“‘High Energy’ Jazz and Sex”

This article considers the intersections between gender, sexuality, race, and disability in the works of jazz multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935–1977). Kirk is primarily known for playing multiple saxophones simultaneously, flutes with his nose, sirens, whistles, and other unusual instruments. As a blind man, Kirk performs disability by presenting a “deviant” musical body, such as performing on several odd-looking instruments at once, and by utilizing unconventional techniques and sounds, like playing through the nose or executing feats of almost superhuman circular breathing. However, we can also think of these characteristics as constituting a performance of gender and sexuality that is a response to both the feminization of the disabled body (after Garland-Thomson 1997) and dominant stereotypes of Black masculinity during the 1960s and 70s (after hooks 2004 and Wallace 1979). The article explores how Kirk performs the stereotype of the hypersexualized Black man, which can be seen as a way of reacting against both the historical oppression of Black men in the US and the dehumanization he experienced as a person with a disability. For example, in “Volunteered Slavery” (1969) Kirk proposes that his sexual prowess can help women break free from society’s chains. Kirk also performs masculinity sonically through his presentation of musical sounds that epitomize stereotypes of strength and virility, such as his (multiple) saxophone playing and his flute playing. Counteracting notions of the flute as a feminine-coded instrument, Kirk’s flute sound is purposefully aggressive, as he hums, sings, grunts, and screams while he plays. Altogether, these characteristics resulted in the perception of his work as gendered and sexual. In a 1970 review entitled “Roland Kirk: High Energy Jazz and Sex,” Stratton characterized Kirk’s performances as “the embodiment of his extreme horniness,” and listening to his music as “a valid measure of [the listener’s] sexual potency.”