“Interesting experiments by challenging artists such as Dar Williams aside, I believe pop music is very gendered. There’s a lot about that I like—and quite a bit more I disdain.” Calliope Kurtz, who recently transitioned from male to female, relocated to Menlo Park, California from the East Coast and reentered the job market after a decade as a stay at home parent, wonders if issues of gender are at play in her difficulty finding full time employment. “I never know if the indifference I face comes from my trans gender, my age, my lack of ‘real’ job skills, or what, but... my phone isn’t ringing.”
Arguing that transition is primarily internal, Kurtz says, “I’ve found most of my transformation in what I do, not how I look.” Although she is “totally nonop, no hormones, no electrolysis, no padding” Kurtz still passes regularly. “Of course, I just dress like an old lady, so who’s really noticing much, anyway?”
Trying to break into music journalism, Kurtz has found the industry less inviting than she’d hoped. “Now the whole punk-grunge-DIY aesthetic has flown, the biz is much more corporate than ever. And still sexist as hell. Dig the [40th Anniversary Issue] of Rolling Stone, for example—20 interviews [of artists and leaders who ‘helped shape our time’] and 18 were men.”
Although she jokes, that feeling like a woman “isn’t [liking] cute shoes, plucked eyebrows or A-line skirts; it’s vulnerability, poverty and shrinking prospects for a happy ending,” Kurtz (calliopekurtz.blogspot.com) is experiencing some success building her portfolio.
“I’ve been published in some respectable places—Monthly Review, Scram, PopMatters—but [rarely] for pay. It’s been just enough encouragement to keep me hanging on. I just did a piece on Yoko Ono’s two feminist albums, which Perfect Sound Forever will feature in their June-July edition. That will be my first Calliope Kurtz byline.”
She says she’s trying a Buddhist attitude, to deal with the rejection and slow movement of her career trajectory. But she’s not entirely positive about her prospects. “I doubt I’ll ever sell a book. I once came close with a biography of Terry Knight, but my passions, alas, seem to always miss the mainstream.”
Still, there’s a silver lining in her current situation. Kurtz says the great thing about working for nothing is, “the liberty to write about [what] interests me. If my travels take me to Judy Collins, who isn’t exactly enjoying retro cool at the moment, then I can dive in to my heart’s content. I’m also interested to see if Britney Spears can incorporate some of her dark experiences into her upcoming tunes and, who knows, maybe turn into Keith Richards.”
Particularly enamored with rock of the Vietnam era, Kurtz says, her transition has her led to discover female musicians she missed before. “I’m now looking at the same…era, but from the female side. I like to imagine how the young Andrea Dworkin heard gender expressed in certain bodies of music—Laura Nyro, Loretta Lynn, Grace Slick and, of course, the great Joni Mitchell. I’d love to interview Slick. Her father was a crossdresser and I wonder if that influenced some of Slick’s more theatrical antics.”
Kurtz says she’s also written about one-hit wonders, obscure genres and overlooked aspects of an artist’s work. “Previously, as Barry Stoller, I wrote a book-length biography of Bloodrock, whose freak Top 40 hit, ‘DOA,’ I believe was an unintentional yet intuitive Vietnam protest.”
While she’d like to hear more trans musicians, Kurtz isn’t sure when the mainstream music industry will embrace them. “I think it’s important to hear your voice represented in music, [but] I don’t think there’s really any sense of transsexuals as a market.”
Trans writer, Jacob Anderson-Minshall, co-authored Blind Curves, the first in the Blind Eye Mystery series, available now. Contact jake@trans-nation.org or visit Anderson-minshall.com for more information.
