somehow hook the audience with
NewJeans’ debut music video. As the title of the song suggests, their goal was to grab the
listener’s attention musically and visually as “Attention” is designed to bring in new fans without
buildup or teasers. This is achieved by relating to their teenage audience in Generation-Z with
their trendy Y2K inspired fashion and music concept, a fashion that has not been used by other
K-pop groups beforehand.

NewJeans’ music video features Y2K inspired clothing such as baggy pants, colorful
plastic hair clips, and even an old Yashica film camera and Walkman as accessories. Their Y2K
fashion concept is also represented musically through the song’s R n’ B influences. In my
presentation, I will explain NewJeans’ Y2K fashion concept in their unconventionally presented
debut music video ‘Attention’ and why it is so effective at gaining the support of Gen-Z
teenagers. I will also analyze how the song musically adds to that concept which further gains
their audience’s attention for a successful debut.

Moderator: Moderator: Marlén Ríos-Hernández, California State University, Fullerton
Elena Romero, “Hip Hop and Pink: How the Color Transcended Gender, Sexuality, and Multiple Generations One Hue at a Time”

Whether its bubble gum, Mylanta, hot, or florescent, hip hop has fallen in love with the color pink. While it appears that this is a recent phenomenon, one can trace early roots in hip hop for several decades. Pink, historically coded as feminine in Western culture, has emerged as a symbol of disruption within this framework. This presentation explores the evolving relationship between hip hop and pink, examining how its adoption by artists and audiences challenges traditional notions of masculinity, identity, and aesthetics in urban culture.

From early resistance to pink’s associations with vulnerability and softness to its modern reappropriation as a statement of power and confidence, hip hop has redefined the color’s place in cultural narratives. Acceptability in pink was ushered with Lil Kim and pushed the likes of the Black Barbie herself Nicki Minaj, celebrating 10 years of The PinkPrint album.

While Harlem rapper Cam’ron has been almost synonymous with hip hop’s thrust into pink, it was an Atlanta-based rap duo names Outkast that introduced pink and its Southern flair to fans in 2001 and kept it constant throughout their career. Both Andre “3000” Benjamin (formerly known as Dré) and Antwan “Big Boi” Patton of Outkast wore pink in different ways yet complimented their individual style. Big Boi had a more street, pimp flair while André 3000 had multiple influences – from the late Jimmy Hendrix, the psychedelic period, the preppy era and dandyism, he became the loudest pink dresser of the group. Outkast arrived at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards having Big Boi in furry bottoms. But it would be André 3000, who would push pink to new heights. The color would be infused in their Outkast Clothing Co. brand. One year later, it would be Harlem rapper Cam’ron who would be the talk of the town as he showed up wearing a pink mink fur to a Seventh on Sixth Fashion Shows in 2002. From that moment on, he cemented his pink legacy. This presentation will be adapted from a book chapter co-written by me and Dr. Monica Miller for Fresh, Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style (Rizzoli).

Diana Sanchez, “‘Suciedad Divina’: Tokischa and Embodied Sucia Performance(s)”

Tokischa is a Dominican dembow superstar and fashion icon; notorious for generating controversy
through her explicit lyrics, provocative performance(s), seductive tone, and uncensored display of
queerness. Tokischa’s sense of style plays and integral role to her life and career, it serves as a site for
creative transgression that remixes the lines of respectable gender expression. In 2022 Tokischa and DJ
Marshmello released a song titled ESTILAZO, a term she uses to characterize her eccentric style. I read
the three-minute music video for ESTILAZO as a vehicle to challenge structures of domination through
titillating imagery, vulgar lyrics, and sexual aesthetic excess (Hernandez 2020). In the video, the
protagonist employs a “style of embodied difference” to embark on a journey of transformation (54).
Furthermore, Tokischa’s stylized performance(s) on-stage, in music videos, on social media, and at award
shows demonstrates her dedication to subverting gendered expectations of respectable femininity. For
example, at the 2023 Premio lo Nuestro award ceremony she appeared embellished in a fragmented
corporate suit, with a full face of makeup, and a bushy mustache to compliment her look. In an interview,
she described that her outfit represented the hybridity of masculinity and femininity within us. This paper
understands Tokischa’s manipulation of fashion as a technology capable of transcending logics of
heteronormativity. My analysis is grounded in Jillian Hernandez’s framework of aesthetics of excess and
Deborah Varga’s analytic of lo sucio, wherein sucias exist disobediently and demonstrate the potentiality
to sustain queer joy and futurity. Using textual analysis, I argue that Tokischa recasts suciedad (Vargas
2014) as a source of divine empowerment and pleasure to playfully provoke authority. How does
Tokischa use fashion to agitate dominant narratives that impose racial and sexual difference onto the
Latina body?

Rosa Stern Pait, “‘Then Expul Me’: A Musical Monologue by Kitara ‘George Santos’ Ravache”

Hey you messy bitches! 1 Did you miss your favorite politician to ever spice up CSPAN? America
is so back 2 , and she’s back too - it’s George Santos, on tour in character as his drag persona
Kitara Ravache to finally tell her story - and this time, it’s the honest truth. The setting - backstage at a
run down club, Anywhere, USA. Disgraced former representative Anthony “George Santos” Devolder
lounges in her dressing gown preparing to confess it all night after night. She has spent the long, dreary
years since her expulsion from Congress begging for attention at the newly ascendant Donald Trump’s
table, scrambling for the scraps of notoriety the public is willing to throw her on Cameo, and loitering
around Hermès trying to get offered a Birkin on name recognition alone. Finally, having racked up too
much credit card debt at Ferragamo, she hit rock bottom and decided to return to her true calling.
She’s weary of the pose she had to assume to represent New York’s wealthy 3rd congressional
district. She didn’t want to grovel at the feet of the Republican party - all she really wanted was
fame. When she was a young queen cruising the beaches of Niterói in a fishnet mask, she
thought she was on her way to stardom. But the allure of money and power drew her from her
path into a web of lies and fugly blazers.

Kitara will walk us through a selec

This roundtable proposes an exploration of the iconic queer Los Angeles night, Mustache
Mondays, as a vibrant intersection of popular music, fashion, and creative expression. C0-
founded in 2007 by Ignacio “Nacho” Nava, Mustache Mondays fostered a community where
music, visual culture, and style converged, creating a space for Black and Brown queer
people. Nava’s vision was not just about curating a party; it was about using music and style
to challenge norms and uplift marginalized voices.

Mustache Mondays flourished at a time when LGBTQ+ nightlife was often confined to
spaces that catered predominantly to cisgender, white gay men. What set this night apart was
its embrace of queer and trans people of color, and its celebration of avant-garde aesthetics.
The night became a platform for underground artists, DJs, drag performers, stylists, and
musicians who didn’t fit into more mainstream queer scenes.

At the heart of Mustache Mondays was a fusion of music genres that reflected its eclectic
audience. It drew inspiration from house, techno, electroclash, hip-hop and global diasporic
sounds, all underscored by the DIY ethos that characterized much of LA’s underground
scene. This musical curation not only fostered a sense of community but also offered an
alternative sonic landscape to more homogenized club music.

Mustache Mondays harnessed style not only to reflect the aesthetics of underground queer
culture but also as a site of transformation. Nava embraced avant-garde fashion, encouraging
attendees to express themselves through bold looks that resisted the whitewashed depictions
of LGBTQ culture common in West Hollywood. Mustache became a launchpad for artists
like Kelela and Total Freedom (Bobby Beethoven), where music, performance, and style
coalesced to shape a new vision for queer cultural expression in Los Angeles. Over the years
many musicians came out of Mustache, DJs like Nguzunguzu, producers like Kelman Duran,
and also artists in various realms, like fashion designers Pia Davis (No Sesso), contemporary
artist rafa esparza, and choreographer Ryan Heffington.

In the wake of Nava’s passing, Mustache Mondays continues to resonate as a space where
popular music, fashion, and queer experiences collided, and this roundtable seeks to unpack
its lasting impact on the cultural landscape of Los Angeles and beyond.
Participants will include DJ Josh Peace, Kelman Duran, and Pia Davis, who will share their
perspectives on Mustache Mondays as a site of creative freedom, resistance, and community.
By engaging with these narratives, the roundtable aims to contribute to larger discussions on
queer nightlife, urban space, and the politics of style.

“Punk Feminisms and the Fashioning of an Alterity” includes a listening session of “cacophonous” records
followed by an interview/conversation with the punk scholar and Professor of Gender Studies Mimi Thi Nguyen.
Covering topics from SoCal's punk scene, DIY sartorial practices, to queer BIPOC genealogies of feminisms, we will contexualize punk as a musical genre, a style, and a politics of apposition that does not conform to hegemonic/masculine modes of resistance. We hope to ruminate on how punk as praxis gestures towards alternative modalities of living and being in the world that rupture colonial logics of extractivism, mastery, and self-sovereignty.

Moderator: Abigail Lindo, The Ohio State University

Kwame Ocran, “The Queer Aesthetics of Dionne Warwick: A Fashionable Analysis”
Inducted into the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at 83, Dionne Warwick is recognized for her popularity as a celebrity and musician. Her musical contributions make her long overdue her academic flowers. Several disciplines including fashion studies stand to benefit from a theorization of Warwick's celebrity; her alternative performances of blackness, interiority, and pop vocalizations immediately come to mind.

While Warwick’s success as an artist refused genre, this paper investigates her style as a queer refusal of overt sexuality. Her sartorial and performative choices demonstrate an opaque interiority existing largely unfettered by the demand for intimate details of our celebrated. Thus, I necessarily turn to Warwick’s peculiar style of dress to listen to her silences.

My work uncovers the queerness of Warwick’s styling as a corollary to the striking quality of her music to transcend genre categorization and artistic performance. Warwick’s refusal to yield to sex to sell is reflected in her wardrobe. Though beautiful, she has never effused the sexual appeal of Diana Ross or Aretha Franklin—a fact that has garnered attention from critics. This study of style examines Warwick's relationships as fashion inspirations throughout her life. It is known that confidants like Marlene Dietrich informed her style evolution; this paper elucidates the extent to which Warwick's kinship ties developed her presentation.

Archives of film, documentary, criticism and text help reveal the sartorial implications of Warwick's image: the sophisticated, romantic grand dame in couture who stops short of the boudoir. Dionne Warwick’s fashion evolution reveals more about her queerness than she may be willing to divulge. Her fashions speak volumes—the meaning of which, when deciphered, address an otherwise opaque interiority that refuses to be laid bare.

Lucretia Tye Jasmine, “Groupie Glamour of the Golden Era: 1965-1978”

This is a paper about glamour from the golden era of groupies, 1965-1978. My original research is based on interviews from my mixtape zine, The Groupie Gospels.

Groupies emerged on the cusp of Second Wave Feminism as the avant-garde of the sexual revolution, embodying the intersection of feminism and music. Colorful companions to the new counterculture royalty, groupies accompanied or followed musicians from city to city, becoming almost as famous as the musicians. 

Groupies stood out with their experimental style. Satin hot pants and platform shoes! Feather boas! Flowers in their hair! Trailing gossamer and gauze and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs, groupies created a style based on thrift store finds, a living history in fashion that endures today.

When Rolling Stone photographer, Baron Wolman, was backstage one night after a concert in the late 1960s, he noticed the stylish groupies, and decided to photograph them. He told me he wanted to take “celebratory portraits of people I admired.” Rolling Stone was going bankrupt, but the 1969 issue devoted to groupies saved the magazine. Groupies, since then fetishized as sex objects for use with their clothes off, actually commanded attention with their clothes on. Musicians wrote songs about them.

Groupie glamour determined the look of music stars. The carnival couture of the GTO’s - known as a "groupie" group - influenced the Alice Cooper Band; GTO, Pamela Des Barres, made shirts for Jimmy Page and Gram Parsons; Betty Davis advised Miles Davis how to dress; Sable Starr and Iggy Pop shared clothes.

Groupies from the golden era challenged convention with their nonconformist fashion. Female fans, navigating patriarchy, expressed their own agency through fashion. They were "stomping down the street with a girl-power vibe", as Holly George-Warren told me. Groupie glamour might well be activism that we need.

Ma'Chell Duma, “Bangs, Bras, and Bags- Pop's High Femme Aesthetics”

The symbiotic relationship between fashion and music is as creative as it is consumptive. Using the visual markers of hairstyles, statement bras, and designer bags we can journey through feminine expression in popular music’s lineage. Though fashion is often dismissed as vapid, there are instances where the seemingly surface is in fact a much deeper story. One such example are Aretha Franklin’s famous oversized luxury bags, always on stage, readily at her side. In my recent 33 ⅓ on Cardi B, I exploded this story, learning that the bags were not a flex, but a sad function of an industry that marginalizes Black women. Having been cheated and stolen from so many times, Aretha insisted on being paid in cash, held in the vast sums in her Louis Vuitton right on stage and in her sight line- Or as I put it in the book “It is out
of necessity, disrespect, and exceedingly good taste that Aretha Franklin invents the proverbial “Money Bag” femme rappers boast of now.

Florence Blackwell, “Baddies…Pose for Me: …”

Baddies are everywhere — in music, television, art, fashion, social media, and on the street — embodying a movement and aesthetic that, as Jillian Hernandez describes, embraces an “aesthetic excess” of hypersexuality and hyperfemininity as a personal and political refusal of white, cis-hetero, middle-class, and ableist norms. These racialized and gendered aesthetics are saturated into our audiovisual cultural landscape, yet the working-class Black and Brown trans femmes and queers who originated these looks remain marginalized, even as mainstream society appropriates their cultural contributions. Without the involvement of trans and queer people of color, contemporary visual and sonic culture would lack its defining glamour and swag. However,their absence has led to the perception of “baddie aesthetics” as inherently anti-trans and anti-queer. This research seeks to illuminate how “baddie aesthetics” is a distinctly trans and queer of color aesthetic praxis.

In this paper, I will trace the evolution of the “baddie” figure through a critical analysis of audiovisual media, focusing on the oft-overlooked role of trans and queer of color innovators who work behind the scenes to shape the aesthetics of famous heterosexual celebrities. I will also examine how historical narratives have erased queer and trans cultural producers and how these artists continue to challenge the cis-hetero sensibilities embedded in “baddie aesthetics.”

When stars like Beyoncé, Cardi B, and Nicki Minaj post selfies, their looks and sense of individuality are often praised, yet little attention is paid to how they’ve constructed their “baddie” personas. Lyrics like Beyoncé’s “I woke up like this,” reinforce the notion that celebrities effortlessly achieve their “flawless” appearance, sidelining the Black and Brown queer and trans artists who help form that aesthetic. While the widespread appropriation of “baddie aesthetics” has generated a polyvocal discourse, it also normalizes the marginalization of the trans and queer cultural producers central to it.

Stephen Hudson, “How Metallica Created Extreme Metal: Battle Jackets, Connoisseurship, 
and Cover Songs as Genre Work”

This paper cross-references close analysis of Metallica’s musical utterances (timbres, guitar
techniques, cover songs, and original compositions) with their “battle jackets” full of patches
advertising their favorite bands and their actions and verbal discourse as fans, collectors, and
tastemakers, in order to build a picture of how their thrash metal style and the nascent extreme
metal ideology of progressionism grew out of their selection, imitation, and iteration of songs
and styles from the preceding New Wave of British Heavy Metal. I draw on Eric Drott’s theory
(2013) of genre as grouping, and Diana Taylor’s theory (2003) that performances are “acts of
transfer” for “repertoires” of embodied knowledge that is inevitably changed as it is recalled
and reenacted, to show how Metallica gradually changed the NWOBHM as they cited it. As
fans, Metallica’s members created their own selections of the fastest and heaviest NWOBHM
bands, promoting a heavier and faster vision of the genre before they even recorded a note of
their own music. They then selected some of the fastest and heaviest NWOBHM songs, and
made them even faster and heavier in their own cover versions. I show how their small changes
in speed and articulation of certain riffs and techniques created more substantial qualitative
shifts that gradually became the characteristic elements of their own original compositions, in a
new style that would eventually be called “thrash metal.” By combining and synthesizing
observations about the mundane and musical dimensions of Metallica’s engagement with the
NWOBHM, this paper shows how style change and genre creation can occur gradually and
cumulatively, through the kinds of things that everyday fans and musicians do, rather than
some kind of grand, genius, visionary, big-idea concept.

Akiko Konishi, “Game Changers in Rock: An Immersive Experience in Visual-kei Metal
Music and Fashion”

This session will examine the Visual-kei metal movement as a significant phenomenon in
both musical and sociohistorical contexts. It will articulate how the genre reshaped the concept of
identity in relation to gender and performance art, as bands like X Japan and Luna Sea challenged
traditional gender norms by combining elements of feminine and masculine aesthetics.
Through a hair-to-toe demonstration of customary V-kei metal performance attire, and a piano
performance and analysis of selected works, the session will explore various global and cultural factors
that influenced the compositional and presentational styles of representative artists. In addition, the
session will invite listeners to experience (try on) the outfits and discuss how the genre embraced the
idiosyncrasies of pairing “heavy” music with feminine stage attire, in a similar manner to the traditional
Japanese aesthetics of Kabuki and Noh. Featured artists will include David Bowie, Cheap Trick, Mötley
Crüe, Glay, Buck-Tick, Luna Sea, and X Japan.

Sadie Sartini Garner, “Painted Handmaidens of Death: Black Metal’s Queer Authenticity”

“Only Black is true, only Death is real!!! Gore is trend!” So writes Pelle Ohlin—better known as
Dead, one-time singer for foundational Norwegian black metal band Mayhem—in a letter to a
likeminded fan. “Gore” was how Ohlin and others in the black metal scene referred to what the
rest of the world called “death metal,” the brutal, technical form of extreme music ascendant in
the late 1980s and early 1990s against which bands like Mayhem and Darkthrone defined
themselves. To these young Scandinavian metalheads, the slasher-movie aesthetics of death
metal were nothing more than a passing fad, and, as such, were ultimately insincere, no matter
how disgusting their album covers might be. If the “wimps” who were “jumping on the Death
metal bandwagon” ever saw a real corpse, Ohlin writes, they would “shit their pants.” True to his
ethos, Ohlin was known to inhale the stench of dead crows before performing to keep death in
the fore of his mind.

Black metal’s insistence on authenticity—on treating its music as a kind of social
documentary—would eventually lead to a total erasure of the line between art and reality with
Dead’s death by suicide, Burzum’s Varg Vikernes murder of Dead’s Mayhem bandmate
Euronymous, and the series of church burnings perpetrated by members of the Norwegian
black metal community. Before the carnage, how was this authenticity communicated? In part,
by rejecting death metal’s white sneakers and sweatpants for all-black everything, leather,
chains, spikes—and, most famously, corpsepaint. My essay will examine black metal’s
peculiarly defined—but seriously believed—definition of authenticity, using an existentialist
conception of the self a la Simone de Beauvoir to show how Norwegian black metal musicians
unwittingly queered masculine notions of authenticity by insisting the true self must be
constructed through costuming and makeup.

Marcelo Garzo-Montalvo, “Crushing Colonialism through Black, Indigenous, and (QT)POC Punk
and Heavy Metal”

This listening session will hold a collective space to share our favorite Black, Indigenous, and
(QT)POC punk and heavy metal music. Extreme, underground, and heavy music plays an
important role in our communities – providing an embodied and communal space for liberation,
experimentation, and catharsis amidst a settler colonial and carceral death world. There is
something about loud, dark, abrasive sound that builds communities of resistance and
resonates with our desires for decolonization. Yet, punk and metal aesthetics and communities
continue to be dominated by cis-hetero, white, male identities, imaginaries, and
historiographies. Centering (QT)BIPOC artists and communities allows us to witness how punk
and metal musics have always been important sites of cultural resistance, and have deep roots
in our communities and lineages of struggle. Therefore, this listening session will be a place to
gather these resources and map them together – activating ancestral knowledge systems and
theorizing decolonial futures. Some examples of artists include: Cemican, Alien Weaponry,
Dispossessed, Screaming Toenail, Bad Brains, Death, Los Crudos, Adelitas, I Dont Konform,
Nechochwen, and more. Participants will be asked to share their favorite artists, which will be
added to an ongoing, online playlist, and listened to in real time.

This panel centers Chicana/o and Latina/o punk chola and pachucas/os musical stylings, sonics,
and aesthetics that announce a politics of social critique and refusal. Presenters reflect on the
dissenting potentialities of the pachuco ‘cuban heel,’ the chola fan hair, and the visual noise and
poetics of punk style. These sonic styles are different yet parallel and overlapping as in Michelle
Habell-Pallán’s articulation of “Punk Chola aesthetics,” wherein the various styles of
pachuquismo, chola, punk, and new wave merge (2011). Taken together, the papers in this panel
demonstrate how these sonic and sartorial styles share Chicana/o histories of dissent and enact
strategic refusals of the heteronormative and heteropatriarchal status quo, including neoliberal
proper subjectivity. Silvestre's paper argues that the interplay of visual and sonic elements in
Shizu Saldamando’s artwork emphasizes punk's political capacity to signal futurities.
Highlighting the work of Chicana poet Alma Rosa Rivera, Sepulveda argues how the Chicana
punk musical styles and aesthetics evoked in the poem “Ska y Frijoles” amplifies marginalized
Chicana subjectivities that refuse the status quo. Engaging the “Jalisco” shoe by fashion designer
Willy Chavarria, Galarte’s close reading, situates how style transcends gender boundaries but
more so the potentialities of “heel-ing” masculinity. In Hernandez’s exploration of cultural
productions from the 1990s, she examines chola aesthetics, such as the Chola fan hairstyle that
gained popularity in early 90s beauty salon culture. She argues that these aesthetic expressions
serve as cultural and political forms of resistance, asserting identity against the violence of the
nation-state. The texts discussed in this panel illustrate how the intersecting sonic stylings of
punk chola and Pachuca/o aesthetics engage in an “attitude of distortion and refusal” (Habell-
Pallán 2011) to offer new and creative ways of imagining Chicana/o and Latina/o subjectivities.

INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS

Francisco J. Galarte, “What Heels Chicano Masculinity?”

Chicano fashion designer Willy Chavarria recently declared, “I am the new Chicano Ralph
Lauren, and my clothes are for everybody.” Chavarria’s Chicano-inspired clothing has garnered
him the honor of CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year two years in a row (2023,2024). In this
paper, I engage in a case study of Chavarria’s first shoe design, the “Jalisco,” produced in
partnership with the iconic American shoemaker Allen Edmonds. This study focuses on
Chavarria’s take on the dressy derby shoe and the choice of modifying the traditional shoe design
by adding a 54mm Cuban heel. Chavarria imagines the silhouette as the “new ‘unformal’ shoe
that will transcend seasons, occasions and gender boundaries.” Through a close reading of the
silhouette of the shoe, the sonics of his recent fashion show, and the accompanying ad campaign,
I argue that Chavarria’s Chicano-inspired designs fashion new forms of masculinity informed by
the “stylized and highly visible refusal” of pachuca/o youth (Habell-Pallan, 345).
Moreover, I argue that Chavarria’s design does more than “transcend gender boundaries.”
Instead, his work “heels” masculinity. By invoking the lineage of pachuca/o fashions in these
designs and highlighting the excesses of pachuca/o flamboyance, Chavarria’s garments offer a
new form of racialized, classed, and gendered Chicana/o style. This opens discussions within
Chicana/o style politics as well as new possibilities for Chicana/o subjects to enact a politics of
style that is untethered from regressive heteronormative and heteropatriarchal underpinnings of
the traditional masculine archetypes within Chicano realist aesthetics. In other words,
Chavarria’s heels are designed to keep toxic masculinities at bay and open new worlds where the
wearer can explore the vicissitudes of the pleasure(s) within unbounded brown masculinities.

Bernadine Marie Hernandez, “Your Hair is Infused with Meaning: The Politics, Aesthetics, 
and History of the Chola Backcombing Fan Hair”

This talk examines and interrogates the history and aesthetics of the chola Fan Hair that was
popularized in the early 90’s and took popular culture by storm in the late 90’s. Some call it just
“The Fan,” while others call it “The Aqua Net Wave,” “Prom Bangs,” “Woody Bangs,” “The
Rooster,” or the “Cha-Cha Hair.” Depending on which region you lived in, there were other
names for this hairstyle. The hairstyle required many steps to finish and many tools and products
to produce. It required an intricate knowledge of backcombing to create the perfect fan shape and
a lot of Aqua net aerosol hair spray (and the knock off brands if that was too expensive). It
required beauty salon skills to shape and keep it held up, defying gravity. Where does this
hairstyle come from and why did so many brown women claim this hairstyle as their own in the
early 90s? How is this hairstyle connected to the chola aesthetics?

We know that mainstream culture has commodified chola aesthetics as seen by way of Vogue
covering “Mi Vida Chola” as early as 2013, however, how have chola’s narrated this hair style
and taken it up as a ritual against nation-state violence on their own terms and through cultural
production? Beauty salon culture is deeply connected and central to chola aesthetics and while
chola’s may not go into the salon to get their hair done, they are historically connected to beauty
salon culture; from the backcombing of the Pachuca pompadour, the bouffant and/or beehive, to
the Fan Hair. This talk will look at the different iterations of the hairstyle and the history and
politics that are connected to it in the United States, specifically the geo-political spaces by the
U.S-Mexico border. This talk looks at different cultural productions like the song and video
Scandalous by Psycho Realm, the 1993 film, Mi Vida Loca, Mary Helen Ponce’s novel The
Wedding, Graciela Iturbide’s Cholos/as series, and Miguel Gandert’s photography of cholas in
East San Jose in Albuquerque, NM.

Susana Sepulveda, “‘Weird & Brown’: Amplifying the Poetics of Refusal in Chicana 
Punk Self-Fashioned Styles”

Chicana spoken word poet and punk Alma Rosa Rivera pays homage to Chicana punk, and more
specifically Chicana punk subjects, in her notable poem “Ska y Frijoles” (2016). The themes of
food, gendered and racialized struggles, and punk musical stylings intermingle within the poem’s
stanzas. Through my methodology of travesando that describes the traversals of Chicana punk
research, I conduct a close reading of “Ska y Frijoles” listening to the visual and sonic stylings
and aesthetics of punk embodied by Chicana subjects, or rather the “weird and brown” (Rivera,
2016). I argue that this poetic homage amplifies the everyday practices of refusal that Chicana
punks enact through self-fashioned sartorial styles and aesthetics that are grounded in but not
limited to punk music. I draw on Michelle Habell-Pallán’s framing of “Punk Chola aesthetics”
that describes the stylistic intersections of pachuquismo, chola, punk, and new wave styles that
the art collective ASCO embraced in the early 1980s and “turn[ed] inside out, using sardonic
humor as part of their social critique” (2011). I underscore that this coalescence of styles and
aesthetics continued to shape Chicana punk social formations and cultural productions well into
the 2000s and can be seen and heard within Chicana / Latina literary works. By close reading and
“listening in detail” (Vasquez, 2013) to the literary soundscapes of Chicana punk in Rivera's
poem, I illustrate how it amplifies and renders visible marginalized Chicana subjectivities that
refuse the status quo, including imposed racialized and gendered expectations.

In the 1980s book, Big Sounds from Small People: The Music Industry in Small
Countries. musicologists Roger Wallis and Krister Malm caustically observed: “Sweden
has given the world ABBA (though their music has nothing to do with their country of
origin).” This panel, convened at a time of tariff-talk and anti-globalization, looks at style
through these fundamental issues. Some pop music is aimed at a domestic market, but
much is made for export. That might be from small countries to regions and global
audiences. Or via racial and genre crossover categories. Using the lessons of Motown,
K-Pop, Max Martin, and Quebec, with likely nods to the British Invasion, country music
of various origins and Eurovision, this panel takes as its starting point the idea that
export music is not just a watered-down product. As pop kicked out of the nest, it
explores non- and anti-domestic style, with implications that range from the role of
government to the mediation of identity.

INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS

Eric Weisbard, The “SweMix” of American Pop, from Abba to Spotify

This presentation, focusing on the band Abba, the guild of songwriters and “SweMix”
producers associated with Max Martin, and the audio music streaming corporation Spotify,
will explore how a small, Scandinavian country has for fifty years redefined mainstream pop
worldwide. Lacking a large domestic market, Swedes crafted music for export, fitting the moods
and needs of consumers rather than unveiling a local scene.

But what makes it Swedish? We can marvel at its scope, feel shaped by its anthems, and still wonder
about its plasticity. I will track a commercial success, the “Swedish miracle,” but also revulsion aimed
at that success, whether 1970s anti-Abba prog-rock scenesters or anti-Spotify teardowns right now.
Swedish-American pop exchanges map a space of remixing, where the dominant language is often
people’s second language and the local gives way to a relentless flow of at times alarming, hybridity. Abba, Martin, and Spotify chose to emigrate from Swedish origins to – quote unquote – “pop.” And they built up equity
in that placeless place.

The choice put them in the tradition of Vilhelm Moberg’s series of novels, The Emigrants, which
made an epic of Sweden as the nation that sent the highest percentage of its people to the United States
in the 19 th and early 20 th century. Abba’s two songwriters, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, created Kristina
från Duvemåla, a musical adaptation of the novels. Having claimed a full stake in a world of Chiquititas
and dancing queens, emigrants Benny and Björn wrote home. These back-and-forths will be my theme:
style at the edge between a small, too-stable locale and a big, ambiguous neighbor.

Euny Hong, “K-Poppenheimer’s Deadly Toy: How the South Korean Government 
Manufactured the K-Pop Industry from Scratch”

Just 70 years ago, South Korea was the world’s third-poorest country. Far from having a
global reputation as a producer of music, it didn’t even have its own national anthem,
and it initially had to borrow the tune from “Auld Lang Syne.” Until a decade ago, if you
were to ask any non-Korean to name a K-pop song, the closest they’d get would
probably have been the theme song from the TV show M*A*S*H*. Now, it’s one of the
world’s wealthiest nations and biggest exporters of pop, having re-invented not just
band-dom, but fandom. In fact, its fandom is so unique that Korean record labels had to
invent the word “fandustry,” a portmanteau word combining “fan” with “industry.” The
world has never seen its like. How did we get from there to here? And what bizarre role
did the movie Jurassic Park play? (Hint: everything)

What most people do not know is that “Hallyu”—the Korean Wave of pop culture
led by K-pop—is no accident. It has been brewing in a South Korean government
laboratory (figuratively… but also literally) for the last three decades. It's the most well-
funded, meticulously orchestrated national marketing campaign in the history of the
world. The goal: to make Korea synonymous with cool, with music leading the way.

Just 12 years ago, after “Gangnam Style” broke YouTube records, many thought
K-pop was a fluke. Well, if so, then it’s a fluke that has already endured longer than the
Beatles lasted as a band. Not only has South Korea produced the world’s top boy band
(BTS), but there’s no end in sight, with some gobsmacking stats: Of the top 10 YouTube
music video debuts of all time, numbers one through nine are K-pop acts, with only one
outlier—Taylor Swift’s ME!—occupying 10th place. The most tweeted-about band is
BTS (even though they’ve been on hiatus since 2022), the band with the most
Instagram followers is BlackPink. How did all this happen? How did Korea make its pop
music fully mainstream, when no other non-English speaking nation managed to pull
this off?

Erin MacLeod, “Distinct Society: Quebecois Music Out of Canada”

The tale of CanCon is one that instills fascination in anyone not familiar with the MAPL
system - a requirement that 35% of any popular music played on radio, must fulfill at
least two of the following conditions: music, artist, performance location or lyrics are
defined as Canadian. This has led to niche artists like B-4-4 and Shawn Desman having
a presence as large in Canada as some major American stars, but it also has
undoubtedly propelled the popularity of now massive stars like Justin Bieber and Drake.

But then there is Quebec. The other of the two solitudes has produced artists like
Arcade Fire, Kaytranada, Grimes, and, of course, Celine. But these artists have little to
no connection to the weekly Franco hit parade. Quebec music has always been defined
as having to be, primarily, French language, but the music that grows up in Quebec and
is exported to the rest of the world expands the notion of what Quebec is, much to the
chagrin of the government cultural brokers.

Kevin Holt, “‘I Come In The Club Shaking My Dreads’: Locs and the Formation
 of a New Southern Black Politic”

Locs have a complex and storied history in black style. Often associated with gestures
in reconnecting to mythic black authenticities and Afro-centric political/religious
movements (e.g. Rastafarianism and Ifa), they have consistently announced various
stances along the spectrum of pro-blackness since the mid-20 th century. Today locs are
extremely common among hip-hop artists from Atlanta. I argue that crunk artists
incorporated locs into their fashions, not as a continuation of the earlier movements, but
as a novel gesture in pro-black disrespectability politics, to borrow from Brittany
Cooper’s deconstruction of ratchetness. The gesture of “shaking your dreads” exists as
a multivalent expression of authentic and un-contained blackness that connotes an
affinity with black radicalism and an eschewing of the “respectable” self-presentation
and/or overt political posturing often expected of the predecessors who wore them. My
proposed paper offers an exploration of this dynamic, following artists like Lil Jon, the
Migos, and Crime Mob.

Alfred Soto, “Make It Straight: Hair Involutions and Revolutions in Male UK Glam Rock”

No male singer sported better hair in rock than Bryan Ferry, Thick, dark, lustrous, it had a sheen
like a new Ferrari, which made Ferry the ideal lead singer and songwriter for Roxy Music. Fans
could trace the evolution of Roxy through his follicle revolutions: from the immobile pompadour
of the early years to the moist loosely combed locks of the Avalon-era

I will demonstrate how the coifs of male glam rock icons and their musical choices
complemented each other. David Bowie’s post-mod wet blanket during the Hunky Dory era
matched his quiet subversions of singer-songwriter rock, followed by the magnificent henna-hair
cockatoo of Ziggy Stardust. The insouciant curls and the in-your-face flash of Marc Bolan and
the New York Dolls. As the acts entered the 1980s, I will show how the age offered divergent
paths: a more conservative look for Ferry and in the case of Bowie a regrettable attempt to out-
mullet contemporaries (Bolan, alas, didn’t live to realize his metal guru dreams).

Finally, I will explain the nexus between hair and sexuality. While Bowie’s protean sartorial
shifts suggested polymorphous curiosity, Ferry’s adherence to Old World glamour effaced his
sexual presentation such that he metamorphosed into a Holy Spirit of Tremulous Melancholy by
the time shoulder pads became acceptable fashion for ‘80s men. Things bottomed out at the end
of the decade when Jesus & Mary Chain sang “I don’t care ‘bout the state of my hair” like snotty
kids picking on Grandpa.

Rhonda Nicole Tankerson, “‘I Just Don't Believe It's Fair’: How Black Women Artists 
Use Hair as Symbols of Resistance and Revolution”

“People ask me everywhere, is that really all of your hair? I just tell ‘em if it ain’t, that it sho’ don’t
mean that now I can’t. I just don’t believe it’s fair to judge [a girl] by the length of [her] hair.”
For Black folks across the Diaspora but particularly in America, hair is a subject that has, for
generations, evoked conflicting sentiments of pride, shame, rebellion, and assimilation. In this
funk-laden cut from Graham Central Station’s eponymous 1974 album, bassist and band leader
Larry Graham is likely referencing the Afro–his and others’, one of the most popular and distinct
styles of the 1970s. As Prince would remind us in the mid-2010s, “An afro is not a hairstyle.”
When the Purple One, the Queen of Funk Chaka Khan, and Graham collaborated on an
updated version of the song for Khan’s 1998 NPG Records release Come to My House, “Hair”
took on an even more nuanced meaning being performed by a Black woman musician
renowned for her beautiful, bountiful mane.

Black women’s hair is an eternal site of tension, empowerment, political thought and action.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Black women artists’ follicular expression: from The
Supremes’ perfectly styled wigs to Patti Labelle’s sculpted crown, to Tina Turner’s golden rock
goddess tresses to Chloe and Halle’s majestic locs. For decades, Black women practitioners of
gospel, blues, pop, R&B, funk, and hip-hop have set the trends, embraced and rejected
conventional beauty expectations, and advanced critical conversations through their hair. Black
women musicians’ hair functions as fashion, art, and documentation of the socio-political climate
of the times, and perhaps foreshadows what is to come in entertainment and commerce. In this
presentation, I will explore how Black women music artists’ hair serves as a source of resistance
and revolution.

Alex Diaz-Hui, “Makeup, Hair Salons, and Style in Reggaetón and Latin Trap”

This listening session focuses women and queer emcees in reggaetón and Latin trap
who develop their musical identities through makeup, hair, and fashion. We will begin
with Ivy Queen, often known as La Reina de Reggaetón (The Queen of Reggaetón),
whose performances and interviews often center on her extravagant nails and outfits.
Critics have acknowledged how the political and social critique of Ivy Queen’s music
comes from the interplay between her lyricism and a look centered on her nails and
makeup. Scholars also consider how these looks rely on a contradictory relationship
with anti-blackness in Puerto Rico. Our discussion of hair and makeup in reggaetón and
Latin trap will consider how the genre’s origins come from different sites of musical
circulation that have conflicting traditions and perspectives. Regardless of these
contradictions, Ivy Queen is regarded as one of the early women emcees to receive
airplay on the island and its diaspora. Her work juxtaposes her nails, hairstyles, and
outfits with songs that speak out against police violence and men who pressure women
at nightclubs. Her song “Quiero Bailar” (“I Want to Dance”) has since been used as an
anthem for feminist movements throughout Puerto Rico because of its call for women to
dance without feeling pressured to go home with the men they dance with. This listening
session begins with Ivy Queen’s early performances, both in The Noise and selections
from her debut and sophomore albums, En Mi Imperio and The Original Rude Girl. We
will focus on music videos to “Quiero Bailar” and “In the Zone” to grasp the range of
looks that defined her rise as one of the key icons of old-school reggaetón. We will see
how “Quiero Bailar” inspires makeup trends on TikTok that have channeled recent
attention to her work throughout North America.

The second half of the listening session will focus on Ivy Queen’s contemporary
performances, collaborations, and influence on women in developing scenes in Latin
trap between Puerto Rico, Chile, and Argentina. “Mami” by Paloma Mami interpolates
lyrics from “Quiero Bailar” to narrativize rejecting a man’s advances. Latin trap
superstars Young Miko and Villano Antillano have both discussed Ivy Queen’s role in
their musical upbringing and often allude to makeup trends in the early 2000s. Ivy
Queen also has collaborated with women in contemporary Latin trap, including Maria
Becerra. We will discuss how these artists use the form of the music video to visualize
Latinidad through makeup, fixing one's hair, and the act of getting ready for a night out.
We will compare these looks and ask how they are inspired by, and sometimes
appropriate, aesthetics from hip-hop and American popular music. Time will also be
given for the group to share songs that resonate with these concerns of style, gender,
and rebellion in modern music, including Princess Nokia, and Kali Uchis, among others.
Participants are welcome to bring makeup.

This panel explores how female musicians in our contemporary moment have
developed various “feminist styles.” It argues that deploying a “feminist style” through
fashion allows these musicians to subvert traditional norms associated with gender. This
panel demonstrates how such subversions have led to the fashioning of new forms of
performance and narrative, as well as genre and identity. It concludes that “feminist
styles” shift how popular music sounds and looks, and who it is understood to represent.

INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS 

Izzy Fincher, “Guitar Girls in Bikinis: Sexual Objectification, Performative Masculinity, 
and Feminist Fashion on Guitar Magazine Covers”

Annie Clark, known as St. Vincent, became the fifth woman ever featured on the cover
of Guitar World magazine in 2017. With her signature Ernie Ball guitar, St. Vincent
poses in an oversized bikini print t-shirt – a feminist fashion statement intended to
highlight the hypersexualization of women in guitar magazines. In guitar trade
magazines, women are primarily depicted as groupies or glamour models in
advertisements and media content, illustrating the use of sexual imagery to appeal to
male consumers and reinforce the masculinization of the instrument. This paper
investigates the sexual objectification of female guitarists on the covers of two widely
circulated guitar magazines, Guitar World and Guitar Player. The cover artists featured
in this study include Nita Strauss, Sophie Lloyd, St. Vincent, Orianthi, Joan Jett, Susan
Tedeschi, Kaki King, and Bonnie Raitt. Through the framework of a feminist critical
visual analysis, this study investigates the intensity and degree of sexualization found in
photographic representations of female guitarists through the lens of objectification
theory, gender performativity, and performative masculinity of electric guitar.

Dan DiPiero, “‘(Revolution) Girl Style (Now!)’: Crushes and Femme 
Performativity in Indie Rock”

While the idea of “girl style” came to national prominence with the advent of the riot grrrl
movement, what came to be known as “indie pop,” “C86,” “cutie,” or “twee” music had
been coalescing aesthetic expressions around traditional markers of adolescent
femininity at least since 1983. Arguing for a reading of indie pop as “soft femme”
expression (Andi Schwartz 2020), this paper traces the status of the crush in indie rock
from the 80s through today, arguing that the queer and feminist artists at the forefront of
the contemporary indie revival deploy and manipulate romance narratives in a variety of
ways that draw from the past in order to continue subverting hegemonic norms. Actively
aware of rock history and the role that masculinity has played in overdetermining
cultural imaginaries of the music, bands like that dog., The Softies, SASAMI, and Black
Belt Eagle Scout self-consciously and creatively work with romance narratives using a
variety of strategies as a part of their larger reshaping of the genre, a renegotiation that
has shifted how indie rock sounds and who it is understood to represent.

Resisting longstanding assumptions that treat women and queer folks’ romantic lives as
inconsequential, the first part of this paper outlines a turn to the “crush” as a
methodological perspective in popular music studies. Subsequently, I trace recent
developments in queer and feminist indie rock, particularly along the affective
orientation I have called “Big Feelings.” Finally, I analyze three techniques
contemporary bands use to subvert traditional romance narratives in rock music.
Ultimately, I suggest three categories of analysis for considering work by bands working
in the tradition of what Kate Siegfried calls the “grrrl crush,” (2019) including love songs
that undermine heteronormativity, love songs about objects other than romantic
partnership, and ostensible love songs that artists insist actually aren’t.

Kate Grover, “Revolution ‘boy’ Style: boygenius Fashions the Self-Aware Supergroup”

It’s safe to say that boygenius, a collaboration between musicians Lucy Dacus, Phoebe
Bridgers, and Julien Baker, are aware of their status as an all-women rock band.
Whether dressing up as 90’s rockers Nirvana on the cover of Rolling Stone, paying
homage to The Beatles’s Ed Sullivan Show performance during their SNL musical guest
spot, or referencing the gendered parameters of genius in their group name, Dacus,
Bridgers, and Baker utilize various platforms to bring attention to their difference from
the male-dominated pantheon of rock history. At the same time, boygenius revels in
contradictory gender expressions, using queer embodiments to question gender norms
and make fun of rock culture’s reverent posturing. Like the feminist bands of the 1970s
who parodied cock rockers’ macho, and the Riot Grrrl punk rockers who encouraged
women to start bands as a means of disrupting the status quo, boygenius deconstructs
rock and roll’s assumed “maleness” to create space for fellow girls, gays, and theys. In
this paper, I examine how boygenius’s use of fashion, rock iconography, and tongue-in-
cheek performances of “female masculinity” situate the band within a linage of feminist
rockers critiquing the genre’s patriarchy.

Ajitpaul Mangat, “‘spill ur GUTS’: Olivia Rodrigo, Merchandise, 
and Asian American Women Who Holler”

Cathy Park Hong, in Minor Feelings, describes coming across a new kind of Asian American woman during her teaching: Hong contrasts the “self-hating” Asian American women of her generation who “sat there meekly like mice with nice hair” with the Asian 2.0 woman who is “empowered and politically engaged and brilliant.” In this paper, I argue that Filipino American singer, Olivia Rodrigo, embodies the Asian American women of today who, as Hong puts it, are “ready to holler.” I begin by considering how Rodrigo’s development as an artist reflects Hong’s assertion that she herself “struggled to prove herself into existence:” I chart Rodrigo’s transformation from representing “minor feelings” (to borrow Hong’s term) on her first album, Sour, to expressing “rage and dissatisfaction” on her second album, Guts. I focus on how the t-shirts that Rodrigo sells as merchandise for her Guts World Tour exemplify her burgeoning voice: these t-shirts feature variations of the slogan “spill your guts,” with some depicting Rodrigo spilling her “guts” while shouting. Such a slogan is far from empty, I demonstrate, as Rodrigo has used proceeds from her tour to support her charitable organization, Fund 4 Good, and “community-based nonprofits that champion girls’ education, support reproductive rights and prevent gender-based violence.” I contend that this clothing has contributed to the creation of a political space during Rodrigo’s tour performances within which young women are empowered to voice their solidarity with other women. Such a space, I emphasize, is intersectional, with Rodrigo creating t-shirts featuring a phrase, “Perfect All-American Bitch,” that mocks her status as a “model minority,” an identity that has been used to isolate Asian Americans by pitting them against other minority groups. Rodrigo can thus, I conclude, be understood to use clothing to respond to Hong’s urging of young Asian American women “to talk.”

Moderator: Frank Meegan

Jacob Cupps, “Countersurvelliant Sampling in King Vision Ultra & Algiers’ SHOOK WORLD”

From the use of AI for sample detection to the admission of rap lyrics as evidence in
criminal trials, the last decade has seen a renewal of surveillant attitudes towards hip-hop’s
cultural practices, concurrent with a right-wing authoritarian shift in US politics. This paper
examines one type of disruption in the face of this return, emergent in the musical practice
of the Brooklyn-based DJ and producer King Vision Ultra. Theorizing in dialogue with the
artist, I combine my interviews with KVU and close readings of several tracks from his LP
SHOOK WORLD (2023), a collaboration with the post-punk band Algiers, to demonstrate
how sampling within the “sonic lineage” of a hip-hop tradition can at once affirm and protect
the cultures most directly impacted by this authoritarian shift while agitating and
undermining its attendant logics.

My analysis highlights the diversity of sampling’s discursive functions. On SHOOK
WORLD, some “stolen” instrumental samples pay homage to a musical artist or style while
others aesthetically indict the artist that recorded them; some spoken samples espouse
beliefs congruent with the artists’ decolonial, collectivist worldview while others document
the various ideologies justifying the forms of state violence increasingly carried out in the
New York subway system. None of these sampling practices are new, per se: indeed,
foundational hip-hop studies texts document these overlapping discursive functions during
digital sampling’s adolescence (Rose 1994; Schloss 2004). However, their continued use
attests to hip-hop’s current subcultural practitioners’ ability to retain some capacity to thwart
cultural forces of surveillance and authoritarianism, even as hip-hop has attained its own
form of cultural ubiquity. Although narrating this dominant/subcultural split risks
romanticizing hip-hop as an ever-insurgent cultural practice, I alternatively conclude that this
dissonant coexistence supports Greg Tate’s (1996) observation that hip-hop is “perverse
logic of late capitalism pursued by an art form.”

Frank Meegan, “Freak Fashion and New York Independent Music: 
Utopias of Obscured Identity”

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the New York independent rock scene has
metamorphized to host multiple genres at the same venues, including rock, electronic, and
experimental music. Despite the scene’s mutations, New York independent musicians and
organizers continue to forge connections in art and fashion worlds. Many New York musicians
are visual artists and, in recent years, some Brooklyn music scene participants have adopted
freak fashion as a creative expression. Nightlife-goers known as “freaks” dress in extreme
garb and cultivate aesthetics drawn from performance art, while celebrating gender
inclusivity and racial diversity. These revelers sometimes wear clown face paint or
makeup that subverts human features. Some have body-modifications and others wear
grotesque outfits influenced by science fiction. Freak theorist Renate Lorenz argues that
freak fashion can be seen as a radical practice within queer and camp cultures as it
challenges and obscures foundational assumptions, norms, and limits of the self, of
identity, and of the body.

This paper contributes to freak theory by considering the relationship between
freak fashion, artistic expression, and musical practice in New York. Local scene
participants use new media platforms like Instagram to promote their fashion
experiments, which can dovetail with musical careers and record promotion. Musicians
perform at Do-it-Yourself (DIY) venues that exhibit sculpture, painting, and multi-media
performance to foster an elevated and unconventional atmosphere that confounds
spatial and temporal norms. I feature musician and costume designer Lust$ickPuppy,
whose music practice and fashion design challenge conventional identity as they create
music that redefines punk. I show how freak fashion, visual expression, and music
practice embody utopian ideals that manifest at DIY venues, in the local New York
scene, and online.

Chi Chi Thalken, “Dystopian Swagger: The Style of New York’s Underground Hip Hop 
Scene in the ‘90s”

When independent New York hip hop trio Company Flow dropped their album, Funcrusher Plus,
in 1997, a lot of new things came to the forefront – business models, production techniques,
lyrical subject matter, and flow. Another aspect that deserves just as much discussion is the
look of this new branch of hip hop. From the sci-fi/dystopian artwork of artists like Matty Doo,
who designed the covers of Organized Konfusion’s Extinction Agenda and Company Flow’s
Funcrusher Plus, to the incorporation of comic art by Keo X-Men for Operation Doomsday, to
the minimal abstract art of M. Sayyid for Antipop Consortium, there was a distinct look within
this new branch of hip hop that both paid respect to hip hop’s roots while also pushing it in new,
unexplored directions. In this presentation, I will be examining the look of Underground hip hop
in New York’s scene of the mid to late ‘90s, talking with both the graphic designers, graffiti
artists, and musical artists who helped shaped this new niche of hip hop and give it a visual
language that matched its audible style. We’ll dive into the unique influences that converged to
make all this happen, but also explore the set of circumstances around technological
development that also shaped the look.

Victor Szabo, “‘People Who Mess With Weird Sound’: Hearing Personal Styles of DJing 
in the Contemporary US Rave Underground”

While some music writers (e.g. Thornton 1995, Reynolds 2011) have discredited undergrounds
as untenable in late capitalism due to porous cultural boundaries and ubiquitous media, the term
“underground” continues to circulate in global EDM culture as an evidently meaningful descriptor
of DJ practices and club/rave scenes, often without imputing purity or authenticity to them. Notably,
writers have long substantiated dance undergrounds through reference to DJs’ styles of programming
and mixing, which marked distance from “professional” standards, and which sanctioned spaces of
safety for minoritized participants (Harvey 1983, Hadley 1993). Music scholars have since mapped
out stratified underground(s) relative to egalitarian attitudes, DIY ethoses, and avant-garde aesthetics
(e.g. Hutton 2006, Harrison 2009, Graham 2016, Garcia Mispreta 2023).

This presentation expands upon the aforementioned scholarship by examining how styles of DJing cultivate contemporary US rave spaces as undergrounds, and indeed perform a regulatory function for them relative to EDM mainstreams. To do so, I draw on my interviews with, and analyses of sets by, self-described underground DJs ADAB, Carlos Souffront, CCL,Furtive, Jake Muir, Kiernan Laveaux, and Yessi, constellating their stylistic tendencies and ways of understanding them. Taking a page from Sontag’s “On Style,” I describe how these DJs make audible their idiosyncratic personalities by troping on generic conventions of programming and mixing, charging their work with a sense of historicity, or what they commonly call “intention.” Ironically, these musical personalities emerge through attitudes of self-humbling and spiritual reverence, in contrast to mainstream DJs’ demonstrations of technical mastery and physical power. Moreover, these particular DJs’ personal styles sanction spaces of freedom and belonging for diversely minoritized participants by becoming legible as both psychedelic and queer, expressive cultural matrices that have enlivened EDM undergrounds—and kept out the squares—since disco.

Lulu Le Vay, “DJing As a Form of Resistance: The Importance of Visibility and Ageing 
As a Woman in Dance Music Culture”

The dance music scene, with its roots in countercultural movements, has always been a space for challenging norms and embracing diversity. However, one critical conversation remains underdeveloped: the visibility of ageing women in this industry. This proposal seeks to explore the significance of ageing visibly as a female DJ, framing it as an act of resistance that is essential for dismantling prejudices and fostering inclusivity.

Ageing in dance music, particularly for women, is often seen as a limitation rather than a strength. The culture’s emphasis on youth perpetuates a narrative that sidelines older artists, devalues their contributions, and reinforces societal ageism. For female DJs, this creates barriers to creative development, as they are pressured to conform to narrow, age-based expectations. By continuing to perform and thrive visibly in the scene, ageing female DJs challenge these stereotypes.

This act of resistance is more than personal. It is a cultural imperative. When ageing women are visible, they create a ripple effect: inspiring younger generations, normalizing diverse representations of women, and providing a blueprint for sustained creativity. Moreover, this visibility contributes to safer and more inclusive environments where women of all ages feel valued and supported in their artistic journeys. The current and historical landscape has sady witnessed a number of women in dance music and dj culture who have chosen to end their lives through suicide. This emphasises the importance to exploring the pressures women are under in this field, as well as the importance of discussing these issues within inclusive and supportive research environments.

The paper will examine key examples of female DJs who have defied ageist norms, analyze the structural barriers they face, and propose actionable strategies for shifting the narrative. In making the case for ageing visibly as resistance, this presentation will affirm that inclusivity in dance music isn’t just about who is present but also about who feels empowered to stay. This shift is essential for ensuring a thriving, equitable, and creatively limitless future for all artists.


Raymond Kyooyung Ra, “Deep Inside”


Merriam-Webster defines “whack” as a verb that means “to strike with a smart or resounding blow.” A formal movement used amongst gay men in the 1970s Los Angeles underground punk dance scene, “whacking” involved the dancer’s visual and textural translation of club music beats through their body – an embodiment of sound and energy, a corporeal representation of the onamonapia. The sharp arm strikes that came to be called whacking by their originators later crystalized into a disco genre of its own while retaining elements of the punk dance such as the dramatic poses inspired by films and theater, as well as elaborate arm twirls that stylized action sequences from martial arts films and gymnastics techniques. As the dance garnered national popularity with exposure through the variety television show Soul Train and mainstream musical artists such as Diana Ross, dancers began using the alternate spelling “waacking” instead of whacking in order to semiotically disassociate the genre from its gay origins, the sensorial and affective messiness of queer nightlife and dance floor, as well as the word’s salacious connotations to lunacy or male masturbation.

Returning to what I have referred to as the “texture” of sound – as many dance and movement artists
have interpreted the term ‘musicality’ – I propose a showcase of the Los Angeles-local queer art form waacking
for Pop Con 2025. I envision this performance to be accompanied by an approximately 3-minute edited track
of Hardrive’s “Deep Inside.” Using the simplistically sophisticated and iconic house beat structure, as well as
the sampled vocals of Barbara Tucker, I want to highlight the labor of the body that can transform the technology of music into new feelings, sensations, and “energy” or the materiality of queer dance. And as queer dancers have historically expressed on dance floors and Tucker sings, maybe “all we need is love” at this time, when we most need something to dance for and about.

Abigail Lindo, “Jungle’s Choreosonic Liveness: Black Acousmaticity 
and Memory on (and Beyond) the Track”

UK band Jungle saw great commercial success in 2023, with the release of their song “Back on 74,” which
featured vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Lydia Kitto. Band members Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland
founded the band in 2013, and quickly gained a following from their grandiose dance sound captured in recorded tracks interweaving funk, (neo)soul, and disco to produce something that simultaneously sounded futuristic while ushering the past into the present. This temporal distortion is supported by recording techniques that communicate era/age and transformation as an aspect of songs– something further created using dramatic, one-shot music videos furthering the sonic aesthetic as a visual reality – I argue, with specific capitalist-driven aims.

This panel brings together scholars exploring Chicanx/Latinx experiences at the
intersections of music, fashion, and identity across diverse subcultures and
geographies, emphasizing how sound and style become tools for negotiating belonging
and resistance. In their own musical world, each paper underscores how sound and
style are the building blocks of building and rebuilding Chicanx/Latinx identity at the
personal, collective, and transnational horizon. Together, these papers explore the diversity
of Chicanx/Latinx music and fashion interests and the nuances of how music and fashion act
as mediums for finding yourself and “your people,” even if those people are outsiders or on the
other side of the planet.

INDIVIDUAL ABSTRACTS 

Eddy F. Alvarez, Finding Sequins in the Rubble and Sonic and Style Memories
of Jotería in Los Angeles: An Autobiographical Perspective

Reading Richard T. Rodriguez’s book, A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic
Intimacies of British Post-Punk and US Latinidad (2022) inspired part of this paper, the
author’s sonic memories transporting me to my own childhood and teen sonic
memories, and to what Francisco Galarte calls “style memories” ( 2015). Using the
concepts of “jotería listening” or listening queerly and carefully to present and past
sounds, music, and memories, through a queer Latinx lens, and Gloria Anzaldúa’s
“autohistoria-teoria,” I stitch together memories of my nine-year-old self listening to both
English language artists like Madonna and Stacy Q as well as Mexican pop bands and
singers like Flans and Gloria Trevi and Mexican regional music like Los Tigres del
Norte, memories of how I created extravagant fashion designs on cardboard paper or
put together outfits with my sister to recreate music videos, memories of Jonathan, a
precocious awkward, queer Central American kid and my neighbor, a few years older,
who dressed like Prince, talked to me about the new wave scene, and allegedly went to
parties where he met Prince and Apollonia, and memories of my high school days,
listening to house music, going to Arena nightclub, and shopping for polyester shirts,
golfer pants, mechanic shirts, and furry coats at vintage stores like Goodwill, Salvation
Army, and Aardvark’s on Melrose Ave. These musical, sonic, fashion and style
memories are central to the autobiographical foundations of my theorization of “finding
sequins in the rubble” a framework for how jotería in Los Angeles find joy, love and
community in the midst of and despite violence, trauma, and debris of many forms.

Kristy Martinez, Finding Emo in the S.G.V. 

I will explore the fashion and impact of subcultures in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern
California, with special attention on the revival of the genre of Emo (emotional hardcore)
in the early to mid-2000s. Emo fashion typically rejected gender stereotypes-- an
androgynous style with band t-shirts, red flannel, black eyeliner, femme skinny jeans,
canvas shoes, chunky skateboard shoes, cowboy boots, or sneakers. Popular
accessories of emo include snakebite lip rings, bracelets, studded belts, and scarves.
Scene hair was either teased, side swept heavy bangs, straight jet-black dyed hair,
raccoon streaks, razor severely cut hair, extensions, and bright colors. Themes in emo
lyrics, imagery and its fashion include fatalism, birds, roses, and broken hearts. Post 9-
11, there was a theatrical, goth and vaudeville element with bands like Avenged
Sevenfold, My Chemical Romance and Panic! At the Disco. I argue that emo in the
2000s was the antithesis of the colorful palette of Y2K style, which has made a
comeback recently--Von Dutch wear, Ed Hardy, velour, reality television, bubbly pop,
and heiress/debutante obsession. In regard to displaying the fashion, I look to social
media platforms (still here or gone), such as MySpace, Photobucket, LiveJournal,
Facebook and the ever popular Los Angeles and Inland Empire nightclub photos.
I will use the work on emo in Mexico by scholar Marissa Lopez and explore how
households of color rejected or embraced emo. I include the Black emos that inspired
me, living in Moreno Valley with my grandparents.

Jose Anguiano and Nicholas Centino, Rolas y Garras de Nipon: Listening for the
Chicanx-Japanese Cultural Bridges in Music and Fashion

The globalization of Chicanx culture represents a cultural bridge and opportunity for reciprocity between Chicanx cultural makers and Japanese audiences and consumers in Japan. A subset of Working-class and middle-class Japanese youth immerse themselves in Chicanx cultural production by embracing lowriders, Cholo fashion, barrio iconography, tattoos, and music. Recent media coverage about Japanese affinity Chicanx culture brought accusations of cultural appropriation. However, the music scene championed by Shin Miyata represents a mutually beneficial relationship and cultural exchange between Chicanx musicians and their Japanese audience. Anguiano argues that music generates a different type of relationship because music is less reliant on static images (open to stereotypes), and the efforts of Miyata have produced a more direct relationship and not just a distant consumption of cultural products. Nicholas Centino will discuss how fashion functions as a unique medium of embodied cultural exchange. This multi-layered appropriation speaks to the unique ways in which the memories of historic intercultural exchanges can either be deployed or ignored in self-fashioning practices of dress and style. From the 1940s “pachucos” and “pachuke” to today’s contemporary fashion artisans of greater Los Angeles, Chicanx-Latinx/ Japanese fashion vocabularies continue to intermingle in uniquely hybrid ways. Thus, a focus on music and fashion expands our understanding of cultural exchanges and the boundaries of Chicano culture.

Rudy Aguilar. ¿Hecho en Mexico?: Rupturing the National, the Transnational, and the
Hemispheric in Ya No estoy aqui (2019)

As 21st century Mexican society embraces neoliberalism while policing culture within their borders, this paper pays close attention how the Mexican subculture Kolombia ruptures cultural “hecho en Mexico” sensibilities when Monterrey youth adopt Colombian musical identities. Kolombia youth find themselves in opposition to normative articulations of Mexicanidad and are criminalized by greater Mexican society. Their fashion choices and hairstyles place them outside the national imaginary of respectable Mexican citizenry. Yet, it is their unique mutations of Colombian soundscapes which place Kolombias at the center of a two-fold cultural debate. Kolombias’ fusion of Colombian and Mexican sensibilities, including cumbia rebajada, poses challenges to Mexican methodological logics in Mexico and its extended U.S. immigrant communities. The second component of this debate relates to altering Colombian aesthetic beyond recognition to many Latin Americans. This essay explores these ruptures with a close reading of the film, Ya no estoy aqui. I highlight how the Kolombia subculture, as depicted in the film, generates contemporary articulations of rupturing conventional Mexican identities, resulting in what I call Hemispheric Mexicanidad. I argue that Ulises and his Kolombia peers in the film produce a hemispheric Mexicanidad that stimulates excitement and anxiety across the Americas by calling into question static, one-dimensional articulations of Mexican youth identity.

Em Catlett, “Un-silencing Lucille: Unpacking Gendered Narrative Tropes in Contemporary Country Music”

Kenny Rogers’s 1976 “Lucille” models a specific gendered narrative trope found in
country music lyrics: a man meets a woman in a bar, infers that she is in a crisis, and proceeds to
speak on her behalf. The crisis most often involves the woman’s former partner. Regardless of
his physical presence, the other man hinders the narrator’s ability to thoughtfully engage with the
woman at the story’s center. Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” presents a foil to Rogers’ “Lucille.”
Rather than silencing her emotions, the “Fist City” narrative trope holds a megaphone up to them
by expressing the woman’s desire to commit physical violence.

Susan McClary defined music as “a medium that participates in social formation by
influencing the way we perceive our feelings, our bodies, our desires, our very subjectivities.”
(1994) She has challenged scholars to consider emotionality with the same zeal they would
around “faith, ideals, mortality, rebellion, and class.” (1989) In other words, scholars must regard
art about women as inseparable from their lived experience as women. Combining McClary’s
frameworks with feminist scholarship by Barabara Tomlinson and Sarah Ahmed, I interrogate
two contemporary country songs that demonstrate the “Lucille” trope (“She Won’t Be Lonely
Long” (2010), “Blue Ain’t Your Color” (2016)), and two that demonstrate the “Fist City” trope
(“Cowboy Cassanova” (2009), “Gunpowder and Lead” (2015)). Combining poetic and musical
analysis, this paper demonstrates how the “Lucille” and “Fist City” tropes reveal an aesthetic
trend of dismissal and retaliatory outbursts of women’s emotional experiences within the country
music genre.

Xavier Sivels, “‘Ain’t I Pretty?’: Secular Aesthetics and Alternative Performances 
of Black Masculinity in the 20th Century Sanctified Church Movement”

“‘Ain’t I Pretty?’: Secular Aesthetics and Alternative Performances of Black Masculinity in the
20th Century Sanctified Church Movement” looks at how, between 1920 and 1960, three charismatic
leaders in the Black “sanctified church” movement—Bishop Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace,
Prophet James F. Marion Jones, and Bishop King Louis H. Narcisse—mixed over-the-top
public personas and charismatic Protestantism to establish followings primarily popular with
working-class African Americans. Specifically, they adapted ostentatious fashion elements associated
with Black, secular cultures in blues, early rock n’ roll, and R&B to develop successful careers
as religious leaders. In their roles as religious leaders, Grace, Jones, and Narcisse developed cult followings
based on performances of Black masculinity that transgressed mainstream understandings of race,
class, gender, and sexuality in sacred and secular arenas.

Skyler Jones, “‘Faking a Straight Line to Suit Yourself Too Soon?: English Glam Rock,
Déclassé Dandyism, and the Subversion of the Suit

In some of the earliest academic writing on 1970s English glam rock, Dick Hebdige
expressed skepticism of glam’s potential for legitimate cultural rebellion due to its evasive turn
toward “disguise and dandyism.” 1 Yet Hebdige’s critique highlights two of glam’s key strategies
of subversion. This paper considers the relationship between English glam rock and dandyism,
focusing on the symbol of the suit. The archetypal dandy is a fundamentally ambiguous figure
that blurs normative categories of gender, sexuality, and social class—and does so dressed to the
nines in lavishly embellished and accessorized suits. What Susan Fillin-Yeh calls the
“destabilizing aesthetic enterprise” of the dandy can be in part located in this subversion of the
suit, a garment that often operates as a normative symbol of capitalist and patriarchal power. 2 By
queering the suit—making it ornamental, non-uniform, with ambiguous gendered and sexual
coding—the dandy threatens the integrity of these categories.

Glam rock’s threat to both dominant culture and earlier (straight, working-class, male-
dominated) rock music cultures lies in its disguise and dandyism. In placing visual and sartorial
“surface” on equal footing with musical “depth,” glam dandified rock; in a dandy embrace of
ornamental fashion, it disguised its working-class origins beneath an ironic performance of
opulence. While glam fashion is most immediately associated with overtly theatrical
costumes—feather boas, platform boots, space-age attire—the nonstandard suit is central to
glam’s visual aesthetics. From Bryan Ferry’s debonair, perpetually suited look to the ice-blue suit
in David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” video, dazzling, bespoke suits call attention to glam rock’s
place in a dandy lineage. Pulling from queer and Marxist theoretical traditions, I read the glam
suit as a costume of class drag: a camp, déclassé, proto-punk remaking of the suit that
destabilizes both conservative class posterity and traditional working-class politics.

Madalyn Pridemore, “Only A Woman Knows How to Treat a Woman Right:
Chappell Roan and the Queering of Femininity”

Chappell Roan’s music first captivated mainstream audiences’ attention
at a point in her discovery of personal identity where she confidently
affirmed her queer identity in her songs and public appearances, a
development which would continue in her subsequent releases. Her
increasingly uninhibited articulations of lesbian sexuality parallel an
intensification of her Chappell persona, beginning with the conventional
femininity adopted in her earlier music videos and growing into exorbitant
costumes that mirror exaggerations of femininity found often in drag. In this
paper, I will examine Chappell Roan’s concomitant development of a campy,
feminine persona and sapphic identity as a deliberate act of queering
femininity to move beyond a binary, heterosexual viewpoint which requires
women to be “pretty” to be successful in the hetero dating scene to a
female-gaze, queer vision of attraction that does not hinge on outdated
male-gaze beauty standards.

When asked about her style inspirations, Chappell responded, “I love
looking pretty and scary, or pretty and tacky — or just not pretty, I love that
too,” in a feather-adorned outfit on The Tonight Show. Chappell Roan’s
selection of a feminine, drag-inspired appearance empowers her to navigate
the liberation of female sexuality and disrupt gender roles through her
conscious use of camp, connecting her musical project to her childhood
admiration of ultra-feminine aesthetics. Across her songs “Casual,” “Red
Wine Supernova,” “Good Luck, Babe!,” and “The Giver,” and concurrent live
performances, Chappell continuously restates her queer identity through a
variety of campy visual aesthetics explored across multiple performances of
the same song, with each iteration adding to an evolving work-concept.
Chappell intentionally disentangles herself from the exacting standards of
mainstream, heterosexual viewpoints through her combination of overstated
feminine appearance with unmistakably queer narratives, defining a space
for her unrestricted expression of lesbian sexuality within the popular music
space. Chappell Roan’s curation of an explicitly sapphic persona provides
insight to the methods by which queer women have created a space for
themselves within the larger popular music landscape.

Rose Bishop, “Snapshots of the Counterculture: Rolling Stone, Rags, 
and the ‘Bay Area School’ of Fashion Photography, 1967–1983”

This proposed paper considers the role of Rolling Stone magazine (est. 1967), and its
short-lived companion devoted to fashion, Rags (1970-1971), in the development and
popularization of street style photography. Unlike the meticulously staged scenarios
found in the pages of conventional fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s
Bazaar, early issues of Rolling Stone and Rags were illustrated with candid snapshots
of self-styled models, who used clothing to express their identification with West Coast
counterculture and its associated music fandoms. These environmental portraits,
produced at nightclubs, music festivals, and record shops, reveal an alternate tradition
of street photography currently absent from our understanding of 1960s and 1970s
documentary practices. I will spotlight the work of Baron Wolman, Rolling Stone’s first
chief photographer (1967-1970) and the founding editor-in-chief of Rags, as well as
Wolman’s successor at Rolling Stone, Annie Leibovitz (1970-1983), to outline the use of
snapshot photography in these two interconnected publications. Such pictures, I argue,
reflect the shifting politics of beauty, authenticity, and personal expression in 1970s
America, and offer new insight into music media’s relationship with fashion reportage.

Katherine Reed, “‘Music is Serious, Fashion is Silly’:
Rock, Style, and Rolling Stone in the 1980s”

For the magazine’s 20 th anniversary in 1987, Rolling Stone planned a special issue with
David Bowie gracing the cover. The theme? “Style.” The extra-long issue included
photos and an interview with Bowie, along with a feature tracking the fashion history of
musical subcultures. This issue sheds light on RS’s 1980s turn toward fashion and the
way the magazine conceptualized its relationship to style in a changing media landscape.
Rolling Stone came to that focus well after rock and its denizens did, and for different
reasons– choosing to center Bowie’s fashion in 1987 is markedly different from doing so
in 1972.

This paper focuses on that anniversary issue to examine the 1980s connection between
music, fashion, and the press, explored by Hebdige and Davis in earlier contexts. To do
so, I begin a decade before that RS issue, examining glam and Bowie’s affinity for
subversive style and the ways periodicals like Creem began capitalizing on it through
their reader contests and “Eleganza” column. Drawing from new interviews, RS’s
fashion features, and internal magazine communications, I then focus on fashion editor
Laurie Schechter’s 1985-1987 tenure at RS as a turning point in that magazine’s fashion
coverage. I show how Schechter created RS’s fashion section and pushed for style
coverage that went beyond a mainstream advertising focus, and why Bowie as
figurehead (with all his fashion history) was important in that push. The 1985-7
coverage shows how musicians, editors, and fashion professionals understood music’s
importance in forging multimedia identities. While other Rolling Stone editors saw
fashion as a commercial opportunity, Schechter’s choices show the deep connection
between star image and fashion. Assessing the internal discussion around her music-
centered choices, I argue that this moment in fashion coverage reveals the changing
symbiotic relationship among fashion, music, gender dynamics and the press in the
1980s.

Kimberly Mack, “Nasty Gal: A Black Critical Response to
Betty Davis’ 1970s Live Performances”

Between 1973 and 1975, funk-rock singer, songwriter, and producer, Betty Davis,
released three albums, Betty Davis, They Say I’m Different, and Nasty Gal. While her
output failed to garner commercial success—radio, in particular, rarely played her
songs—her live shows became infamous. Davis’ onstage fashion certainly played a
role—her style was sexy and fabulous whether she was wearing hot pants and thigh
high platform boots or a trench coat with lingerie underneath (Mahon 237 ). But it was
what she did with her body onstage that caused moral panics among the Black middle
class, the White middle class print media, and unprepared (male) audience members.
Her pelvic thrusts and booty shaking was too much for onlookers unaccustomed to such
a joyous and uninhibited expression of Black female sexuality. The uproar was loud
enough for the NAACP to join protests to stop a Black radio station in Detroit from
playing her song, “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up.” (Mahon 231).

Davis played a series of live shows at the popular New York City club, the Bottom Line,
in June 1974 in support of They Say I’m Different and one show at the same venue at
the end of 1975 after the release of Nasty Gal. There’s virtually no extant live footage of
Davis from the 1970s, so what we know about those performances is largely mediated
through the writings of music critics who are overwhelmingly White and male. This
presentation will focus on Vernon Gibbs, a Black male rock critic who wrote positively
about Davis’ live performances in Phonograph Record, Crawdaddy!, and Penthouse in
1974 and 1976, calling out the underlying sexual repression, and latent sexism, in the
reception to her music. Gibbs’ intervention underscores the vital role that Black rock
critics played in articulating a politics of support and allyship for Black rockers who faced
obstacles in the music industry because of their race and, in this case, gender.

Moderator: Ambre Dromgoole, Cornell University

LaTasha Bundy, “The Whole Hood Watched Dragon Ball Z: Megan Thee Stallion, Anime, and Black Culture”

Megan Thee Stallion is the culmination of decades of the intermixing of East Asian and Black American cultures. Her use of specifically anime in her style and even cosplaying characters, has endeared her to fans of both hip-hop/rap and anime alike. Megan is not the first Black American super star to use East Asian and even specifically anime influences in her style and music. She comes from a long line of artists borrowing from East Asian culture (i.e. RZA, Kanye West, Thundercat, Lil Kim, and Nikki Manaj). She is however the most outspoken woman artist that exhibits “nerd culture” in both her music and her aesthetic.

Japanese artists have also benefitted from this relationship over the years. Anime like Cowboy Bebop, Lupin the Third, and Samurai Champloo use jazz music and hip hop as their backdrop to go with visuals that are seemingly irrelevant to the music. While all these anime end up a part of the zeitgeist, no show has the unanimity of Dragon Ball Z. The show was the biggest reason for the proliferation of anime in American culture at large, but more importantly Black Culture in America.

From Blaxploitation and Kung Fu, J. Dilla/Nujabesu, Black aesthetics in anime in Japan, Frieza calling Goku a “monkey” with a hard ‘R,’ and how a Black woman broke through the nerd fandom bubble and became a popular artist that specifically embraces what was once a niche interest. I would like to explore how we get to a figure like Megan Thee Stallion, who is uniquely positioned herself as the most famous vocal anime nerd in 2024.

Sean Davis, “Sounding Cool: The Aural Politics of Style in Video Games”

While the digital age may seem far removed from the era of James Dean, the specter of an aloof male in jeans and a leather jacket continues to haunt portrayals of so-called cool characters in film, television, and video games. Whereas the visual of coolness remains somewhat consistent in popular media, albeit with variations that reflect contemporaneous style and fashion, the sound of coolness continues to be elusive. This paper seeks to identify what, if any, the commonalities are among representations of implied cool characters in video games. The complex relationship between style, emotion, and gendered expression with depictions of coolness in game characters reveals multifaceted approaches to cool, ranging from the tongue-in-cheek critiques of game culture in Goichi Suda’s No More Heroes to the stereotypically standoffish attitude of Sonic in Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Using sociological and psychological conceptions of cool (Haynes, Brown, Frank) as a framework through which to apply semiotic and topical analyses (Tagg, Hatten, Monelle) to the music ascribed to cool characters in video games, I argue that portrayals of cool often emphasize masculinity, emotional avoidance, and aversion to authority by highlighting contextual cues in the music (genre or topical association, thematic development, character motif, etc.).
As Brown and Frank argue, coolness routinely assumes a predominantly masculine category determined in part by lack of emotional expression and perceived indifference in the face of challenges; however, when women are portrayed as cool, the expectation includes performance of male sexual fantasies (Brown 2021, Frank 1997). Using Sonic and Shadow from Sega’s Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, Travis Touchdown and Sylvia Christel from Grasshopper Manufacture Inc.’s No More Heroes, and Bayonetta from PlatinumGames’ eponymous title as examples, I will explore musical characterizations of cool as they relate to these parameters, engaging in either the subversion or fulfillment of cultural expectations.


Morgan Bates, “‘Is That My Camera?’: Voicing Camp on RuPaul’s ‘Snatch Game’”
Since its second season, RuPaul's Drag Race reality competition series has brought the practice of celebrity impersonation to the limelight in its seasonal, highly anticipated "Snatch Game" challenge. A parody of The Match Game, each contestant impersonates a celebrity with the goal of attaining the most laughs from RuPaul and the guest judges. These contestants are expected, if not required, to engage in camp aesthetics through volleyed jokes and cultural commentary. On All Stars Season 7, Jinkx Monsoon revitalizes camp by portraying and singing as Judy Garland. While Monsoon’s audience extends beyond the queer community, many of Monsoon’s jokes, vocal stylings, and gestures speak directly to a queer audience across generational and social divides, from Garland’s longtime fans to young Drag Race connoisseurs. Amidst corporatization of drag performance, Jinkx-as-“Judy” asserts her own power through camp performance designed specifically for her queer audience members.
In this paper, I position camp as an invariably queer artform, allowing members of the queer community to situate themselves in a heterosexist world. Reflecting upon Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Notes On Camp” (1964), as well as writings by Newton (1972), Meyer (1994), and Ross (1999), I engage with Monsoon’s performance to showcase four foundational functions of camp as 1) queer code and social commentary, 2) an act of parody and failure, 3) a “time machine,” bridging the gaps between temporal spaces, and 4) a radical act of queer worldmaking. Further, I identify the complex web of vocal references from queer popular music that tie these purposes together, notably the reallocation of RuPaul’s house music and the Drag Race title sequence, as well as Monsoon’s “hauntological” play with vocal “Judy-isms.” Through camp, Monsoon serves far more than looks and jokes; she brings viewers into a world where queerness is understood amidst the constraints of capitalism and heterosexism.
Chris Molanphy, “Mad Men and the Forgotten ’60s”

How the most over-lionized decade in pop culture revealed its fundamental squareness on the charts—and how a 21st-century TV show depicted the decade’s music as it was actually experienced“Blowin’ in the Wind.” “A Change Is Gonna Come.” “For What It’s Worth.” “Purple Haze.” “Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud.“ “My Generation.” What do these ’60s anthems have in common? They came nowhere near the top of Billboard’s Hot 100.
Now here are some ’60s songs that did reach No. 1: “Stranger on the Shore.” “Telstar.” “Sukiyaki.” “Dominique.” “Love Is Blue.” “Harper Valley PTA.”
Incidentally, these chart-toppers also appeared on Mad Men, the 2007–15 premium TV show that depicted, over seven seasons, a stylish advertising agency plying its trade across the 1960s. As ring-a-ding cool as Mad Men was—from its fashions to its set design—the music that show creator Matthew Weiner chose as syncs schooled modern audiences on how square the ’60s really were.
Ten years after Mad Men completed its run, it remains the most accurate depiction in popular culture of the lived ’60s, especially as reflected through popular music. By portraying a team of Silent Generation and older adults selling the American dream back to their fellow Americans, Weiner was presenting the ’60s as they were actually experienced—not so much a hippie decade as a kitsch decade; less a sociopolitical watershed than a pop-culture curiosity shop.
In this paper, I will walk through categories of ’60s hits—from instrumentals to quirky novelties, easy listeners to deep cuts—and discuss not only the songs featured on Mad Men but other Hot 100 chart-toppers that defined the decade but are largely forgotten today.

Moderator: Sarah Kessler, University of Southern California

Destiny Meadows, “Glittery Gowns, Holiday Cheer, and Caroling Capitalists: [Re]Configuring Intimacy through Modern-Day Christmas Specials”

In 2019, streaming giant Amazon Prime Video released The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show, a Christmas variety special starring Kacey Musgraves and featuring a revolving door of musical guests including Troye Sivan, Leon Bridges, and the Rockettes. As Musgraves moved through holiday standards like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” her wardrobe, too, continuously changed. Custom Gucci brooches, Giambattista Valli gowns, and Manolo Blahnik pumps provided a stark contrast to the intimacy suggested by her covers of World War II-era classics.
Musgraves’ Christmas Show, though perhaps novel in its brazen nods to designer fashions, comes from a lasting lineage of holiday variety specials—starring prominent figures—that were produced in the latter half of the twentieth century. From Judy Garland (1963) to Dean Martin (1967), and the Captain and Tennille (1976), celebrities have capitalized off the intimate affordances of the televised Christmas variety special. However, a larger communication circuit including new streaming partnerships with musical artists have reconfigured—through both fashion and capital—the imagined domestic space produced by these specialized variety shows. New forms of mediation have redefined such concepts as closeness and attainability while simultaneously reifying celebrity through visual signifiers, specifically through luxury clothing.
This paper examines two musical Christmas variety shows created by pop artists Kacey Musgraves (2019) and Sabrina Carpenter (2024). Drawing on the work of sound and media scholars Christina Baade (2022), Karen McNally (2012), and Eric Drott (2024), I argue that the connection between fashion and present-day media technologies has contributed to shifts in audience perceptions of celebrity intimacy in Christmas programming. I suggest that newer variety shows reify investments in both the celebrity and the streaming services, whose strategic, capital-driven partnerships are demonstrable through changing fashion and visual spectacle.

Clay Conley, “Black T-Shirts and Cargo Pants: The Disguised Labor of Sound Engineers”

Just like theatrical tech crews, sound engineers have a uniform: all black, black work pants, black band t-shirts, and black comfortable sneakers or boots (Curtin and Sanson 2017, Mayer, Banks and Caldwell 2009). Because live music productions center around the spectacle of an artist performing, black clothing allows the laboring body of the sound engineer to blend in with the black stage and curtains of most venues (Kielich 2024). The illusion of invisible laboring bodies can best be described as a “swan effect” (Behr et al. 2016) where essential work is below the surface, behind the musicians, their instruments, and the stage. Beyond wearing black, sound engineer’s technological extensions are visually disguised through cable management, discrete mixing stations, pre-show sound checks, etc.
In amplified venues, sound engineers have audible traces through the balance of the mix, prevalence of feedback, monitor levels, and/or audio effects. During ethnographic research working as and alongside sound engineers at mid-sized independent venues both in Ann Arbor, MI and New York City, I observed that sound engineers work to minimize these audible traces. In addition to invisibility, sound engineers are also inaudible. Jacob Faraday (2021) recognizes this concealment as a culture of control wherein the eponymous sound guy is distinctly masculine.
In this cultural space, essential workers prefer to cease to exist. Sound engineers find pride and success in convincing ticket holders that the artists are the primary actors in the realization of liveness. As visually and audibly disguised laborers serving the success of the performer, a job well done for an engineer hinges on the eclipsing of the barrier between artist and audience. In the pursuit of liveness, mediation, sound engineers and their technology, yearns to be hidden, drawing the audience closer to the living presence (Emmerson 2007) of the artist. 

Rebecca Rinsema, “Putting the Brakes on Accelerated Consumer Culture: Pedagogy, Fashion, and Comedy on ‘The Voice’”

The 13-year-old singing competition show ‘The Voice’ can be read as an example of our contemporary accelerated consumer culture. Biannually producers cast singers from all over the United States to compete in becoming the next pop phenom. The show trades on packaging and cycling through the traumatic life journeys of the cast members and attached emotional vocal performances. With a new potential phenom spotlighted every five minutes, roughly, (during ‘The Blinds’), the show can be viewed as a microcosm of the consumer culture it exists within. In this presentation, I complicate the above reading of the show by emphasizing the characteristics of ‘The Voice’ that I argue decelerate consumer culture, and of popular music in particular. Typically, an accelerated consumer culture focuses consumers’ attention on the ‘now’ and ‘next,’ and, while this is true for the attention that audiences pay to the contestants, the attention paid to the coaches requires further framing. The coaches are popular music ‘icons;’ that are seasoned in the music industry; by industry standards, they are old. The coaches, thus, call to mind ‘the past,’ encouraging viewers to locate the contestants’ versions of the songs within a meaningful (nostalgic) historical lineage. As one would expect, the coaches are teachers of the contestants, which encourages viewers to reassess notions of ‘born-with-it’ vocal talent that more easily aligns with accelerated pop music culture. The coaches bring something ‘new’ to the table, in that they position themselves for the reality television medium as fashion influencers (Gwen Stefani, Ariana Grande, Snoop Dogg) and comedians (Michael Buble, Blake Shelton). I read this reinvention of the ‘old standards,’ along with the coaches’ pedagogical and contextualizing functions, as supporting a kind of stasis and continuity of pop culture that works against the inertial motion toward and allure of the ‘always new.’

Karlyn King, “Witchcraft Feminism: Conjuring Rebellion in Music and Fashion”
This presentation explores how the symbolism and aesthetics of witchcraft have become powerful expressions of feminist resistance in contemporary music and fashion. I delve into the ways artists and creators use witchcraft-inspired imagery and narratives to challenge patriarchal norms, empower marginalized voices, and remix societal expectations. By focusing on the intersection of witchcraft, feminism, and pop culture, I illustrate how music and fashion create spaces of resistance and empowerment, transforming these cultural expressions into tools of social and political critique.Through case studies from the Riot Grrrl movement to contemporary artists like Florence Welch and FKA twigs, I analyze how the “witch” archetype resurfaces as a force of creative rebellion, with style and sound as its primary mediums. In both music and fashion, witchcraft aesthetics—dark florals, ritual-inspired accessories, and mystic symbolism—become expressions of defiance, resilience, and female empowerment. This convergence not only celebrates individual agency but also fosters a collective identity rooted in strength, mystique, and self-possession.

By examining album art, music videos, performance styles, and fashion trends, this presentation reveals how witchcraft feminism remixes traditional narratives, turning them into powerful commentaries on contemporary issues. Here, fashion and music are not just forms of self-expression but spells cast to challenge oppressive structures, conjuring alternate realities where women’s voices, autonomy, and creativity are central. In listening to these rebellious frequencies, we witness how witchcraft-inspired feminism pushes us toward the edge of what’s possible—where style and sound become acts of reclamation, transformation, and collective empowerment, offering a vision of a world where self-expression is both magical and revolutionary.

Larissa Irizarry, “Cowboy Carter: Cosplaying American Womanhood”

In 2024, Beyoncé was all but consumed with citing national belonging: she introduced Team USA for the Paris Olympics, she dressed in red, white, and blue, was crowned with various cowboy hats, and in her promotional photos for her most recent album she rode astride a horse while wielding an American flag. Although 2024 visually stands out as Beyoncé’s “cowboy era,” she has cited her southern American roots since (at least) 2016. It was that year that she performed with The Chicks (previously The Dixie Chicks) at the Country Music Association Awards. Despite her real-life credibility as a native Texan and her adherence to the sonic signifiers of the genre, her reception by country fans ranged from mixed to racist.

During the release of Cowboy Carter, the album’s promotional photos were accompanied by the caption, “[This album] was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcome.” Beyoncé has yet to explicitly connect Cowboy Carter to the reception of her CMA Awards performance; regardless, the album brings to the fore the historical race gatekeeping of not just country music, but American womanhood. Beyoncé's citing of Americanness took a campy turn in a surprise release of the music video “Bodyguard.” In the video released on election day, she urged people to vote while cosplaying white American womanhood via Pamela Anderson’s most famous television, movie, and awards looks. In this paper, I contribute to the growing discourse on national identity (Hoffman), nostalgia (Ahmed; Berlant), and genre (Goldin-Perschbacher), and I argue that Cowboy Carter is Beyoncé’s most important political work to date in her pointed satire of American womanhood via cowboy culture.

Blair Smith, “Black Femme Frequencies: DIY Style Cassettes as Archives of Rebellion”

This experimental session blends live performance, soundscapes, and participatory art-making to explore the creative potential of Black femme cassette tape culture. Centering the cassette as a tool of sonic and visual storytelling, I examine how Black femme artists use the medium to remix their realities and imagine radical pasts, presents, and futures. I draw from Black feminist thought, sound studies, and cultural histories of cassette tape aesthetics to investigate how sound, style, and materiality intersect at the edges of pop music, fashion, and artistic expression.

We begin with a live sound collage that immerses participants in the textures of DIY cassette culture. Featuring loops of Black femme recordings layered with archival sounds, spoken-word excerpts, and experimental beats, the performance highlights the imperfections and distortions—such as tape hiss and warping—that characterize cassette sound. Following the performance, the session transitions to a showcase of recreated DIY cassette covers inspired by Black femme artists. These hand-drawn, collaged, and text-based designs are presented as visual archives that extend the radical potential of the cassette beyond sound.

We then move into an interactive art-making activity where participants are provided with materials to design their own cassette covers. This hands-on exercise mirrors the DIY ethos of Black femme cassette culture, inviting attendees to experiment with visual storytelling while reflecting on their own narratives of resistance and creativity. The final segment features a collective playback of the audience’s contributions, integrated into a live soundscape created on-site. This collaborative act reinforces the communal nature of Black femme DIY practices, emphasizing co-creation as a method of rebellion and world-building. By situating Black femme DIY cassette culture at the intersection of pop music, fashion, and creative rebellion, this session aligns with the conference’s call to listen intensely to the frequencies of agitation and revolt.

Teresa Turnage, “‘I Choose Violence’: An Exploration of Feminist Rage in a Man v. Bear World”

Feminist rage serves as a powerful political tool, channeling women's collective anger for sociocultural change. Social media has become a pivotal space for expressing and disseminating such political content in mediated forms, including music, movement, and text. Here, I offer a reading of feminist rage musically expressed in contemporary social media discourse. Pop musician Jax released the 2024 song "I Choose Violence,” in part as response to the so-called #manvsbear trend. The trend posed a hypothetical question—would women prefer to be left alone in the woods with a man, or a bear?—and sparked widespread debate over women's perceived safety in society. Jax’s musical response combines powerful lyrics with a striking visual: Jax holding hands with a bear, evoking both vulnerability and strength. The visual plays a crucial role in connecting the song to the broader viral discourse, highlighting the intense emotional expressions of feminist rage, such as frustration, empowerment, and defiance, alongside the psychological impact of societal gender expectations.

I argue that the amalgam of audiovisual aesthetic choices in "I Choose Violence" constitutes a reckoning with feminist rage in 2024. The song is situated within an emergent genre of digitally-curated feminist music, which leverages social media’s viral nature to amplify its message. This genre’s ability to engage with online publics and viral phenomena connects individual anger to collective movements for social change. Jax's song responds to media trends, while contributing to ongoing dialogues about women's rights and safety.

Drawing on feminist aesthetic theories (Cusick, 1994; Ngai, 2009) and a philosophy of responsive listening (Kramer, 2019), I explore how digital musicking might contribute to projects of social change. I show that sonic and visual practices might offer new tools for analyzing emotionality, activism, and the intersection of media and justice in reshaping digital spaces and society.

Moderator: Lauron J. Kehrer, Western Michigan University

Katie Moulton, “Nelly's Band-Aid: Physical Vulnerability as Pop Fashion Statement”
In the early 2000s, at the height of his pop domination, rapper and hip-pop artist Nelly began sporting a Band-Aid on his left cheek. The small adhesive immediately sparked speculation, imitation, and derision. Was the unmissable Band-Aid an idiosyncratic fashion choice, a blemish cover, or a deeper political message? The answer is some combination of all three, but the facial decoration became his much-debated signature for a decade. Nelly ditched the bandage many years ago, but the image looms large in cultural nostalgia. In this talk, I will tell the conflicting stories behind and the legacy of Nelly’s Band-Aid. And I will explore why this provocative adornment – a pop icon demonstrating physical vulnerability as part of their style iconography -- is particularly rare and deeply tied to expressed masculinity, connecting it to other examples from Axl Rose’s leg casts to 50 Cent’s bulletproof vest, and even – woefully – Trump followers’ ear bandages. 
As a millennial St. Louisan, I have grown up with Nelly-as-cultural-icon and written extensively about his impact. As I did with my 2023 presentation on The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” and how wedding playlists predict future pop canon, I hope to examine a piece of seemingly fluffy pop ephemera from a new, illuminating, and entertaining angle. 

Paige Chung, “Grills and Bling: The Entanglements of Johnny Dang and Black, Excess Aesthetics in Hip-Hop Culture”

In Erykah Badu’s 1999 song “Southern Girl”, she sings “home of the teeth that’s gold,” proclaiming the American South’s reign on grills, gold, and lineage of grill beauty rooted in a Black aesthetic of excess. Teeth have a long sociocultural history as an expression of beauty and class status. Hip-hop culture elevates teeth beauty with grills, such blinged-out embellishments are boasted in raps communicating upward mobility. Johnny Dang is a famous Vietnamese jeweler based in Houston, Texas. Since the mid-1990’s he’s been recognized as the top celebrity jeweler amongst icons Migos, Soulja Boy, Simone Biles, etc. How does Johnny Dang, a Vietnamese refugee, become a symbol of hip-hop grills culture, a culture rooted in Black diasporic aesthetics? 
Aesthetics of excess, in Jillian Hernandez parlance, is a physical representation of abundance by Black and Latina women that boast their beauty and establish their humanity despite oppressive conditions. Shine and bling aesthetics, as theorized by Krista Thompson, function as forms of resistance through agency and empowerment for African Diasporic communities. In this paper, I trace the collaboration between rappers and famous Vietnamese jeweler Johnny Dang through Dang’s guest appearances across music videos from Nelly’s “Grillz” to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Bigger in Texas” to think critically about the material products (grills) and aesthetic codes (Blaccent) that Dang sells and embodies. Hip-hop’s entanglement with Blackness as a fixed, ontological category is troubled through the intimate relationship between Johnny Dang and hip-hop celebrities, I argue, showing hip-hop’s changes through time and dissemination of cultural exchange and conversely, Vietnamese migration post-1975 end of the Vietnam war. By traversing through these relationships and music video moments, I unravel the entanglements of hip-hop with Johnny Dang that reveals the tensions, contradictions, and displacements of Black aesthetic practices that arise when adapted by other diasporic communities. 
Shiva Ramkumar, “Aesthetics of Authority: Styling Contradiction in Tamil Hip Hop”

Artists in the world of Global Hip Hop face a difficult challenge: to stylistically authorize themselves as Hip Hop artists while also performing authenticity in their own cultural contexts and audiences. Tamil Hip Hop in particular deals with the distinct, complex worlds of American Hip Hop (and the specificities of Black culture encoded within it) and Tamil media and culture. Both these worlds are full of multiple, competing aesthetic ideologies along lines of gender, race and/or caste, class, and more. I focus specifically on Tamil aesthetic ideologies as they draw from Tamil film, and how male protagonists in particular have long been a key stylistic influence on Tamil youth. I trace Hip Hop’s aesthetic ideologies to music videos and red carpets, which boast a diverse variety of styles across different time periods and genres, from streetwear to gender-fluid high fashion; styles that have not only been taken up within Hip Hop communities, but that have gone global in popular culture more broadly.

I interrogate the ways in which the aesthetic ideologies of Tamil films and Hip Hop interact in the music of Tamil Hip Hop artists, and how they might emerge as both complementary and conflicting in different contexts. I center this investigation on the music of Tamil rappers Yung Raja and Paal Dabba in particular, analyzing their music videos to (1) identify the specific aesthetic ideologies they draw from, and (2) discuss the ways in which they are privileged, transformed, or contradicted. An examination of how these aesthetic ideologies are negotiated can offer new insights into how authority and status can be constructed in the diverse world of Global Hip Hop.
Alexander Moore, “‘Wear Your Halo Like a Hat, That’s Like the Latest Fashion’: Hip-Hop Identity, Merchandising, Fandom, and Chance the Rapper’s ‘3’ Hat”


In 2016, posters for Chance the Rapper’s upcoming mixtape Coloring Book were wheatpasted around major metropolitan cities across the United States. The cover features Chance (real name Chancelor Bennett) with a smile on his forward-tilted face, wearing a New Era ® snapback embroidered with the number “3,” which Chance has stated represents his third mixtape, the Holy Trinity, and his 3-part family (himself, his partner, and daughter). Other than the “3,” the mixtape cover art does not include an artist name or album title, as it is presumed that Chance the Rapper had enough of a strong following to market without any titles. 
    Chance garnered a massive fandom from his independently released mixtapes 10 Day (2012) and Acid Rap (2013). Coloring Book was no stranger to the same process of his previous mixtapes. He recorded the album without a major label and released the mixtape online for free. The record eventually went on to become a critical success, winning Chance a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in 2014. After the breakthrough success of Coloring Book, he began selling the “3” hat online and, in 2018, 2 years after the album was released, claims that he made $6 million on selling the hats. 
    From “peacocking” to “hypebeasts,” there are various motives to express fashion within the culture of hip-hop. While acknowledging the commercialism and exploitation of fans that merchandise may have, this paper investigates how Chance the Rapper’s hat has given him an iconic look, allowing fans to engage with the merchandise and feel a personal connection to the artist, who has consistently gone on record about his philanthropic work of donating his income to arts education in Chicago.  

Moderator: Alex Diaz-Hui, Princeton University

In his 2013 review of Charli XCX’s debut studio album True Romance, Pitchfork writer Marc Hogan despairs at the growing tendency to treat Internet platforms like genres in their own right. For Hogan, this kind of “technology-based shorthand” includes both earlier disparagement of Charli’s singles as “fucking terrible Myspace music” and the association of her eventual debut with the aesthetic sensibilities of popular microblogging site Tumblr. Eleven years later, still riding the aftershocks of Charli’s Brat summer, the close relationship between digital cultures and pop music feels as inevitable as ever, from the algorithmically- generated playlists and social media pages that structure our consumption (Galloway, Goldschmitt, and Harper 2020) to the growing expectation that our favorite artists double as influencers, tastemakers, and brands in their own right (Vesey 2023). And yet, even in this increasingly digital and disconnected musical landscape, questions of the body and embodiment are never far behind. This panel brings together papers that consider this intersection of music technology and the body across four distinct case studies, reflecting on the ways that users remix, reprogram, cover, and camp. As the panelists consider subversive cover songs, nostalgia-imbued music media, the seeming paradox of using AI to drive technostalgia, and the radical potential of accessible queer signifiers, we understand embodied listening and music fandom as a practice that transcends eras and upends framings of contemporary music cultures as disembodied or depersonalized. How do we maintain a connection to the voices, bodies, sounds, and technologies of the past? What are some of the ways that technology helps music and listeners play dress up? And how do we continue to listen, perform, record, and accessorize in ways that foreground bodies and embodiment, even — and especially — in the context of our digitally mediated world?

Amy Skjerseth, “Wearing Out Genres: The Cover Song as Radical Refashioning”

How do singers who perform cover songs wear or refashion the voices and genres associated with the “original” singers? In this paper, I explore cover songs as a form of embodied fandom that rehearses familiar debates in popular music: the status of the original versus “copy,” the stickiness of genre categorizations, and perceived markers of “authentic” singing. I examine how Chance the Rapper transforms Nelly’s 2002 “Hot in Herre” into a country rock bop. Chance performed this cover in December 2021 on Jimmy Fallon’s That’s My Jam, a Tonight Show spin-off that showcases music and comedy games. The “Musical Genre Challenge” selects a song for Fallon’s guest to sing in a completely different genre—supposedly selected randomly, but the show’s high-polished performances seem preplanned. For critic Jessica Wang, Chance adapts Nelly’s hip hop/rap hit with a “silky smooth [...] southern accent so convincing you might just think you’re at the Grand Ole Opry” (2021). Wang emphasizes Chance’s vocal suaveness as if it’s only through cunning that a Black rapper has pulled off country music, much like the reality show’s audience reactions racialize a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing perception of Chance’s voice and accent. These reactions to his cover’s embodiment of country underline the recording industry’s long association of country music with whiteness, despite recent calls to acknowledge country’s roots in Blackness (Giddens, 2019; Royster, 2022; Beyoncé, 2024). Moreover, the audience’s surprise recalls rapper-turned-singer judgments about T-Pain that separated rapping from singing in Black virtuosity. As I argue, fashioning one’s voice into a supposedly antithetical genre from the original can expose the arbitrariness of genres and other aesthetic judgments about music (Brackett, 2016). By exploring cover songs as something artists can wear in order to refashion expectations about genre, vocality, and race, I show their force as cultural intermediaries in the music industry and beyond.
Morgan Bimm, “The Children Yearn for the Cords: Tech Anxieties, iPod Nostalgia, and the Resurgence of Wired Listening”
Chris Anderson, “Sonic Hauntology, Technostalgia, and the Implications of AI-Generated Retro Aesthetics in New Music Production”

Morgan Bimm, "The Children Yearn for the Cords: Tech Anxieties, iPod Nostalgia, and the Resurgence of Wired Listening"

In the midst of a retro tech renaissance that has seen retail giants like Urban Outfitters selling refurbished iPods and campaigns to evade Apple’s DRM to preserve “lost” clickwheel-era games, there’s another nostalgia-tinged marker of bygone MP3 cultures making its way back into cultural relevance: wired or corded headphones. One recent explainer connects the newfound popularity of wired headphones to their affordability and functionality. It’s far easier to ensure lossless audio, reports SoundGuys (2024), by plugging in. Other explanations for the phenomenon are more ephemeral, rooted less in tangible benefits and more aligned with the new cultural and political relevance of “vibes” (James 2021). An Instagram account with over 16k followers, Wired It Girls describes wireless Apple AirPods as “functional and practical, which is the antithesis of cool. We use them because Apple forced us to.” In this paper, I examine the cycles of nostalgia that have contributed to 2000s MP3 cultures’ seemingly unshakeable place in our collective, cultural imaginary — or, as music writer Niko Stratis (2023) wryly observes, how “time make[s] easy fetishists of us all.” How do wired headphones represent a tangible and literal tie to the past? How have the aesthetics of vintage music technology also been invoked to signal certain ideas about one’s gender, class, privilege, and subcultural capital (Thornton 1995)? And in what ways might this apparent rebellion against the consumer logics and homogeneity of today’s technologies be unknowingly replicating certain stories of music’s materialist histories note for note? This paper explores wired headphones as more than a reactionary tech impulse to argue that this moment of technological remix culture can teach us something about the surveillance capitalism that defines contemporary streaming, the power of wired media as signifier, and what room for resistance we have left.

Chris Anderson, "Sonic Hauntology, Technostalgia, and the Implications of AI-Generated Retro Aesthetics in New Music Production"

Advances in music recording software and virtual instruments have empowered music creators with a greater set of tools to produce content. Yet many producers harbor a nostalgia for older vintage and retro music aesthetics as evidenced in music that presents what writer Simon Reynolds (2011) considers endless retrospection within the start of the twenty-first century. This nostalgia is not only a longing for the sounds of the past but also manifests as a longing for vintage recording methods and retro equipment in a form of technostalgia (Burns 2021). A twenty-first century fetishization of vintage gear, analog synthesizers, and the tactile nuances of tape recording has led to a resurgence of music technologies in both hardware and anachronistic software plug-in forms, while music styles such as vaporwave, chillwave, and synthwave reimagine retro aesthetics through recycling the consumer market-driven aesthetics of the 1980s in films, video games, television programmes, and advertising (Ballum-Cross 2021). This paper argues that not all musical styles that integrate retro aesthetics of the twentieth century are a pastiche of consumer kitsch but are instead in critical opposition to the reliance of retro aesthetics in popular music. Mark Fisher discusses sonic hauntology as a style of music that is not so much a longing for retro aesthetics but is instead a critique on culture’s current reliance on nostalgic depictions of the future that cloud the sense of imagining a different future (201

Moderator: Victoria Xaka, Cornell University

Andrés Amado, “Refashioning of La Catrina in Drag: A Queer Latine Vision for Día de los Muertos”
This paper explores how drag shows, as exuberant performances of gender, can offer a queer vision of Latine/x identity in the interstitial space of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through music, dance, and fashion. While Latine/x queer communities in the Texas Rio Grande Valley had remained at the edge of both mainstream and queer cultures in the United States, they began to draw media attention with the increased politization of the border region brought about by Trumpism. For instance, in 2019, NPR covered a protest drag show at the border wall in Brownsville, Texas, that raised funds to support LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. In popular culture, the 2024 season of the reality television show RuPaul’s Drag Race featured Geneva Karr, a contestant from Brownsville. In these instances, local drag artists put on display elements of their transnational identities as queer Texan-Mexicans through music and fashion. To further investigate the local refashioning of intersecting identities through drag, this presentation analyzes a performance I observed in the border city of McAllen, Texas on November 3, 2019, which celebrated the Mexican holiday día de los muertos. Studying the musical, choreographic, and costume design elements of the performance, I argue that this display of music and fashion offers a queer utopian vision as described by José Esteban Muñoz: a world not quite existing as a present reality, but a reconfiguration of elements from the past that project a queer aesthetic possibility. This vision came to life through juxtapositions of binary elements commonly associated with Mexican and queer cultures—sometimes in tension with each other. By refashioning La Catrina, the skeleton-like demure lady symbolizing the Mexican holiday for the dead as a sexualized burlesque character, the performance offered a queer vision of local traditions at the edges of borders and identities.
Chaz Antoine Barracks, “Durag Matter: Everyday Aesthetics and Black Queer Spectacle”
The Black queer-femme body as a site of rebellion within the homeplace (bell hooks, 1990). I got my first durag from my favorite cousin’s boyfriend. While babysitting me, he gave me a fresh line-up and a wave-brushed my curls down into an active ocean breeze. He then stood behind me, tying on the durag with a joyous sense of Black pride that bonded us. Since the making of my 2020 film Everyday Black Matter, I have been in critical dialogue with artist-scholars whose work contextualizes Black popular and material culture(s) from the everyday as archival sites of queer worldmaking. Becoming a popular trend in the late 90’s into 2000’s, durags have evolved as a marker of innovative style owned by the Black community— who is solely responsible for transforming this protective style item into iconic and industry-disruptive style (hiphopcloset.com). Fashion designer Kadeem Fyffe recently inserted durags into his most recent NYFW show “Wedding and a Funeral” at the Park Ave Cathedral stating, “playing off the typical high-fashion show practice of including a bridal piece as the closing look, I featured a white lace durag on the “groom” to offer contrast to his black structural look. I saw it as a critique of rigid gender roles in fashion through (re)placement of the “veil.” It was a look!!”

This innovation through durag fashion-art that I mark as rebellious Black queer representation, is what I plan to explore in this lo-fi critical kiki about mundane Black matter. It features rich auto-theory and mixed-media methods (sound/oral history, short film, fashion photography) to center durag fashion as sites of rebellion that ferments Black politics of pleasure and joy in industry/institutional critique. I’m also displaying my own 8-ft long durags as research material to help blur the lines between resistance and refusal in Black archives that disregard rigid respectability in order to complicate the straight/queer binary. 

Black artist have been engaging durags style as disruptive style for quite some time now and I want to enter the chat, at PopCon 2025 to explore the fugitive possibilities of Black everyday style. This is a work-in-progress exhibition in the making that builds onto my recent durag exhibit works, presented at Honcho Campout (2022), Studio 23 (Richmond, Va), and the Iridian Gallery (Richmond, 2022). 
Sofi Chavez, “‘She’s So Solid,’ ‘She’s So Soft’: Butch-Femme Style in MUNA’s Lesbian Erotic Gaze”
LA-based indie pop band MUNA builds a lyric lesbian erotic world grounded in felt materials. In their 2022 self-titled album, the band lingers in the aesthetics of lesbian life: how it feels to see a girl’s silk dress “dancing in the wind,” or to be with a girl “of material substance” who is “so solid” (“She’s using her hands, she’s pulling the levers”). This essay explores the ways in which MUNA’s attention to style reveals a lesbian erotic gaze. I first take up their chart-topping hit “Silk Chiffon” (MUNA ft. Phoebe Bridgers) to elucidate femme style and desire, and then turn to the more subtle elaborations of butch desirability in their less commercially popular track “Solid.” Through close-readings of the lyrics, music video, and the band’s self-produced merchandise, I attend to the ways in which lesbian identity emerges from encounters with the material world; beauty for MUNA and their listeners emerges not from normative or conventional femininity, but is found in the ways that women manipulate the world around them. The essay also considers the endurance and transformation of contentious categories of “butch” and “femme,” turning to popular music’s resignification of these historic, situated social identities.

Ryan Lambe, “A Battle Cry for Queer Worlds: Voice, Music, and Sound in Live-Action Roleplay”
In August 2022, a transgender woman in red armor and top hat shouts, calling for archers—including myself—to volley our foam-tipped arrows at people in imp costumes while she whacks her foam sword against a large round PVC shield. In an interview, she tells me that playing this game gave her the confidence to speak up and ask for a raise at work, where many transgender women face discrimination. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in two fantasy live-action roleplaying games (LARPs) in California and Florida to examine how LGBTQ players use music, sound, and vocality for queer world-making. Unlike digital roleplaying games (RPGs), LARPers fully embody their characters, using voices, playing music, swinging swords, shooting arrows, and dressing in medievalist garb. LARPers craft  “kits”—costumes that, with vocalism, accent, and music, perform their character. I situate LGBTQ LARP performance using ludomusicology and transvocality. Queer games scholars document how transgender players in massively multiplayer online RPGs try out gendered identification and performance before risking their bodies in reality. Similarly, ludomusicologist William Cheng amplifies how queer and trans gamers in online games risk discrimination when speaking. Where these scholars attend to digital games, I argue that queer and trans LARPers in analog games use music and voice to refigure social spaces. However, LGBTQ LARPers also play against a trend in LARP celebrating violent, militant masculinity. This paper builds on ethnomusicologist Luis Garcia-Misprieta’s insights about surface positive affect in creating queer worlds by locating LARP as engaged queer solidarity amidst escapist gaming. The sonic queer world-making of LGBTQ LARPers becomes more urgent for queer and trans survival in the context of legislation targeting queer and trans spaces for elimination. 

Moderator: Eddy Francisco Alvarez, Jr., California State University, Fullerton

Emma Jensen, “Dressing Fat: Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey, Sophie Tucker, and Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton”
Willie Mae Thornton hated wearing dresses. Sophie Tucker insisted on expensive dresses that accentuated her body type. Despite being known for extravagant gowns and weighty jewelry, a popular image of Gertrude Rainey features her wearing a suit in an advertisement for “Prove It on Me Blues.” How did dressing for, or around, fatness influence the perception of a musician’s gender in the early nineteenth-century United States? Furthermore, how did the fashion choices of a fat performer affect their positionality in a rapidly changing music industry?
In this presentation, I argue that the fashion choices of fat, nineteenth-century femme musicians in the United States allowed, and occasionally forced, fluctuation in their perceived genders, genres, and social desirability. Such fluctuations largely depended on a performer’s body size, race, and class, as I demonstrate with case studies of Rainey, Tucker, and Thornton. Comparisons among these three fat femmes showcase how fashion choices enabled them to assert autonomy over their bodies, cement their legacies through specific sartorial choices, and influence how audiences heard and engaged with their public personas.   
Ellie Martin, “Radicalizing Pregnancy: Black Femininity, Fashion, and the Reclamation of Bodily Agency in the Public Eye”
In recent years, Black female musicians have transformed pregnancy into a radical and empowering form of self-expression, rejecting societal norms that historically silenced and concealed maternity. Artists such as Rhiannon, Beyoncé, and Cardi B challenge traditional expectations by celebrating pregnancy through fashion and art, reclaiming agency over their bodies. In her 2022 Vogue interview, Rhiannon redefined maternity as an integral aspect of her artistic identity, using fashion to highlight her pregnant belly rather than conceal it. These artists position pregnancy as a visible, empowering act, challenging the historical pressures of the entertainment industry to maintain a polished, unaltered professional persona (Gimlin, 2007; Harrison, 2014).
This paper explores how Black women use pregnancy as a creative rebellion, reshaping cultural narratives of beauty and motherhood. Beyoncé’s iconic 2011 MTV Video Music Awards performance and Cardi B’s unapologetically pregnant SNL appearance in 2018 are pivotal moments where pregnancy became a statement of strength, creativity, and defiance. These acts reflect broader societal shifts, as Black women confront systemic inequities while redefining their public identities.
The 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade complicates this reclamation of bodily autonomy, disproportionately endangering Black women, who are 3.5 times more likely to die during pregnancy or postpartum than white women due to systemic racism in healthcare (PRB, 2023). These public celebrations of pregnancy by Black artists not only reject societal expectations but also amplify awareness of racial disparities in maternal health. Through an analysis of Rhiannon’s Vogue interview and other iconic examples, this paper examines how Black women challenge traditional norms by transforming pregnancy into an act of empowerment. Ultimately, these artists use their visibility to celebrate motherhood, reclaim agency, and resist societal and systemic limitations, asserting their creative and personal autonomy as acts of radical empowerment.
Aliyah Martinez, “BIG MAMA: How Women in Hip Hop Take Up Space”
Whether a woman is strutting towards a private jet in a 30-inch middle part “bussdown” or infamously walking the red carpet with one exposed breast covered with a dainty purple pasty, women in Hip Hop, like many of their round-the-way counterparts, consistently challenged the status quo. Female rappers in a male-dominated industry use intersectionality to challenge notions of femininity, invisibility, and autonomy. This paper examines how female rappers take up space through their style and dominating personalities. I will visually analyze music videos, red carpet footage, and performances from artists Lil Kim, Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion, and Latto. All four women have notably been centered in conversations regarding hyper-sexuality and respectability.
    In contrast, many discussions revolving around female rappers in the past engage in finding a balance between modesty and bashfulness. This study will highlight the cultural shift from women finding empowerment through emulating a baggier style towards figure-hugging garments, colorful hair, bold makeup, and decorative accessories. It is imperative to understand further the intentionality of how many female rappers choose to position themselves by emphasizing their sensuality and taking hold of the male gaze within their parameters. To widen the scope of research for women’s fashion practices is crucial to understanding how embodiment and adornment can challenge subversive societal ideas.
    Furthermore, I find it increasingly necessary to deepen the scope of research on Black American women’s beauty and fashion practices as much innovation within the past decades become globalized, risking an erasure from their historical markings. Subculture and sexualized historical caricatures aimed towards Black women serve as foundational theoretical concepts that continue to be at the forefront of the politics in female rap. This paper unpacks Black women’s desire to be unapologetically themselves while challenging their worthiness through derogatory perceptions contrasting notions of modesty and respectability. 
Melanie Ptatscheck, “From Heroin Chic to Shape Wear. Body Images, Fashion Trends, and (Mental) Health in Popular Music”
Concepts about the body, health, and illness are socioculturally and historically variable; they represent social constructions that reflect cultures, politics, and moral ideas of a society at a particular time. Popular music and its diverse cultures may also have a decisive impact on those constructions and thus contribute to the social definition of a ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ body. Health-threatening effects can also accompany this notion: The (re)production of toxic fashion trends (e.g., ‘heroin chic’ in grunge or ‘size zero’ low-rise pants) and unrealistic ideas of norms (e.g., flawless, overtrained bodies of pop stars) can lead to distorted perceptions of self- and body images and even to mental illnesses such as depression and eating disorders. Especially in the last decade, however, it has become apparent that popular music can also function as a health-promoting tool, make diverse body performances visible, and challenge ‘unhealthy’ fashion trends. In particular, female pop musicians such as Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, and Lizzo broke with heteronormative ideas of the body and mental health stigmata by personally addressing issues such as self-love and body-positivity. The latest with Ariana Grande’s statement on TikTok about body shaming over her ‘unhealthy’ look, a ‘healthy’ discourse around body images was initiated against the background of self-determination and subjective wellbeing. Based on an interdisciplinary research project, this paper is located at the interface of popular music studies and public health. It provides a discourse-analytical approach to the ‘healthy turn’ in popular music relating to prevalent body norms and fashion trends at the intersection of the music/celebrity industries and contemporary self-improvement culture. Body- and health-related transformation processes will be reconstructed by focusing on body images and fashion styles of selected pop musicians and their (self-)representations, discussing how these trends shape/are shaped by (gendered) discourse and power dynamics.

Moderator: madison moore, Brown University

Zoey Greenwald, “TURNING LOOKS AT THE CLUB: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY”
My residency behind the bar at one of Brooklyn’s most popular nightclubs; my best friend’s residency behind the counter at one of Brooklyn’s most popular vintage shops: our jobs, day-in and day-out; the wild glamor we clock into and out of.
The act of turning looks at the club has always been and will always be political. As queer people, nonwhite people, and otherwise people for whom the narcotic glamor of the club and of high fashion are vital to survival—people for whom nightlife may be safer than the daytime— a new internal social structure forms. Informed by drag and queer history, what we wear to the club is still, in constantly new and different ways, important.
Whether or not the club acts materially as a place of employment, the club inscribes and situates social politics and hierarchies. The club is a venue for the careful breaking of time—tracks spin into sets, stretching the late-night pliable; drugs open perception wide; dancing renders the body ecstatic. It is exactly this undefined and mutable state which allows queer life to thrive and community to grow. Within this schema, the Look takes on the weight of the Signifier—for which High Fashion is remixed and re-interpolated.But what happens when we, in these spaces, are interpolated into workers? Workers towards the club; towards high fashion? The question becomes: what can we take. No, literally: what can we take from this place. Teflar bag. Floor drugs. Anna Bolina dress. Shots. DJ slot. Gucci corset. Won’t fit me might fit you. Does anybody have a safety pin? A slicing moment of precious, slowed conversation in the greenroom. Ringing in ears. Rick Owens shorts. We’re going to be icons forever. I mean we’re going to be sisters forever.

Carla Vecchiola, “Unyielding Underground: Detroit Techno's Legacy of Resistance, Creativity, and Resilience”
Detroit techno is black music, born out of the city's African American community in the 1980s. Due to both geographic and cultural distance from mainstream music industry benefits, Detroit techno has produced a distinctive sound reflecting the city's unique cultural and historical context. This presentation explores how Detroit's techno scene used music as a form of rebellion and self-expression, laying a foundation for what would be possible in any future electronic music production.
Characterized by its DIY ethos and willingness to experiment, Detroit's music scene has sustained an underground culture valuing creativity and self-expression over commercial success. Examining the intersection of music and social change in Detroit's techno scene highlights music's power as a tool for resistance and innovation, particularly against systemic inequality and marginalization.

From the beginning, Detroit’s techno scene was futuristic. Along with Chicago house, it laid a foundation that influenced all electronic music that would follow. Detroit techno musicians have never remained stagnant and are still pushing electronic music forward. Therefore the original techno musicians simultaneously serve as both legacies and innovators. The current social scene in Detroit mirrors that timeless approach by being intergenerational. To be out in Detroit is to see 50 and 60 year old DJs playing for crowds that are multiracial, sexually diverse, and young and old—including parents who sometimes attend parties with their adult children. Detroit's intergenerational danceclubs offer a unique space for connection and innovation, evoking the strengths of the past while maintaining continuity with the futurism that existed at the start of techno in Detroit. 
Young, up-and-coming artists and traditionally overlooked early musicians share commonalities in their efforts to maintain an underground culture. Could this collaboration lead to more equitable compensation for underground artists? This presentation will contribute to the conference themes by highlighting music's power as a tool for creative rebellion and social change, shaping the sound and attitude of a community, and challenging dominant cultural norms.

Isabel Gurrola, “Runways in the Underground: Fashion, Sound, and Identity in Los Angeles Techno Culture”
his presentation explores the intersection of fashion, sound, space, and performance within the contemporary Los Angeles underground rave scene, focusing on a bi-monthly event that hosts a techno runway show. My conceptual framework of sonic spatial resistance is central to this analysis, which integrates Gaye Theresa Johnson’s spatial entitlement, Jose Anguiano’s sonic citizenship within Latino cultural citizenship, and Deborah Vargas’ lo sucio framework. This approach emphasizes the reclamation and repurposing of spaces by marginalized communities, where music fosters identity, resistance, and solidarity. These underground runways are heavily influenced by ballroom culture, where participants challenge and play with gender roles, much like the ballroom houses of queer Black and Latinx communities. Like ballroom culture, this underground runway lets attendees—especially queer men, women, and trans individuals—challenge gender norms through fashion, with queer men in skirts, women’s clothing, and others blending masculine styles. This defiance of binary gender expectations embodies lo sucio, as Vargas (2014) describes it, where genderqueer people of color resist erasure by engaging in non-conforming performances. Spatial entitlement, as defined by Johnson (2013), describes how marginalized groups form new collectivities through imaginative uses of space and technology, fostering belonging and solidarity in spaces such as speakeasies, warehouses, and these techno events. Sonic citizenship, according to Anguiano (2018), highlights how music and sound technology become tools for marginalized communities to assert presence and resist assimilation. The sonic environment of raves, often active from 11 PM to 6 AM, underscores this defiance through music that challenges silence and discipline. In addition, this presentation contributes to Ethnic Studies by illustrating how underground runway raves embody cultural expression, resist dominant power structures, and foster identity through sonic and spatial practices that echo decades of underground culture.
Viet-Hai Huynh, “Cosplaying Dystopia: Techno-Orientalism and Cyberpunk at Raves”
Asian American rave fashion has historically been marked by representations of “Asianess” through forms of popular culture, including anime, Sanrio, and Pokémon. However, Asian American rave fashion has recently shifted towards cyberpunk aesthetics, utilizing its grunge and punk inspirations to incorporate their ethos of refusal, rebellion, and dissatisfaction with society. While cyberpunk subcultures replicate dystopian realities as a form of social commentary, raves have often been conceptualized as spaces of utopianism. My paper asks what it means for the Asian American rave scene to embrace an aesthetics of dystopia through cyberpunk aesthetics when Asian Americans have suffered from the negative tropes of tecno-Orientalism. As David Roh states, Asian Americans have been contained within tropes of techno-Orientalism that frame Asia as a dystopian cyberpunk future (Roh et al. 2015). Scholars of rave culture have also argued that the rave is a less-than-utopic space given its racial exclusions (Garcia-Mispireta 2023). Building on this work, I argue that Asian Americans’ embracing of techno-Orientalism through rave fashion constitutes a refusal of the rave as a utopian space while envisioning new radical futures that embrace messiness and imperfection. Through their conceptualization of the rave as a dystopia, Asian American ravers contest the common perception of the rave as a space of belonging, community, and togetherness, revealing the inadequacy of the ideas of peace and perfection. I postulate that raves are alternative dystopias that exist alongside our current dystopia, a

Moderator: Chi Chi Thalken, Scratched Vinyl

Tyler Bunzey, “Styling the Self: The Music Video as a Primary Site of Hip-Hop Persona Development”
Since the rise of the popularity of the hip-hop music video in the 90s with platforms like Ralph McDaniels’ Video Music Box and Yo! MTV Raps, the music video has been central to many artists’ artistic practice. The medium itself is flexible and has expressive aims that serve multiple ends. For example, the music video can be simultaneously a marketing tool for a label’s new release and an aspiring filmmaker’s artistic medium. It can be simultaneous publicity for a new artist and a visual representation of aurality. Put simply, the music video is not singular in its expressive purpose. 
This paper argues that varied music video performance strategies in hip-hop culture serve as a medium for artists to develop their respective hip-hop identities. The music video performance impacts everything from the compositional process to the development of artists’ personas. Put simply, the music video is not an extension or reflection of live performance but a key performance practice itself, one that extends the artists’ presence beyond the stage or recording booth.  Music videos, I argue, are largely autonomous platforms in hip-hop culture. Rather than being contingent on an artist’s stage presence, fan base, or recorded archive, the music video is a primary site of identity development for hip-hop artists. After a brief discussion of the history of the music video in hip-hop culture, this paper will examine how the video bibliography of Busta Rhymes works to extend and develop two distinct personas in his work: the trickster and the mafioso. This persona shift highlights how persona development is an artistic practice in its own right and how the music video is a predominant platform in the production of persona.
Shana Goldin-Perschbacher and Elizabeth Lindau, “Thrift Store Queens: The Musical Fashioning of White Working-Class Femininity in 80s Film and Music Video”
John Hughes’s 1986 cult classic Pretty in Pink materialized on a tip from its 17-year-old star Molly Ringwald. The two regularly shared music, and Ringwald’s recommendation of a 1981 Psychedelic Furs song inspired the film’s title, screenplay, and heroine, Andie. Like many of Hughes’s teen drama protagonists, Andie comes from a working-class background. Out of financial necessity, she cultivates a distinctive fashion sense using handmade and hand-me-down items. Andie’s thrifted self-styling is, crucially, linked to music–she works at a record store owned by Iona (Annie Potts), who continually reinvents herself through vintage looks.
Andie’s thrift-store chic was part of a larger trend within early MTV videos, as superstars Cyndi Lauper and Madonna layered garments and accessories of different styles and eras. In “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Lauper cavorted about the Lower East Side in a vintage pink satin dress and porkpie hat. In “Lucky Star,” Madonna writhed on the ground in an all-black assemblage of cropped mesh tops, fingerless lace gloves, and rubber bracelets. The mistaken identity drama of Madonna’s 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan stems from a jacket exchanged for sequined boots at a used clothing store. 
This collaborative presentation will explore thrifted fashion in 1980s pop music and pop-music inspired film. In these texts, white working-class women (real and fictional) use eclectic, vintage, gifted, or handmade clothing to reframe their class status as a cool, outsider persona–what Theo Cateforis (after Kathleen Hanna) calls the “Rebel Girl.” Vintage shopping and “visible mending” are seeing a resurgence among consumers and online fashion influencers, who present these practices as sustainable solutions to fast fashion and textile waste. Gen Z’s craze for thrifted fashion is prefigured in the “thrift store queen” sartorial styles of early 1980s white working-class pop singers and film characters. 
Del Cowie, “The X Factor”
With iconic videos like Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” Usher’s “Yeah!” and Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” to his name, music video auteur Director X has applied his visuals to some of the biggest hit singles of the last 25 years, directing well over 100 music videos of countless hit songs. While many of the aforementioned titles in Director X’s musical oeuvre are unapologetically commercial in nature, serving the needs of the artist and the song, there is also a counternarrative present in his work. In many of his music videos, X, born Julien Lutz in Toronto, Canada has navigated the music video world to consistently communicate Black diasporic culture, specifically Black Canadian culture in his work. By tracing and situating the roots of his emergence and creative inspiration in 1990s Black Toronto – a time that according to Idil Abdillahi and Rinaldo Walcott’s BlackLife represented an unprecedented explosive presence of Black Canadians in music and other creative arts –  this paper will recontextualize Director X’s use of the music video medium as asserting the presence, viability and resonance of Black Canadian culture. Through additional analysis of videos such as Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” and Rihanna’s “Work” I will explore how X extends this cultural foundation to facilitate a visual representation of Black diasporic culture.
Eric Lott, “Recording Western Recording”
In 1969, Harry Nilsson recorded the song “City Life” at United Western Recorders on Sunset Boulevard for release on his fourth album Harry, which arrived in August of that year.  In a gentle falsetto and head voice that descends into the chest only on the third verse, a plinking soft-shoe arrangement behind it, the singer declares himself fed up with the city life, but his pledge to grab a plane and come back to his folks withers in the light of the city’s promised dollars and dreams.  There was nothing obviously rebellious about the style of the tune, despite Nilsson’s soundtrack association with the X-rated film Midnight Cowboy, released earlier that year; in fact it carries the same unplugged innocence of his “Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me.”  In 2003, celebrated mixed-media artist Mathias Poledna made a short film called Western Recording (on exhibit in 2023, where I saw it, at Vienna’s modern art museum the Mumok) that depicts the recording session that produced Nilsson’s song.  In an unassuming button-down shirt and beige bell-bottom slacks, a Nilsson lookalike wearing monitor headphones does a credible version of “City Life” into a boom mic while reading from a music stand and surrounded by speaker cabinets and other studio paraphernalia.  That is the work Poledna gives us, and it is a fine puzzle: a primal scene of recording for which we have no original, only a copy of the record; a loving historical gesture recreating a hallowed but unheroic late-60s L.A. session subculture that raises all kinds of questions about mechanical reproduction, in this case the mechanical reproduction of a moment of mechanical reproduction.  Far from revolt or rebellion of a “Dick Hebdige” kind, the studio scene here nonetheless depends on certain uncanny reversals that unsettle history, the solidity of reference, 60s commonplaces, and the musical given, exploring the operation of artifice in a modality of artifice that appears to deny artifice.  This “transvaluation of the norms of reality” in aesthetic formations is what Herbert Marcuse in The Aesthetic Dimension (1977) called “stylization,” for him a mode of transcendence that was a technology of liberation.  Both Godard’s 1+1 and Warhol’s screen tests seem to lurk in Poledna’s provocation.  But this is not the workaday studio boredom of the Rolling Stones in the former or the withering of the star image in the latter but an insistence on the scene of Recording, something like the infrastructure of style, the styling of style itself.  T

Moderator: Alan Parkes, University of Delaware

Aidan Levy, “Way Out West: Stetsons, Mohawks, and Frontiers of Sound and Style”
The cowboy hat and the mohawk are deeply entrenched symbols in the iconography of American popular music, synonymous with punk nonconformity and country swagger. However, there is a counternarrative of artists of color who have signified on the fashion and style of cowboys and Native Americans to critique America’s founding myths, exposing the country’s settler colonial past while simultaneously honoring indigenous culture and claiming a shared cultural heritage—an emancipatory vision through sound and style. This presentation begins with Sonny Rollins and traces this history of sartorial and coiffed resistance to the present. In the 1957 album Way Out West, Rollins paid tribute to one of his idols, Herb Jeffries, the “Bronze Buckaroo.” Rollins and photographer William Claxton shot the iconic cover photo in the Mojave Desert, with the rogue saxophonist wearing a Stetson and holster, brandishing his tenor like a six-shooter with a rented steer’s skull in the background. The album crossed a new sonic frontier while subverting racial stereotypes as a forerunner to Blazing Saddles. In 1963, Rollins started wearing a mohawk haircut, not as a metonym for nonconformity, but to pay homage to indigenous music and culture. In performances, he would frequently wear a cowboy hat only to remove it mid-performance and ironically reveal a mohawk underneath, claiming not only the tradition of the western as his own cultural inheritance, but also the buried history of dispossession that represents the dark side of the American dream. To what extent has this tradition been an act of cultural appropriation? To what extent has it been used for cultural critique? I will consider this lineage of resistance through the iconography of the cowboy hat and the mohawk, including Joe Strummer, Lil Nas X, Taboo from Black Eyed Peas, Shaboozey, and Cowboy Carter. 
Hannah Moltz, “Y2K Cowgirl or US Imperial-Core? Examining the Enduring Legacy of the Cowboy and Reconfiguring the Contours and Limitations of the Cowgirl Aesthetic as Subversive Resistance”
What does the rising popularity of Y2K styles, particularly the Y2K cowgirl, reflect within the contemporary context of challenges to US imperialism, counter-offenses to these challenges from coalitions of formerly colonized nations, some of the largest protests in US history, and widespread disenchantment with the United States’ imperial agenda at home? Pop feminism continues to supply a steady stream of subversive starlets like Chappell Roan, Kacey Musgraves, and Sabrina Carpenter - whose looks and sounds can be linked to the many cowgirls before them in Dolly Parton, The Chicks, Madonna, and many more. The cowgirl motif enjoys a far reach, found in Mitski’s Be the Cowboy, Rina Sawayama’s “This Hell,” and arguably the highest impact homage to the cowgirl in Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. This paper will examine the roots of the cowgirl aesthetic, the signals deployed by the aesthetic, and compare the critical gaze applied to different bodies who utilize it to send messages to their audiences about who they are. It will ask if this look constitutes an aesthetic of resistance and liberation, and what the limits and accomplishments of that aesthetic might be, or another nostalgic trend to drive over-consumption and diminish attention given to aesthetics that signal counter-cultures and drive organization and direct action. It seems worth wondering whether or not this is an aesthetic of resistance or a continuation of a decades long infatuation with subverting the cowboy to create the cowgirl - one with equal opportunity to dominate and exploit rather than liberate from a culture of imperial violence. To consider these questions I will engage the work of Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism, Nell Irvin Painter’s History of White People, Tansy E Hoskins Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, as well as journal publications from Nicole Doer, Lisa Jacobson, Lydia Goehr, and Meredith Levande.  
Lisa Sorrell, “From the Saddle to the Stage: Country Music and the Evolution of Cowboy Boots”

Cowboy boots have long been the standard footwear of country music, both for the performers and their fans. Exploring the history of the cowboy boot, examining how they evolved from plain black boots the cowboys of trail drives wore, to the brightly colored, high-heeled, pointed-toe footwear we recognize today, this project proposes how this evolution happened alongside, and for the benefit of, entertainment. Given that there is little academic research on cowboy boots, and that the craft of cowboy boot making is traditionally passed along orally from master to student, primary sources are limited to historical photos, vintage boot catalogs, and the memories of aging boot makers. With over thirty years of experience as a cowboy boot maker, I have access to the craft and its embedded knowledge, giving me unique access into its history and traditions. This project will highlight how cowboy boots, the most universal staple of country music fashion, contributed visually and aesthetically to country music from its beginnings to today.
Jacob Kopcienski, “‘White Trash Revelry’: Rural Queer Style, Narrative, and Strategy in Adeem the Artist’s Country Music and Media” 
In their 2023 Opry Debut, the non-binary, queer, Knoxville-based musician Adeem the Artist performed their single “Middle of a Heart” wearing bright red lipstick, wide-brim hat, and a floral jean jacket. Their flamboyant working-class apparel and twangy country vocal affectations underscored the song’s lyrics, which trace tensions between pride, restrictive expectations, and violence in small-town American life. Critics lauded Adeem’s performances and Americana Emerging Artist of the Year nomination as a progressive shift in rural politics and country music industries. Yet, performers like Jason Aldean and conservative legislators in Tennessee claimed rural landscapes, iconography, and styles for conservative values through performances and queer/transphobic legislation. This paper examines the sonic, narrative, and aesthetic strategies Adeem the Artist uses to navigate contested symbols and experiences in rural life and Country Music. 
Using quare (E. Patrick Johnson, 2001) as an intersectional framework, I argue that Adeem “sincerely” uses country aesthetics (Goldin-Perschbacher, 2022), narratives (Thomas-Reid, 2020) and sound (Royster 2012; Stoever 2016; Murchison 2018) to represent queer negotiations with rural power structures. Cast Iron Pansexual (2021) queers Appalachian aesthetics and gender conventions to construct non-linear narratives through shame, identity, and place (Halberstam, 2005; Gray, 2009). White Trash Revelry (2022) reworks sonic and narrative tropes structuring white, working-class masculinity in 1990s Country Music to express disappointment in rural economies and national politics, while imagining intersectional coalitions (Marcus, 2024).
Adapting “acoustic citizenship” (Sonevytsky, 2019), I argue that Adeem uses these stylistic moves in ways that model aesthetic strategies for navigating country music industry and re-envisioning rural municipal politics. Adeem’s grass-roots social media “Redneck Fundraisers” (2022-2024) to produce country albums by circumventing queerphobic industry barriers. Their music videos (e.g. “Run This Town”) use rural queer styles to reflect rural activists' ambivalent attachment to municipal politics, while constructing coalitions that address federal and state-level political failures. 

Overview:
This proposed performance and panel discussion offers an immersive experience that bridges the music, fashion, and political identities of three of Oakland’s most iconic blues musicians: "The Cowboy" William McCallister, "The Pimp" Fillmore Slim, “Lady” Earnestine Barze, and Ronnie Stewart. These legendary figures will headline a live blues jam session, followed by a panel discussion where they will explore the intersection of their music, fashion, and political expression.

The Performance:
The jam session will feature a four-piece blues band led by McCallister, Slim, and Barze, whose distinctive styles—characterized by the deep roots of traditional blues, mixed with the rich cultural history of Oakland—offer a powerful sonic and visual experience. Audiences will be immersed in an authentic blues jam, showcasing the raw emotion and spontaneity of the genre.

The Panel Discussion:
After the performance, Dr. Victoria Xaka will lead a panel discussion centered on the ways in which these musicians iconic fashion choices—ranging from McCallister’s cowboy hats and boots to Slim’s nostalgic street-inspired wardrobe, to Barze’s bold aesthetic—reflect both their individual identities and their political stances. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Victoria Xaka, a Black feminist music theorist, who will guide the conversation through topics of cultural appropriation, political resistance, and the role of fashion in articulating the cultural significance of blues music in the context of Oakland’s Black Radical history. The panel will provide attendees with an insightful look into how fashion is used as a tool for political and personal expression within the intergenerational community supported by Oakland’s local blues scene.

Conclusion:
This performance and panel discussion will offer a unique lens into the intersection of music, fashion, and politics, celebrating Oakland’s rich cultural heritage while fostering important dialogue about identity, resistance, and artistic expression.

Alan Parkes, “Nailed to the X: The Sounds and Styles of Later 1980s Straight Edge Hardcore Punk”

With a playing time of just two minutes, hardcore band Bold’s “Nailed to the X” adhered to the
assaultive sound that characterized early hardcore punk – distinct from its punk predecessor by
its simplicity, increased speed, and aggression. In it singer Matt Warnke shouts:

Working together with straight clean souls
Working for a common cause, the youth unite
Join with us in our fight
Nailed to the X

Expressed by an emphasis on “the X,” a symbol of straight edge identification, and cleanliness,
the song represented a broad embrace of straight edge – abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and
promiscuous sex – among hardcore fans and band members. Straight edge, along with
disavowing nihilism popularly associated with punk and the metal sound that many earlier
hardcore bands turned toward by 1985, helped to recover hardcore punk from what many
hardcore scene members saw as a mid-decade nadir. However, by the end of the decade, straight
edge hardcore’s success came at the cost of immersing itself in cultural influences beyond its
venues and hangouts. While straight edge bands created music in line with that of their hardcore
predecessors, they signified a dependency on latent support of broader cultural trends, marked a
drug-free philosophy that mirrored prevailing approaches to anti-drug programs of the decade.
At the same time, the popularization of a hip-hop style alongside a growing hardcore youth
culture at the end of the 1980s signified a new phenomenon in which white hardcore fans
retained a distinct musical form while embracing a hip-hop inspired fashion. This paper will
assess changes in hardcore punk at the end of the 1980s, exposing more than the evolution of a
youth culture. Through analysis of hardcore music, zines, and flyers, this paper will argue that an
adherence to a rising white consumer culture, inspired by black music makers and icons, and the
popularization of anti-drug messaging mediated hardcore’s subversion of American cultural
norms in the late 1980s.

Robbie Segars, “Gatekeeping Punk: Tim Yohannan, Maximumrocknroll, and the East Bay Scene”

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Tim Yohannan had a significant, though often overlooked,
influence on reshaping underground values within the East Bay punk scene. With his local
radio show, Yohannan gained a large teenaged following by promoting lesser-known bands whose
musical style reflected his “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) ethos, political views, and preference for socially
conscious punk. In 1982, he extended this influence into a national magazine, Maximumrocknroll,
which many fans revered as the “punk rock bible.” The success of his local radio show and magazine
eventually enabled Yohannan to fund the Gilman Street Project, an all-ages music venue in the East Bay
intended to be inclusive and collectively run. Despite its stated values, however, Yohannan continued to
exert his influence to exclude bands and overturn policies that with clashed his personal tastes.

This paper explores Tim Yohannan’s position as a gatekeeper in the East Bay punk scene. Building on the
work of David Pearson, Pamela Shoemaker, Timothy Vos, and Charles Goshert, I trace Yohannan’s rise as a key spokesperson in both the local and national punk communities. By analyzing interviews with Yohannan,
oral histories with other scene members, and columns from Maximumrocknroll, I argue that Yohannan
was a highly influential figure who used his outsized status in the East Bay scene to help redefine punk
as an anti-capitalist, DIY practice—a philosophy that many insiders still use to police punk’s boundaries
today. This process allowed Yohannan to problematically act as the authority on punk rock, which had adverse consequences for the bands he personally disliked, who both had trouble finding acceptance within the
punk communities, and, after the fact, had their impact on punk history diminished. Ultimately, this research
illustrates how punk gatekeepers like Yohannan have problematically wielded their social power to promote
their personal tastes as the new “universal” standard.

Abigail Ryan and Jerika O'Connor Hayes, “Latex, Whips, and Minivans: 
How Be Your Own Pet’s Mommy (2023) Confronts Youth through Punk’s History of BDSM Aesthetics”

Two concepts that have accompanied the legacy of punk rock are the spirit of youth
rebellion and incorporation of subversive countercultures, namely the aesthetics of BDSM. Early
feminist musicians including Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux, and designer Vivienne Westwood,
used these styles to create social commentary, push the envelope, and demonstrate the personal
liberation found in youth revolting against the established systems of old. Both the adoption of
the subversive visuals of BDSM— an acronym from three sets of terms: bondage/discipline,
domination/submission, and sadomasochism—and punk's ties to youth have unfortunately led to
the acceptance, visibility, and opportunity within the music subculture to decline drastically for
those outside the youth demographic. In 2023, American garage-punk band Be Your Own Pet
unexpectedly released a new album, a full fifteen years after their untimely breakup in 2008. The
album, titled Mommy, was both a return to their biting, noisy rock, and a new venture for the
band as they unabashedly explore aging, motherhood, and politics through BDSM related
metaphor and aesthetics. Our findings are established through close readings of music and lyrics
from the album, informed by literature on punk and feminism by Vivien Goldman and Sheila
Whitely, aging and pop music by Abigail Gardner, as well as Margot Weiss’ concept of
“working at play” in BDSM subculture. In this paper, we argue that on Mommy, Be Your Own
Pet uses BDSM signifiers to carve out space for 30 and 40-something punks to explore
adulthood with the freedom and fearlessness usually reserved for youth. Through these complex
juxtapositions, we posit that Be Your Own Pet not only furthers the lineage of punk and BDSM,
but offers a fresh perspective on the difficulties of aging, feminism, and what it means to be
punk.

Jocelyn Aguilera and Yadira Arroyo-Díaz, “Fashioning Resistance: Race, Gender, and Style 
in LA's Punk Scene”

Led by secondary rockera educators, this presentation explores how marginalized punks in 1970s
and 1980s Los Angeles crafted resistance through DIY fashion. Focusing on East LA's and Hollywood's
vibrant scenes, the presentation will uncover how people of color, women, and queer punks challenged
both mainstream society and punk's white heteronormative culture.
Through an interactive gallery walk featuring archival photographs, participants will explore how pioneers
like Teresa Covarrubias and Alice Bag incorporated political messages and cultural elements into their fashion,
while Vaginal Davis's drag performance art and DIY style challenged gender norms and racial boundaries
in the punk scene. By examining these intersectional fashion practices, the presentation reveals how clothing
became a crucial medium for expressing political dissent and cultural pride in LA's diverse punk community,
offering valuable insights for all attendees but especially educators looking to incorporate these themes into
their classroom.

Moderator: Jalylah Burrell, Loyola Marymount University

Victor Arul, “Fabrics of Rebellion”

I am proposing the presentation of a work-in-progress experimental, non-linear collage film
exploring the intertwined evolution of fashion and music within the counterculture of the 1960s.
Utilizing archival footage, original imagery, archival audio, and layered visual techniques, the
film examines how the fashion of the era became an emblem of musical rebellion, cultural
identity, and political dissent.

The aim of the film is to present fashion not as static artifacts but as living expressions of the
dynamic ethos of the 1960s counterculture. I hope to provoke an atypical presentation of how
fashion and music were pivotal in challenging social norms, redefining aesthetics, and
empowering communities.

The film employs a collage aesthetic as opposed to a manner of chronological storytelling. The
aim is to capture a mosaic of impressions, textures, and sounds which mimic the fluidity and of
the countercultural movement.

1.  Juxtaposing stark monochrome imagery of postwar conservatism with vivid,kaleidoscopic visuals of
   countercultural attire inspired by psychedelia, and DIY aesthetics.
2.  Layering performances from acts including The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and Janis Joplin
   with snippets of protest chants, spoken word, and fashion show soundtracks to emphasize the synergy
   between sound and style.
3. A featuring of how clothing ranging from bell-bottoms to tie-dye, became tools for individualism and
   collective identity, directly tied to movements like civil rights, feminism, and antiwar protests.
4.  Incorporating interviews with designers, musicians, and activists of the era alongside depictions of contemporary reimaginings of 1960s fashion, highlighting its enduring legacy.

The film will last for 20 minutes.

The aim of the film is offers an account of historical and cultural narratives through an
experimental filmic lens. By prioritizing non-linear storytelling, the film seeks to resonate
emotionally and historically, evoking lasting impact of the 1960s counterculture.

Jalylah Burrell, “She Flew over the Bridge Wars: Faith Ringgold Rings the Changes”

In 1988, Faith Ringgold completed “Change 2: Faith Ringgold’s Over 100 Pound Weight
Loss Performance Story Quilt,” comprised of panels, paint, patterns, photos, stories, and
self-described “songs and raps.” With a body of work included oil painting, acrylic
painting, prints, soft sculptures, textile arts and performance, the nimble artist and
activist was always experimenting with and exhausting the possibilities of form.
Ringgold performed this and other quilts over the course of a few years and this paper
attempts to hear them through formal analysis of her stitches, world play, memoir, We
Flew Over the Bridge, as well as reviews of these performances. This talk lends an ear to
the songs and raps brought into view with this quilt to examine how Ringgold’s style
melded sight and sound. To facilitate this conversation, I put this quilt in conversation
with the work of a Rozeal, a more contemporary Black woman artist whose work
transposes hip hop’s sonic features onto canvasses. If, as Rozeal recognizes in her own
work, “sampling, scratching and blending, all of these elements show up in the
paintings,” what elements show up in Ringgold’s story quilt and how do they help us to
hear a louder, and contemporaneous, moment in hip hop historiography, the Bridge
Wars?

John Wood, “White Men / Black Leather”

In the second half of the 20 th century, the black leather jacket (BLJ) became omnipresent
in Western popular culture. As an index of rock-‘n’-roll rebellion, the BLJ today graces the
shoulders of everyone from babies and pets to Taylor Swift and Elon Musk. Yet for all its
ubiquity, scant scholarship has attempted to document the BLJ’s history, let alone interrogate its
significance. And while plenty of critics have accused White rock ‘n’ rollers of appropriating
African-American music, no one, it seems, has thought to question the racial implications of
literally wearing black skin.

This paper hypothesizes that the black leather jacket functioned as a marker of racial
difference during the era of the American civil rights movement. I begin by tracing the history of
the BLJ from motorcycles to movies to music subcultures. Using methods of structuralism
(popularized in the same era as the BLJ), I then compile a schema of oppositional binary codes to
explain the BLJ’s significance in relation to music, politics, and race. This schema is then tested
by comparing two performances by Elvis Presley. Placed in historical context, these analyses
imply that Presley strategically performed both whiteness and blackness at alternate times in his
career, and that the latter was sartorially backed by the BLJ. However, drawing on
poststructuralist queer theory (Halberstam 2005), I suggest that the BLJ was not simply a means
of racial mimicry (in the minstrel tradition), but rather served as a technology of transracial
performance for individuals challenging the binary structures of midcentury American society.

In light of recent political trends, this paper concludes by considering how the BLJ in its
“frozen” mass-commodity form (Hebdige) may confirm Susan Sontag’s assertion that the
popularity of black leather portends a turn toward fascism.

In this Pop Conference tradition, presenters each share brief reflections on songs about style.

Lynette Dixon, “Shuttling Toward a New Blue Sun: The Southern Fantastic and Black Masculinity”

At the 1995 Source Awards, an award show celebrating hip hop, Andre 3000 declared in his acceptance speech for Best New Rap Group, "The South has something to say." This statement has continued to resonate in hip hop as a regional and stylistic intervention into a genre dominated by New York and Los Angeles. Nearly three decades later, Andre’s 2023 album New Blue Sun, a meditative flute-based project accompanied by a visual album (called Listening to the Sun), offers a striking departure from the lyricism in his earlier work. Andre, now 48, explained this shift by stating he does not “have anything to rap about” at this stage in his life. Yet, through this work, he articulates a rich embodied vernacular of play, imagination, and improvisation that reconfigures how we understand Black masculinity in hip-hop and popular culture more broadly.
In Listening to the Sun, the visual album, Andre engages in a series of quotidian, playful gestures: rolling on the ground with his flute, swaying like a tree, embodying a panther, and moving through meditative poses. This performance, though markedly different in style from his earlier work, resonates deeply with what I call the “Southern fantastic” style—a mode of performance that blends the quotidian and theatrical to imagine beyond “the American grammar book” (Spillers 2003) of Black gender. In my dissertation, I propose that style is not simply sartorial, rather it names modes of embodiment that short-circuit the logics of liberal subjectivity rooted in the violence of chattel slavery.  The “Southern Fantastic”, which my dissertation traces through Outkast, Missy Elliott, and other Southern hip-hop artists of the 1990s, foregrounds play, imagination, and fantasy as one strategy of “stylistic embodiment” and identification. Andre’s current work extends this lineage, pushing against the rigid grammars of Black masculinity in popular culture. His flute, rubber ducks, and yoga poses challenge the limited performances expected of Black male artists, demonstrating that even though he does not have anything to rap about, he still has much to say. 

Patrick Mitchell, “‘It's Not a Phase, This Is Who I Really Am’: Emo and the Contradictions of Protest Masculinity”

Between 2001 and 2008, emo grew from underground DIY scenes to sweeping commercial success, becoming one of the final mainstream rock genres. Central to emo’s cultural impact was its distinct fashion—long, side-swept bangs, black skinny jeans, and “guy-liner.” The emo fashion trend achieved its broad cultural impact amongst its predominantly suburban teenage fans due to the prevalence of retail chains such as Hot Topic (a clothing and accessories store specializing in “counterculture”) cropping up throughout American shopping malls. Emo’s expressive style underpinned the music’s notion of expressing one’s deepest emotions. Although some rock critics celebrated the male emo style for modeling a softer, emotionally open masculinity that resisted the post-9/11 gender backlash (Eisenstein 2002, Tickner 2002, Goldstein 2003, Faldui 2007, Coon 2013), scholars have begun to probe the genre’s legacy of entrenched chauvinistic narratives (Williams 2007; Ryalls 2013; De Boise 2014; Fathallah 2020, 2021; Mack 2021). In this paper, I examine how emo’s “feminized” fashion aesthetics masked deeper misogynistic narratives while normalizing its sentimentality and emotional openness. By applying R.W. Connell’s concepts of hegemonic, complicit, and subordinate masculinity (Connell 1995, 2005) to the post-9/11 socio-cultural sphere, I argue that emo’s countercultural veneer functioned as a protest masculinity that served as both an appeal and a defense of patriarchal ideology—effectively concealing and legitimizing the genre’s underlying gendered contradictions.

Christi Jay Wells, “Race-ing The Rock: Identity, Ideology, and Celebrity in Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s Wrestling Entrance Themes”

Reflecting on composing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s entrance theme “Electrifying,”
World Wrestling Entertainment’s in-house composer Jim Johnston remarked that “Rock
was actually tough because he’s such a different guy, cross-cultural, cross races, he’s
tough to pin down.” Johnston’s words encapsulate the role of music in creating a
dynamic wrestling character through outfits, lighting, musical sound, and performer
affect as well as the specific challenges in a performance medium often driven by racial
archetypes of crafting a character for a mixed-race performer. In this paper, I analyze
versions and reworkings of The Rock’s entrance music as his character shifted from
Black Power foot soldier to WWE’s public face and a global celebrity.

Though The Rock was initially presented with music and costuming highlighting his
Samoan heritage, “Electrifying” stems from his time with the “Nation of Domination,” a
group of Black American villains whose mannerisms and fashion drew from the Black
Panthers and Nation of Islam. When The Rock became the group’s leader, their style
increasingly reflected the swagger of NFL players including Dion Sanders and Warren
Sapp, and their music was reworked to reflect ‘90s West Coast Hip Hop. When The
Rock became a mainstream protagonist, his music retained its “Nation of Domination”
bassline and tempo while adding electric guitar, often the featured instrument for
WWE’s most popular, and predominantly white, heroes. Informed by discussion of
masculinity, racialized sound, and “the mainstream” from T. Carlis Roberts, Steve
Waksman, and others, I identify the role of “Electrifying” and its antecedents in The
Rock’s process of self-fashioning as a mainstream celebrity, and specifically his
complex navigation of race. Toward that end, I highlight the role of 1990s affirmative
action discourse and backlash in both shaping and blunting the revolutionary
possibilities of the Black Power movement’s style and message within mainstream
professional wrestling.

Rory Fewer, “Cause Every Time We Touch: The Sickly-Sweet Affective Politics of 
Asian American Eurodance”

In the early 2000s – and largely mediated through the Japanese video game Dance Dance Revolution
that had just arrived to the U.S. – Eurodance hits could be heard pumping from LED-outfitted rice rockets
and Asian American nightclubs in the Bay Area. Tracks like Darude’s Eurodance-inflected trance hit “Sandstorm,” with its famously cloying style, was derided by most American audiences for its excessively “emotive sound” (McCarthy 2019) but found a special place in Asian America alongside similarly cloying tracks like Smile.dk’s “Butterfly” and DJ Sammy’s “Heaven.” Eurodance and its subgenre bubblegum dance are also stylistically tied to tropes of “Asia,” with artists sporting anime-inspired clothing and music videos with Asian children cast as salary men (“Butterfly”) and geishas (“Heaven”) navigating futuristic worlds, or what scholars of techno-Orientalism have named the “technologized Asian subject” portrayed as “unfeeling, efficient, and inhuman” (Roh et al. 2015, 8, 11). Techno-Orientalism as an analytic, however, needs further augmentation in order to account for a seeming contradiction of Eurodance’s style: the unfeeling cyborg of a technologized "Asia” is also the repository of full-bodied, cloying emotion. My paper reads Eurodance's popularity in Asian America as a disidentificatory practice, whereby Eurodance’s cloying style responds to one’s “minor feelings,” or “non-cathartic states of emotion” that occur when “American optimism...contradicts your own racialized reality” (Hong 2020, 46). I argue that Eurodance’s saccharine style constitutes an affective-political intervention even as it negotiates representations of techno-Orientalism, aiding Asian America in feeling otherwise as, in Cascada’s words, we listen to “get this feeling” (“Everytime We Touch”).

Paul David Flood, “White and Black Blues: The 1990 Eurovision Song Contest and the Prospect of European (Racial) Integration”

The 1990 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest aired at a pivotal moment in European history, one that anticipated the establishment of the European Union through the 1993 signing of the Maastricht Treaty. While many songs in the 1990 edition gestured toward bright Europeanist futures, the show’s runner up sang of a different kind of unity: racial integration. The Guadeloupean singer Joëlle Ursull was France’s first Black representative in the Contest, with her song “White and Black Blues.” The song, written by the infamous French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, addresses her desire to overcome racial prejudice and celebrate her Blackness in a white society, and features influences from the French Antillean genre zouk that became popular in France in the 1980s and 90s (Guilbault, 1993), as well as in Guadeloupe during its concurrent independence movement (Camal, 2019). Drawing from Muñoz’s theory of disidentification, I argue that Ursull and her song “White and Black Blues” imagined racial unity as a key component to the emerging prospect of European integration while resisting assimilationist techniques and politics that would seek to erase her Blackness, as well as demonstrating her allegiances to both her homeland Guadeloupe and to France.
According to interviews from the time, Ursull was motivated by Black internationalist rhetoric and interested in representing globally racialized (post)colonial communities through her participation in Eurovision. But her song’s musical aesthetic, ostensibly drawn from zouk music, is primarily characterized by the essentialist markings of Blacksound (Morrison, 2024) that evoke vague sonic depictions of a fixed ethnic somewhere else. By positioning Eurovision as an active force within Afro-diasporic cultural flows during a time of geopolitical instability in Europe, and interrogating how Eurovision has become a fraught benchmark for what Europeanness can look and sound like, we can more clearly understand the limits of belonging in Europe.

AJ Kluth, “Sartorial Signifyin(g) on Maroon Culture with Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah”

In the pulsing opening of the eponymous song of his 2023 Ropeadope release, Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah calls out: “Mau Mau, Maori, Egba, Igbo, Olmec, Aztec, Sioux…” invoking multiple nations connected by histories of self-determination in the face of imperial domination and diaspora. The fifteen-minute performance featuring Chief Adjuah’s voice and kora-like “Adjuah Bow” over Afro Indigenous drumming and droning bass is a recent manifestation of his ongoing genre-blind project, “Stretch Music.” Complementing his musical choices, the Chieftan of the Xodokan Nation of Maroons—a New Orleans Black Indians group—who is also recognized as Grand Griot of New Orleans, deploys a thoughtful self-presentation signifyin(g) on complex personhood. Perhaps best known as a “jazz” trumpeter (despite his opposition to the term) Chief Adjuah’s recent records and personal investments continue the creolizing project of New Orleans musics, drawing broadly from Afrodiasporic, American indigenous, and popular styles in a project of recovery and critical fabulation of ancestral memory. Beyond Stretch Music’s musical inclusivity, Chief Adjuah’s custom trumpet-related instruments and the newly created “Adjuah Bow” demonstrate an awareness of dramatic visual presentation in addition to the sonic. Moreover, his provocative jewelry and clothing that index West African and contemporary urban styles as much as New Orleans Black Indian ceremonial regalia further evince the superabundant hyper-signification of his plural identities. Developing ideas regarding diasporic identity from Stuart Hall and Thomas Turino, this paper investigates how, in the greater ecosystem of jazz musicians that either lean into the neo-classical jazz suit-and-tie or streetwear looks, Chief Adjuah’s sartorial signifyin(g) demonstrate his understanding of how self-presentation ties to his overall projects of self-determination, celebration of Maroon culture, and radical globalized connection.

Elena Razlogova, “The Politics of Race and Style on Freeform Radio in the Black Power Era”

When Black Panther Elaine Brown released her first album of political songs Seize the Time in 1969, its cover, by Panthers’ Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, featured a woman’s arm with nails painted purple gripping an AK-47. After stores refused to stock the record, Brown’s label Vault added a second “front” cover—a lyrical headshot of Brown—so clerks could display the LP with the militant image facing the wall. Brown’s vocal delivery aligned with classical and folk traditions—“someone accused me of not having a black sound,” she later remembered. The record was both too militant and not funky enough for the times. Neither Top 40 nor Black-oriented stations played it. But it got airplay on “underground” freeform stations, where underpaid and volunteer DJs (mostly white men) had autonomy to mix in music of any genre. Underground FM spurred enough sales to convince the Black Panther Party to continue its record producing ventures. Eventually, its “house band” the Lumpen broke into the Billboard charts.
This paper uses the Seize the Time story to examine the politics of race and style on majority-white underground freeform radio in the Black Power era. Drawing on the work of Nina Sun Eidsheim and others who link and critique racialized aural and visual expectations and fashions, the paper analyzes West Coast underground stations’ alliances with the Black Panther Party; the art of Black freeform DJs such as Roland Young, who was fired from for-profit KSAN but welcomed at nonprofit KPFA; and live free and benefit concerts organized by noncommercial freeform stations WBAI and WFMU in New York that included Black folk, blues, “psychedelic soul,” and free jazz musicians. Noncommercial freeform stations more consistently supported Black artists, bands, and DJs who did not fit into genres and forma