Conference Agenda

Contralto Mrs. Howard Paul (née Isabella Hill) enjoyed a twenty-year career as half of a comedic double-act with her husband, Henry, whose name she used professionally even after their separation in 1877. The pair toured her native Great Britain, his native United States, as well as continental Europe, all to great acclaim. The Howard Pauls specialized in impersonations and character work, and among Mrs. Howard Paul’s late-career personas was the fictional women’s rights advocate, Miss Grym. The “lectures” Mrs. Howard Paul gave as Miss Grym have not survived—and may well have been extemporized, besides. The sheet music for this character’s signature number, “Bother the Men!” (1869), however, is extant. Written by the Howard Pauls’ frequent collaborator, Henry Walker, the song rehearses common, farcical stereotypes of reformed-minded women. With a rising titular refrain, single-note patter singing in the verse, and lyrics that present incomplete or irrational ideas, Walker’s music for Miss Grym engages several sonic qualities typically found in caricatures of women’s rights advocates—shrillness, stridency, garrulousness, and incoherence.

Straightforwardly misogynistic as the music is, Mrs. Howard Paul’s embodiment of Miss Grym may have engaged in more nuanced gender play. According to published advertisements and performance reviews, Mrs. Howard Paul’s particular specialty was male impersonation, and she was widely praised for her convincing portrayals of real singers, especially tenor Sims Reeves and Henry Russell, a baritone. Moreover, when she was not on tour, Mrs. Howard Paul periodically played Captain Macheath in The Beggar’s Opera and other trouser roles in burlesques and ballad operas around London. Using scholarship on cross-dressing in nineteenth-century American and British theater (Gillian Rodger, 2010 & 2018; Kathleen Casey, 2015; and Karen Raphaeli, diss. 2019), I argue that Mrs. Howard Paul’s embodied realization of Miss Grym was necessarily flexible—able to be masculinized or femininized, rendered as transgressive or farcical. This flexibility afforded Paul both artistic freedom and political cover during what was a tumultuous era for the proposed expansion of women’s rights in both Great Britain and the United States.

This paper examines how ‘spliced collage’ functions as a musical technique in drag performance, constructing trans and queer storyworlds, engaging audience co-creation, and reflecting the ephemeral, fragmented nature of trans existence. Drawing on performances from Bristol’s drag scenes (U.K.), I build on scholarship in queer musicology (Barz & Cheng, 2020; Garcia-Mispireta, 2023; Maus & Whiteley, 2022) to explore how drag performers manipulate musical materials to involve audiences in acts of collective gender play. The technique I term ‘spliced collage’ draws from multiple genres, sound bites, and pop culture references, fragmenting and reassembling them onto a core musical text. Contributing to studies on trans cultural production (Rosenberg et al., 2021; Stryker & Currah, 2014; Tourmaline et al., 2017), I explore ‘spliced collage’ as a distinctly transcoded technique which demands audience co-creation for three reasons: Firstly, the compositional process emphasises DIY culture, fostering resistance and community. Secondly, its referential nature, which invites collaborative acts of recognition, interpretation, and play. Finally, it conveys a multiplicity of meanings, containing structural fragility through its bold, fragmented form. This requires audience participation to fill gaps, making worldbuilding a collective, co-authored experience. Using participant observation and interviews, I reconstruct a number deploying ‘spliced collage,’ analyse how musical texts compete and interact, and examine audience responses to the original performance, building on music and drag scholarship (Blackburn, 2024; Heller, 2020). By framing ‘spliced collage’ as a trans-coded musical practice, I demonstrate how it articulates both individual and collective transness through the storyworld co-created, expanding discussions on trans methodologies in musicology and participatory performance.

Since its second season, RuPaul's Drag Race reality competition series has brought the practice of celebrity impersonation to the limelight in its seasonal, highly-anticipated "Snatch Game" challenge. A parody of classic game show The Match Game, each contestant impersonates a celebrity with the goal of attaining the most laughs from RuPaul and the guest judges. These contestants are expected, if not required, to engage in camp aesthetics through volleyed jokes and cultural commentary. On RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Jinkx Monsoon revitalizes camp by portraying and singing as actress, vocalist, and queer icon Judy Garland. While Monsoon’s audience extends beyond the queer community, many of Monsoon’s jokes, vocal stylings, and gestures speak directly to a queer audience across generational and social divides, from Garland’s longtime fans to Drag Race connoisseurs of all ages. Amidst ongoing corporatization and non-queer consumption of drag performance, Jinkx-as-“Judy” asserts her own power as a queer and transgender performer through a campy performance designed specifically for her LGBTQIA+ audience members.

In this paper, I position camp as an invariably queer artform, one that allows members of the queer community to situate themselves in a heterosexist and cissexist world. Reflecting upon Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Notes On Camp” (1964), as well as writings by Esther Newton (1972), Moe Meyer (1994), Andrew Ross (1999), and Judith Peraino (2005), I engage with Monsoon’s performance to showcase four foundational functions: camp as 1) queer code and social commentary, 2) an act of parody and failure, 3) a “time machine” that the gaps between temporal settings, and 4) a radical act of queer worldmaking. Further, I identify the complex web of vocal references from queer popular music that tie these purposes together, notably the reallocation of RuPaul’s house music and the Drag Race title sequence, as well as Monsoon’s hauntological play with vocal and gestural “Judy-isms.” Through this performance, Monsoon serves far more than looks and jokes; she brings a unique brand of camp to a large body of queer listeners, offers new pathways for addressing individual and communal trauma, and encourages queer worldbuilding through comedy and vocal play.