'America's first queer jazz festival,' breaks ground and weathers controversy
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
There’s a long and storied history of gay and lesbian jazz musicians, from Duke Ellington’s composer/arranger/right-hand man Billy Strayhorn, to avant-garde innovator Cecil Taylor, to in-demand drummer Allison Miller. But the music hasn’t enjoyed much of a tradition of acknowledging or celebrating that lineage. Vibraphonist Gary Burton, for example, didn’t feel comfortable coming out for the first 30 years of his renowned career.
That will change a bit later this month when the William Way LGBT Community Center presents OutBeat, which it’s billing as “America’s First Queer Jazz Festival.” The weekend-long festival, co-produced by Ars Nova Workshop artistic director Mark Christman, will feature a lineup that would be impressive by the standards of any jazz festival, whether concerned with sexual orientation or not.
Pianist Fred Hersch, vocalist Andy Bey, singer/pianist Patricia Barber, drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Bill Stewart and a number of other performers showcase the wide range of LGBT artists active in the music today. In addition to the performances, which will take place at venues including Chris’ Jazz Café, the Painted Bride, Union Transfer and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the festival will also feature panel discussions lending historical context.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to both celebrate the music, and look at it within the context of the conversation between race, sexuality and gender in the jazz world,” says Chris Bartlett, executive director of William Way. “The LGBT experience has been part of that conversation, from old blues songs that looked at the experience of the ‘sissy’ through Billy Strayhorn being one of the first openly black gay artists, but the participation of LGBT people in the jazz world has been largely silent.”
Controversy over the festival was inevitable — it is, after all, happening in the city where hirsute drag queen Martha Graham Cracker’s scheduled performance at the 2013 Center City Jazz Festival was greeted with an email from a local musician declaring “No fags in jazz” — but it was surprising when Outbeat took some heat from one of its headliners. Following the announcement of the festival this summer, Fred Hersch wrote an open letter to the organizers decrying the use of the word “queer.”
“I was surprised and shocked,” Hersch says of his reaction when he first read the tagline. “I don’t identify myself that way, and I daresay most of the artists who are appearing don’t identify themselves that way. To me, ‘queer’ still means ‘odd.’”
Bartlett counters by saying that that definition actually did play into the decision to use “queer” in the festival’s marketing, as did the word’s past as a derogatory insult and other factors. “I don’t think any term that we could have chosen would have been perfect,” Bartlett explains.
“‘LGBT’ is not a term known broadly outside of progressive circles; ‘gay’ isn’t inclusive enough for what we were trying to do; ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender’ is too awkward. But ‘queer’ has this inclusive sense of looking at difference. It’s also a term that’s been used historically in a negative way, so we’re looking at the change in the use of that word but also saying that what we’re doing is something quite queer, quite outside of the box, and something quite different than anything that’s been done before.”
Hersch came out in the early 1990s as both gay and HIV-positive, among the first artists in any medium to do so. He’s since been active in speaking out and fundraising for AIDS-related agencies and charities. “In 1993 having HIV was something of a death sentence,” Hersch says. “So honestly, I thought I might not be around in two or three years, so maybe by my coming out I could be helpful to some people who were struggling with it. I call myself an accidental activist.”
On Sept. 19 at the Art Museum’s weekly Art After 5 concert, Hersch will perform music from his latest CD, Floating (Palmetto), a typically gorgeous and elegant trio outing. But don’t confuse the beauty and delicacy of his playing as “gay” traits, a frequent mistake that he’s quick to rail against. “I don’t play gay music,” Hersch says emphatically. “I play my music, and I happen to be gay. That’s kind of the end of it. To me there’s no gay sensibility. One of the most radical and intense creative jazz pianists in the world, Cecil Taylor, is gay, and his music is anything but pretty. It’s wonderful, I love it, but this idea that gay equates with prettiness or elegance is just not something I buy, and I think there’s going to be ample demonstration of that at this festival.”
The genre-spanning range of the artists scheduled to perform at OutBeat was intentional, says Bartlett, who hopes to make the festival a biennial occurrence. “It was key to have the roster reflect the multiple diversities within the LGBT community. At the end of this jazz festival, are people going to say, ‘Wow, I really saw something in what these artists had to offer that said something about race, gender or sexual orientation’, or not? My hypothesis is that we’re going to see a lot said and said in different ways by the diversity of the lineup.”
OutBeat runs Sept. 18-21, more info at outbeatjazzfestival.com.
