UC Riverside

My dissertation examines gender and sexuality constructs in Thai classical music, and how they are reinforced and challenged through the participation of queer men musicians in khrueang saay or string music. Drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in Bangkok, the work is situated within ethnomusicology and uses ethnography as its primary method of representation. It is informed by theoretical frameworks from gender, queer, Southeast Asian, and media and cultural studies. My core argument is that the presence of queer men string musicians exposes but does not interrogate heteronormativity in the tradition.

I begin by tracing of the construction of gender-defined rules in Thai classical music during the early to mid-19th century. This resulted in the feminization of string music, a precondition for the subsequent emergence and visibility of queer men musician. I pay attention to various gendered performance and performative methods through which queerness is articulated through musical rendition, embodied gestures, and homoerotic interpretation of song texts. I also investigate the social lives of queer men musicians string music circles as a contentious space, variously faced by both inward and outward pressure to conform. I focus on gossip about musical linages to challenge often smoothed-out notions about social interactions among Thai classical musicians. I then examine queer men musicians’ consensual pressure to conform in hyper-gendered institutions to avoid the shame of nonconformity and to maintain their social status. With the close interwovenness of gender, sexuality, queerness, and heteronormativity, I extend the concept of queer worldmaking as a modality in ways that are reconciliatory and oblique.

My dissertation contributes to the critical examination of underrepresented groups in Thai classical music and expands the boundaries of knowledge pertaining to gender, sexuality, and queerness as they intersect with musical performance. My research is part of a broader conversation about ethnomusicology and sexuality, an area that has been very slow to arrive in the discipline. This work joins the rich, critical scholarship of gender, sexuality, and expressive cultures in Southeast Asia from a specific underrepresented angle of queer subjects’ lived experiences that are closely associated with classical performing arts.