UCLA

This dissertation explores the dynamic interplay between queer, female musicians and the electric guitar, an instrument which has historically been oriented toward cisgender, heterosexual men. Using an autoethnographic, practice-based analytical approach, I deconstruct the electric guitar’s material, cultural, and performative dimensions, focusing on how queer, female musicians challenge and reimagine its legacy. By centering the embodied experiences of queer women, I interrogate the electric guitar’s exclusionary design and its cultural positioning as a symbol of cisgender male, heteronormative sexual dominance and reframe it as a mutable tool for diverse expressions of identity, desire, and creativity. Each chapter introduces innovative methods for musical analysis to uncover the phenomenological, material, and erotic dimensions of queer, female guitar practice.

The dissertation’s chapters are structured around three material aspects of the instrument: artifact (its physical structure and design), signal (the electromagnetic path from vibration to amplification), and surface (the residues and imprints left by/on the body during performance). Chapter 1 uses the St. Vincent Signature electric guitar as a lens through which to illuminate the material and cultural factors which have alienated women from the instrument and the rock genre. I use my method of “cyborg organology” to situate the instrument in relation to standard guitar models and unpack how it accommodates queer, female bodies and performance styles. Chapter 2 shows how queer, female guitarists disrupt conventional electric guitar practices through their alternative uses. Using the signal chain as a metaphor and analytical framework, the chapter explores how unconventional textures, timbres, and techniques reflect queer orientations. Chapter 3 explores the relationship between the electric guitar, the performer’s body, and the physical traces left behind during musical acts, arguing that such traces can serve as archives of queer use and embodied creativity. I establish “vampiric performance,” a method of sensory ethnography in which a musician tries to recreate another performer’s style to feel what it might have been like to play as they did. Interludes between chapters highlight specific performances by queer, female artists and show how they use the electric guitar to negotiate with hegemonic narratives about rock and roll, virtuosity, gender, and sexuality.