Doctoral Colloquium (Music) | Kiersten Beszterda van Vliet
The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.
Doctoral Colloquium:聽Kiersten Beszterda van Vliet, PhD Candidate, Musicology and Gender & Women's Studies, 9I制作厂免费
Title: Dancing Queens: Making the Discotheque Gay in Montreal, 1968鈥�79
Abstract: In 1979, Billboard magazine dubbed Montreal disco鈥檚 鈥渟econd city鈥� after New York. As Will Straw has observed (2014), this status was due to how the city鈥檚 musical market functioned as a tastemaker. Rather than major producers of music, at the height of the 1970s disco era Montrealers were noted consumers of disco records, and the city itself was a litmus test for which records would later 鈥渂reak鈥� into other markets and become hits.
Notably, disco is commonly associated with a large, visible gay market. Various theorists have proposed explanations for this phenomenon: the permanent breakaway of disco dancing is liberatory for same-sex dancers (Lawrence 2011), or the mechanized four-on-the-floor beat is disciplining and organizing dancers (Hughes 1994). Another hypothesis for the link between gay men and disco is historical: gay territorialization of discoth猫ques from existing nighttime economies led to the development of distinct club-cultures.
In this presentation I trace the growth of Montreal鈥檚 gay market for disco and the influence of these club-cultures on the city鈥檚 reputation within the music industry. Starting from the discoth猫que as the site of disco consumption, I look at how these spaces were appropriated by gay men from the late-1960s by evaluating primary sources from the Archives gaies du Qu茅bec, including periodicals, maps, and guides. Ultimately, I propose disco鈥攁s musical genre, dance, and mode of consumption鈥攊s inherently urban, and disco culture promoted an idea of collective pleasure in urban space that fostered new spaces of sexual citizenship in Montreal and beyond.
Bio: Kiersten Beszterda van Vliet is a PhD candidate in Musicology and Gender & Women鈥檚 Studies at 9I制作厂免费, in Montreal. Their dissertation project, history of LGBTQ club cultures in Montreal between 1970鈥�1990, is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Kiersten is also a labour rights activist and former president of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at 9I制作厂免费 (AGSEM).
