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Ten Yards, who typically books two or three events a month, believes he’d get more work if he just played generic chart-toppers.Ĭomplicating things further is the recent surge of mostly-well-meaning straight women at gay bars - some of whom are simply searching for spaces in which they feel safe. “It’s marketing! Actual gay people aren’t being marketed in the same way those pop stars are,” adds DJ Ten Yards, a Brooklyn-based DJ and clothing designer. “Everyone knows who these artists are and a great deal of private money has been put into creating their significance.” This is what made them feel normal,” J Clef says. J Clef, agrees, noting that many gay clubbers grew up listening to pop music. “A lot of people just want to blend in and fly under the radar. Sometimes, there’s assimilationist logic at work - as in, why can’t we just listen to what everyone else is listening to? “Gay people are so caught up in wanting to be just like everybody else,” says Buckmaster. It’s hard to get anybody to respond to anything that they don’t know the words to … I usually get the Top 40 memo before I walk in the club.” On a typical night, J Clef says, “I would play as many queer artists as I can get away with, and I can get away with that way easier at a hip hop night. “Our job as DJs is to make the bar money,” says GLAM-award winning DJ J Clef. If it’s a basic white crowd they are not having it if it’s not Britney.”īuckmaster barely plays Portland gay bars any more for this reason, noting that, at most gay bars, “people don’t want to be uncomfortable, they want to hear what they already know.”Īnd from a purely financial standpoint, it’s always much safer for any bar to play music that is going to fill dance floors and keep crowds spending. But when I play at, people are not happy - ’cause I try to play queer people or queer-adjacent people. Lady Simon agrees, saying: “I have spooky and cool parties where I do them at straight bars. “I have heard horror stories from DJ friends where the management said they were playing too much ‘black’ music, which is such a disgusting statement,” Coleslaw, a Boston-based drag queen and DJ, adds.īecause of this kind of pressure, I’ve personally found queer-friendly straight bars - usually goth and punk establishments - are more open to newer, diverse, and experimental sounds than many avowedly queer venues. So much has changed - and yet sometimes it seems so little has changed.” “I could tell stories that will either curl your hair. “I got suspended at Limelight back in 1992 for playing ‘too much of that rap.’ I wish nightclubbers were more open-minded,” he says. Racial discrimination in nightlife has a long, terrible history, says DJ Tennessee, a New York City nightlife staple. Instead, I’m told to stick to Top 40 or pop classics (and, more recently, ’90s throwbacks).ĭistressingly, these requests are more emphatic when it comes to gay artists of color. In my own experience as a DJ, bar owners and managers of nearly ever gay establishment I’ve worked at have asked me to play less music by queer artists. Unfortunately, streaming Lil Nas X all day doesn’t mean straight or LGBTQ music fans are any more accepting of sexual minorities.
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Openly gay artists like Lil Nas X top Billboard charts, and musical subcultures like queercore have emerged. “Being gay isn’t counterculture anymore, it’s culture,” Buckmaster says. One of many contradictions in our current political climate is how there is now greater representation of sexual minorities in popular culture at the exact same time our civil liberties are being dismantled.
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Of course, queer and so-called mainstream cultures are constantly evolving. I feel safe with pretty blonde girls singing to me about boys, because I also like boys! That’s easier and safer than a radical queer singing, like, ‘Drone Bomb Me.’ That’s much scarier.” “There’s also this age-old thing of little young queer boys and their girl best friends - they understand each other,” Simon adds. For generations of LGBTQ music fans turned clubgoers, pop music provided communal catharsis.
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“It’s catchy! It’s a team of producers that know how to write a beat that’s easy to dance to.”Īnd with gay people essentially forced underground for the majority of human history, women singing passionately about unrequited love became a proxy for unfulfilled gay desire. “I grew up with Britney and Christina there was overt sexuality, there was feminism,” says Simon. Lady Simon, a Brooklyn club kid and DJ, thinks nostalgia is a factor.