“"YOU MAKE ME FEEL GOOD, I LIKE IT,": QUEER ASIAN/AMERICAN LISTENING, NIGHTLIFE, AND SOUNDS THAT SOOTHE US
Ph.D. Research Project
“EDM music…feels like Asian American music…I am not sure why…” – Anonymized Asian American interlocutor attending Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) 2024
Nightlife in its most expansive definition, whether that is the underground club, the karaoke bar, or the online video game lobby, or the night market, is the study of said spaces and not just what constitutes fun, but also how the body is made and unmade through darkness, desire, and “doing” fun (Mattson 2015; Khubchandani 2020). Studying nightlife illuminates how marginalized groups might experience freedom, resistance, and solidarity, which in turn shape our understanding of race and sexuality. The rich scholarship that exists about Electronic Dance Music (EDM) has pointed to its popular manifestations and formulations coming from queer Black and Latinx communities in New York and Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s (Fikentscher 2000; Salkind 2019; Moore 2018). It finds itself in community with scholarship about the Afro-Asia connections to music-making and meaning-making (Powell 2020; Roberts 2016). However, literature regarding global festive states or nightlife has seldom focused on the transpacific or offered a critique of the festive state due to a focus on nightlife in Europe and North America (Collin 2018; St John 2013; Sylvan 2005; García-Mispireta 2023). Likewise, the vantage point of raves is a lacuna in queer worldmaking in part due to having a separate genealogy from the drag, ballroom, and bar scenes (Adeyemi 2022; Benedicto 2014; Wark 2023; Khubchandani 2020; Adeyemi, Khubchandani, and Rivera-Servera 2021). EDM has quickly become one of the most popular forms of music for young Asian Americans of East and Southeast Asian descent for listening and as a creative avenue to make music (Bhardwa 2013; Park 2015; Little, Burger, and Croucher 2018). How then do we characterize notions that EDM is “Asian North American” music? What might it mean to listen in detail to how queer Asian North Americans are processing the sonic experience on the dance floor through their bodies and connecting the textures and lyrics of the songs to a diasporic experience (Vazquez 2013; Chambers-Letson 2018)?
To date, there has been no extended study within the field of transpacific studies that also directly addresses sensory studies, let alone studies that examine in detail how music listening, and music-making are coloured by the diasporic body. What scholarship does exist has largely focused on written forms of sensorial experiences that exist in archives or works of literature and poetry (Hoskins and Nguyen 2014; Wong 2018; Mendoza 2022; Patterson 2018). This is also different from scholarship that has traced only to music-making and not listening (Wang 2015). Such a critical gap in scholarship has meant that there has been no true study done on the sonic experience of listening from, and to, the diaspora. Given that the importance of cultural backgrounds is integral to understanding the meanings and values within specific kinds of music, it stands that major interventions can be made with a project seeking to combine transpacific studies with sensory studies through raves (Vazquez 2013). Furthermore, raves act as the optimal nexus to conduct this research as they can be interpreted by observers as a modern, nascent subculture, and most importantly, a “Temporary Autonomous Zone,” within which queer Asians explore beyond Western boundaries of sex, gender, race, and sexuality, and sexual geographies (Bey 2003; Munoz 2009; Tongson and Herring 2019).
This project seeks to (re)orient diasporic listening for queer people from East and Southeast Asia as well as their diaspora in North America around a theoretical concept referenced by queer Asian North Americans online as “Gaysia.” I argue that Gaysia and “gaysian listening” is a concept of community that is temporally and spatially built around festive nightlife events that has a different genealogy of listening in comparison to the canon of Black and Latinx sounds. Rather than hearing Black and Latinx characteristics in EDM, I theorize how Asian North American and Asian listeners of EDM are attuning to affective relationships of “techno Asiatic” practices of karaoke, to video gaming, and to anime and manga (Patterson 2020; Tongson 2022). I make the argument that such listening centers on the intermingling of Asian North Americans and East/Southeast Asians who travel across the Pacific to party or play, and in turn, disperse alternative methods of knowing and navigating the queer experience. These locales include EDM music festivals in Las Vegas, nightclubs in Bangkok, the karaoke bar in Manila, brothels in Singapore, concerts in Toronto, the Australian dancehall, gay cruise ship tours drifting in the Pacific, and transpacific online/in-person community organizing or gaming.
Regarding method, my project seeks to imagine ways of knowing queerness and listening to diaspora that lie at the Asian American borderlands and reflexive to my own identity as a queer Asian North American. I expand on Chen Kuan-Hsing’s “Asia as Method,” which uses “Asia” to decenter the colonial practices of knowledge production (Chen 2010). I develop the idea of “Gaysia as method” to respond to the need for different lenses to analyze the “Asia/s” that exist in the diaspora (Yoneyama 2022). It is a grouping of reflexive practices: 1) Kinesthetic intents (dance, touch, intimacy) that repair memories of trauma and harm. 2) Ephemeral moments build a home where we can dream. 3) Joy as practiced agency and love. Using auto/ethnography at EDM music festivals and what happens before/after the festivities, I want to chart how gaysians interact with Gaysia across the transpacific and how they make Gaysia “real” by worldmaking through festivity (Kondo 2018). I plan to engage in native ethnography rooted in Asian North American affects, such as music curating as a DJ, gaming, and karaoke. Through this, “Gaysia as method” can enrich current scholarship about the “messy” nature of diaspora, and generative of a new affect(ive) archive (Manalansan 2015; Ellapen 2021).
This study will provide a much-needed intervention into the fields of transpacific studies, queer studies, Asian North American studies, as well as performance studies. My work will consider how affective objects and experiences help queer Asian North Americans make meaning out of sounds not necessarily of Asiatic origins. It will continue a larger discussion on the materiality of (queer) Asian North American culture, and how practices of listening in detail to diasporic experiences might enable new orientations in cultural studies.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How does the predominant rave ideology of "Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect" (abbreviated to PLUR) influence queer understandings of love and community? Of alternative relationship styles outside of monogamy such as polygamy, polyamory, etc?
How do raves create a “global” gaysian community and queer rave scene (where gaysians network and meet each other at raves and travel to participate in events)?
Does the idea of a “weekend utopia” enable the development of raves being a space where gender as a social construct is reinforced through costume/dress, and gender performance? Are raves developing into a space where gaysians can experiment and affirm their gender, race, and sexuality (as queer Asian people)?
RESEARCH METHOD
Based on the goals stated above, my hypothesis for this research and study is that the queer Asian raving experience is largely affirming of the queer experience. I believe that “PLUR as method” is a driving ideology that exists even outside the space of “utopia” that raves advertise themselves to be. Practicing and embodying “PLUR as method” also changes the way gaysians and other queer-identifying individuals understand platonic and romantic love configurations, with gaysians commonly creating larger, more globalized acquaintance groups and being more receptive to the idea of polyamorous or polygamous relationships given that PLUR is about “spreading love.” However, regarding the intersection of raves and ethnic/cultural identity, I suspect that raves might appear to be welcoming as a result of PLUR ideology, that under the surface level there is a level of racism and stratification of community not just between White and non-White communities, but also between White queer-identifying individuals and non-White Queer individuals such as gaysians. I also hypothesize that the concept of a temporal “utopia” and “escape” presented in raves is conducive to allowing queer-identifying individuals the flexibility and safe space to experiment with their gender identity, sexuality, and cultural/ethnic identity through key parts of gay rave culture. Key components in raves I will be examining include costume design, music, drug usage, and house/home parties (commonly known and truncated in the gay raving community to “homepas”).
The research method for this study are 1) interviews with self-identifying queer Asian men and 2) auto-ethnography as well as participant-observation at rave events. Within the first category, I will be looking to interview self-identifying queer Asian men within the ages of 18-40 who make up a broad category and sample size of the gaysian community. The choice of having a broad age category is deliberate in that it will assist my research and writing about how different generations of self-identifying queer Asian men have different perceptions of the self and of their own queer Asian community yet still equally enjoy the raving experience. This includes individuals that were able to “come out” as gay earlier in life or later in life. As such, this best represents the critical issue of how rave ideology erases age distinctions between individuals in this age group.
In regards to auto-ethnography, my approach to this methodology of research is informed by Dr. Sarah Pink’s monograph “Doing Sensory Ethnography.” I am a believer in treating the body and the senses as a canvas for research. Pink describes how being in the same space and time as the research participant group would be in as it pertains to research enables one to better position themselves as “insiders” to the participant group, thus allowing for interviews that integrate the sensual aspects of the participant experience.