Attending jazz jam sessions is a crucial extracurricular activity for individual musicians seeking networking opportunities. However, jam sessions operate in ways that normalize toxic, aggressive, and masculine-coded behaviors and attitudes, which may intimidate people of all genders. I draw on feminist scholarship on labor and the psycho-social norms of Western workplace practices to demonstrate that jam sessions operate similarly to casual work environments.

To elucidate my argument, first, I present an autoethnography to situate myself as a participant with first-hand experience in this toxic environment. Following this, I review previous research on jazz jam sessions to illustrate how scholars have historically approached this critical space for jazz performance. Third, I share field research conducted in 2019, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which I interviewed jam session leaders and attendees of all genders based in New York City. Subsequently, I provide a comparative analysis drawing parallels between the operation of jam sessions and extra-curricular social workplace settings in the corporate sector. Lastly, I present my recent field research that examines several alternative jam session spaces designed to offer an alternative environment distinct from the traditional jam session. I ask whether these alternative jam sessions address the larger issue of toxic gendered behavior that has become normalized, or whether they, in fact, permit traditional jam sessions to persist unchanged by providing an escape for those who ‘can’t hang’ in such environments.

There has been little exploration of how Black queer identity is expressed within industry-marketed African American musical traditions such as hip-hop, soul, and rhythm and blues (R&B); the sparse representation that has been granted thus far primarily focuses on sex and the body. This paper employs a phenomenological approach to examine Black queerness beyond its common framing around sexuality and struggle. Instead, I center the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and lived experiences of Black queer individuals as expressed through alternative R&B music. Ethnographic interviews with executives at the GRAMMYs’ Recording Academy inform my approach to current industry standards, genre classifications, and sonic barriers. Using works by Sara Ahmed, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Fred Moten, and Alexander Weheliye, I explore this Black popular culture phenomenon through cultural biopolitics, specifically the “flesh,” “viscus,” and “voice.” Sonically, this paper discusses genre hybridity cultivated beyond industry normativities as encapsulated in the term “alternative.” I argue that this musical experimentation has led to a decolonial orientation of resistance within the Black queer community and an exploration of musical identity that mimics lived reality (Crawley 2017). Exemplifying the lyrics, rhythm, timbre, and melodic choices of experimental artists Erykah Badu and Willow Smith will guide my approach. By describing the humanity in relationality in music, as opposed to solely the sexual objectification of Black queer bodies, I center the importance of what it means to realistically occupy such space under a Western hegemonic structure.

As an African woman who is a music practitioner and music scholar, I often find myself questioning which voices to highlight in my work and navigating the complexities of authority and authenticity. Who holds knowledge in music performance spaces, or better put, who is learning from whom? By examining two ethnographic sites—one involving girl dancers and the other, involving women who identify as mothers making music (both in Nigeria)—I juxtapose my experiences with theirs, reflecting on how musical knowledge flows within our communities. In these encounters, I confront the longstanding orality-literacy divide, a notion born from colonial constructs that often misrepresents and undermines African knowledge systems, especially women’s perspectives. By revealing unique and perhaps unusual insights gained from these practitioners, which are pivotal to my analysis, I aim to demonstrate that African Women’s music is a living, evolving practice that challenges these simplistic classifications. My experiences in performance spaces reveal how deeply rooted and complex these interactions are, teaching me as much as I teach others. I advocate for a decolonized approach to representing African musical experiences, one that respects and centers the voices of African women and girls. By sharing my experiences, I hope to contribute to a research methodology that honors and makes space for all voices involved in our shared musical knowledge.

Where is the academic literature concerning black queer women emo fans? This presentation explores the intersections of Black womanhood, queerness, emo music, and the profound emotional landscapes that emerge within this genre, positioning emo as both a musical genre and an erotic utopia (Muñoz 2009). My research underscores the importance of emo as a site of belonging and resistance, where queer Black women find solidarity, empowerment, and the opportunity to reclaim narratives such as vulnerability and joy within a genre often characterized by its white male centricity (Ryalls 2013).

Drawing upon participant observation as an academic and fan, or “aca-fan” (Williams 2022) and qualitative interviews with queer Black women emos, I seek to elucidate how we access the erotic and utopic via emo musicking. I borrow the term “erotic” from Audre Lorde (1978), to move beyond queerness solely regarding sexuality, and posit queer Black women’s experiences with emo as a deep social practice, resource, and framework for emotional agency. With this presentation, I aim to foster an environment where the emotional resonances of Black women participants are foregrounded (Ahmed 2004), creating an active bulwark against the racist, classist and abelist tendencies of academia that have historically marginalized queer Black women’s contributions to this genre.