The Gold Medal Standard: Musicking and Gendered Sport

Abstract

Gendered differences in sport have long been used to create and maintain Olympic socio-cultural identities that align with traditional definitions of masculinity, femininity, and of an athlete. Music within Olympic competitions has been a tool to present socio-cultural identities that align with traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity. Among the seven Olympic individual competitions that incorporate music, men have only physically competed in two; figure skating in the Winter Olympics, since 1908, and breaking in the Summer Olympics, in 2024. Not only is the use music usage gendered feminine within Olympic sport, but the kinds of music that are generally accepted for use within an athlete’s Olympic performance have also been circumscribed. This dissertation has cataloged over 700 uses of music in individual competitions. The types of music used, and when they were utilized, are used to identify acceptable musical practices within specific sport and within the Olympics altogether. Additionally, interviews from people involved in Hip Hop culture, such as dancers, deejays, and promoters, offer additional insight to the use of music in the breaking events. Since Olympic sport has been linked to promoting masculinity, women’s inclusion has been carefully tailored to maintain that masculinity through differences in the opportunities presented to male and female athletes. The music used in Olympic competition, as outlined in this dissertation, and the nature of the competitor’s relationship to the music, such as performance, is indicative of how almost all of the international federations that oversee sports that embed music use musical performance as an element that further separates men’s and women’s divisions of sporting events. Those sports with musical performance are typically associated with femininity. The sports that use music in the same way for both men’s and women’s divisions, such as figure skating and breaking, still embed differences in the music tailored to those events to sonically show the difference between the two to maintain an Olympic socio-cultural standard that aligns with traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity. These findings provide insight into how musical competition is curated to have success at the Olympic level. The music used in sport must be cost-effective, serve an external purpose (i.e., connect to a younger audience, pander to the home crowd, or promote national cultural values), and align with long-standing traditions of gendered virtuosity with women performing to music but men distancing their bodies from that musical connection. Additionally, these findings indicate that while music in isolation is not inherently gendered, the connection to Olympic sport over the past 116 years have gendered sports that require a musical connection as feminine.