A reader writes:
For some reason, I can't stop watching this MHB. I've now seen it five times in full screen HD, and it just gets better every time. It's Busta Rhymes mashed up with Antoine Dodson flamboyance, the booty-fixation of Sir Mix-A-Lot, the vapid lyrics, professional production and bad white person dancing that is Rebecca Black, and whatever learning disability that causes my students to think that the solution to a shitty project is adding more and more special effects. It's an awesome high point in a new art movement that I can only describe as craptacularism.
Exposure to such delicious randomness is a small but vital part of why your blog is one of my daily reads. Thanks for sharing.
From an interview with social theorist Alix Chapman:
Sissy Bounce is really not all that different [from the more widely known genre of "bounce."]. It incorporates call and response, the triggerman and brown beat, and a lot of the same dancing and sexually provocative lyrics associated with the rest of Bounce. There's a lot of social critique and explanation throughout Bounce music, just like any other form of hip-hop.
The only difference is these "sissies" are commenting and explaining a way of life that is not usually heard. I'm sure if you gave anybody marginalized by their sexuality or gender the chance to speak from their lived experience you're gonna hear something different.
OMG Blog recommends:
[C]heck out the excellent website "Where They At", an oral history of bounce music curated by photographer Aubrey Edwards and writer Alison Fensterstock for the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. The site features music and audio interviews with veteran bounce acts such as Mia X, Cheeky Blakk and DJ Jubilee, and sissy bounce performers Katey Red, Vockah Redu and of course, Big Freedia.
A reader passes along a great short doc on NOLA's bounce movement. The above video is Katey Red performing at SXSW last year. Stereogum features a very NSFW performance by Big Freedia:
Here’s a video where the artists’ statement makes all the difference. On the surface it’s a strip club video. But underneath:
… Freedia encourages the dancers at Sassy’s to shake not for the customers specifically, but rather for their own pleasure and expression. The result is evident in the cheering and support of the crowd. In these three songs money rains on the stage (a necessary part of the work these girls do) despite the fact that the girls themselves rarely acknowledge the crowd. No longer performing “for” the men and women who are visiting the club, the energy of the room transcends the practical nature of “stripping as a profession” and illustrates that what works the best when trading sexuality for sustenance is a genuine expression of sexual joy.