ABSTRACT
This chapter uses two eccentric musical examples from Black cultural history in order to trace the kind of gender variance that peppers popular culture on the one hand and racial formations on the other. By writing about Big Mama Thornton and Sylvester, furthermore, I forge an alternative genealogy of music by linking two performers not in terms of genre or period but in terms of the vocal innovations that attend their queerly gendered performances. I present each case separately and then conclude with some thoughts about how to create a history of “musical genders.”
