Patsy Cline & Queering Southern Music

Besides being the perfect music to sing in the car, Patsy Cline is a queer icon. I recently saw a performance of Ted Swindley's Always...Patsy Cline during the off-season in Provincetown, Massachusetts's community theatre. It was terrible, albeit in a fun, campy way. The audience, a small crowd of mostly middle aged white gay couples, loved it.

As evidenced by the success of Queer Appalachia, a Southern LGBTQ media and culture collective, many LGBTQ Southerners relate to each other through shared music. Queer Appalachia, among a collection of memes and photos of local queer mechanics, highlights classic artists like Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Nina Simone, and Muddy Waters.

This music is special to me because it invokes a shared regional identity. In my own documentary work, I think about how referencing cultural icons means different things to different groups of people. Throughout my interviews with LGBTQ Southerners in small towns, music always appeared somehow: "I'm Coming Out" blaring in the background at a community Pride event, an older woman's story of being outed by attending a Melissa Etheridge concert, and a man who remembers his favorite pop singer's HIV/AIDS activism.