Queering Country Music: Conceptualising LGBTQIA+ Voices in a Contested Genre
Thursday 25th April 2024, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (London Time)
Country music is a genre that is sometimes assumed to lack LGBTQIA+ participation. Over the past 30 years, scholarship (Rich, 1992; Dickinson, 1999; Hubbs, 2014; Goldin-Perschbacher, 2022; Royster, 2022) has begun to challenge these assumptions and shone a spotlight on the long history of LGBTQIA+ people’s engagement with the genre, as both artists and audiences. This course builds on this emerging field of research to consider the way LGBTQIA+ artists use country as a storytelling medium with potential to represent a broader range of experiences and narratives than the country music industry has historically recognised.
Country music has a self-referential conceptualisation of itself as a genre that is heavily invested in notions of authenticity. On the one hand, this holds potential for the expression of LGBTQIA+ voices. On the other, authenticity is heavily policed by the country music industry who wields this notion to construct and enforce exclusionary ideas of who country music is, marginalising women, people of colour and LGBTQIA+ people, erasing these histories of participation in the genre (Bishop and Watson, 2022; Goldin-Perschbacher, 2022; Moss, 2022; Pecknold, 2013; Royster, 2022; Watson, 2019). At the same time as this discriminatory industry context, LGBTQIA+ people continue to engage with country music and push the genre forward.
This course considers the way songs by LGBTQIA+ artists navigate country music aesthetics and definitions of genre, looking at the voice as a medium for articulating and reworking ideas of authenticity and genre identity. The presentation explores particular songs in depth covering the period from the 1970s until the present day, featuring artists such as Lavender Country, Chely Wright, Namoli Brennet, Indigo Girls, Jake Blount, and Allison Russell.
There will be a consideration of how each song navigates the genre, which has both potential and risks for LGBTQIA+ artists, dedicating particular attention to the way trans artists engage with precarious notions of authenticity. Through paying close attention to these songs, this course aims to showcase LGBTQIA+ voices in country music and to suggest ways that these artists challenge our understand of who and what country music is.
James Barker
James Barker (he/they) is a PhD candidate in Music and Media at Newcastle University, UK. His PhD research explores the potential of queer reading as a strategy to assert LGBTQIA+ belonging in country music, using Dolly Parton as a case study.
Sorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Monday 12th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Tuesday 13th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Wednesday 14th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Thursday 15th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Tuesday 20th January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Wednesday 21st January 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(London Time)
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Are you a voice, acting, or singing coach looking to expand your expertise and add accents and phonetics to your teaching repertoire? This 6-session course covers essential topics such as articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and ethical approaches to accent and dialect coaching. By the end of this course, you'll be equipped with the knowledge and practical skills to start to bring phonetics and accent coaching into your coaching and provide more comprehensive support to your clients.
Monday 12th January 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)
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How does the singing voice influence the speaking voice? How does the speaking voice influence the singing voice? When is there a disparate relationship between the two? Can they help each other? Can one harm the other? How can we use them positively in the voice studio. During this short course we will consider the voice as we sing and as we speak. The acquisition of language is a very interesting journey from birth through old age. We will broach the topics of “lexical” which refers to learning words, and “semantic” which is how we use words in the context of language.
Monday 12th January 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
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What exactly is meant when we label ourselves or someone we know a perfectionist? It is a good to be this way? Or are you setting yourself up for failure? Can a performance psychologist or a other performance-related practitioner help you if you’re a perfectionist? In this short course, you will learn how perfectionism is defined according to popular models in clinical psychology, and whether it is maladaptive or adaptive. You will also learn how perfectionism impacts on music performance anxiety, in addition to other areas of importance for performing musicians, like work-related stress and burnout, and procrastination with one’s practice.