Tuesday, September 3

From Baseball to Jazz - The NY Times covers the waterfront in its investigation of being gay in a macho jazz man's world. I'm guessing the Times readers can relate to NPR fare better than to hip-hop, another genre where being gay would bring your street cred as a gansta and a balla into serious question. Then there's dancehall reggae from Jamaica, which has its own loud and proud homophobes. (Et tu, Ms. Jackson?) Race can play an interesting undercurrent to the issue of sexuality, and as in many foreign countries, the same-sex attracted in urban society tend to avoid conventional labels. Another reminder that gay life is experienced in many different ways in different cultures.