Trans Music Tuesday: Masoud El Amaratly

It’s Trans Music Tuesday! Here’s a cool historical trans musician I learned about from Eli Erlick.

Masoud El Amaratly was an early-20th-century singer from what is now Iraq, and a mustarjil, a word in his Ahwari culture for what we might now call a trans man. He started publicly identifying as a man around age 18, and also started gaining success as a singer around that period. He recorded songs in the abuḏiya style in the 1920s and 30s, which were popular throughout Iraq and in neighboring countries. He’s a great example of how trans people lived and thrived even in the past, and have been welcomed in regions that now are much more hostile. Transphobia is not inevitable or eternal – it comes and goes, and we’re still here.

Sources: https://ajammc.com/2023/06/26/iraq-trans-history-masoud-amaratly/, https://web.archive.org/web/20250915204559/https://digital.newint.com.au/issues/52/articles/891?srsltid=AfmBOooDdoij0etO65qy89DvlArb9U6VwQF7UmqHlqUv0rdYnVAjhbOg