(From a post I made to this thread, which has now dead-ended.)
I’m a straight male who greatly enjoys 1920s and '30s jazz and pop music. At least in English speaking cultures, this is a niche interest that is heavily gay male. I’ve always assumed it had to do with the taste for show and film music among “mainstream” gays, plus some degree of traditional camp practice.
For some reason, interest in this music - especially the obscure, nonjazz variety - seems to be associated with bodybuilding. (I have known of a couple of guys who were into both, and surveying YouTube favorites lists implies several others.)
I just wonder - not that it’s any of my damn business - whether there is some subcultural connection or ritual at work here that I don’t know about, or whether these are just two interests (one much more common than the other) that only have gay male culture in common. Your ideas about why, exactly, socially obsolete pop music might be a gay-coded passion would also be welcome.
I’ve been collecting 20s and 30s jazz and pop for over fifteen years, and this is the first time I’ve heard of a connection with gay culture. All I can say is, “huh?” Do Armstrong, Ellington, Goodman, J. R. Morton, Bechet et al. really have a gay following?
Yes, but only because it’s great music, not because we’re gay. We do tend to be somewhat more into “culture” than straight guys, but I don’t see anything more specific. And I don’t know of any connection between the music and bodybuilding.
It probably has nothing to do with bodybuilding but the nudity or semi-nudity involved.
In the 1920s America was undergoing a “revolution of sorts” and the standards of America were rapidly being eased off. The 20s was the opening of the Tin Pan Alley era which lived on till the early 50s.
Freedom of expresion was more open in the 20s than anytime before. Vaudeville, burlesque and now movies were becomign more and more daring. Women had just helped fight a major war. They took male careers and wore pants and the freedom they got by working in the WWI factories while the men fought overseas was a new thing. Especially since this was the first big war when America was urbanized.
Then came the huge and I mean huge backlash that started in the 30s. Government threatened to censor everything as a backlash. The mails were used for censorship and then the Great Depression hit.
The self imposed censorship by the movies, the death of Vaudeville, and the start of Radio which also imposed self-censorship was nearly a 180 turn from the 20s. In fact it wasn’t till the late 60s when you found Hollywood as open as it was in the 20s with language, nudity (or partial nudity) or just plain “adult situations”
Some stars such as Mae West, who was blantantly sexual and fined for it, were able to live on by creating innuendos. Indeed nearly everything West said had a double meaning. It was a technique aslo employed by the radio comedy team “Burns and Allen,” in response to censorship.
Gracie) Let’s go dancing
George)I’m too danced out
Gracie) And dancing wil help exercise that off.
Get it -> Say “Too danced out” fast enough and it becomes “too damn stout”
So what you seeing is not really connected, necessarily. It just happened the music of the 20s, was at the same time when America was undergoing a “sexual revolution”
Not so much the jazz artists as the pop music - the stuff that has been slighted and/or obscured by historians and isn’t played so often (or at all).
If you know about and enjoy straight (no entendre) dance orchestras like Isham Jones, Ray Noble, Paul Whiteman, Leo Reisman and the like, you are part of a fairly small and well-defined subgroup of aficionados - most likely middle-aged or older and male, and more likely to be gay than the general run of music lovers.
I’m a general music fan, but feel reasonably clued-in about trends and interesting links between sub-groups and music - and I haven’t heard that connection. When I think of obscure jazz music from that era, the sub-group I think of is the R. Crumb / Ghost World group of asocial, just-this-side-of-creepy straight dudes who comb garage sales and know *exactly *who played on every track…
This is still a surprise to me. I suppose it’s possible I just hadn’t noticed that a high proportion of folks who like 20s and 30s dance bands are gay.
Yes. In my experience, the subculture is made up of about 3 asocials to every gay. (I’m asocial myself, tho I dress well, get out every so often and generally put up a good front.) There are a very few men - and almost no women - who don’t fit either profile. I’d guess maybe one in every 20 men, but I have no idea on the women because they just do not get that far into the fandom.
Taking a tangent from the gay thing, psychologist Brian Gilmartin originated a theory he calls love-shyness, which he estimates prevents ±1.5% of hetero men from enjoying meaningful relationships (he only studied str8s). The interesting thing is that he studied their musical tastes, which ran to “brassy music and love ballads.” Which, taken together, account for most of the popular music (and jazz) of the pre-WW2 era.
I kinda hate to think that anybody’s esthetic taste is predetermined by factors out of their control. Especially if peppy fox trots and crooning are a better indicator of social pathology in hetero males than death-metal.
I guess I’m not even gay enough to get the reference.