Musical composition
Let Me Down
2017
Appears in NTRO Research Collection
Abstract
Research Background
The recent discourse surrounding inclusivity in the music industry has reached a tipping point where music industry environments are altering their practice to implement broader visibility of diversity (Florian 2013). While much of the research in this space focuses on notions of gender expansion, little is written or explored on how music can act as a potent symbolic action of gender subversion (Butler, 1999). Butler argues: Subversiveness is not something that can be gauged or calculated. I do think that for a copy to be subversive of heterosexual hegemony it has to both mime and displace its conventions (in Kotz in Artforum).
Research Contribution
Resulting from my PhD findings, specifically the pervasive use of non-gendered pronouns in pop songs, this work uses three different approached to displace gender stereotypes: the degendered implementation a vocal production interacts heavily with the gender-ambiguous range (Dacakis 2000) to create a physical melodic displacement of gendered vocals in a sound recording; lyrically, the work employs a lost-love story framed in a first person conversational narrative with no pronominal gender identifiers, thus degendering pronoun use; the visual work is a collaboration with non-binary film-makers and a cast of 40 diverse and deliberately gender ambiguous people using layering techniques that never allows the face of any one gender to be viewed at any one time. Let Me Down subverts by way of mimicry and displacement (Butler), responding to how creative work can increase visibility of LGBTIQ+ allyship in music through gender subversion.
Research Significance
This work has been released internationally by Sony Music Australia with over 1.5 million streams over various platforms since its 2017 release. The work was also presented in the conference proceedings at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s ANZ conference in 2018.
Details
- Title
- Let Me Down
- Authors
- Andy Ward (Author)
- Format
- MP4; 3:27 minutes
- Date published
- 2017
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99534107002621
- Output Type
- Musical composition
- NTRO Classification
- NT2
Metrics
137 Record Views