The legendary musician, producer, and collaborator SOPHIE has passed on. She’s a producer as prolific as Brian Eno. A critically acclaimed musician. Trans Icon. Founder of HyperPop, the genre that defines Pop in this age. Listening to her, her influence becomes obvious. Much of modern music has her fingerprints all over it, either directly or indirectly.
I urge you to take time to appreciate her and her fellow trans trailblazers, like Wendy Carlos, Lauren Bousfield, and Laura Les.
Wendy Carlos is one of the best soundtrack artists alive, responsible for The Shining, TRON, and Clockwork Orange. Lauren Bousfield’s debut as Nero’s Day At Disneyland laid the foundation for breakbeat’s evolution into hyperpop, whilst SOPHIE and 100 Gecs (Laura Les’s duo with Dylan Brady) define hyperpop itself.
That’s by no means the end of the list of genderqueer musicians, which includes Of Montreal, Sam Smith, Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!, Ruby Rose, Glass Beach, Zand, Dorian Electra, Christine and the Queens, Vektroid (Macintosh Plus), Left @ London, and Mal Blum.
Nor is that list recent. Though The Clockwork Orange came out in 1971 and Carlos was out by the time she was a contributor to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. She is far beat by 40’s gospel singer Willmer “Little Ax” Broadnax, who sang with the biggest acts of his day. Like 30’s Jazz Singer Billy Tipton, Little Ax was transmasculine.
Closer to home for me are 4th Curtis https://www.4thcurtis.com/, who are absolutely wonderful. I truly believe they will define an entire social movement, aesthetic, and punk scene. My Dutch music geek friend is a fucking huge fan of them, and one of their members is a good friend of Literally 2 out of the 3 kindest people I know. That’s not something that maybe should go into a formal article like this, but CPunk fucking rocks and they do too.
Trans individuals have a long history in music, and have come to define much of what we listen to today.
Her contributions to the development of the Moog synthetizer, a keyboard that offered infinite possibilities of sounds, had an enormous impact on popular music: she is considered a pioneer in electro, but also an inspiration to the 70s rock and disco scene.
She made the synthetizer accessible and mainstream, notably with her classical album Switched On Bach which won several Grammys. She’s also known for composing the soundtracks of A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Tron.
Wendy is a transgender woman. She started to speak out about her identity and experience in 1978. Her works were immediately reissued with her preferred name.
Billy Strayhorn and Wendy Carlos, illustrations for upcoming events the Longy School of Music’s Queer Student Union will be organizing in the coming semester.
