The history of pop mic, and of black pop mic particular, has always been gay history.
Contents:
SISSY MAN BLU: STRAIGHT & GAY BLU
* gay blues *
Her nfn is overstated, and maybe liberately ironic: Like her mil mentor Ma Raey, Smh had numero sexual relatnships wh both men and women, and was que faiar wh gay and lbian subcultur.
Lyrilly she rarely flirted wh homoerotic material as did Ma Raey and Bsie Smh, and her only referenc to lbianism her tobgraphy are rogatory. Billy Strayhorn, pianist and wrer wh the De Ellgton orchtra, was openly gay. Hugh' private life was also much ls public than Raey's—but most scholars believe he was gay, and he did wre sympathetilly about gay characters a number of his works.
Gay performers, and sometim gay subtext, ntued to be a part of blu and jazz and their rivativ. That history has often been obscured though, so that, for example, the mixture of gay and Ain-Amerin fluenc dis was seen at the time as somehow alien to, or outsi of, the blu/rock leage, rather than as a natural part of . But fact, the history of pop mic general, and of black pop mic particular, has always been gay history.