Author Sasha Geffen Comes To BAM To Discuss Pop Music's Impact On The Paradigm Of Gender Identity

To celebrate their new book, Glitter Up The Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, music writer Sasha Geffen joins fellow writer Thora Siemsen in conversation-followed by a dance party DJed by SHYBOI. This event is part of Unbound, a series celebrating new book releases co-presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore.

A sharp, insightful, wide-ranging survey of the queerness coursing through pop music history, Sasha Geffen's first book, Glitter Up The Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, shows how music allows rigid gender roles to fall away in a sensual and ambiguous exchange between performer and listener. Starting with early blues and the Beatles and continuing with performers such as David Bowie, Prince, Missy Elliot, and Frank Ocean, Geffen explores how artists have used music, fashion, language, and technology to break out of the confines mandated by gender essentialism and establish the voice as the primary expression of gender transgression. From glam rock and punk to disco, techno, and hip-hop, music helped set the stage for today's conversations about trans rights and recognition of nonbinary and third-gender identities.

Sasha Geffen is a writer based in Colorado. Their work focuses on the intersections between pop culture and gender and has appeared in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Artforum, The Nation, and The New Inquiry, among others.

Thora Siemsen is an interviewer and writer living in New York City.

SHYBOI is a Jamaican born, New York based multidisciplinary artist. SHYBOI is the moniker she uses to cause sonic disruption. As a creative positioned between Caribbean and American culture, she uses sound to interrogate ideas of identity, notions of power, perceived histories and the entanglements that happen within these topics. She is also a member of the queer artist collective #KUNQ.