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Kirsten Zemke

The University of Auckland, Anthropology, Faculty Member

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Jared Mackley-Crump

Auckland University of Technology

Macquarie University

Kirsten Moana Thompson

Seattle University

Michelle Ladwig Williams

The University of Auckland

The University of Hong Kong

Kalissa Alexeyeff

University of Melbourne

University of Wollongong

College of Micronesia-FSM

Siobhan McDonnell

The Australian National University

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Papers by Kirsten Zemke

‘Sissy that walk’: Reframing queer Pacific bodies through the FAFSWAG Ball

by Jared Mackley-Crump and Kirsten Zemke

Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, Volume 4, Number 1, 2019

This article explores the Auckland-based arts collective FAFSWAG. This group of queer Pasifika ar... more This article explores the Auckland-based arts collective FAFSWAG. This group of queer Pasifika artists and dancers has taken up the activism and aesthetics of US ball culture, creating their own underground vogue scene. Facing exclusion and marginalization sometimes from both the mainstream queer community and their own Pasifika communities, FAFSWAG craft a creative response that celebrates and asserts safe spaces for queer ‘brown’ bodies and revisits distinctive Pasifika gender concepts. Their discourse, dance, and events offer responses to lived exigencies of colonization, diaspora, homophobia and racism. Voguing offers masculine and feminine movements for these queer bodies, challenging masculinities imposed by ‘tradition’, pop culture and colonial narratives. The transplanting and uptake of New York ball culture has given FAFSWAG in New Zealand a platform and inspiration to create art and movement that reflects their multiple identities, genders, histories and influences.

The FAFSWAG Ball: Event spaces, counter-marginal narratives, and walking queer bodies into the centre

by Kirsten Zemke and Jared Mackley-Crump

Events and Marginalisation, 2019

FAFSWAG are a group of young queer Pasifika artists and dancers who have taken up the activism an... more FAFSWAG are a group of young queer Pasifika artists and dancers who have taken up the activism and aesthetics of U.S. ball culture to create their own underground vogue scene in Auckland, New Zealand. In doing so, they fuse together both global black queer pop culture as well as indigenous paradigms of gender and sexuality to craft a unique and creative response to exclusion and marginalization. Ball culture is centred around competitive balls, fashion and dance, but they function at a deeper level. They are spaces of community and collaboration for those often rejected by mainstream society. Ball culture’s more recent shift into mainstream pop culture has transmitted its style and message globally, in this case to a group of radical creatives at the bottom of the Pacific ocean who are developing their own responses. The FAFSWAG balls celebrate and assert safe spaces for queer ‘brown’ bodies.

"“I Told You I Was Freaky”: Gender, Genre, and Parody in the Songs of Flight of the Conchords."

Music in Comedy Television, 2017

“I’ma school that bitch”: Gay Rappers Defying Binaries and Expressing Fierceness

Rethinking Difference in Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Music Theory and Politics of Ambiguity, 2018

This chapter explores the theoretical, musical and political contexts of four black gay American ... more This chapter explores the theoretical, musical and political contexts of four black gay American rappers: Cakes da Killa, Le1f, Mykki Blanco and Zebra Katz. Through wildly different personae, their atypical gender performances destabilize normative gender and sexuality binaries, interrogating and presenting challenges to both homonormativity and heteronormativity within gay, black and mainstream cultures. These identity performances necessitate considered distillations of theory around black masculinity, hip-hop culture, hip-hop homophobia, black gay culture, and queer theory. In an attempt to avoid a reductionist approach through labelling, we instead employ the term “fierceness”, from an underground black and Latinx gay cultural movement called “Ball culture”, as an aesthetic at the core of these artists’ gender and sexuality performances. “Fierceness” is an attitude that embraces difference, denotes quality, and is defiant, bold, and confident. It challenges the binaries of masculine, feminine, gay, straight, hyper-masculine, and femme, and acknowledges that gender and sexuality are not fixed, but are fluid and dynamic. These artists challenge the hip-hop status quo, inserting confident, aggressive and authentic queer attitudes and stories into their artistry. This paper explores how the axes of gender, race and sexuality, intersect in the identities and positions of these M.C.’s, who then revolutionize and disrupt the aesthetic and social norms of gay culture, black culture, and hip-hop culture. Despite its supposed homophobia, we show that hip-hop is flexible enough as a genre to be a platform for transgressive gender performances. Having drag queens, riot boys, femmes and queens as rappers highlights the legacy of popular music as a medium where queer bodies can transgress notions of acceptable identities under the guise of “entertainment”.

Claiming Ka Mate Maori Cultural Property and the Nations Stake

The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, 2019

This chapter unpacks the sociocultural and legal issues surrounding the Māori haka (chant/dance) ... more This chapter unpacks the sociocultural and legal issues surrounding the Māori haka (chant/dance) "Ka Mate" authored by Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha in the 1820s. In Aotearoa New Zealand, this beloved haka has become a symbolic display of biculturalism and is integral to the national imaginary. Historical associations and usages in wartime and sport, particularly rugby, have exacerbated associations with aggression and masculinity with essential meanings becoming diluted and erased with each further layer of appropriation. Important dialogues emerge from Ka Mate's complex location at the intersection of Indigenous cultural property, the public imagination, the nation-state, and global appropriation. Ka Mate's contentious legal history, including its recent repatriation to Ngāti Toa as an "intangible" taonga (treasure), highlights the problematics that the circulation of music and dance have for Indigenous custodial guardians, underscoring that repatriation must include an acknowledgment of history, context, and mana (integrity/power).

Good Girls Gone Bad: Rock-a-Billy femininity featuring Elvis and the Gender F@%#s

Music on the Edge: Selected Papers from the 2007 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, 2008

Dubbed 'untamed women' or even 'Rock-a-billy fillies', the presence of a crop of female Rock-a-Bi... more Dubbed 'untamed women' or even 'Rock-a-billy fillies', the presence of a crop of female Rock-a-Billy artists in the mid nineteen fifties allows for an exploration of sexuality, gender, femininity and 'genderfucking' in popular music. While the heightened sexuality of Rock-a-Billy music may have seen these women merely move across the conventional female binary of Madonna to whore ('Good Girls Gone Bad') this paper argues that instead, their emulation of male artists, occasional cross dressing and the transgressive sexuality of some male Rock-a-Billy artists, especially Elvis, puts these women in the category of the 'genderfuck'-which according to Butler is defined as a subversion of entrenched gender norms, especially via displays of liberating gender reworking. Such sexually dissident performances help demystify normative gender binaries, encouraging multiplicities of sex and gender to flourish and become more acceptable. While these women, their music and their gender play were in no way as financially and socially as successful as their male counter parts, these artists offer an important element to the birth of the rock genre, opening a small space for women to rock. These women often wrote their own songs, many played guitar on stage, some were considered unruly and overly sexual and some performed in men's clothing.

'How many dudes you know roll like this?': the re-presentation of hip hop tropes in New Zealand rap music

Image & Narrative , 2005

New Zealand artists take globalised American rap, converting it to suit specific local sites, peo... more New Zealand artists take globalised American rap, converting it to suit specific local sites, peoples and struggles. Rappers in Aotearoa/New Zealand, reinforce, explode and represent essential hip hop tropes, using them to celebrate and negotiate complex contemporary identities and locations. This paper first summarises the New Zealand hip hops scene, then engages with the trope of 'keeping it real' showing how New Zealand hip hop artists 'keep it real' by keeping it Pacific and local. New Zealand 'gangsters' decry the exigencies of their own poorer neighbourhoods, and rap's 'place' tropes extol, solidify and explore a local hip hop. Rap's bragging and battles are used to celebrate hip hop, to promote MC skills, and to articulate communities ('represent'). Narrative and autobiography tell individual and community stories, reflecting in particular Pacific immigrant communities and the indigenous Maori youth. New Zealand rap manages to keep 'authentic' to the original hip hop culture by representing core tropes and attributes; and maintaining the whole culture (including graf art, DJ-ing and b-boying). This is not mimicry, but the tropes themselves allow for localised expressions which reflect unique cultural and diasporic identities. Abstract (F): En Nouvelle-Zélande, des artistes s'approprient le rap américain globalisé, qu'ils adaptent aux besoins de sites, de peuples et de luttes locaux.

THIS IS MY LIFE’Biography, Identity and Narrative in New Zealand Rap Songs

Perfect Beat, 2015

Zemke-White, Kirsten. "‘THIS IS MY LIFE’Biography, Identity and Narrative in New Zealand Rap Song... more

NESIAN STYLES (RE)PRESENT R'N' B: The appropriation, transformation and realization of contemporary r'n'b with hip hop by urban Pasifika groups in Aotearoa

This paper will first give a brief cultural context of hip hop and its meanings in Aotearoa. The ... more This paper will first give a brief cultural context of hip hop and its meanings in Aotearoa. The relationship and nature of hip hop and r'n' b at its point of origin (in America) is explored showing how the two pop genres are intimately related historically and musically, in Aotearoa and in the United States. From the Pacific community and media, a contemporary [Poly] 'Nesian Style' is evolving which utilises this creative and cultural combination. Many of the key Aotearoa 'Nesian' styles and artists are introduced, citing their songs, musical influences, and Pacific themes. This outline of artists supports the notion of r'n' b as contemporary local cultural expression and, alongside hip hop, as a 'Nesian Style'. Academic theory around the politicisation and deviance of African American music forms is explored, suggesting that r'n' b can be as political and meaningful, and as radical, as hip hop, both representing notions of black history, black community, and black stories. A final discussion presents the synchretic features of love songs, religion and dance which also drive these musical alignments. Interviews with local artists confirm these synchronies and support the concept that, as in the United States, r'n' b carries significations of history, race and community which are behind its and hip hop's appropriation in Aotearoa.

Selling Beats and Pacifications: Pacific music labels in Aotearoa/New Zealand/Niu sila

Zemke-White, Kirsten. "Selling Beats and Pacifications: Pacific music labels in Aotearoa/New Zeal... more

‘Sissy that walk’: Reframing queer Pacific bodies through the FAFSWAG Ball

by Jared Mackley-Crump and Kirsten Zemke

Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, Volume 4, Number 1, 2019

This article explores the Auckland-based arts collective FAFSWAG. This group of queer Pasifika ar... more This article explores the Auckland-based arts collective FAFSWAG. This group of queer Pasifika artists and dancers has taken up the activism and aesthetics of US ball culture, creating their own underground vogue scene. Facing exclusion and marginalization sometimes from both the mainstream queer community and their own Pasifika communities, FAFSWAG craft a creative response that celebrates and asserts safe spaces for queer ‘brown’ bodies and revisits distinctive Pasifika gender concepts. Their discourse, dance, and events offer responses to lived exigencies of colonization, diaspora, homophobia and racism. Voguing offers masculine and feminine movements for these queer bodies, challenging masculinities imposed by ‘tradition’, pop culture and colonial narratives. The transplanting and uptake of New York ball culture has given FAFSWAG in New Zealand a platform and inspiration to create art and movement that reflects their multiple identities, genders, histories and influences.

The FAFSWAG Ball: Event spaces, counter-marginal narratives, and walking queer bodies into the centre

by Kirsten Zemke and Jared Mackley-Crump

Events and Marginalisation, 2019

FAFSWAG are a group of young queer Pasifika artists and dancers who have taken up the activism an... more FAFSWAG are a group of young queer Pasifika artists and dancers who have taken up the activism and aesthetics of U.S. ball culture to create their own underground vogue scene in Auckland, New Zealand. In doing so, they fuse together both global black queer pop culture as well as indigenous paradigms of gender and sexuality to craft a unique and creative response to exclusion and marginalization. Ball culture is centred around competitive balls, fashion and dance, but they function at a deeper level. They are spaces of community and collaboration for those often rejected by mainstream society. Ball culture’s more recent shift into mainstream pop culture has transmitted its style and message globally, in this case to a group of radical creatives at the bottom of the Pacific ocean who are developing their own responses. The FAFSWAG balls celebrate and assert safe spaces for queer ‘brown’ bodies.

"“I Told You I Was Freaky”: Gender, Genre, and Parody in the Songs of Flight of the Conchords."

Music in Comedy Television, 2017

“I’ma school that bitch”: Gay Rappers Defying Binaries and Expressing Fierceness

Rethinking Difference in Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Music Theory and Politics of Ambiguity, 2018

This chapter explores the theoretical, musical and political contexts of four black gay American ... more This chapter explores the theoretical, musical and political contexts of four black gay American rappers: Cakes da Killa, Le1f, Mykki Blanco and Zebra Katz. Through wildly different personae, their atypical gender performances destabilize normative gender and sexuality binaries, interrogating and presenting challenges to both homonormativity and heteronormativity within gay, black and mainstream cultures. These identity performances necessitate considered distillations of theory around black masculinity, hip-hop culture, hip-hop homophobia, black gay culture, and queer theory. In an attempt to avoid a reductionist approach through labelling, we instead employ the term “fierceness”, from an underground black and Latinx gay cultural movement called “Ball culture”, as an aesthetic at the core of these artists’ gender and sexuality performances. “Fierceness” is an attitude that embraces difference, denotes quality, and is defiant, bold, and confident. It challenges the binaries of masculine, feminine, gay, straight, hyper-masculine, and femme, and acknowledges that gender and sexuality are not fixed, but are fluid and dynamic. These artists challenge the hip-hop status quo, inserting confident, aggressive and authentic queer attitudes and stories into their artistry. This paper explores how the axes of gender, race and sexuality, intersect in the identities and positions of these M.C.’s, who then revolutionize and disrupt the aesthetic and social norms of gay culture, black culture, and hip-hop culture. Despite its supposed homophobia, we show that hip-hop is flexible enough as a genre to be a platform for transgressive gender performances. Having drag queens, riot boys, femmes and queens as rappers highlights the legacy of popular music as a medium where queer bodies can transgress notions of acceptable identities under the guise of “entertainment”.

Claiming Ka Mate Maori Cultural Property and the Nations Stake

The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, 2019

This chapter unpacks the sociocultural and legal issues surrounding the Māori haka (chant/dance) ... more This chapter unpacks the sociocultural and legal issues surrounding the Māori haka (chant/dance) "Ka Mate" authored by Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha in the 1820s. In Aotearoa New Zealand, this beloved haka has become a symbolic display of biculturalism and is integral to the national imaginary. Historical associations and usages in wartime and sport, particularly rugby, have exacerbated associations with aggression and masculinity with essential meanings becoming diluted and erased with each further layer of appropriation. Important dialogues emerge from Ka Mate's complex location at the intersection of Indigenous cultural property, the public imagination, the nation-state, and global appropriation. Ka Mate's contentious legal history, including its recent repatriation to Ngāti Toa as an "intangible" taonga (treasure), highlights the problematics that the circulation of music and dance have for Indigenous custodial guardians, underscoring that repatriation must include an acknowledgment of history, context, and mana (integrity/power).

Good Girls Gone Bad: Rock-a-Billy femininity featuring Elvis and the Gender F@%#s

Music on the Edge: Selected Papers from the 2007 IASPM Australia/New Zealand Conference, 2008

Dubbed 'untamed women' or even 'Rock-a-billy fillies', the presence of a crop of female Rock-a-Bi... more Dubbed 'untamed women' or even 'Rock-a-billy fillies', the presence of a crop of female Rock-a-Billy artists in the mid nineteen fifties allows for an exploration of sexuality, gender, femininity and 'genderfucking' in popular music. While the heightened sexuality of Rock-a-Billy music may have seen these women merely move across the conventional female binary of Madonna to whore ('Good Girls Gone Bad') this paper argues that instead, their emulation of male artists, occasional cross dressing and the transgressive sexuality of some male Rock-a-Billy artists, especially Elvis, puts these women in the category of the 'genderfuck'-which according to Butler is defined as a subversion of entrenched gender norms, especially via displays of liberating gender reworking. Such sexually dissident performances help demystify normative gender binaries, encouraging multiplicities of sex and gender to flourish and become more acceptable. While these women, their music and their gender play were in no way as financially and socially as successful as their male counter parts, these artists offer an important element to the birth of the rock genre, opening a small space for women to rock. These women often wrote their own songs, many played guitar on stage, some were considered unruly and overly sexual and some performed in men's clothing.

'How many dudes you know roll like this?': the re-presentation of hip hop tropes in New Zealand rap music

Image & Narrative , 2005

New Zealand artists take globalised American rap, converting it to suit specific local sites, peo... more New Zealand artists take globalised American rap, converting it to suit specific local sites, peoples and struggles. Rappers in Aotearoa/New Zealand, reinforce, explode and represent essential hip hop tropes, using them to celebrate and negotiate complex contemporary identities and locations. This paper first summarises the New Zealand hip hops scene, then engages with the trope of 'keeping it real' showing how New Zealand hip hop artists 'keep it real' by keeping it Pacific and local. New Zealand 'gangsters' decry the exigencies of their own poorer neighbourhoods, and rap's 'place' tropes extol, solidify and explore a local hip hop. Rap's bragging and battles are used to celebrate hip hop, to promote MC skills, and to articulate communities ('represent'). Narrative and autobiography tell individual and community stories, reflecting in particular Pacific immigrant communities and the indigenous Maori youth. New Zealand rap manages to keep 'authentic' to the original hip hop culture by representing core tropes and attributes; and maintaining the whole culture (including graf art, DJ-ing and b-boying). This is not mimicry, but the tropes themselves allow for localised expressions which reflect unique cultural and diasporic identities. Abstract (F): En Nouvelle-Zélande, des artistes s'approprient le rap américain globalisé, qu'ils adaptent aux besoins de sites, de peuples et de luttes locaux.

THIS IS MY LIFE’Biography, Identity and Narrative in New Zealand Rap Songs

Perfect Beat, 2015

Zemke-White, Kirsten. "‘THIS IS MY LIFE’Biography, Identity and Narrative in New Zealand Rap Song... more

NESIAN STYLES (RE)PRESENT R'N' B: The appropriation, transformation and realization of contemporary r'n'b with hip hop by urban Pasifika groups in Aotearoa

This paper will first give a brief cultural context of hip hop and its meanings in Aotearoa. The ... more This paper will first give a brief cultural context of hip hop and its meanings in Aotearoa. The relationship and nature of hip hop and r'n' b at its point of origin (in America) is explored showing how the two pop genres are intimately related historically and musically, in Aotearoa and in the United States. From the Pacific community and media, a contemporary [Poly] 'Nesian Style' is evolving which utilises this creative and cultural combination. Many of the key Aotearoa 'Nesian' styles and artists are introduced, citing their songs, musical influences, and Pacific themes. This outline of artists supports the notion of r'n' b as contemporary local cultural expression and, alongside hip hop, as a 'Nesian Style'. Academic theory around the politicisation and deviance of African American music forms is explored, suggesting that r'n' b can be as political and meaningful, and as radical, as hip hop, both representing notions of black history, black community, and black stories. A final discussion presents the synchretic features of love songs, religion and dance which also drive these musical alignments. Interviews with local artists confirm these synchronies and support the concept that, as in the United States, r'n' b carries significations of history, race and community which are behind its and hip hop's appropriation in Aotearoa.

Selling Beats and Pacifications: Pacific music labels in Aotearoa/New Zealand/Niu sila

Zemke-White, Kirsten. "Selling Beats and Pacifications: Pacific music labels in Aotearoa/New Zeal... more