Thinking about New Orleans bounce

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, writing, and speaking about New Orleans bounce in the past few months!

On February 11th I had the opportunity to join the Queen Diva of Bounce herself, Big Freedia, in conversation in a webinar event hosted by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute called “New Orleans, Katrina, and Bounce: A Conversation with Big Freedia.” The second in a two-part series exploring the connections between New Orleans, Climate Change, and musical cultures, this discussion explored bounce music, the impact of Hurricane Katrina, the role of LGBTQ+ artists in the genre, and more. You can watch a video of the conversation, which was moderated by Loren Kajikawa, here.

I was also recently invited to write a blog post for the University of California Press blog about bounce music in honor of my Journal of Popular Music Studies article on bounce music winning the 2024 Marcia Herndon Article Award. In addition to providing some background, I also suggest a playlist of five queer bounce artists to twerk to. You can read the post, with links to some fun music videos, here.