Queer Choirs, Archives of the Self, and Finding Voice in the Refuge of the 1990s

When I teach about the 1990s, I get slightly dizzy. It's the decade before many of my students were born, and although I imagine this makes them unable to access the feeling, texture, spirit of that decade, their aesthetic palettes and political parlance suggest otherwise. As an elder of the millennial generation, however, the 1990s are the wellspring of my consciousness, my home, my refuge even.Back in 1992, my music teacher in Rome shared with me her idea for our school to sing Lionel Richie's “Love, Oh Love” from his best-of album Back to Front (released that year). Familiar with the song—my eldest sister had bought the album—I envisioned myself and my class mates performing as a large chorus, joining in a collective mood of hope, peace, and global solidarity articulated in the song. I'm no longer sure if I remember seeing live on TV Berliners climbing and dismantling the Wall in 1989, images that have since been canonized. But imprinted in my being is the feeling of optimism and progress of those years, when conflict and suffering seemed to be diminishing at the limits of my temporal and geographical imagination. Perhaps I'd even heard someone quote a political theorist who heralded the end of history. At the borders between European countries, that I would traverse increasingly as the years went by, security and controls relaxed considerably. I recall my father, after we'd moved back to the UK, expressing relief, after eighteen years of Conservative rule, at the landslide victory in 1997 of the Labour Party, their chosen election campaign song intoning “Things Can Only Get Better” by D:Ream. Swaddled in teenage middle-class, heteronormative whiteness, I reaped many of the privileges of a decade that allowed its nascent millennial generation to dream of a utopian world.Over the past six years, as I approached middle age, I kept stumbling over the 1990s. Living in Italy during the first half of the decade seemed to have propelled me as an adult into a series of privileged migrations on my search for somewhere to call home. Bullying at a UK comprehensive school in the second half of the decade conspired with the endemic mental health struggles of later academic life. Increasing numbers of films and TV programs would come to revive the 1990s on the screen, as our peers rose the ranks of the cultural industry, eager to parse through their own personal archives. A student in their twenties startled me recently with their encyclopedic knowledge of Mariah Carey, almost as if they'd lived through the 1990s themselves. When in 2016 I began to research, as an ethnomusicologist, queer choirs, I was trying to push debates on gender and sexuality within my discipline just as I was aware that I was probing, potentially self-indulgently, into myself. But I did not realize that this work would keep pointing backwards, in temporal loops, to the 1990s.“But I'm a creep; I'm a weirdo.” To perform Radiohead's “Creep” was a stroke of magic by Europe's oldest mixed queer choir, the Pink Singers, as part of their concert “From Queer to Eternity: Songs of Struggle and Celebration” in July 2017. The song was Radiohead's very first single, released in 1992 from their album Pablo Honey, that, although not receiving immediate popularity, slowly gained traction in a wider popular imagination which led to its rerelease in 1993, propelling it to anthemic status in the 1990s canon. Its recontextualization in Cadogan Hall, London, that summer evening tuned me in to the lyrics, which recounted the narrative, in the first person, of an abject outcast submerged in desire for an unnamed and unobtainable subject. The self-loathing antihero is wonderfully embodied in lead vocalist Thom Yorke's original performance with angry guitars and grungy drums that appealed to a particular vision of early 1990s Anglophone masculinity, one I couldn't, nor desired to, live up to.Before setting words to page, I parsed through my fieldnotes, concert programs, internet sites, and YouTube videos of queer choirs as I prepared to write this text. I imagined queer choral performances of songs from the 1990s would offer an invitation into my own current autoethnographic musings. Considering it was the decade when numerous globally famous (though admittedly white cisgender) pop stars—Elton John, k.d. lang, George Michael—came out, and perhaps because their individual stories of coming out revealed insistent queer-phobic struggles, the 1990s, I assumed, must be audibly present in the current work of queer choirs. Yet, within the recent archive of the choirs I have worked with, songs from this decade are surprisingly thin. It appeared as though the explicitly affirmative queer anthems of the 2010s, and the treasure trove of synth pop, classic camp, and sexual liberation of the 1980s offered a shinier treasure trove of queer chorality in the present.“Creep” sends me in reveries back to my own childhood, memories coalescing around our daily commute down the Via Cassia to school on the northern peripheries of Rome. Cultivating a reverence for all things British, this English international school fostered an elite cosmopolitanism, educating children of diplomats, those working for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Italian celebrities, and, as in our case, teachers at the school. Amongst the several distinguished alumni is the actor Alessandro Gassmann, who in 1997 depicted one of the first explicitly queer characters in Italian cinema through the film The Turkish Bath (Hamam), by celebrated Turkish director Ferzan Özpetek. It was the decade when MTV Europe colonized the continent, and my two sisters and I were mesmerized by select programs of this exciting international channel as it was mysteriously broadcast at certain times of the day on Italian terrestrial TV. Occasional trips into central Rome allowed us to roam the aisles of Ricordi or Messaggerie Musicali, two of the main music shops both on Rome's classic shopping street, Via del Corso, in search of some of the music we'd watched on these illicit broadcasts. Or we'd wait until our summer ritual return to the UK, and visit HMV and Our Price stores to find the music not available in Italy. The cassettes we purchased with our pocket money created the soundtrack of our daily commute to school. One of my sisters became a big fan of Radiohead, and although my music taste differed substantially to hers, of all the music she was into, this was my favorite band.Today, I would probably define myself as a writer, pedagogue, activist, musician, and scholar. None of these labels was obvious in the 1990s, nor was the zigzagging journey, via Italy, the UK, Norway, and Germany, that would lead me to adopt them. I began a bachelor's degree in music (at Bristol) to become a composer, to live what I imagined would be a world of creativity and escape. I pursued musicology in rejection of modernist aesthetics of composition, and a freedom found in research. I rejected historical musicology for its Eurocentrism and trained as an ethnomusicologist (at Royal Holloway). As a postdoc in Germany, I began to poke at ethnomusicologists’ inability to mention the letters of the queer alphabet. When in 2016, as a postdoc in Bergen, I embarked on ethnographic research with queer choirs in London, Rome, and Warsaw, I experienced severe mental health challenges that I now, for convenience, narrate as “burnout.” Bodies, careers, lives felt fragile, messy, and certainly not linear. It was at this time I helped co-found the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group, through which we've forged new space and visibility for studies of gender and sexuality in music studies internationally. In my current job as associate professor in ethnomusicology (at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), I've become a spokesperson for issues of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and engaged in various projects of community engagement in Trondheim. Since 2017, I have played not an insignificant role in building our local queer choir, Kor Hen, which has, through collaborations with queer choirs from London, Helsinki, and Bergen, become part of the larger international community.“If you want my future, forget my past.” As a teenager I'd never imagined I'd one day sing the Spice Girls as part of a queer choir, just as I, as a queer thirty-nine-year-old and Norwegian resident, never had imagined what would happen later that night. It was June 2022 and the summer concert of Voces Gaudii, Warsaw's first queer choir, and whose musical director, Misza Czerniak, insisted I sing with them. War was raging in neighboring Ukraine, and Warsaw would host the following day the joint pride parade for Warsaw and Kyiv. Inviting as guests the Pink Singers, the two choirs delivered an eclectic myriad of Anglophone and Polish songs celebrating joy, love, defiance, empowerment, and sharing stories of coming out, queer kinship, and LGBTQ+ rights. I was intrigued by this version of the Spice Girl's first hit, “Wannabe,” arranged for four-part choir in the style of sixteenth-century polyphony. On the stage at Kino Elektronik, we sang with conviction, enjoying the audience's response of recognition and delight, our paper fans poised to burst open on the final chord to reveal rainbows. When I think back to this moment, to the song, to its lyrics, I find this lyric about past and future intriguing. I imagine I sang this particular line of “Wannabe” with a glint in my eye. I sang this song with bemusement. I sang this song embodying its specific meaning for me, but wondering, like an ethnomusicologist, what resonances it may have had for my fellow choristers and audience members. The play of temporalities in these lyrics teased me as I embarked on my own archaeological excavations in this text. The past will not let me forget, and the historian in me smiles.Looking back on the 1990s from today I realize so much of the chronology of my memory is punctuated by popular songs and their mediations. BBC World Service broadcasts enabled us to follow the Top 20 of the UK singles charts, huddled around a radio in our kitchen in Italy. My sisters and I were startled by the musical experimentalism of Björk and the innovative visuals of her music videos by Michel Gondry, which we saw on MTV Europe. I marveled at the technological camp irony of the Pet Shop Boys, enticed aesthetically but also by alternative representations of masculinity. The vocal acrobatics and lush ballads of Mariah Carey seduced me into unknown sound-worlds and taught me the language of heteronormativity even as it offered pedagogies in gay masculinity. But by the time the Spice Girls jumped in 1996 into global consciousness, I was already withdrawing from popular culture. I began to immerse myself into an imaginary museum of classical music works, particularly of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was here where I could hide from the realities of my everyday life, thus losing a connection to the songs that might connect me to wider peer groups and new performances of gender and sexuality. I my in my own of pop songs are a the in a new musical and queer The performance of “Creep” by the Pink Singers, arranged for the choir by one of its own the song of its and on the lush building through choral and of was the of the song. The lyrics of self-loathing and by a queer choir became at the to who been a queer by in from But by queer on the performance not but through an perhaps back at a queer-phobic performance was a musical of the of the by in the late 1980s and 1990s. did I of the song in it with my own Or was the of a the of the queer who I'd been taught to and thus began to in of the 1990s was a I imagined the popular music of the and a certain in to the of pop, and ballads that I to in the 1990s. It was not that and were from my offered no for queer of queer of the in and the at taught me the of even if my own of in white Europe. Only years later as a postdoc did I from that my 1990s the of War the of thus the of my Polish and me that the 1990s was the decade when the of Polish that of and Our school us of us in the wider of and to teach us about a at its I being to of the of the film which I was not allowed to whose song by played on Italian and I was by the of this film in my everyday with the of My own music teacher at that whose queer was an open was by and students in various of went into on and I our choir that A choir in was found to be a Queer choirs to via a for many of the and musical were from life. queer choirs to videos of choirs, from and of On of Italian queer a of queer choristers from the the globally famous It was to day LGBTQ+ which the when the World Organisation from its of in you think about that, you I A song that is so to me, so in the popular not to all its personal It me back to the I first heard it on the radio as it at one on the UK It me of a new aesthetic in pop, at It me to my class on within my larger on and where I offer the Spice and as of about new of empowerment, and over their own in the 1990s. But to suggest I this song by the Spice Girls would be It was released in a after we had moved back to the As a in the of the of and I to be at school and began my from and in the It on me that my and could not be to hide the of “Wannabe” is a song about for who you are and what you me, this song me to a time of in and in until in and was the by Conservative that local to in teachers withdrawing from in about LGBTQ+ was the to children as gay and of A big in the of my past into for my and issues of sexual health and inability to me from I remember at what during my research into queer music that I of but I recall the of receiving a to the with which this the queer at were by their Queer their own from the 1980s and 1990s at the of the As my own and research to an I began to find a new of meaning and by the for cultural representations of not perhaps to of our present I about the I watched a of a recent of of at the I to of as whose to the of that with I in a with and activist, about in the film she and the she In the I in my on and about musical to the I began to my own life, my could have played out very had I come of before the of in In one I about the who was one of the first to of in the UK, and after the famous was shared my first I shared his in London, on July the very day I was I the queer I did not the it would me It was and I'd recently moved to as I as a to in the of gender and queer In I to the of queer I imagined new queer and I found and play in a space by alternative and the choirs that would later part of my research, offered one of the for of and class to if also though not by years of job and the became a of a taste of a I'm to you that was at her But the 1990s had already a it was to sing these lyrics at the Rome, as part of the for Italian LGBTQ+ choirs in June first LGBTQ+ choir in and Rome's second queer choir, me to sing with them at that The which been in a Italian since over the of June a at the and concert at on the and performances in of the on the choirs, the main concert in one of Rome's into a by local choir performing one song, with and by and with a joint of all choristers the are the As the host choir, the with our performance of arranged in by choral director and the past years, I've to the 1990s as my I've on I've my own at songs up to the When I'm in the I to these songs on offer me memories of my childhood, European my school in Rome. songs the spirit of and of that When I'm feeling I these songs to my own of that years I would have kept this a because it revealed much about I it as an archive of and and the of queer whose are series me to the the numerous and soundtrack the series But was about the of the of the 1990s in two which me on the of my in the of it its if of the it the cultural to that I remember from my In the of and queer and those with I that the series was not about me or my later to I however, the wider of the at the of the as part of a collective queer my were of my were also an of the connection between that by never to to queer with I had shared time on this of was a choral that much part in and out of the texture, a at time the where of the original song are On we were by two queer who to the of a part of a larger international pop and of desire to queer however, for the in me not to have to masculinity, recent Perhaps I this song in my from my on to teenage in the late 1990s, her pop aesthetic imprinted on the as we approached the however, seemed to a new style as it was released in the first of Our performance on the Rome stage that summer the audience to the the I I It did not much to in after numerous years of that my in adult had as much to with a and an academic job as my own to the on my as a queer teenager in large for the recent film the of of my I through of the of the It was the of 2022 and I had my own work at the queer of The programs, all in the of Europe's queer these from the in to the present became an my studies in and connection to the I was with many they'd I of their performance as part of the of the the on the very final day of the 1990s. I'm sure I had watched this broadcast on the but did not their you were here you in the The lyrics of “Creep” into my as I to for my own the of my own past with the of the queer choral world become an of of my past and thus also a of I back through the of Warsaw following our concert and I through my expressing and solidarity by queer in began to on the of the Norwegian I the of a one of the main queer in my and my to years since the of was the around us to hide our their inability to our Only in through with the local did the LGBTQ+ to stage a within the of that our choir two songs to the large who in solidarity on the of June in academic began to as the between my as pedagogue, and began to over the past But perhaps it was the that, for me, the and on in ethnographic like my as as longer of and queer not to mention and I began on my own search for alternative and The by revealed to me and research in by of like as by me to play with as I have to parse through the of our When those as in have academic and as in personal of mental A I myself by to for the first time a in the for the the and the in for its own and Perhaps these queer the of and could me find my own queer autoethnographic was released was in a the time when I up from my 1990s studies in ethnomusicology in would not offer to live in and Norway, but much to my connection to Italy. the past six years, I've Rome on numerous to sing with the two queer choirs, to and and to with queer I would never have had the to as a I'm and for two also new queer and queer struggles to language memories in I myself with the to queer and Queer research in a a of and an in I on Rome, one of my first Mariah album Music My would never have imagined that years later would be in the very with queer choristers from all of Italy, in the of In four-part we sang and and are the our queer in the of a that would later that become by a since released from the 1990s utopian I was in the of 2022 at to have found my and to be to to the personal excavations of queer

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