"Raising the Bottom is a performance ethnography of the sissy bounce musical genre in post-Katrina New Orleans. An amalgamation of Black queer vernacular, R&B, blues, and US and Caribbean performance traditions, named for the figure of the Black "sissy,"sissy bounce highlights inclusive notions of Black belonging and liberation. Drawing on two years of fieldwork with bounce artists and audiences in New Orleans, Alix Chapman emphasizes marginalization of cultural practices not only by race and sexuality,but also class disparities, tracing what he calls an epistemology of the bottom to understand and counter narratives that conflate Black and queer bodies, spaces, and sex with the bottom of social hierarchies. Through this notion of the bottom, Chapman shows how performers address, remix, and redirect stereotypes to amplify community power, pleasure, and solidarity"-- Provided by publisher.
Drawing on two years of fieldwork in post-Katrina New Orleans, Raising the Bottom is a performance ethnography of the bounce musical genre, tracing what Alix Chapman calls an epistemology of the bottom to understand how black queer performers amplify community power, pleasure, and solidarity.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent mass displacement of black neighborhoods in New Orleans, black queer performers redefined notions of belonging throughout the city. These unlikely figures, such as artists Big Freedia and Vockah Redu, played a significant role in calling the displaced back home and serving as beacons of hope. In Raising the Bottom, Alix Chapman engages in performance ethnography, taking to the stage while writing about the lives of these bounce artists and their extended community. He theorizes an epistemology of the bottom—a way of knowing, praxis, and aesthetic—which contests hierarchies of value that place black and queer bodies at the lowest rungs of the social ladder. By engaging in this bottom episteme, bounce performers leverage pleasure and coalition to transform collectives not meant to survive crisis and disaster. Raising the Bottom shows how black queer artists address, remix, and redirect stereotypes to amplify community power, pleasure, and solidarity.
