Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory Vol. 22, Nos. 2–3, July–November 2012, 315–323
Black Love? Black Love!: All Aboard the Presence of Punk in Seattle’s NighTraiN Jasmine Mahmoud*
Downloaded by [New York University] at 09:00 12 December 2012
Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
It’s New Year’s Eve 2010, and before counting down, I spend my evening at Columbia City Theater, a recently reopened performance venue in southeast Seattle, WA. After giving the doorman 10 dollars and walking down a brick hallway laced with beer-holding patrons, I enter the club space and join 150 revelers bedecked with tinsel and glittery hats. Then, to the tune of a three-note, hallucinatory keyboard melody, a rumble transforms into shouting voices. Out from speakers, I hear: Even Thomas Jefferson had an ebony honey. An African beauty that was brought to this country. She took his shit faithfully and produced for him fruitfully. Which made him a forefather, truly. Black love!1
These lyrics perform across national histories, race, sexuality, and power. These lyrics are from ‘‘Black love,’’ a song by NighTraiN, a toddler-aged punk band based in Seattle. Part of NighTraiN’s New Year’s Eve set, ‘‘Black Love’’ satisfies standard punk performance tenets: brevity, angst, amateurish delivery, and political irreverence that circuitously pushes against current public discourse. The members of NighTraiN also wear punk with do-it-yourself dresses – all handmade by the bassist – different in color and shape, united by adorning black tassels. NighTraiN is decidedly punk, and not by mere checkbox. The players – Rachael Ferguson, Selena Whitaker-Paquiet, Nicole Peoples, and Taryn Dorsey – are black and female. The New Year’s Eve set features eight mostly original songs, including the debut of ‘‘Reparations.’’ Between songs, the women of NighTraiN perform kitschy and affronting stage banter about pop icons and sex humor. As they perform, they exist in a stratum of landscapes: in 98118, one of the most ethnically diverse U.S. zip codes; in Seattle, where do-it-yourself aesthetics pervade; and at the end of 2010, a year of stifling budget crises and stilted anti-oppression discourse. They also perform black punk, which remains an understudied and – for some – an inconceivable form of black performance. Much discourse on punk furthers
*Email: j-mahmoud@u.northwestern.edu ISSN 0740–770X print/ISSN 1748–5819 online ! 2012 Women & Performance Project Inc. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0740770X.2012.720824 http://www.tandfonline.com