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Drawing upon and amplifying Black men 's perspectives, this essay first theorizes music s role in Moonlight via social justice advocacy group The Counter Narrative Project which asserts that "Music is a source of personal strength, and collective power. " This essay then considers Marlon Riggs sfiim Tongues Untied and Isaac Julien's film Looking for Langston, films that establish a tradition ofshaping complex representations ofBlack men, by juxtaposing predominantly heteronormative popular music with images of homosexual desire. After theorizing music 's role in identity formation via The Counter Narrative Project and Riggs 's and Julien 's films, this essay analyzes music s role in "Black, " the third part of Moonlight, where characters play music to many ends, including performing masculinity, desire, and intimacy.
On June 7, 2016, The Counter Narrative Project, a social justice advocacy group for Black gay men based in Atlanta, Georgia, promoted an #ArtIsResistance campaign focusing efforts to share "stories from [their] network members about music through words and images" for Black Music Month and LGBT Pride Month. The campaign's description, featured in a blog post titled "#ArtIsResilience: Black Gay Men, Music, and Power," emphasizes the influence music has on Black gay men's identity formations to counter the reality that, "As Black gay men, the most prominent and public narratives about our lives are often told through narrow statistics and structural violence." Countering the systemically-shaped, limited narratives about Black gay men's experiences, the blog post proposes reflecting on music's impact, and circulating those reflections on social media, to create more nuanced representations:
Music is a source of personal strength, and collective power. Even in our darkest days, we have looked to music to offer comfort and inspired resilience. Music has inspired and continues to inspire our activism. Music has inspired and continues to inspire our culture. From Gospel to Hip-Hop, from House to Soul, music tells the stories of our lives and affirms our deepest desires. Many of us owe our survival to music. Its (sic) imperative that Black gay men's programmatic and political engagement consider the role of music in our lives.
In some of The Counter Narrative Project's #ArtIsResilience posts, Deion Luis reflects that "[Sing To The Moon] inspired [him] to pick up the pieces and gather...