An Exploration of Bass, Queerness, and Identity

(unfinished, draft 1)

In attending Donna Summer the Musical, a quote from the show stuck out to me, “Once we found that bassline, it was a whole new world, A world of mystery and androgyny, blurring all the lines”. Thinking and reflecting further on this, there is something quite obviously queer about a prominant bassline within various music scenes, branching from disco and evolving into a plethora of genres and sounds today. This stems from the early pioneering of black and brown queer bodies performing their culture to the public in the 1970s-90s. Pioneers like, Donna Summer, Ru Paul, Grace Jones, Madonna, Sylvester, Kylie Minogue, Pet Shop Boys, and so many more. Historically, you can see this form of sound sky rocket during the AIDs crisis where queer people were threatened, mistreated, and neglected. These leaders created a foundation for queer identities to grow, evolve, create, and ultimiately be seen. It provides a safe space to explore identity. But how does this define bass as “queer”? Bass requests no form of body, gender, race, or sexuality, everyone can feel it, everyone can move to it. Almost like water, it ebbs and flows through and about a space while accepting all walks of life. Bass is distinct and recognizable, if everything is energy, it physically moves through anything thing it touches, which was exactly the end goal of these early pioneers, to move through every type of body ,to be seen, and to make a point. From this, I have commenced a bit of this exploration of my own queer identity with the idea of world-building through sound by using primarily bass. Stripping the sounds down to the foundation that was created for people like me and creating a sonic world out of it. A somewhat minimalist view of using this staple sound created for people like me. Putting this through my lens of work, I have made many references to sonic healing and trying to find a way I can utilize it through my hand. Ted Andrews researches the historical and magical principals of pitch within sonic healing in his book, Sacred Sounds. Writing that low pitch sounds are ever bending and grounding, whereas high pitch sounds shatter old energies and perceptions. Andrews writes that rythm (bass, percussion, piano, brass) is metaphysically connected to the emotional and physical parts of the body, whereas harmony and melody are connected to the mental and spiritual side. At the moment, I have a visualization of a sonic performance/piece using bass tones (D and C notes mainly?) to build a world through sound where all walks of life are accepted and healed while leaning into my own queer identity.

Poulson-Bryant, Scott. “Put Some Bass in Your Walk”: Notes on Queerness, Hip Hop, and the Spectacle of the Undoable.” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, vol. 2, no. 2, 2013, p. 214, www.academia.edu/15155713/_Put_Some_Bass_in_Your_Walk_Notes_on_Queerness_Hip_Hop_and_the_Spectacle_of_the_Undoable_. Accessed 9 Apr. 2022.

Donna Summer the Musical. Directed by Colman Domingo et al., 7 Nov. 2017.

Andrews, Ted. Sacred Sounds : Magic & Healing through Words & Music. St. Paul, Minn., Llewellyn Publications, 1992.