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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5799-518X
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Afro-American Studies
Year Degree Awarded
2024
Month Degree Awarded
February
First Advisor
James Smethurst
Second Advisor
Traci Parker
Third Advisor
Cameron Awkward-Rich
Subject Categories
Africana Studies | Cultural History | Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies | Women's History
Abstract
This work is a historical biography of Gladys Bentley and her blues music. She was a cross-dressing entertainer from the Harlem Renaissance and performed popular songs with added, sometimes improvised sexual innuendo. This study considers the performances of her recorded and written material as trans music, meaning, that black music provided a platform to determine racial, gendered, and sexual cultural expressions changing over time, however, always rooted in black vernacular culture. Using showbills, promotional material, studio recordings and short autobiography, this study follows Bentley’s career as “male impersonator” and the effects lesbian/gay (queer) culture had on her blues. Also, I demonstrate how trans narratives coincide with Bentley’s personal life and how Bentley’s transition to woman offers scholars to consider how narration and historicization archive ‘trans’ in a way that obscures the nuances of queer performance that challenge and resist cisnormative structures and symbols of power. I refer to Black Queer Studies, Black Trans Studies, music history and biography to demonstrate how Black music culture operates as a “trans analytic.” Understanding Black music as a trans music, offers us a historical culture that finds queerness and gender transgression before Gay Liberation made them legible in public and political discourse.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/35982575
Recommended Citation
Torres, Bianki and J., "Lay It On The Line: The Life and Music of Gladys Bentley" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations. 3095.
https://doi.org/10.7275/35982575
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/3095
Included in
Africana Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Women's History Commons