Music, Music, Music

Happy New Year everyone.

There’s music in the air all through 2014. Unlike last year’s science theme I won’t devote a whole month to one specific musical style as there are so many styles that it’ll probably need a decade to cover them all. Instead I’ll mix up the styles throughout the year.

The subjects I intend to include will be classical, folk music, ballet music, hip-hop, ethnic, punk, instrumentalist, composers, pop, film music, opera, rock, boy bands and many others.

Unfortunately with such a wide-ranging subject with thousands of lgbt people involved it has become necessary for me to restrict myself and only glance over one other subject this year – dance. Even though dance it intimately linked with music I decided it would bring a whole new long list of lgbt people which would make research unmanageable. Dance has it’s own many diverse forms and could by itself easily fill a whole year. Dance will not be totally ignored in 2014, however. I just want to concentrate on the dance music rather than the dance performance.

Having said that I won’t concentrate any specific musical styles into one month there’ll be times when several related articles will appear as a sub-theme. Several of these will include articles on transgender musicians and singers in November, some Eurovision articles in May, and month of female musicians for Women’s History Month in March.

2013 was the bicentenary year of the birth of composer Richard Wagner. Even though he wasn’t gay (see the article I’ll publish in a few days time), his work is intricately linked to the patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who almost certainly was, as were several other people who are associated with him. There’ll be several article on Wagner, his music, his family and his legacy throughout January.

The academic studies of the musicologists have brought to light many previously under-researched and unrecognised connections between sexuality and music. One of the earliest academics to concentrate on this was Philip Brett, the subject of an article on this blog many months ago. Through his efforts the Gay and Lesbian Study Group of the American Musicological Society was formed. The work of this group and it’s regular newsletters have provided a lot of useful leads and information for many articles I’ll publish throughout the year.

Also, a reminder about the  year-long sub-theme for 2014. On the 11^th day of each month I’ll publish an article connected to this year’s 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I and the 75^th anniversary of the start of World War II.