Viral sexualities, viral songs: Queer musical interventions in the AIDS crisis in Turkey

Abstract

The AIDS crisis was a global phenomenon, but the ways individuals responded to the crisis reflected local histories and sociopolitical dynamics. This was particularly true for musical productions. Turkey’s first high-profile HIV patient Murtaza Elgin’s albums demonstrate how queer cultural producers and their allies used stigmatized popular music genres to intervene in the AIDS crisis. The albums show how such collaborative projects become a site for artists diagnosed with HIV to resist criminalization and abjection, build artistic, social, and economic solidarity, mobilize affect for sociopolitical change, and develop a broader critique of homophobia and transphobia.