Following on from definitions of ‘outsider art,’ (Maclagan, 2010; Scherr, 2022) outsider music is broadly understood as ‘self-taught’ or ‘naive’ musicians working outside of normative institutional frameworks, or conversely non-normative bodies attempting (and failing) to work within these frameworks. Largely consisting of self-made recordings from the 1950s-90s in North America, which were lost and rediscovered decades later, outsider music’s recorded archive consists of a collection of ephemeral sonic objects, often once deemed insignificant and without ‘use’ or ‘value.’ Limited existing writings on outsider music (Chusid, 2000; Laraway, 2018) treat it less as a creative practice and more as an object of ridicule which fetishises a certain idea of sonic morbidity; it’s ‘monstrous,’ ‘chaotic,’ ‘weird,’ ‘disgusting.’ What is it precisely about these sonic objects that provokes such a response, and how does this relate to the particular forms of marginalisation experienced by outsider music’s racialised, disabled and queerly gendered musicians? This presentation will set outsider music and its social reception into a broader history of North American popular performance (Brooks, 2005). Here, I draw particular links to the sensationalised otherness found in 19th and early 20th century ‘Freak Shows’, their relation to settler conceptions of national identity (Bendix, 1997) and the identification of ‘problem bodies’ within a population (Schuller, 2017). By incorporating critical, reparative readings of the freak show by queer, disabled scholars (Clare, 2015; Awkward-Rich, 2022) I ask how we might uncover the radical, transgressive forms of humanity present among situations of abjection, and their emergence in outsider musicians’ performance.

For a group of displaced queer and femme punks in San José, Costa Rica, rural Guanacaste, Cartago, and Alajuela remain both idealized homelands and ‘good places to leave’. Though such rural spaces hold romanticized places in the hearts of many San José-relocated punks, a significant number of those who have left cite the danger that accompanies queer identity in rural parts of the country as far outweighing their positives. While queer punks in the city still face the physical and symbolic violences of homophobia, many see the development of queer, femme counterpublic spaces to be notably more feasible there. This brings to the front the roles of colonialism and imperialism in citizens' daily lives. Punk musicians in the scene engage with musico-poetic forms such as bombas y retahilas, poetic mythmaking, and rural landscapes by actively queering them in their music, performances, and activism. Bombas y retahilas, for example, are known for their humor, loaded word play, and informal critique of colonizers, the rich, and the country’s most powerful. Still, they carry with them many homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic conventions. Musicians in the scene draw on the queer and feminist punk potentials of distorting such practices, while maintaining a connection to their home cultures and engaging the result in decolonial praxis. This paper examines how these bands utilize sonic, poetic, and visual elements to connect with their ancestral lands and cultures, as they disrupt the homophobic, misogynistic, and colonial baggage these forms may carry.

Queer orientations in music and the culture surrounding them challenge societal expectations on what it means to be queer and how joy can be found in it. This paper explores the performance and interaction of the concepts of queer joy and world-building within the work of the American pop band Muna, focusing on how musical and socio-political contexts contribute to the meaning of songs and how they might generate shared sentiment and affect for a predominantly queer audience. Themes of joy and desire are omnipresent in Muna’s output, as they are in broader contexts of queerness. Before performing their hit song “Silk Chiffon” during their Tiny Desk concert in 2023, lead singer Katie Gavin stated: “We love being queer and we find a lot of joy in it.” While their music is a generative site for examining queer joy, it is foremost a place for queer dreams to come into fruition, akin to how their 2017 song “I Know a Place” has become an anthem for chosen families and community-building. In live performances, they even alter the titular lyrics of the song to “Let’s build a place,” which they are effectively doing with their listeners. As Muna’s audience grows into the mainstream, questions of queer identity in their music become increasingly important in how this joy is received and spread, particularly by queer communities. Through performance analysis and ethnographic insights, the paper’s analysis addresses how music can build a place where queer joy is not mere utopian possibility but reality.

Honey Andrews, an illusionist performer based in Corpus Christi, Texas, is known for her Selena performances. In interviews, Andrews has stated that, from a young age, she knew she wanted to be like Selena. As a trans woman, she has gone to great lengths to fashion an image that resembles the slain Tejano singer and has dedicated her performance career to re-creating Selena’s dance moves, costumes, and overall aesthetic. In this presentation, I focus on her interpretation of “Disco Medley,” as it was performed by Selena during the infamous 1994 Astrodome concert. In recreating this moment, Andrews not only conjures the star’s rebellious desire to cross genre boundaries (e.g., Tejano music, ranchera, R&B, and, of course, Disco), but also creates a queer lifeworld that binds Selena to groups that routinely face oppression, violence and hostility in daily life. Blending considerations of Selena’s queer potentiality (Vargas 2007) and Latinx nightlife as queer utopias (Muñoz 2009; Rivera-Servera 2012; 2004) with studies on Disco’s activation of queer identities through music and dance (Lawrence 2016, 2006, 2011; Neibur 2022; Hubbs 2007; Blaney 2013), this presentation contributes to ongoing conversations about the concrete possibilities of performing Otherness and community through subversive musical participation. Listening to Selena’s Disco remixes and Andrew’s embodied rendition of those same sounds decades after her death offers insight into the way the Tejano star’s musical memory imbues the physical geography of the US/Mexico border, often thought of as hostile terrain (De León 2012) with a sense of joy, hope, and futurity.