This book explores manifestations of same-sex love and attraction in the popular music landscape of contemporary Russia by focusing on performers, songs, spectacles, and audiences that in many ways served as embodied and audible instances of both homosexuality and homoeroticism. Drawing on a combination of theory and ethnography, the book highlights the corporeality of the homosexual self in post-Soviet, Russian space. It argues that Russian homosexuality in the first decade of the twenty-first century must be understood as bound up with embodiment—a term indicating a mode of experience of one's self, located culturally, spatially, temporally, and in relation to others, as a sentient, material, corporeal being. The book also shows that, in addition to sexual liaisons, the act of socializing with other gay men, either in private or public spaces, as well as in the growing area of cyberspace, is important to Russian gay men. This introduction explains the book's methodology and scope of study and provides an overview of the chapters it contains.
Twenty First Century Popular Music Studies