A UCLA alumnus will soon make their final stop on a two-decades-long tour of making the case for punk music and amplifying queer artists.

Candace Hansen, who earned a doctorate in musicology this year after completing an undergraduate and master’s degree at the university, has spent the past decade drumming for punk pioneer Alice Bag. Hansen said the band is now preparing for its final performances, including opening for feminist punk band Bikini Kill at the Wiltern on Sept. 9. Their journey has centered around documenting the queer and trans artists who have historically been left out of music coverage, Hansen said.

“I saw that all the amazing queer and trans artists that I played with were not getting covered,” Hansen said. “The amazing people that inspire me and that have historically been erased. … Who gets left out of the larger picture, who gets left out of stories about music history and why, and how can I change that?”

[Related: Alumnus Julissa Prado, founder of Rizos Curls, makes waves in hair care industry]

Hansen’s academic journey has become intertwined with that goal. Their dissertation traced how the LGBTQ+ community has used punk as a form of resistance through dance, rhythm and sonic aesthetics, Hansen said. Their dissertation also draws on their decade of collaboration with Bag, whom they interviewed for the project before ever imagining they would play together. Hansen’s dissertation is currently being adapted into a book for Duke University Press under the working title “Queer Punk Survival,” they said.

Hansen said their path to the drums was first shaped by the gendered expectations they experienced. Growing up in Garden Grove, a city in Orange County, elementary school teachers repeatedly steered Hansen toward traditionally “feminine” instruments like the flute.

Hansen, though, eventually convinced their teacher to let them play the snare drum. In high school, Hansen said they taught themselves to play on a 50-dollar drum kit and began touring with adult bands, missing school for weekend gigs and making up assignments once they returned.

“I got good really fast, and then I started playing – I was in, like, five or more bands when I was in high school, and I actually started touring,” Hansen said. “I come from a working class family and we never got to travel, and so the first time I really ever traveled was when I was 17, in high school, playing drums for this band.”

After graduating high school, Hansen said they balanced touring with jobs at a termite factory, Domino’s and Guitar Center’s drum shop before enrolling at Santa Ana College. Four years later, they transferred to UCLA to study history and gender studies.

As an undergraduate, Hansen said they began to submit pieces for Tom Tom, a queer feminist drum magazine, to increase visibility for the LGBTQ+ community in the media. Later, they started writing for the OC Weekly, continuing to pen stories about the queer people that inspired them – and who had historically been erased.

Raymond Knapp, a professor of musicology, disability studies and humanities and co-chair of Hansen’s dissertation committee, said he recognized Hansen’s instincts for storytelling through drumming early on. Knapp said he first encouraged Hansen to write about drumming for class assignments, noting the same attentiveness that helped them succeed in their graduate studies.

Knapp recalled watching Hansen notice a shy student hovering after a department punk event they helped organize. The drummer quietly walked over to the student to introduce them to the event’s speaker, he said.

“It’s that kind of paying attention that – it’s just a part of their teaching, but it’s also part of what makes them great at the kind of work they do as a journalist,” Knapp said. “I’m sure it’s what makes them a great drummer.”

Hansen said their passion for teaching started when they became a teaching assistant in graduate school. Since 2016, they have taught nearly every quarter at UCLA, moving across musicology, gender studies, LBGTQ studies and music industry courses.

Rachel Curry, Hansen’s wife, said the couple recently ran into one of Hansen’s students at the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives in West Hollywood.

“It (UCLA) has made them (Hansen) see their own value in a different way and think about possibilities bigger than what they had previously imagined for themselves,” she said. “I really think that they can do anything. And part of that is UCLA, and part of it is also just how special and genius, brilliant they are.”

[Related: Modern-spin Macbeth crafts Shakespeare to 1970s context with feminist tones]

Alongside their work with the band and upcoming book, Hansen said they have tried to continue building the platform not just for themselves but for the broader community of queer musicians. Hansen recently wrote about the history of the lesbian erotica magazine “On Our Backs” for Playgirl, presented teen rom-com film “But I’m a Cheerleader” at Zebulon’s queer film festival and is reporting on underground trans rave spaces for the Los Angeles Times. Hansen also works as a specialist at Julien’s Auction house, where they use their training as an archivist and historian.

Hansen said their future might include a new band, more freelance writing and some relaxing by a pool in Palm Springs. When looking back on the decade that took them from being an undergraduate to finishing a dissertation, what stayed with them the most was the people who made space for them.

“As a writer, as a historian, it’s easy for me to look from the outside at these things that are happening,” Hansen said. “But then it’s also really beautiful and crazy to remember, I’m a part of that legacy too.”