M Magazine Pride Month Edition

IWD PRIDE June 2021 Pride Month Edition prsformusic.com/m-magazine

36

Contents Ones to watch

4

Identity beyond commodity

8

Kele Okereke

10

How Frank Ocean changed the landscape

12

Drag! It’s the most punk you can be

14

Lunatraktors

20

Hannah Holland

24

Safe spaces

28

Rina Sawayama and queer publicity

30

McHifi: David McAlmont & Hifi Sean

32

Alicai Harley

36

Sound & Music

40

Dance proud

44

Radio representation

46

Pride is not for profit

48

Editor’s welcome It’s my great privilege to be able to celebrate Pride Month with another special edition of M Magazine, and to provide a platform for key LGBTQ+ voices in the business to share their stories.

Pride Month was created to commemorate the events of Stonewall and it’s crucial to recognise that those who identify as LGBTQ+ still face widespread discrimination, even in a music industry seemingly as inclusive and progressive as that in the UK. LGBTQ+ artists have shaped, and continue to shape, the music and pop culture we know today. We must ensure that the spectrum of diversity that individuality brings to the industry is given the respect it deserves if it’s to continue to enrich us all.

It’s our duty to provide creators with the space to be themselves, freely.

Maya Radcliffe - Editor M Magazine

Contributing Editor

prsformusic.com/m-magazine Editor Maya Radcliffe (She/Her) Art Director Carl English (He/Him) Creative Director Paul Nichols (He/Him) Contact magazine@prsformusic.com

Select features throughout this magazine were conceived and commissioned by former BBC Radio 1Xtra breakfast show presenter, Dotty. Since leaving her post at the BBC, Dotty has become Lead Cultural Curator, UK for Apple Music and daily host on Apple Music 1. Dotty is also the author of Outraged: Why Everyone is Shouting And No One is Talking’(Bloomsbury Publishing).

Dotty

Ones to watch From thunderous feminist punk to silky neo-soul, get to know some of the best breakthrough LGBTQ+ talent our little island has to offer.

Pink Suits Margate duo Pink Suits are anything but reserved. A noisy and deliberate queer feminist outfit, the pair formed in 2017 and have been making political punk ever since. According to Pink Suits themselves, their work is ‘an exploration of sexuality, fantasy, mental health, politics, activism and is a resistance of binary gender, questioning how voices and bodies can be used as a form of protest.’ Pink Suits’ anarchic debut album Political Child came out back in April to riotous applause and straight into our Soundtrack to the Revolution playlist.

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Ones to watch Photo: David Strawbridge

Coda Vallach At long last, trans non-binary artist Coda Vallach is about to drop their debut EP and we couldn’t be more ready for it. Heavily influenced by Caroline Polachek and SOPHIE, Vallach’s electro futuristic pop sound bridges the mainstream with the avant-garde to deliver an intimate exploration of trans existential angst. By juxtaposing smooth layered vocals with sizzling melodramatic synths Coda traces the connections between the different facets of their identity as a transfeminine musician of Eastern European descent. Vallach’s upcoming project has been awarded the ‘Do It Differently’ grant (Help Musicians) aimed to empower artists for their innovative work and vision.

Crying Mood drops in July.

Susan Ethereal and unmistakeable electro pop artist Susan makes music that explores what it feels like to exist differently. Last year, Susan released six-month long project suepreme which covered themes of lost love and self-acceptance through tracks body like this, wild time, fake love and rose. Through this project, and the release of Hold Still more recently, Susan expertly demonstrates their mastering of matching visual performance with music itself; both, every time, alluringly dark, gloriously abstract and beautifully honest.

Geo Jordan Multi-instrumentalist, writer and producer, Geo Jordan, was once best known for his role in British electronic band, The Hics. Fast forward to 2021 and Geo is continuing his ascent through the musical ranks, now as a solo artist.

A futuristic dose of neo-soul, Geo’s latest single Let Go pairs modern, jazz-inflected production with Geo’s own soaring vocals. Co-written with fellow London-based artist Laura Roy, it marks his second single release in quick succession, following last month’s Better.

Both tracks are set to feature on his forthcoming EP Technicolour, a record that details his journey of self-discovery and expression as a trans artist.

Stay tuned. We’re expecting big things from Geo.

Seeva London-based artist Seeva released his debut album We Need To Talk in September 2020; a project that explored love, loss and heartbreak from the perspective of a queer British-Asian person. A burgeoning creative talent and growing voice in the London queer scene, the album saw Seeva making an unforgettable entry.

Speaking on the release, Seeva shared: ‘Listening to this album really is like reading my diary – my mantra during the whole writing process was for it to be ‘open and honest’. They continued: ‘I wanted to prove to myself that I could dive in deep and be honest with myself about mental health, heartbreak, sexuality and just growing up in our society, and finishing the album during lockdown allowed me time to reflect and write even more intensely.’

We Need To Talk was a remarkable introduction to a truly exciting new voice to emerge from the British music industry.

Photo: Andrew Benge

STRAIGHT GIRL Describing themselves as ‘fiercely and fearlessly queer,’ Straight Girl, otherwise known as composer and producer Remy, is an electro-punk powerhouse. Their latest release Limón is a mind warping exploration of shame and self-acceptance and was dubbed ‘zesty and adventurous’ by BBC Radio 6 Music’s Tom Robinson. Discussing the track, Straight Girl explains: ‘I wrote Limón in 2017 at a point where I was feeling a lot of shame about the person I felt I was. Feeling crushed by this immense disconnect between the things I was saying and the things I was thinking.’ Catching a Straight Girl live show needs to be at the top of every music fan’s post-pandemic bucket list.

Limón was released on Come Play With Me - a Leeds-based label and development organisation responsible for a number of LGBTQ+ inclusive events in the north of England.

Zand Blackpool-born artist, ZAND, aka Zander Sweeney, makes industrial pop that broaches subjects like feminism, gender, rape culture, transphobia, sex work and mental illness.

Touching on subject many would deem controversial, ZAND coined the term ‘ugly pop’, describing both the style and the subject matter of their music. Since its release in November 2020, ZAND’s Ugly Pop EP has surpassed one million streams on Spotify and if that’s a sign of what’s to come, the world ought to watch this space.

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Identity beyond commodity: Queerness in mainstream music Parris OH discusses mainstream music’s dependency on queer culture, what’s considered palatable when viewed through a heteronormative lens, and why the industry has a duty to safeguard and support those whose identities are objectified for profit.

Exploring identity is nothing new, especially through music.

Music is the final art form, an amalgamation of an artist’s most vulnerable moments and life influences. Without a doubt, music will always reflect an artist’s inner identity. So, when artists step outside of the binary, they do so defiantly.

The relationship between popular music and queer culture has stood strong through time, a testament to the underground ballroom culture started by Black, trans and femme people, creatives and artists throughout history. In 2021, the exploration of varying identities within queer culture has been at the forefront of the national conversation. Pronouns, transness, gender non-conformity and any other identities challenging the binary have been leading the discussion, with brands, companies and people alike adopting a push toward inclusivity on all levels.

However, when observing the current UK music scene’s relationship with queer artists, we can see that their queerness is framed so that it sells to the mainstream, dealing in the stereotyping of feminine presenting men for hordes of rowdy hen parties, or the prideful anthemic choruses and visuals for the nights out at G.A.Y, heavily focused on the cis-white, male gay experience. But as an understanding of queerness and identities beyond the gender binary are broadened, it is individual expression, not clichéd marketing techniques, that gives way to a deeper understanding of queerness in music.

As the number of artists exploring their queerness through music rises, the intersection at which the identity of an artist and their prospective audience meets has been heavily commodified. They are polished and packaged within the realms of a very basic understanding of sexuality and gender. Mixed with a side of stereotyping, the ‘powers that be’ can profit from a queer audience association, whether the artists actually identify within the community or not. However, that has not stopped queer artists from exploring their identities outside of this ‘polished package’, which is the overly camp, white-washed and highly sexualised lens that LGBTQ+ people are often viewed through.

Grammy award-winner Sam Smith came out in 2020 as non-binary, choosing to use they/them pronouns. Similarly, only just a few weeks ago, we witnessed the public declaration of Demi Lovato’s own sexuality and their journey into defying the gender binary. With an Instagram account boasting one hundred and seven million followers, Lovato has arguably become the highest profile non-binary artist in the world.

Whether they’ve been ambiguously referencing a samesex relationship, changing their gender presentation or making a ‘coming out’ statement, there has always been a presence of queer artists both inside and outside of the mainstream pioneering a push toward representing the

expansive spectrum of gender and sexuality. Queer artists such as MNEK, JGrrey, Tiana Major9 and Olly Alexander have all recently been a part of curating and obtaining a queer audience through a voyage of their own personal experiences as part of the LGBTQ+ community; with realisations of their fluidity when it comes to sexuality, each are just a small example of young queer artists now gaining a diverse, fluid and relatable audience. Even presumed heterosexual artists throughout the history of popular music have explored gender non-conforming presentation and identities. Artists from Prince to David Bowie, Grace Jones, Harry Styles and even Jaden Smith have all been praised for breaking barriers. But when artists who do identify as queer start exploring their identity on a level deeper than presentation, do we see a conversation opening? Or do they pay a price for living in their entire truth?

Often, much like Blackness, the only problem with ‘mainstreaming’ queerness is that it comes along with queer people. When queerness is displayed, celebrated, and lived out loud by the very people who inhabit the culture, it comes with the most resistance. However, when put on like a costume – camped up and queered out to build an audience, gain a fanbase, sell some records or to be approximated as close to ‘cool’ as possible – it’s fully accepted. So, when built for sale and sexualised by the rest of the world, queerness is permitted to thrive. But when displayed on Black, trans or femme bodies, it is often treated with the utmost disrespect, almost as if it’s open season for criticism.

MNEK, for example, arguably one of the most prominent Black, queer artists in the UK, openly displayed gender non-conforming styles during the promotion and release of his debut studio album, Language. At the time it felt he was shunned by a wider audience for expressing his individualism and fully embracing his identity, often donning make-up and nail varnish to do so.

So when we speak on Pride, the time of year when rainbow flags meet corporate logos and sandwich names are changed to sell us back a diluted version of our culture, it’s important to bring to light that the music industry has some way to go. Yes, it’s an industry that boasts individuality, pride, uniqueness, exploration and vulnerability, but there are still huge strides to be taken to support the queer artists doing the work, representing themselves, and the community, 365 days a year. Encouraging artists to express themselves through the safe space of their music and to be able to explore fully their identity – even in the public eye – should come with a duty of care; teaching that everyone is fluid, forever changing and can be many different things to many different people whether queer or not. Our society can only be as strong as our weakest parts.

As a Black, queer, non-binary executive working in the music industry, the stark reality is that my identity does not fall within the traditional norms of what people are used to. In 2020, I changed my pronouns from she/her to they/them. Cut off from the world, in the midst of a global pandemic, it seemed that all I had to do was change my Instagram bio and hope that people noticed. Easy enough.

But when entering back into a life where we spend more time in the office with our colleagues than at home with our loved ones, I became the focus of unrelenting questions.

As a result of this, I found myself responsible for educating others, a responsibility I did not ask for. Simply put, I would love to just do my job, however I know that existing fully as I am in this world means that my visibility is a protest. And of that I will forever be proud.

Now, in 2021, we are still experiencing a so-called ‘glitch’ in our matrix – the withdrawal of traditional identities. We’re realising that queerness must not only be celebrated when flamboyant, loud, and camp – all of which are valid – but also when quiet, subtle, non-traditional, on Black bodies and as queer as they come. Sexuality and a binary that is easy to digest and understand is not intended for everyone.

Some people are more complex than that. It’s now time for the people – the average listener and audience member – to educate themselves while listening to their favourite queer artists, so that the entire spectrum of varying identities can finally become the norm.

‘Queerness is not a commodity to target an audience with.’

The ultimate goal is an odyssey of self-expression; a plethora of identities that exist beyond, and are breaking free from, the gender binary. Alongside this, we should see an exploration of queerness and gender identity, not only from artists, but their teams and their audiences. Queerness is a never-ending journey of insightful and intrinsic selfexpression, and those who do exist outside of the traditional identities deserve to live out loud to the fullest extent, expressing the deepest need of life.

Popular music has always been a vehicle for the individual to express. We must then realise that queerness is not a commodity to target an audience with, but an elite level of self-expression, truth and vulnerability – a way to live authentically in a world that still isn’t ready for us.

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Kele Okereke Stephanie Phillips speaks to Bloc Party frontman, DJ and solo artist Kele Okereke about the noughties indie scene, new Bloc Party music, and his latest album The Waves Pt. 1 Ever since he first emerged in the early noughties as the lead singer of the British alt-rock band Bloc Party, Kele Okereke has been a leading light in the British indie scene. With his open hearted and genre expanding approach to songwriting, Okereke is forever rattling the indie old guard who would prefer to keep the genre monocultural and narrow minded. Two decades on, and a successful move into the DJ arena and theatre later, Okereke is back with his fifth solo album, The Waves Pt. 1.

After joining Instagram to share covers and reworkings of old songs during the early stage of the pandemic, Okereke’s new ideas for songs – unlike anything he’s ever written before – began to take shape. Written and recorded alone during the height of lockdown, The Waves Pt. 1 is a lo-fi experimental beast that merges spoken word sections, found sounds, shimmering guitar riffs, and latenight strolls through the streets of London to evoke the solitude and uncertainty of the period it was created in.

As we celebrate Pride, Kele Okereke speaks to M Magazine about the cinematic soundtracks that inspired his new album, queer representation in the media, and the differences between the indie scene and the dance world.

Stephanie Phillips: Congratulations on the new record. You recorded it during lockdown, what made you decide to start working on an album?

Kele Okereke: It wasn’t really so premeditated. At the start of 2020, I was due to start working on a new musical and at the same time, we were speaking about making a Bloc Party record. My 2020 was going to be quite busy, but when the pandemic happened, that

all got put on ice. I was just at home looking after my two kids, my 19-month-old and my four-year-old, this year and everything just kind of switched around. The only thing I’ve ever really done in my life is make music, so in a time of uncertainty I turned to the only thing that really gives me comfort, apart from my family and my friends.

Stephanie:The Waves Pt. 1 feels almost lo-fi in its sound on songs like How To Beat a Lie Detector. Was that sound intentional or the result of necessity because you were working on your own?

Kele: I’ve always personally preferred the lo-fi aesthetic. With The Waves, because of how the initial songs were created, there was a kind of scarceness of sound, it was just me and my amp. I wanted that nakedness to carry through into the music and lots of the music I was listening to at home was in a similar sort of vein. I was listening to quite a lot of classical music and ambient music.

Stephanie: Yes, it sounds quite introspective and there’s almost a cinematic quality to it.

Kele: It’s interesting that you say cinematic because I was listening to quite a lot of Ennio Morricone and the power of small music movements. With Bloc Party we’ve always been pushed into this dramatic, grandiose place with how we write and how our songs make people feel. It felt nice to kind of go the opposite way this time and go inwards and not try to fill all the space with emotion. Just being aware of the absence of things.

I thought I’d like to try making an instrumental piece, and then I kind of got waylaid with songs. In my mind, I was scoring something potentially for film. Now that I’ve done this, it would be awesome to

try something for the big screen, because it’s just so powerful. The right image with the right music, it’s the most powerful thing ever.

Stephanie: I really loved the cover of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat. What made you want to cover that song?

Kele: I actually covered it for my Instagram page, but I felt I hadn’t done it justice. It was in my mind when we were recording the songs for the album, and last minute I worked something out. It took on a different meaning for me because it was during lockdown, and in the song the character is trying to escape his situation. I think there’s an element of that idea of escaping the period that we’re in right now that resonated with me. I was nervous about covering it but I heard from Jimmy [Sommerville] that he liked it so that was good.

Stephanie: Will there be The Waves Pt. 2?

Kele: Yes, there is. I don’t want to talk too much about it because it’s still in the ether right now, I’m still pulling bits of it out. With The Waves, there was very much a sense of wanting to make music to calm me, to take you away somewhere gently. But part two is going to be the opposite. It’s about music to wake you up, to snap you out of it.

Stephanie: You wrote the music for Leave to Remain (2019), a musical that covered the topics of gay marriage and queer interracial relationships. Why did you want to tackle these subjects?

Kele: I wrote the music and Matt [Jones] wrote the dialogue, but I guess we had an initial idea together about two men who are about to get married, but one of them isn’t quite so sure. We felt it was something that we understood. It wasn’t like there was a decision to only intentionally talk about queer relationships. It was something that is part of us, so of course it was going to be queer.

Stephanie: In terms of queer representation in the media it does feel like things are at least starting to change. If so, does that give you hope for the future?

Kele: The one thing I remember talking about with Matt was that it was important for us to see two men in love and somebody not dying of AIDS, or for it to not feel tragic. I think for such a long time, the only depictions I saw of gay men in film and television seemed to be kind of laced with tragedy. Obviously, there’s been a wave of brilliant queer television in the last few years. I’m all for more stories and more diverse depictions of the way people live.

Stephanie: It was amazing to see a multicultural group like Bloc Party in the early noughties but the environment you came up in is very different to that of today. Today it feels like there are a lot more Black indie artists. How does that feel for you to see the indie landscape now which seems more diverse?

Kele: I don’t know, there were always people of colour in indie bands.

When I was growing up you had Skin from Skunk Anansie and Sonya from Echobelly. I think there always are going to be people of colour that want to make alternative music, like Jimmy Hendrix through to Willow Smith. I saw something of hers recently and apparently, there’s this new scene of alt. emo Black kids. That didn’t really exist when I was younger.

‘I think for such a long time, the only depictions I saw of gay men in film and television always seemed to be kind of laced with tragedy.’

Stephanie: It’s more that the conversation around Black people who make alternative music seems to have changed from ‘why are you here’ to ‘you should be here’.?

Kele: I don’t know what they’re asking Willow Smith in her interviews. I don’t think I ever had anyone explicitly ask me, “why are you here?” I think it might have been in my head somewhat.

Stephanie: I remember reading the music press back then and it was a weird relationship.

Kele: Maybe there was a racial subtext to things that I wasn’t aware of. Probably less so at the NME, but in places like Q magazine, from what I’ve been told from our press people, it was like a boys club.

There would have been people that would have had a problem with me because of who I was, what I looked like, but it was never said explicitly. It might have manifested in them not taking me seriously. I think an element of that still exists now, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s healthy to be thinking about how you’re being perceived. The only thing that you should be thinking about is what you’re making.

Stephanie: You previously wrote that you felt your experiences of being Black and gay in the dance world were easier than in the indie scene. Why do you think that is and is that still the case?

Kele: I don’t know if I was more embraced by the dance community because of [my identity], but it felt more familiar because there was a precedent of Black and queer artists in that world, so maybe I didn’t seem so alien.

Stephanie: The dance world seems a lot more expansive in terms genre and being able to explore.

Kele: I think indie music is still very much mired in this kind of history of the Beatles through to Oasis or Arctic Monkeys. It’s just four white guys, and that’s what people that are into indie music want, hence the kind of lack of reaction to what’s happened with Morrissey’s statements over the last few years. There have been artists like Billy Bragg coming out to condemn what he’s saying but where has the reaction been from the rest of the community?

Stephanie: Is there any new Bloc Party material on the horizon?

Kele: We had been writing for about two years and finalised the tracks that we were going to record and then the lockdown happened so we had to put it on hold. I can’t say too much, but yeah, we’re working again, so there should be something soon.

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HOW FRANK OCEAN’S COMING OUT CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE…

by Dotty

In 2012 it was not uncommon to hear anything vaguely gay bookended with the caveat ‘no homo,’ A phrase that, for a time, became part of the linguistic canon in pop culture. An unequivocal way to rid sentences of any homosexual double entendre and distance the speaker from sentiments that could be loosely interpreted as even remotely queer-adjacent.

‘It’s crazy how you can go from being Joe Blow / to everybody on your dick — no homo.’ Said Kanye West to open his feature verse on Jay-Z’s 2010 hit Run This Town – Hov’s first UK number one single as a lead artist.

It was amidst this socially retrograde climate (where many Black men in music were proofreading their lyrics for any traces of gayness) that R&B singer Frank Ocean decided the time was right to open up about his relationships with men.

‘4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19 years old. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together. Everyday almost. And on the days we were together, time would glide. Most of the day I’d see him, and his smile.

I’d hear his conversation and his silence…until it was time to sleep. Sleep I would often share with him. By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless. There was no escaping, no negotiating with the feeling. No choice. It was my first love, it changed my life.’

Frank Ocean’s 2012 coming out letter (or Tumblr post as was the trend back then) was a watershed moment for the Black LGBTQ+ community, a statement that was both intimately sincere and profoundly brave. An unprecedented juncture for Black masculinity at the time and a revelation that would go on to empower a generation.

I was a rapper in my early twenties then, quietly gay, always careful not to divulge the pronouns of my bedmates in songs or interviews. So for me, like many queer artists navigating the music business at the time, sexuality was something to be discreet about – a self-imposed silence that Frank Ocean helped to free me from. His candid statement would go on to be far more groundbreaking than the lo-fi Helvetica .txt file might have alluded to at first glance. An awakening that would plant a seed of emancipation, not just for the music industry but for the entertainment business at large.

also a masterclass in songwriting, with each composition showcasing a flair for honesty and vulnerability. The kind you’ll only come across every so often in a generation. But above all it was uniquely accessible. Refusing to be marginalised as niche or specialist. An album that didn’t need to stand in the shadow of his sexuality. A project so universal and undeniable that it couldn’t be side-lined as an album ‘for the gays.’

Now make no mistake, queer artists have every right to be as loud and proud as we desire when it comes to grand declarations of love or bold proclamations of gender expression. We can choose to stand out in all our rainbowclad glory if we choose to. But there was an immense power in how understated Channel Orange was as a seminal work of art that spoke to the LGBTQ+ experience. It was subtle, poetic. A project that allowed sexuality to be incidental. An album that reminded the industry that queer artists need not be dressed in a technicolour dreamcoat of sexual nonconformity but can instead exist simply, unembellished and unannounced, side by side with their straight cis-gender peers. Proof that simply existing unapologetically is, at times, as radical as we need to be.

And what we saw in the years that followed was unprecedented in Black music. A wave of LGBTQ+ artists being ‘out’ and thriving without bounds. Artists like Janelle Monae, ILoveMakonnen, Young MA, Tyler, the Creator, Kehlani, Angel Haze, MNEK and one of the most talked-about pop stars on the planet, Lil Nas X. Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange is an example of what can happen when artists and songwriters are set free. A historic moment that demonstrated the boundless possibilities that exist on the other side of our expectations, boxes and labels.

In an industry that insists on categorising artists based on genre, race, demographic or song tempo, Frank reminded us of the power in fluidity. ‘I feel like a free man,’ is how Frank Ocean ended his now infamous Tumblr post in 2012, ‘if I listen closely I can hear the sky falling too.’

The album that followed was Channel Orange, a body of work that served as the soundtrack to his ‘coming out’ and a powerful project that saw him speak openly of his love for a man. ‘You run my mind boy’ he sang on Forrest Gump, the album’s most overt exploration of Frank’s sexuality. ‘You’re so buff and so strong, I’m nervous, Forrest’, he continued. Then there’s the self-deprecation on Bad Religion, a song that sees Frank battle the demons of unrequited same-sex love in the back of a cab. ‘Taxi driver, I swear I’ve got three lives / Balanced on my head like steak knives / I can’t tell you the truth about my disguise / I can’t trust no one.’ He sings, ‘I can never make him love me.’

Like his open letter in July 2012, Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange was perfectly undefinable. Flirting with soul, funk and electronic styles without ever turning its back on R&B. It was

Dotty is Lead Cultural Curator, UK for Apple Music and daily host on Apple Music 1. She is also the author of Outraged: Why Everyone is Shouting And No One is Talking (Bloomsbury Publishing)

M Magazine | 13

! g a It’s the most Dr

you can be.

Princess Julia serves up some drag history, celebrating how it has always explored the spectrum of gender across music and talks to some of today’s scene stars.

Princess Julia

In 1976, I’d just left school and found myself in the midst of a very exciting time in the UK music scene, disco was happening and so was punk.

As subcultures go, the punk scene was a very diverse moment and its stars included Jayne County. Outspoken and glam, Jayne was ‘Wayne’ back then, Wayne County and the Electric Chairs. Jayne was a star of the Warhol Factory, but butched it up ever so slightly as Wayne, and it wasn’t long before the bouffant came out and Jayne revealed her true self. Storming her way through Paranoia Paradise as Lounge Lizard in Derek Jarman’s film seminal punk film Jubilee in 1978, I was even more obsessed.

On the disco scene, a star named Sylvester shone bright.

Sylvester crossed boundaries with a soaring falsetto over the pulsating beats of Patrick Cowley. Sylvester would not have classed themselves as ‘drag’ in the strict sense of the word, but the artistry of Sylvester’s looks and talent gave them the allure of a modern gender defying beauty. There’s no doubt Sylvester was a true non-binary pioneer.

Photo: Nick Royal

You might be thinking these two disparate scenes had nothing much in common, and you’d be wrong. In fact, queerness was abounding everywhere and really both scenes represented a freedom to express oneself beyond the fringes of ‘normal’ society.

The same freedom came with the new romantic movement where questioning gender, sexuality and ways of dressing were at the forefront of our thoughts. Stars such as the androgen Ronny crooned their way through an electronic drone in a trilby, and of course, Boy George cut his teeth in the coat check of the Blitz club in the late ‘70s. By the early ‘80s, he had become

M Magazine | 15

Le Gateau Chocolat

In the US, RuPaul’s hit single Supermodel sashayed into the mainstream from the club kid scene in New York in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, with producer Larry Tee changing the game. The beautiful Amanda Lepore cultivated a clubland career working with Tee, the powerhouse of camp catchy hooks, and with Lady Bunny, a performer with a repertoire of their own as a music producer and an array of disco inspired songs in her archive.

In the noughties on the cabaret front, Kiki and Herb created a stir. They arrived in the UK as fictional characters, Mx Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman, with a repertoire that covered pop classics to Broadway musicals and featured a series of entertaining monologues delivered by ageing star Kiki who strung the show together.

Photo: Lee Faircloth

The underground electro vibe of the noughties peaked with Fischer Spooner referencing drag with their showcase. The campest thing ever seen. The fabulous Peaches incorporated gender diverse statements in her artistic forays. This wave renewed a club scene which was crawling out of the AIDS pandemic with a glimmer of hope. References to DIY subcultures meant we were all doing it ourselves, opening new nights, creating new music on new technology, styling ourselves up and yes, dragging up too.

‘Whatever the rules were, they’ve now been broken.’ a fully-fledged pop sensation with his band Culture Club. Queer clubland stars had officially become pop stars, activists and role models.

Divine, the drag star of John Waters’ avant-garde cult films like Pink Flamingos, literally burst onto the stages of our clubs with HiNrg tracks created by producers Stock Atkin and Waterman (SAW). But it was an appearance on Top of the Pops in 1983 that made Divine a household name. Even today those notable performances have the power to stun.

To all intents and purposes the idea of ‘drag queens’ wasn’t a new one. There’s a vibrant history spanning from the music halls of yore to traditional drag artistes such as Danny La Rue and later, Lily Savage even presenting peak time TV shows. But as the pop machine rolled on, drag upped its game. ‘Drag’ may even be the wrong word to use here, as Pete Burns often attested. With so many groundbreaking and forward-thinking views on beauty, gender and sexuality, I feel we are only just catching up in 2021.

In pop music, ‘drag’ is often used as a creative vehicle. From Bowie to Madonna, The Eurythmics, Queen, Cher, Elton John to Lady Gaga, it appears in many forms; Queens, Kings, a fabulous blurring of sexual identities with gender diverse lewks, camp, kitsch sometimes larger than life.

And in 2001, the film scene introduced a new shero in the form of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Originally a stage play, Hedwig battles her way through a multitude of challenges with an emotional and raucous soundtrack of anthemic songs.

John Sizzle

‘In pop music, ‘drag’ is often used as a creative vehicle.’

Fast forward to the present day where being a drag queen has captured the public imagination with renewed fervour. My socials are awash with make-up looks that are other worldly and escapist. Queens and Kings lip-syncing, swishing and ruling. Le Gateau Chocolat takes an operatic stance with a baritone that spans drag, cabaret, musical theatre and art, whilst AFAB drag Holestar has been belting her classics since 2003.

Could it be that RuPaul’s Drag Race has really set a precedent for a counter-cultural scene to go mainstream, but in a different way? Our latest drag star crossing over into the mainstream, Bimini Bon Boulash, discovered their voice (on so many levels) on RuPaul’s Drag Race when constructing a song with MNEK and The United Kingdolls. The most recent development in Bimini’s career is a debut single God Save This Queen.

‘Drag, music and performance go hand in hand,’ Bimini tells me.

But at the beginning of Bimini’s journey, lip-syncing to other people’s music really gave them a performance platform on which to build. Crediting the art of lip-syncing Bimini adds, ‘I think without it we wouldn’t really have the careers that we do, because it’s a way to connect with the audience in bars and clubs or wherever we’re working.’

Freida Slaves, whose infamous lip-syncing antics are wowing us says, ‘Music is in the very fabric of my drag. I’m a dancing lip-syncing queen. And in the words of Abba, ‘What would I be without a song or dance!? It’s one of the most quintessential components to drag. It can make or break an act.’

In the past 15 years, lip-syncing has become part of our drag cultural landscape. Jonny Woo hosted a lip-syncing contest at the Bistrotheque and made east London drag art kookiness cool.

We all piled in that snug bar for some up-close alternative drag.

Nowadays drag competitions abound and we love them: Miss Sink The Pink, Drag Idol, then there’s LIPSYNC1000, Man Up and Gold Rush at The Glory, to name but a few. These competitions provide launching pads on which to explore different ways of expressing yourself. Our pubs and clubs have become ever more inventive with review shows, drag karaoke, quiz shows and bingo.

And yes, all these things involve a bit of live singing and a bit of lip-syncing if the mood takes you. John Sizzle, co-founder of The Glory, sums it up, ‘With a carefully chosen lip-sync we can bring you to tears, ignite your passion, get you leaping to your feet and wailing along in joyous rhapsody.’

Today we can all do ‘drag’ and own it, and that’s refreshing, but more and more I’m seeing a new wave of artists that defy defining as non-binary, trans or drag. Whatever the rules were they’ve now been broken.

Emerging singer-songwriter Susan Reby says, ‘My experience within the music industry has been one that has been built by a community of artists who have found themselves lost within the binds of genre. My friends and I put on our own shows around the UK as we noticed that it was impossible to generalise a night of queer talent; there is so much variation and so much diversity that to create a concrete line up of similar acts, simply is impossible. The boundaries of music and art have always been pushed by drag and queer performers.’

Pushing boundaries and switching things up, creating iconic moments with anthemic moods that resonate. ‘Music just brings people together and that’s what drag does so well.’ Bimini further explains. ‘I feel drag and music totally complement each other and drag wouldn’t exist in the form that it does today without the music.’

Ultimately our queer pioneers are insightful, groundbreaking, political and flamboyant, David Hoyle has been pushing boundaries from the get-go discussing gender and hierarchy with directness and common sense delivery dressed in looks

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Lady Llloyd producer Jodie Harsh has been putting out banging dance tracks for years now.

Lady Lloyd says, ‘I think it’s quite possible for drag artists to find success within the mainstream music industry, the time is now, you know. Jodie Harsh is on the radio.’ With underground tracks produced by Boy George, Lloyd says, ‘For me it’s always been music first, drag second, I couldn’t care about the perfect contour but if I write a good hook, I’m on cloud nine for the day.

Working with original drag icon Boy George is just the biggest thrill, and being allowed to collaborate and write on the records has given me profound joy and purpose. I do think for someone to truly connect long term, the music needs to move above the cheap beats and naff lyrics – we all know your hair is fierce girl but give us something real.’

‘Pop music is at its most powerful when it’s depression and heartbreak set to a disco beat and you know what? Drag queens have feelings too! Is the world ready for vulnerability in drag yet? It’ll take someone with guts to go there. I’m in the middle of writing my country album so maybe it’ll be me.’

Bimini, reflecting on what it takes to break into the mainstream, says: ‘I think drag artists kind of feel there’s a criteria that they need to stick to when they create music. I feel a lot of the time [drag artists] will stick to the style of music that they feel is what drag is.’

Performer Paul Soileau’s ‘drag terrorist’ character Christeene Vale emerged in 2010 with an energising bang; gritty and grimy but with a heart of gold.

that are both inspired and confrontational. No one can deny that Hoyle is integral to the way drag has enlightened us on so many levels over the years.

On the underground cabaret scene, Adam All is putting drag kings on the map. He tells me, ‘Music is an integral part of my performance as a drag artist, I sing live, I sometimes even perform original pieces. As a drag artist, inviting thought and empathy is central to my work, as a result music is a vital tool in conveying my message.’

In fact, our queer cabaret, clubland and performance scene is awash with fabulous diversity and talented people who are expressing themselves in various forms. DJ and dance music

Personally, I feel the mood is changing. Emerging underground star Olivia ‘Glam Clam’ says, ‘Music is a soundtrack to an artist’s life and with a big personality and experience there is enough for a platinum album. For so long drag and queer artists have been over shadowed and undersold to be palatable to an audience when we are truly an enigma.’

Susan Reby adds, ‘I feel freedom in 2021 to express myself through music and know that it will be digestible to the general public; I don’t know whether I would be saying the same if I was around even a decade ago as the music industry is shifting so quickly. I feel lucky to have seen so many people gain success by expressing their true selves and I look forward to seeing where queer experience pushes the music industry in the future.’

‘Drag was never one dimensional and it’s not just about female impersonation.

It’s political and about exploring the spectrum of gender across art, music and fashion.’

Divine

‘The way things are evolving in the mainstream currently reflects what we have been nurturing in our queer scene for years.’ gender across art, music and fashion. I do feel slightly hesitant that the mainstream labels and media might start using drag performers solely because they see the popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race, without much interest in developing artists and their music. But as long as the artist is aware of that and makes sure they are treated and compensated fairly, it works both ways. The exposure and success that is on offer today for drag performers via RuPaul’s Drag Race is so exciting and I hope it translates to other areas of our community.

Currently entering my pop consciousness are electro duo Emperors, who are finding their feet with with singer-songwriter Stephen ‘Cassandra’ Eyre fronting this foppish styled band.

They have considered today’s pop scene and where they fit in, ‘Perhaps it’s that music now is very SPLINTERED. You can find your own niche on the internet. Everything is much more spread out.’

Producer, singer-songwriter Viktor Victoria came up in the noughties and is seeing a shift in attitudes. He explains, ‘When I started making music during the ‘electroclash’ era, I don’t think drag was taken seriously by the mainstream music industry at all.

In fact, there was a clear pressure on queer and non-binary artists to avoid it, as it wasn’t considered cool. I had some interest from mainstream labels but there was always a sense that being too ‘drag’ or femme was not going to achieve any success beyond nightclubs. Even if I had tried, I couldn’t have played down my femininity, so changing was never an option for me.

Taking into consideration past inspirations, Emperors are creating their own version of how to navigate and change attitudes with the tools we have now. They tell me, ‘I suppose if we music artists on the scene would like to scale to dizzying heights, we would either need to make a clever meme or video related to our music to explode me to viral fame. On the music itself — make a song that is just so catchy and perfect for the zeitgeist that it travels like wildfire. But as an artist I don’t know if you can be that calculating — I think you have to allow yourself to just flow and then if something spreads and ascends you then it does.’

‘After the ‘80s where drag or ‘gender bending’ found success in the mainstream music industry with Divine and Boy George, the ‘90s and noughties music world felt like it largely turned its back on drag or queerness. Brit-pop and grunge were hypermasculine, except for a couple of artists who we clung on to, but even then, it felt mostly like vague androgyny and straight men playing with a bit of eyeliner.

The way things are evolving in the mainstream currently reflects what we have been nurturing in our queer scene for years. Drag and its array of expressionistic variations is slowly but surely crossing over. I often think, ‘What will the current era we live in counter culturally be remembered for?’ Well you know what I’m going to say... DRAG! It’s the most punk you can be.

‘With drag now reaching mainstream success, I’m so happy to see my sisters killing it, and the diversity of drag now is amazing.

Drag was never one dimensional and it’s not just about female impersonation. It’s political and about exploring the spectrum of

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Lunatraktors Harry Harris speaks to Margate folk duo Lunatraktors about their contemporary and confronting lyrics, how their approach to folk music is akin to their queer identities and challenging the ‘nostalgic nationalists.’

As Louis Armstrong famously said, ‘All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.’ And yet, over the years a specific idea of what folk music is, what it sounds like, what it should be, has been cultivated. It should be traditional. It should be acoustic.

It should be about these people, not those ones. The beauty of Armstrong’s quote is not only in the absurdity of its image, but in its understanding that folk music is the broadest of churches, a well from which everything else springs.

Enter Lunatraktors, the Margate-based duo whose background of cabaret, musical theatre, jazz, hip-hop, and plenty more besides, all filter through a rigorous, academic understanding of the history of folk music to create something that sounds completely unique, and completely familiar at the same time.

‘I’m obsessively researching all the time about a lot of things, not just music’, says Clair Le Couteur, whose four-octave vocal range and ability to sing two tones at the same time help make the Lunatraktors sound so engrossing. After their debut album This Is Broken Folk was named as one of Mojo’s Top Ten Folk Albums of the Year in 2019, they return in 2020 with The Missing Star, a more expansive, ambitious effort that adds new layers of sound and meaning onto their existing canon.

‘We definitely allowed ourselves to indulge in what the studio process can allow you to do this time, rather than being quite so purist,’ says vocalist and percussionist Carli Jefferson, ‘but one rule that seems to still stick with us is that if it hasn’t been done within three takes, and that’s generally the whole take all the way through, we would be like ‘well, okay, we’re definitely going to come back and do that on a different day.’’ Clair expands on this approach to the recording process: ‘All of our music is very much about the story, and if you tell the same story several times in a row, you lose interest,’ they say. This approach translates to their live performances too. ‘When it comes to being performed,

there’s a basic form, which is kind of fixed, but then at every show, there’s a big element of improvisation that happens. The groove is not set,’ Carli explains.

The stories being told are many and varied. ‘We’re constantly turning up new songs, and then following little hunches, or keyword searching archives for particular things, or talking to people or getting recommendations. But then sometimes something just grabs you by the collar and shakes you and you know that you have to sing it to understand it,’ Clair says, but what’s clear is that Lunatraktors aren’t interested in using folk music to hark back to an idyllic, romanticised past. Rather, they are rooting out the contemporary and political themes in this music, in a way that is often very confronting. On The Rigs of the Times, the first single from The Missing Star, an ancient sounding folk melody is paired with lyrics about Brexit and COVID-19, and the haunting refrain: ‘hon’sty’s all out of fashion.’ ‘It’s an old one in terms of the song structure,’ Clair says. ‘The chorus is original, from the 1800s, and the last verse and the tune is original, but the lyrics are updated to be about the current conditions.’

As two queer artists working in a genre that can often feel quite stuffy and straight, there’s an inherent politicisation to Lunatraktors’ existence. But rather than these identities competing with each other, the depth of understanding of folk music and folklore that Carli and Clair both have turns it into very fertile ground for them.

Speaking about the occasional preciousness that some communities have over folk music, Carli explains how their approach to folk music is akin to their queer identities: ‘We find it quite difficult when things jump out of categorisation boxes.

That binary way that just says, ‘it has to be this, or it has to be that.’ Folk music isn’t about that, it’s a kind of trawling and moving

Photo: Emma Falconer

‘We really want to include everyone. We want to make music you can tap your foot to, for people to move with moods.’

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absorption of the visual arts. There’s so much that is not boxed, and not just in one form. Folklore, for me, is lots of different places and lots of different people all finding very similar ways of voicing or sounding or expressing, and you can see that blend across the world. There are moments where you go, ‘ah yes, that is very distinctly from there,’ but there are many moments where you just listen to something that doesn’t have a name, or a country, or a flag attached to it, and you go ‘ah! I don’t know where that sound comes from!’

‘That’s the exciting thing, the non-binaryness of that.’ Clair quickly picks up Carli’s train of thought: ‘Being a non-binary person is a gender thing but I guess it’s also very much a political position.’

The queering of folk music is important for many reasons. There is still, unfortunately, an uncomfortable association that gets made between folklore and the far right. Nick Griffin famously tried to co-opt folk music for the BNP way back in 2010, leading to the compilation album Folk Against Fascism being released in response, from participants including Martin Simpson, June Tabor, and Christy Moore. More recently, Mumford and Sons’ Winston Marshall was widely criticised after he praised altright commentator Andy Ngo’s book Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. And beyond folk music specifically, there has been a growing trend amongst the alt right to attempt to invoke traditional folk mythologies in defence of white supremacy.

All of these things are quickly shouted down, but rarely is the ugliness interrogated with any great seriousness. More often, it is dismissed, like a family quickly shushing the ‘one bad apple’ whom they still keep inviting to dinner. ‘People are attracted to folk music for very different reasons. A lot of the people who were involved in setting up the folk revival of the ‘60s and ‘70s were super socialist. You had the trippy hippies in one direction, and the hardcore Marxists, and they ganged up to create these clubs, but what happens with folk clubs is they tend to attract nostalgic nationalists,’ Clair explains. ‘But the thing about folk heritage is, it’s for everyone. There’s plenty of disgusting nationalist crap in

Photo: Lorraine Phillips

the folk archives, partly because the establishment was paying people to put it out there. I think the point is to talk about it, and also to make fun of how bad the nationalist, revivalist, nostalgic music is, because it’s always derivative and predictable, whereas weird stuff remains weird forever.’

Perhaps one of the reasons Lunatraktors can comfortably and confidently mine these deeper questions and notions out of the genre they’re working in is because they are performing it outside of the traditional settings, those being folk clubs. ‘They’re still a bit resistant to us,’ Carli says, before telling a story about one club who declined to book them on account of their having a ‘no drums’ policy. While some of the folk circuit are now catching up, it’s in other spaces where their music has found its home first: cabaret nights, art galleries, gay clubs, village fetes with children crawling across the stage, TED talks. At the start of our conversation, Clair explains their recent involvement with the Ten Songs From Lar project, a joint project from The Historic Dockyard Chatham and The Rochester Guildhall Museum for which ten artists were invited to create audio responses to a bronze Lar, essentially a Roman figurine dating from 200 AD thought to be household guardian deities. ‘We’ve developed a sideline in making weird time travel music,’ they say. I put it to them that playing this material to audiences who maybe aren’t as familiar with it can lead to new responses, and new life breathed into it.

‘Seeing these songs in a gallery context, they become intensely political and interesting, which they are in the folk club of course, but it’s less obvious,’ Clair says, ‘We really want to include everyone. We want to make music you can tap your foot to, for people to move with moods. People are put off by folk music, I think, in the same way as classical music. It can feel quite claggy.’

Carli then leaps in, their voices often overlapping throughout the course of our conversation as one thread of an idea is picked up by the other and woven into something new. ‘There’s a distance instantly created in folk clubs because you can see the musician with their instrument, and they’re clearly very good, while you don’t have an instrument in the audience - there’s a big, quite

Photo: Paul Emery

‘It is music and storytelling that invites us to consider everything that has come before, and everything still to come.’

strong fourth wall, I think. Whereas if you’re watching two people slapping their thighs and singing, you think ‘Ah, I’ve got these instruments too!’ Instantly I think you connect to it easier.’

Our conversation coincides with a gentle easing of lockdown restrictions in the UK, and a tentative move toward the resumption of live music. Test events have been successfully trialled, vaccination numbers continue to soar, festival line-ups are being announced. But across all the arts, there is a clamour for the creative industries that return to be better than the ones that were so abruptly shut down in 2020.

The topic of inclusivity is one that comes up regularly, and both Carli and Clair feel there should be a greater structural approach from the industry at large to ensuring this is addressed.

‘Programmers have a responsibility to include everybody,’ Carli says, ‘there has to be a vigilant process that every time you’re looking at the question of ‘have we got a diverse group of people? Or have we forgotten about Black Lives Matter and gone back to booking the white guys who sent the email first?’’ Their thinking on these matters is intersectional, as Clair explains: ‘LGBTQ+ appeals need to phrase themselves as human appeals and be aware about the risks of putting a rainbow heart around it. The more and more the media gets into that culture war, ‘anti-woke’ thing, the more and more fragile our position’s going to become. It has to be about solidarity across groups - stuff like Kenmure Street, the protesting and rescuing people from immigration vans. That’s what we need.’

An accusation occasionally thrown at artists – particularly musicians, it seems – who deign to voice a political opinion is that they should ‘stick to what they’re good at.’ It seems to stem

from a desire for music to be a space for escape, away from the in-fighting and messiness of the political sphere. I sometimes wonder if folk has bought into that too much over the years, whether by not challenging the ‘nostalgic nationalists’ it has not only created a more inhospitable environment for people, but also an inhospitable environment for the genre itself to grow and thrive. Lunatraktors are not the only group happy to counter this. Listening to them I’m reminded of Lisa O’Neill’s astonishing Violet Gibson, the story of an Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Benito Mussolini, which in O’Neill’s hands becomes a powerful anti-fascist, anti-misogynist statement. Or even the gesture from the Irish band Lankum, who changed their name from Lynched in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, accepting that despite the word being a play on their family name, it carried too much baggage.

Lunatraktors’ politics makes their music richer, more interesting. Makes them as artists, particularly artists if not at the beginning of their careers, but at the beginning of this particular project, more exciting.

Early on in our conversation, Clair mentions the Turner Prize winning artist Tai Shani, who described Lunatraktors as ‘conceptual art disguised as folk music.’ It’s a neat line, but pondering on it I wonder if it should be the other way round, or whether the comparison should be more broad, more declarative. Folk music is conceptual art, and not only do Lunatraktors understand that, but they run with it. It is music and storytelling that invites us to consider everything that has come before, and everything still to come. Weird time travel music. All music. All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.

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Hannah Holland

As multi-talented as the many multi-tracks in her studio, DJ, producer, Batty Bass label boss and award-winning soundtrack composer Hannah Holland is often cited as one of dance music’s most inspiring women. Her debut album Tectonic, recorded in her hometown of Margate, is certain to charm you; travelling the broad horizons of electronic music, cinematic in ambition but always ready to lead you to the most underground of dancefloor experiences.

Tectonic’s genius is no surprise for those who know Hannah, for she is one of the LGBTQ+ and alternative club scene’s pioneers, DJing at Berlin’s Berghain, for The Carry Nation in NYC, at Glastonbury’s infamous NYC Downlow or the deliciously deviant Trailer Trash and Adonis parties. Add a career of stunning remixes for artists including Goldfrapp, The Knife, Planningtorock and Metronomy and the admiration so many have for Hannah is as deep as the acid-tinged techno and house bass lines she plays.

Kate Wildblood caught up with Hannah Holland to talk all things Tectonic, the musical roadmap her life has followed and the contribution LGBTQ+ culture will always make to her work.

Kate Wildblood: From DJ to producer to soundtrack creator to album creator is an impressive journey – but how did your journey to the dancefloor begin?

Hannah Holland: I spent my very early teens growing up in south London around a load of junglists, listening to pirate radio and being taken to raves. Then, a little later, some really great alternative gay nights. Naturally I was meeting music heads, some of whom were DJs, and I loved the clubs and the music so much, I just wanted to touch it. Hence I got decks and started collecting vinyl, with the help of a couple of DJ mates showing me a few skills.

Kate: How did you make that transition from decks to studio? Where did you find the inner confidence to create?

Hannah: I had been in studios before with a band I had played bass for, so it felt quite a natural move once I’d really established my sound as a DJ to turn to learning production.

I really found my sound at my East End DJ residency Trailer Trash and own night Batty Bass, with the help of an amazingly dedicated crowd.

‘I love collaborating, it teaches you so much and it takes the ego out of the process too, which is very important!’

Hannah: Dancefloor wise, it was hearing jungle and hardcore at around the ages of twelve and thirteen. Then everything else with a distinctive bass driven sound, whether it’s breaks, acid, electro, techno or house, certain artists fit nicely into my taste. A very London sound, steeped heavily in Jamaican culture. Later, when I lived in Berlin I was heavily influenced by the groove I was hearing in the more minimal and techno DJ sets, and then hearing how house was played in New York and the energy of that sound, again that was a major influence.

Right from age ten and eleven I was massively into Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Hole, PJ Harvey, so that punk spirit, rage and musicality was there in my life from a very early start.

Kate: Seeing as we’re all about roadmaps right now what was your genre roadmap? What music first lit up your passion for music, DJing and producing?

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‘Punk spirit, rage and musicality was there in my life from a very early start.’

Kate: Your debut album Tectonic is a titan of a release, diverse and distinct and destined for many to be a classic I’m certain. What was your process, did it live on your head for many years or was it something that came to you more recently – a means to a lockdown end, as it were?

Hannah: Thanks! I’d had lots of ideas brewing already, and a couple of the more dancefloor tracks were already written as sketches to jump from. Most of it was made during the lockdown and was a chance to dig deep and use all the knowledge I’d gained during the last few years working on film scores and with the band Black Gold Buffalo. I really wanted to explore emotion, time and space in the record and make something for people to get lost in. I wanted to really push myself as an artist on this album and I feel like I’ve managed to achieve that. I wrote it at my studio and then did all the recording of the strings at Big Jelly Studios with engineer Al Harle, where we processed all the sounds throughout the album using vintage effects units, to really take it to unusual places. That’s when the music took a life of its own. I’m very proud of it.

Kate: Having seen your fabulous Fender bass love affair on your socials how important was it for you to use live instrumentation on Tectonic?

Hannah: I love playing my bass in my music, I think it adds a little piece of my soul! As for the strings, I adore strings and they really reach deep emotional parts of oneself, so it was an absolute honour to have Francesca Ter-Berg on cello and Raven Bush play violin on the record and add their own magic.

Kate: How did you find making an album? Did you struggle with the process or was it a joyful experience?

Hannah: It was a journey of exploration and I absolutely loved doing it. I’m always at my happiest making music but it’s taken decades to get to this place!

Kate: How does the soundtrack process differ from making an album?

Hannah: With the soundtrack you are very much working closely with the filmmakers and have a designed world for the sound, working with dynamics and also there is a whole technical aspect to score work, which is different. But for me

Kate: Your latest soundtrack for the Channel 4 film Adult Material directed by Dawn Shadforth is stunning and like your previous award winning original score for Steve Conway’s film Electrician destined for critical acclaim. How did you get into making soundtracks? Happy accident or lifelong ambition?

Hannah. Thank you! I started my working life in film, music videos and editing, for a good solid eight years before I started doing music full time. So it’s pretty much a full circle and natural move into a medium I’m very familiar with and have a huge passion for.

it all comes back to tapping into an instinct and conveying an emotion through music, which is the same process as DJing for me, you become a medium in a way!

Kate: Your self-owned record label and infamous party night Batty Bass has enabled you over the years to work alongside some truly iconic artists including Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s, Josh Caffe, The Carry Nation, Mama, Lauren Flax as well as your own new wave band Black Gold Buffalo. How important is working with others for you as an artist?

Hannah: I love collaborating, it teaches you so much and it takes the ego out of the process too, which is very important! It made me a much better artist. I also love to work on the label with artists and be part of the process of releasing their music and creating a journey for the sound to go on.

Kate: Any LGBTQ+ musicians, DJs, producers etc. you must thank for lighting your way?

And which artists and producers influence your work now?

Who would you like to shine a light on this Pride Month?

Hannah: Smokin’ Jo, Jo Jo De Freq, Miss Kittin, The Carry Nation, Steffi and Tamo Sumo are all queer DJs who sparked that early magic for me on the dancefloor, my favourite DJs for sure. Josh Caffe is an absolutely fierce DJ and has an exciting new album coming out later this year. A very new DJ I’ve got my eye on is Xilhu Ayebaitari who runs a drum and bass party called Queer Rave.

Kate: If you could talk to those young LGBTQ+ creatives we hope to see equal the gender balance soon through initiatives like Future1000 what would you tell them?

What do you wish someone had told you when you were just starting out?

Hannah: I don’t really wish anyone had told me anything, because I’m grateful for the journey I’ve been on. I would tell anyone starting out to be fiercely yourself and work damn hard! Nothing comes quickly and it really is a game of patience in which you have to hone your craft as best you can, practice all the time, research, learn, go out, soak it all up, be inspired and most important…..have fun.

Kate: How important is the LGBTQ+ community to your work as a DJ, label boss, composer and producer?

Hannah: I started off DJing in queer clubs and it’s that community that made a place for me, it’s where I grew as an artist, found my peoples and really connected with a crowd that has spread out into everything else I do. I’m eternally grateful for that.

Kate: As we tentatively move out of lockdown and back to the dancefloors what have you missed most about nightlife?

Hannah: The energy exchange of the dancefloor and all the spontaneous otherworldly experiences that brings.

‘It all comes back to tapping into an instinct and conveying an emotion through music.’

Kate: And what have these many degrees of separation from our community taught you? Have they changed how you see the Pride movement?

Hannah: The last few years have really taught me how important Pride is and to value the community uniqueness even more.

Kate: Finally, what would be your killer vogue ball outfit and which tune would you be sashaying down that runway to?

Hannah: My new Mrs Jones silk PJ’s and of course the classic Walk For Me by Tronco Traxx!

Hannah Holland’s latest track Shutters is out now and her debut album Tectonic is released on PRAH Recordings on 17 September 2021.

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Safe spaces for LGBTQ+ artists

Back in 2016, queer grime artist Karnage Kills was a normal college student who spent his spare time quietly making music at home.

After his friends shared one of his videos on YouTube, Karnage was discovered by the promoter Hakeem Kazeem, who runs the night Too Black, Too Queer, and was catapulted onto the London queer scene. ‘He booked me for my first gig in Clapham, I think at the Two Brewers, and it literally just took off from there,’ Karnage, who released his latest single The Set Up last year, explains over the phone. ‘I was performing every weekend at different queer venues, just on the underground scene, and it really helped me develop as an artist being around my peers and being around like-minded people.’

Karnage is one of many LGBTQ+ artists who have found both a sense of community and inspiration for their art in the safe spaces of LGBTQ+ venues and the queer music scene. ‘In the mainstream world, there still isn’t a lot of us and we’re not taken seriously enough yet,’ says Karnage, explaining that queer performers often feel less comfortable in straight venues. ‘At [LGBTQ+] places, you know the vibe and everyone’s loving and accepting.’ For many artists, these spaces give them and others the chance to fully embody themselves without judgement. For Birmingham-born rapper James Indigo, safe spaces are necessary for the community.

‘I remember my first gay venue in Birmingham. As soon as I stepped a foot inside, I automatically felt safe. I felt like I was home,’ he recalls.

Many bars and clubs feel like home because they naturally emerge from the communities they represent. Dalston’s VFD club evolved from the many house parties owner Lyall Hakaraia would throw until they realised there was a better option. ‘Every weekend, there was another party in my house. You know how many mornings I opened up the fridge to find high heels stuck at the back of a lump of butter?’

Stephanie Phillips looks at how LGBTQ+ venues can act as safe spaces for the most marginalised members of the queer community and how they will survive post pandemic.

Since then, VFD has become a major part of the queer music scene, giving people a chance to, as Hakaraia says, ‘celebrate not only queerness, but also their culture and their artistic practices’.

Even festivals have become more aware of their responsibilities to the LGBTQ+ community. Pride in Music, a not-for-profit collective that support LGBTQ+ musicians, have worked with a number of festivals to showcase queer artists. Pride in Music’s director and co-founder, David James Lennon, says, ‘We find that a lot festival spaces, particularly pride festivals, are often safe spaces. Over the last couple of years, it’s become more prevalent and diversity has become a hot topic.’

The need for safer spaces reflects the struggles the most marginalised in the community still face. For Emma Kroeger, marketing and bookings coordinator at Dalston Superstore, creating an inclusive space for non-binary and trans people is essential to the way they run as a club. ‘It’s really crucial that we provide a space where they can walk through the doors, breathe a sigh of relief and know that they will be respected and looked after. That’s something that venues that aren’t specifically queer venues are still grappling with.’ Kroeger states that Superstore’s ethos is reflected not only in booking queer talent and employing queer staff, but also training their security team in inclusivity.

‘No matter how fantastic the internet is you still need to be in the room with people’.

Creating such a welcoming space has led to LGBTQ+ venues having a deep influence on music culture by giving young up and coming musicians a place to be, whether they’re on stage, in the crowd, or behind the bar. ‘We’ve seen a lot of young queer artists who have started at superstore, often as members of our staff, who’ve then gone on to perform on the world stage either as DJs or as drag performers,’ says Kroeger. ‘Just off the top of my head, Tayce, who was recently on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, used to work behind the bar, and Bimini also performed at Superstore a fair bit.’ LGBTQ+ spaces have always had a deep impact on music culture. For Indigo, the most obvious example is Studio 54. ‘[Studio 54 was] the most iconic queer venue and inspired the likes of Cher and Madonna. I’ve always been inspired by the ballroom scene,’ says Indigo. ‘Us gays have inspired the music scene.’

The future of the music scene depends on how well venues perform in this period of reopening, and whether they’re able to sustain themselves for another four weeks now that reopening has been delayed. Many venues have put on virtual gigs and are transitioning into sit down, ticketed performances to meet regulations. Keeping the doors open is first and foremost in every venue owner’s mind.

At VFD, Hakaraia has decided to make the bar a community interest company, believing it will open up more funding options and also continue VFD’s community ethos. They also hope to offer different membership options. Despite this, it has been a difficult time for many venue owners. ‘We’ve opened and close three times now,’ says Sizzle.

James Indigo

Photo: Paola Peli

Despite best intentions, in a space that primarily serves alcohol and is an outlet for people to let go of their inhibitions, it can be difficult to keep things safe. For John Sizzle, owner of The Glory in east London, creating a welcoming environment means taking a step back and thinking about the diversity of the space. ‘It’s not easy, especially when you’re just trying to fix toilets and make sure that the beer barrels are cold,’ Sizzle jokes, adding that the work is worthwhile in the end. ‘It just ensures your longevity as well. That’s why people are so warm and so generous when they talk about The Glory. What they’re actually doing is they’re seeing a reflection of themselves.’

‘There’s still a vibe, but it’s not raucous, wild and sexy as it used to be.’

Another worry for venue owners has been getting people through the door again. According to Hakaraia, the more marginalised in the community seem to be the most reluctant to come out. ‘Some of the communities that use the space have known people who have died of COVID and, out of respect, they want to make absolutely sure that it’s completely and utterly safe for people to return before they do. It’s a way of honouring the memory of those who have died.’

For Sizzle, the return of live audiences is less of a worry as he can tell that ‘everyone’s gagging to grab hold of each other and have a boogie’. Kroeger is a little more positive about the return of their customer base, citing Dalston Superstore’s May opening as a sign that people still want to get together, but believes it will take time after the past year. ‘The discussion around mental health, going from this being relatively socially isolated to the madness of partying again, I think it’s really important that we’re sensitive to what everyone has been through. We’ve all endured a serious trauma together.’

How these spaces will survive is yet to be seen, but what has always been clear is that not much can replace the thrill of experiencing a live performance surrounded by like-minded people feeling the same emotions as you. ‘It’s much safer in lots of terms, and cheaper, for people to be at home and just do live streaming, but then the point about live performance is about being in the room with a musician,’ says Hakaraia. ‘No matter how fantastic the internet is you still need to be in the room with people. That will never be replaced by a live stream, no matter how good it is.’

Karnage Kills M Magazine | 29

Photo: Greg Lin Jiajie

Rina Sawayama and Queer Publicity Jay Singh speaks to Tom Mehrtens, Senior Entertainment Publicist at SATELLITE414, about their experiences in the industry and how they have helped a queer person of colour become one of the biggest names in pop.

After a decade working in PR, Tom Mehrtens is a success story that any LGBTQ+ aspiring music industry professional could take inspiration from. Mehrtens is a senior entertainment publicist at SATELLITE414 — a London-based entertainment agency representing global icons such as Adele, Beyoncé and Dua Lipa. Most recently though, SATELLITE414 have played an important role in the meteoric rise of Japanese-British pop star, Rina Sawayama.

An openly pansexual woman of colour, Sawayama is changing the landscape of mainstream music. Having successfully campaigned to make the BRITs and the Mercury Prize more inclusive to immigrant artists like her in the UK, Rina is adored by critics, fans and music icons alike.

2020 was a mammoth year for the artist, her debut album SAWAYAMA was revered, achieving universal acclaim and appearing on countless year-end lists. She made her TV debut on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, and her fanbase — affectionately known as the Pixels — grew exponentially. So far in 2020, Rina has collaborated with Elton John, announced her feature film debut and was nominated for the coveted

Rising Star award at the BRITs. These are all well-earned triumphs for both Sawayama and her team; triumphs that have felt like years in the making.

Mehrtens began working with Sawayama during the build-up to her stunning 2017 EP, RINA. ‘She came fully loaded with all of these creative ideas — we can’t and won’t take credit for any of that,’ Mehrtens enthuses. Her first headline show sold out quickly, they tell me, and it was from there that things began to snowball. ‘Press really picked up on her when she was in the Dazed 100 in 2017, and then things started to pick up in America, which is obviously a big thing — breaking in America is very, very hard to do. She was selling out shows there, albeit relatively small ones, but there was a growing fanbase.’

A notable moment for Sawayama was her coming out story which broke with her 2018 single Cherry; her first track about a female love interest. ‘Being queer myself meant that I could handle that situation sensitively,’ Mehrtens explains. They set up an interview with Zing Tsjeng, the then-editor of Broadly UK and a fellow queer woman from Asia.

‘There are not enough queer

Tom Mehrtens

people in executive roles, and across the board, walking into planning meetings with major record labels.’

‘To tell that story, it was really important to put Rina in the room with somebody who would completely understand. [When] working with Rina, or any of my queer artists, I think it does help that I have had — and still am experiencing — my own journey with queerness, in its very many forms.’

Mehrtens’ wide roster of talent includes plenty of queer representation, including Munroe Bergdorf, Dorian Electra and Pabllo Vittar. When I ask if this is a conscious effort to help amplify marginalised voices, Tom responds, ‘Yes and no. I think there’s subconsciously a queer agenda, so to speak, in my roster, because I do feel like I’m a good person to tell those specific stories — as I was saying, I’ve experienced it. It’s something that’s very important to me. It’s close to my heart, and I want those stories to be told properly and with grace.’

Though queer visibility in the industry has grown in recent years, we still have a long way to go until LGBTQ+ people are truly equal. ‘There are not enough queer people in executive roles, and across the board, walking into planning meetings with major record labels. It’s been hard being a very visible queer person, especially in the early days of my career when I wasn’t as respected. I’d love to see more queer faces at the heads of tables. But there is much more acceptance, for sure, and I hope that it’s not too daunting for young queer people to get into.’

‘The reason that I work with any of the artists is because ultimately I love the music,’ they add. ‘I’m not just going to work with a queer artist because they’re queer — I’ve got to inherently love the music, and I think it boils down to that. It just so happens that marginalised people make some fucking great music!’

The sheer presence of queer people in the music industry, both on stage and behind the scenes, is invaluable in paving the way for the next generation, but how can we make it easier? ‘Just seeing each other and uplifting each other, I think,’ Mehrtens suggests. ‘I don’t know how to get our names on the executive boards, but I believe that existing and existing loudly, actually, is the best way about it. And the proof is in the pudding. We can do a job just as well as a straight person — and probably better, because we have to try twice as hard.’

Being able to platform LGBTQ+ talent is a privilege that has come from years of hard work and breaking down stigma, they say. ‘I was hesitant in the early days of my career as a junior publicist; I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself as ‘the queer publicist.’ And then as I got further on in my career — I would say maybe in the last three years that I’ve been like: ‘You know what? Yeah, that is the person I want to be!’’

A watershed moment in their journey was working with Sink The Pink, an LGBTQ+ collective of drag artists and creatives who are breaking the boundaries of nightlife in the UK. ‘I think that that was maybe the first turning point and I thought, ‘Yeah, I want to push this agenda, and I want to put it in the mainstream, not just the queer media.’’

Mehrtens credits Carl Fysh, the Chief Executive of SATELLITE414, for believing in them from the beginning and pushing them to craft a roster of talent they believe in.

‘I was a very lost little gay, and he definitely took me under his wing.

I think he definitely nurtured that in me, and it’s really important to acknowledge that,’ Mehrtens says. ‘As a Junior Publicist, I was fortunate enough to work alongside him on projects. With him being an out gay man in the industry through the ‘90s and ‘00s, when it wasn’t as accepted, to know that he has succeeded and pioneered some incredible artists was definitely inspiring to me.’

It’s also important to acknowledge how privileged we are to have established queer media in the UK. ‘We have Gay Times, we have Attitude, we have Pink News, and they all serve slightly different purposes, but are all valid in their own right. I think that as queer artists and publicists working for queer artists, we should give them access to our A-list talent — because without that A-list talent, they’re not going to be able to keep thriving.’

Sawayama’s impact is already apparent, having blasted into the mainstream and led positive change within the industry. Mehrtens’ advice for anyone hoping to follow in her footsteps is simple: ‘Just do you. I think it proves to anybody — publicists, journalists, fans, anybody — that if you’re trying to be someone you’re not, it’s completely inauthentic. Do you and do you the best you can, and it will work.’

‘It’s really important to recognise that everybody’s goals and expectations are different,’ they continue. ‘With someone like Rina, we’ve got certain aspirations, and with someone like Softcult — the queer rock band that we work with — they’ve got different aspirations. Set yourself realistic goals and you’ll probably hit them.’

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‘Co-writing is competitive, and that’s as it should be’.

McHifi By: Kate Wildblood Photography: Michael Springett

Works well with others is an understatement when describing Hifi Sean. From those indie-lustrous days with The Soup Dragons to his collaborative work with Yoko Ono, Bootsy Collins, Crystal Waters, Dave Ball, Fred Schneider and Alan Vega and his US chart topping single Testify via his legendary DJ sets on the LGBTQ+ club scene, Sean has always kept his trajectory starward. So, when Sean connected with David McAlmont in 2017, we knew the stars were aligning for something very special.

David has become one of the UK’s most beloved performers, be it beside Butler or inhabiting Bowie with his legendary Hideaway songbook shows. Combine David’s astonishing vocals with Sean’s sublime studio craft and McHifi’s 2020 debut single Bunker to Bunker soon reached the heights of critical commendation.

With their new album set to launch early next year, Kate Wildblood caught up with the duo to discuss collaboration, the creative process in lockdown and what inspires their divine work together.

Kate Wildblood: So how did you both meet?

Sean Dickson aka Hifi Sean: I made an album called Ft. a few years ago where I asked artists I respected and wanted to collaborate with to work with me and David was high up on my list. Through that experience we became good friends and the music started to flow from there, mutating into what we now know as McHifi. Just two friends making music, enjoying themselves and the creative buzz.

David McAlmont: I’d freshly returned from Guyana after nine years. I watched Channel 4’s The Chart Show and was a bit weirded out by the section called The Indie Chart. I had no idea what indie was, and I’d never heard music like it. One of the bands was The Soup Dragons. Years later, this DJ made friends with me on Facebook. I thought, ‘Yeah. I’ll make friends with a DJ.’ Then I asked the hive mind to suggest a special guest for a Fingersnap show I was doing, and the DJ said, ‘Me.’ I wondered why he would suggest himself. Then I took a closer look.

Kate: If you were introducing yourself to the other for the first time, how would you describe yourself?

Sean: I’m Sean. Fly me!

have that very tape and it’s so lo-fi it hurts, but it was my learning ground on how sound layers on top of sound to create these wonderful experiences, and that is what I have been basically doing ever since.

David: Sean asked me to be one of his game-raising crew on his album Ft.. I enjoyed the sound we made, and I hoped he might suggest a more involved enterprise.

Kate: You have both worked in bands and as solo artists. Has your preference for one or the other changed over the years and have your experiences brought a confidence to your songwriting abilities?

Sean: For me personally, I have grown as a songwriter as I have learned not to fully finish the song in my head when working with someone else. Up ‘til the album Ft. I basically wrote everything in a song but that taught me to leave a space for someone else to be involved. With David it’s a journey for every song we do from starting it and not knowing where its destination is going to land.

For me that has been the most exciting experience about our working relationship. The unknown trajectory of the idea.

David: I do what I do, bring what I bring. Co-writing is competitive, and that’s as it should be. It is why I work with sonic visionaries. If there is mutual respect, it’s as a case of Bob and Fanny.

David: Got any skins?

Kate: So how did you get from childhood bedrooms in Bellshill, Glasgow and Croydon and Guyana respectively to working with each other now?

Kate: How does your creative process work as a duo and has lockdown life hindered or helped that process?

Sean: I have been writing little songs since I can remember. From little patterns I created on my aunt’s piano as a small child, to having a synth as a Christmas present and a drum machine from a friend, making my first full length album on a C-60 cassette and double boom box and calling it Silent Industry age fourteen. I still

Sean: Like everyone in lockdown we had that huge creative curve where at one point via WhatsApp, emails and so on, we were bouncing songs and ideas back and forth like three to four times a week. I think some of our best work has come out of that period and those sessions are what bred our debut single last

M Magazine | 33

Photo: Michael Springett

year Bunker To Bunker. It felt like the world had stopped and you could breathe artistically with no outside daily interference from personal schedules, daily chores, and time itself.

years, which it wasn’t. It shows that the method works.

Timelessness is everything.

David: With Sean’s singer Rolodex, you can sink without trace. Stand out or dematerialise! You might call the record a Dropbox/WhatsApp record, Sean Dropboxes my arrangements and I WhatsApp him my melodies. Lockdown was more of the same, but also additional focus.

Kate: Your debut McHifi album is set to be released in 2022 with the promise of electronic, psychedelic soul adventures and an eighty-piece orchestra. So, what can we expect when you come together at 33rpm?

Kate: What would you say is the McHifi dynamic?

Sean: There are no rules in my head, if there was it would be tediously boring and lose the excitement to which we seem to generate when songwriting.

David: I get out of Sean’s way, and he stays out of mine. Sean fires the music over and I go to work on it. I have a method that works, and I stick to it. The ideas I log at the time, reflect the time, but then other elements reflect others. It means listeners can use what’s created to tell their own story. I try not to dwell on reception.

Kate: There’s never been a time like this in our lifetime. Can you leave reality at the studio door, or does it infiltrate everything you create?

Sean: You would be lying to not realise it will infiltrate your mind set and your art, but I am also personally in the camp who thinks that there will be a bottleneck of post-lockdown themes that will at some point become tedious. Looking further afield from this point is where the visions should lie. I think we are all allowed one lockdown song, two at a push but three is just milking it.

David: It’s a great question, especially as so much of what we have written sounds like it was written in the last two

Sean: A full-on personal journey which is immersive in its soundtrack. Or as a good friend of mine said when listening to some track we were working on ‘it’s experimental without bogging you down and still cracking songs, a bit like The White Album was but sounding zero like that, just with that same attitude.’ I loved that response, and I will go with that.

David: Hmm. Expectations. I do my best not to get into those.

I love what we’ve done. Those who get it will enter an epic, psychedelic, emotional matrix. Those who don’t are those who don’t.

Kate: You were the recipients of some PRS Foundation funding to help with some aspects of your forthcoming album. How important was it to be able to access that kind of funding right now?

Sean: We really needed financial help to fund the guest musicians and engineering side of the album and PRS Foundation were a huge help with the fund as at the crucial period it was make or break if we could fulfil the full potential of our ideas and they helped us reach that point.

Kate: Sean, you have worked with some superstars of the music industry including Yoko Ono, Bootsy Collins, Crystal Waters and Alan Vega. Collaboration it would seem to you is the key. So, what has it taught you?

‘I think we are all allowed Sean: It has taught me not to overthink an idea and let the creative process flow to steer it in a direction you did not expect.

Many times, when writing music with David I have these melodies in my head, but every single time David blows my mind with his vision as he takes it to the stars and back.

Kate: David your Wall to Wall: Bowie live concerts have earnt much deserved critical acclaim. How did it come to be and what have you taken from your time spent performing David’s work?

David: Janette ‘D’Ranged’ Mason, the creator of the show, is a wonderful jazz arranger, and she created the show for Lea DeLaria. Sam ‘It Just Won’t Do’ Obernik and I were Lea’s replacements when she returned to America. It was a welcome voyage of discovery for me. Going to Guyana at eleven, the only Bowie tune I knew when I left was The Laughing Gnome.

Then I heard Let’s Dance a few years later. That was my Bowie knowledge until I found Diamond Dogs and Scary Monsters in a friend’s collection. Janette’s invitation to take over from Lea was a grand opportunity to plumb the great man’s oeuvre.

Kate: It’s Pride Month so it’s time to share the Pride love. Which LGBTQ+ musicians, DJs, producers inspired you?

Sean: I came out late in life as a married man with a baby, which was incredibly tough for me and those I hurt around me. Back then there really was not much help or support for someone in my situation. Of course, LGBTQ+ artists and the scene were always a huge influence and something I was very inclusive in within my previous bands. In fact, Divine Thing by The Soup Dragons (a song I wrote of course about Divine) was the first MTV daytime playlist video in USA with transgender artists in it.

I lived in NYC a lot on and off around that time and frequented all the clubs like Jackie 60’s, Save The Robots, Limelight, and this was a homage to that scene which we loved so much and a snapshot of downtown NYC culture and of course the LGBTQ+ culture of that time which drove the NYC club scene.

David: It was Paul ‘Polari’ Burston’s columns for Time Out London that shone a light. I came out because waiting for God to fix me wasn’t working out. I saw Torch Song Trilogy at that time and felt like my decision would prove to be a rewarding one. My gaydar wasn’t for shit at the time. I had no idea that gay people were gay people, although seeing Andy Bell dancing around on TV in a leather leotard freaked me out a bit.

Kate: And which LGBTQ+ artists and producers influence your work now?

Sean: I’m loving on the non-binary world of Blood Orange.

David: And I’m loving on Nakhane.

Kate: Having both found success in the 1990s, how did you navigate the road to Pride under the glare of the of pop music’s spotlight?

one lockdown song, two at a push but three is just milking it’. anyway as a young man as I always question anything good that happens to me, so to then accept coming out and watching my decision to be a tsunami of hurt to those I loved around me at the time led to many years of self-hate and loathing towards myself. To eventually reach a point of acceptance to myself and be able to use the word ‘Pride’ is a big grown-up step for me.

‘Live the life you love to live and if someone wants to pay you to help you do that then you are one step away from fulfilling your destiny.’

Kate: Have you discovered any shared experiences together as gay men in the music industry?

Sean: I thought gay was going to be a big happy accepting world where every club played the best music ever and everybody was going to be my best friend and I would live happily ever after. Bit of an Emerald City syndrome that.

David: I think we might have thought that gay men were an enlightened lot. Turns out they’re human like everybody else.

We’re human too.

Kate: How important is it for you to celebrate your LGBTQ+ community with your work?

David: I moonlight as a performance activist. I amplify the Black queer perspective wherever possible.

Kate: What has the LGBTQ+ community given you that you will always cherish?

Sean: A sense of a collective knowing.

David: Me. Kate: If you could share one lesson to those young LGBTQ+ creatives, what would it be?

Sean: Live the life you love to live and if someone wants to pay you to help you do that then you are one step away from fulfilling your destiny.

David: Be more queer than they can handle!

Kate: And finally, if you had both met at school what would you call the band you created for your music class?

Sean: I had at a very early age an imaginary band (yes other kids had imaginary friends but I had a band). I called them ANON as I was fascinated by that word. In my head we could have been bigger than ABBA. David: Croygow!

Sean: Pride is something I found hard to accept in myself

M Magazine | 35

Alicai Harley

Zoya Raza-Sheikh speaks to Alicai Harley, an unstoppable dancehall queen, to discuss her newly debuted EP The Red Room Intro (Yard Gyal Inna Britain) and her personal and creative journey across the last year.

Alicai Harley is an unmistakable talent. Born in Jamaica and raised in south London, Harley has become adept at meshing her sound with British culture and heritage to create tracks flecked with pop-infused dancehall beats and contagious rhythm. A breakthrough hit, the 2017 single Gold saw the multi-talented artist spotlighted for her witty lyrics and festive production. In a few years, Harley has become a star on the rise and The Red Room Intro (Yard Gyal Inna Britain) has cemented her flourishing profile as a UK dance staple.

With Pride Month in full swing and The Red Room Intro (Yard Gyal Inna Britain) available to stream out in the open, Zoya Raza-Sheikh caught up with the creative to chat about the debut release, the importance of Pride, and the trajectory of her career.

Zoya Raza-Sheikh: How do you like to describe your music?

Alicai Harley: I’m a dancehall infused songstress that raps, does pop, grime, and a bit of everything. I can’t put it in a box. I feel like that’s the statement and that’s what my sound represents, that’s what Alicai Harley represents. You don’t know what song I’m going to drop and or who I’m going to work with.

Zoya: You’ve been very expressive about how music has shaped you as an individual and an artist. What role has music played in your life?

Alicai: Music is my therapy. It’s something that I love very much. It’s a form of expression. After I’ve finished writing a song, what matters the most is how it’s made me feel.

There’s this burst of happiness that comes from it almost like a workout. It’s the same for the genre of music I make as well. I’m always pushing myself to see what I can do next, how can I blend it, or how can I give a raw authentic Jamaican sound blended with a real pop sound. I want the two of them to sound just as powerful as each other and coming together to work.

Zoya: How did your dual upbringing (in Jamaica and London) inspire your artistry?

Alicai: Growing up in London, it has been a journey to get to where I am today. I used to try and fit in a box in terms of what sound I created. I used to feel like I had to be one thing and that’s what people would tell me when growing up. I would get asked if I’m a singer or a rapper. I would think ‘what’s wrong with these stupid people and why did they say that?’, I was obviously young at the time and you’re telling someone that can blatantly do all these things that they have to choose one your whole life. When I look at it now, I’m like ‘you’re a whole hater!’ At the time, I went through stages of just singing and it was so boring. So then I went through a stage of just rapping. Once I started singing more, I did this first record when I was belting singing and I remember everybody was mind blown. I do both. After a few years of doing different things, I found myself. It made me know that I shouldn’t put myself in a box and it’s what makes me different as well. I realised that I wasn’t gonna hold back and I’m gonna give everything I got and that’s how I got here.

Zoya: Congratulations on the release of The Red Room Intro!

Your EP has been well received and praised. How are you now feeling about having your debut out there?

Alicai: I’m still soaking it in and I’m still yet to see the people’s reaction to the new record in person. I’m just happy that I put it out and it’s not a flop. I put it out, everybody enjoys the songs, and it’s a success. This is beyond numbers. I’m talking about how people feel when they listen to my EP, with how my friends feel, and when people are communicated about it. I really did what I was supposed to do and that makes me feel happy because it was a long time coming. I feel really grateful. It was a solid body of work and that makes me happy.

‘What I enjoy the most about Pride is seeing how happy everybody is. I’ve been to Pride and anybody that has, you see the joy that comes from it.’

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it’s ready yet. It’s scary working with other people sometimes because of the pressure. I do enjoy collaborating, obviously, as you can see from my EP, and I feel like that made sense as well. Those were beautiful collaborations that worked out and none of them felt out a place and everybody killed it.

Zoya: Did you uncover anything about yourself with making The Red Room?

Alicai: I’m indecisive. If you leave me with something for too long, I’m going to think about how it can be greater. It can be a positive, but it can also be a problem. I had the EP mostly finished for so long that coming to the end of it I was thinking it’s not good enough. My manager would have to say that each new idea was a new record. I’ve realised that I’m a perfectionist and I learned the importance of patience when it comes to your artistry. It’s down to you, you have the final say, and artists should always have their final say because it’s their art. It’s not just the music, but the artwork, visuals and all of that.

Zoya: You collaborated with a handful of artists on The Red Room Intro. Do you enjoy the process of collaboration?

Alicai: I don’t even think I’ve collaborated enough. I want to collaborate more and be in the studio with people. When it comes to collaboration, it needs to have a purpose and I think that’s the thing why I’m so scared with recording with other people. I can’t take somebody being onto me for a record to come out. It scares the life out of me. Do you know how many records there are that the world would never hear? Just because we’ve spent all day recording it doesn’t mean that

Zoya: Ahead of your performance at UK Black Pride in 2018, you said: ‘I’m a Jamaican girl that sings dancehall music when dancehall is associated with homophobia’. Can you expand on your meaning behind that statement?

Alicai: I did that interview based on the record Gold. At the time, that was a record that had so much different underlying elements. I’ve left it quite open because I did the whole ‘Gyal you spend too much time whining’ and then I did ‘Why I spent too much time talking’, however, it’s me speaking every single time. There was this kind of underlying question of whether I’m speaking to a gal at the start of the song and I did that on purpose. I wanted it to be like that. I wanted it to connect to different people and I wanted to leave room to be self-explanatory. Initially, I was writing it based on a girl, not because of fancying her, but because of admiring and that’s what I was talking about. I wanted to put all of these different perspectives in this song. Everybody took what they took from it and that was beautiful.

Zoya: Do you think the attitudes and inclusivity around dancehall are starting to change?

Alicai: I feel like those genres are changing already. In terms of dancehall, if you go to Jamaica, they’re not going to say the majority of the country doesn’t have a stigma of being homophobic because they have and it’s in their history. For me, my main point has always been that if people are not harming anybody then people should be allowed to live freely and make their own choices. In terms of homophobia, it’s based around a culture of hate that people have created to say, ‘This is bad’. There’s a lot of forced mentality to believe negative stigmas of the LGBTQ+ but once you ask the people saying these negative things, ‘How does it affect you when you go home?’ it changes. Everybody, in every country, should be allowed to live a happy life and how they choose to live. There’s a trend of hatred and you’ll see some people okay with two women together, but not two men.

Zoya: You attended Pride before and even performed at LGBTQ+ events. What is your favourite thing about Pride?

Alicai: What I enjoy the most about Pride is seeing how happy everybody is. I’ve been to Pride and anybody that has, you see the joy that comes from it. It’s kind of like Carnival and you don’t get that in most places. It’s not a festival, but there’s a certain joy and carefree happiness going on. It’s the joy that comes with people being happy and able to express themselves and be who they are.

Zoya: What have you got planned next?

Alicai: I feel like I’ve been on a journey in the last couple of months. I got baptised in December. It has really made me want to help people more, especially in regards to mental health. Its become one of my focuses now. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take me to achieve or prepare, but I know that’s my focus. I’m just trying to get myself in the right frame of mind so I can do that. One of these ideas is a charity surrounding therapy because therapy is really expensive.

Money shouldn’t be the reason our mental health suffers, so that’s one thing I want to put into place. I’ve also got shows coming up and quite a few festivals coming up this year too.

In terms of my musical journey, we’ll see where that takes us.

It’s changing a little bit and the truth of what is on my heart is creating that. It’s creating resources to help and once I do that I’ll start caring about other things.

‘I’ve realised that I’m a perfectionist and I learned the importance of patience when it comes to your artistry.’

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‘Queerness has historically been a radicalised identity and often culture – be it music, art or film – has supported the redress of a heteronormative society.’

Ellie Showering

Sound & Music Capturing the essence of a community Bekki Bemrose speaks to the team behind Sound and Music’s LGBTQ+ Composers Open Call and the recipients of the grants about the complexities around representation, issues surrounding diversity and the importance of safe spaces.

How do you do labels? How do you do representation? What counts as queer today?’, ponders Sophie Marie Niang. Sophie is part of the Queer World Making Collective along with her friend and composer Ruari Paterson-Achenbach. As one of the four successful applicants of the Open Call, the collaborators are grateful for the opportunity while remaining highly curious about how it all fits into the discourse surrounding queer people and the wider community within the music industry.

The Open Call, which offers four grants of £500, is part of a larger programme initiated by Sound and Music that has been housed on the British Music Collection to mark LGBTQ+ History Month. The discovery platform for new music in the UK is closely related to the physical collection, which is housed at the University of Huddersfield’s archive centre, Heritage Quay.

Sound and Music was created to support the production of new music, and diversity is at the core of its work. And while the British Music Collection is undoubtedly fascinating, there was a feeling that its representation of British music history was a little myopic, i.e. one that is predominantly white and male.

With regards to this specific project, Sound and Music’s creative project leader, Heather Blair, expands: ‘We wanted to make sure that this body of work was balanced in terms of identities and experiences; that themes and areas of focus were far reaching and that they demonstrated a breadth of musical styles and compositional approaches.’

The fact that 70 percent of composers who applied were based outside London and a further 40 percent self-identified as non-binary or gender-diverse, indicates the organisation’s efforts have been worthwhile.

Musically, the scheme has also found in its recipients a truly diverse spectrum, as Heather enthusiastically notes: ‘Lunatraktors will be making a duet composition for two overtone singers and body percussionists; Ellie Showering, who usually composes for theatre, will be composing a choral work that they are calling A Mass for the Masses. Ruari and Sophie are creating a sonic manifesto that articulates new ways for in-collective sound-making, while Precious Oni is making a new piece that takes in neo-soul, alternative, jazz afro and R&B influences.’

Heather goes on to explain that there was no strict brief for the pieces, or for the works to specifically speak to queerness.

So, while some composers identified as LGBTQ+, it didn’t tend to be incorporated into their art; yet others chose to celebrate queer histories, sound and stories though their work ‘I immediately thought I would like to do it collaboratively because that’s how I enjoy making stuff, and also if I can give people any money then I will do it,’ laughs Ruari.

They add: ‘I find collaboration is the only way I can work that makes me feel really nourished or like I’ve achieved something, because things can only come alive when they’re between people.’

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Ruari and Sophie

Sophie and Ruari’s collaboration is a fine example of the breadth of approaches the programme has encouraged.

Although Ruari is a seasoned composer and performer, Sophie’s background is largely academic, and it’s a position she is certainly comfortable with.

‘This is going to sound very childlike, but I’m not ashamed of that, I don’t know how it’s going to sound and then I try a new pedal. I try something and it works and it creates something new entirely. I love that. I think collaboration, for me, is really about realising how much we all know. Once we share the basic skills, how much power there is in each person’s background and in your musical memories,’ she muses.

For her part, Precious was also thankful for the freedom to create as she sees fit: ‘When I heard I got the grant I was like, ‘oh my gosh lets see what their sound is like.” And it was very different from mine. But then I spoke to the team and they explained that it’s actually anything that you resonate with and I was like, ‘wow!’ Because my music is quite outlandish, it’s quite a new sound, so it was nice to have that opportunity to express it on such a well-regarded platform.’

In terms of which themes and concepts the creators are set to pursue, it seems the finished products will be as wonderfully diverse as everyone involved might have hoped.

‘The project’s about everything really, like coming to an acceptance of being LGBTQ+. And even though I’m quite bold and quite proud, there are still inner pains of not being

accepted. This project is allowing me to voice parts that not a lot of people get to see,’ Precious offers.

And while her piece might come from a place of individual experience, she also has her eye on the wider community, as she explains: ‘I’m really happy to share that with the world.

It’s so, healing. I do make music that’s just fun but potentially being able to help someone else heal and be at one with themselves is what’s really doing it for me to be honest.’

With a musical manifesto and a personal exploration already forming two out of the four compositions, the scheme is already championing a, albeit small, range of experience. It’s a point that Heather is keen to impress: ‘Like all communities, this is not a homogenous group, there is a huge breadth of distinct musical voices, styles and sounds which is continuously evolving.’

Trying to capture the essence of a constantly developing community is no mean feat and a premise that Sophie is distinctly aware of.

‘Obviously, queer sound has been erased throughout time.

But also music is a space where a lot of people were queer and it was not fully recognised and not fully erased. This messiness is something that archives can get rid of because that’s how you make sense of the world. So what I think personally, is that trying to preserve some of that messiness within archives is important and really difficult,’ she says.

Precious goes on to highlight how tokenism can sometimes tarnish contemporary queer representation: ‘We have progressed and I have to give us credit for that. Although I do think that sometimes it can feel like an add-on to look good.

That’s what a lot of people in the community feel any way.’

says, ‘it does mean that it’s going to become more and more exclusionary. That you won’t have people that don’t have access to the arts getting in to it and you will have fewer people living off it than you have today. A handful of people live off artistic practise. I think it’s criminal.’

Dig just below the surface of any dialogue around queerness, representation and diversity and the complexities of the conversation leap out.

‘So much damage has already been done to an extent where people feel so isolated and individualised that art in any abstract form has become a competition. Even in the act of us applying for something and getting it means that someone else has not,’ adds Ruari.

Ruari expands on the issue of diversity beyond what that means for LBGTQ+ people, saying: ‘I think there’s maybe much more important conversations and difficult things to be worked through in regards to class and affluence and race, that have actually been much more historically exclusive to people than necessarily just being gay, for example. Because one of those things is very easily hidden and disguised, but sometimes you can’t hide yourself.’

‘What you pointed out there was interesting: that white, gay, cis men, rich men will fit in – not to say that life has always been easy for gay men, that’s not what I’m saying – but if you have a platform for LGBTQ+ artists, historically the Black trans women in there will have had a much harder time than the white, gay composer,’ adds Sophie.

She continues: ‘The thing that people have been talking about more and more recently is that your identity doesn’t make you radical. I mean Priti Patel is not white and she’s a woman, so…’

Queerness has historically been a radicalised identity and often culture – be it music, art or film – has supported the redress of a heteronormative society. Yet with arts education resting in the cross hairs of government cuts, what will it mean for marginalised communities?

Meanwhile, Precious considers its meaning for the LGBTQ+ community: ‘You’ll see a lot of LGBTQ+ people are really creative and that’s how they express themselves. It’s how they get themselves out of trouble. So to have funding cut in half, I mean, if we’re already struggling…’ For now, at least, the four recipients of the Sound and Music LGBTQ+ grants can create unencumbered. ‘We want the winners to feel supported and celebrated, we want to create a space for those who need to make work after what has been quite a horrendous year for composers and music creators across the board,’ says Heather.

This is a point not lost on Ruari who also acknowledges, ‘that any space we carve out is temporary or fleeting. If we have a chance or an excuse given to us by a little bit of money, or a little bit of time, or a space where something can be made, it’s almost as if we can take that and run away with it as much as possible.’ It appears that space, as a concept, is a key factor in allowing LGBTQ+ people and other marginalised communities to flourish. Music creators need physical space, they need headspace, but perhaps more than that, they must also take up the space that they have been so often denied.

Sophie explains that she doesn’t fetishise the arts, in the sense that they can save the world, but faced with cuts

Lunatraktors

Precious Oni

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Photo: Hannah Sherlock

Dance Proud 1979. The year I can never get away from. The year that produced some of the greatest disco tunes ever, when Donna Summer sang Heaven Knows and Sylvester made us feel a Star. The year the mainstream tried to kill the LGBTQ+ disco stars, burnt vinyl and all.

As a young queer growing up in the 1970s, disco was my saviour. The glittering queens and butch clones that filled the airwaves were my queeroes hiding in plain sight, my baby dyke self, oblivious to the not-so-subtle signifiers that accompanied disco’s magnificent ones. Be it the bravery of Sylvester, the tongue and cheeks of Village People, the blazen brilliance of Boys Town Gang, Gloria Gaynor’s survival techniques or the many disco divas destined to accompany every broken heart (oh Esther Philips, Fern Kinney, Suzy Lane, Melba Moore, Linda Clifford, Gladys Knight and Ms Ross I salute you) the queer life was there. From the bathhouses and dark rooms of gay bars, be they the Ice Palace on Fire Island, David Mancuso’s The Loft in New York or Bang at London’s The Astoria, disco music via R&B, jazz, Motown and that oh so glorious Philly sound had journeyed to the mainstream, soundtracking the liberation of the LGBTQ+, Black and Hispanic community and women’s equality. It was the sound of rebellion, of freedom, of us.

But disco’s roots were never as clean-cut as they seemed, a million miles away from the syncopated basslines and flared flaying of seventies rock bands desperate for one last chart kiss. As kitsch as the various attempts to reignite careers

Kate Wildblood shows us who The Boss is as she share’s her deep love for disco and its unshakeable influence on our sacred dancefloors.

‘The underground was always the beating heart of disco.’ with this most glittering of genres was, no amount of disco dust could connect The Ethel Merman Disco Album or a certain Disco Duck to a beat created with sweat in mind. For the dirt, the sex, the underground was always the beating heart of disco, after all, Sylvester’s 1982 hit Do You Wanna Funk was a tune about cruising for sex and no amount of glitterwashing could rinse that away. The very building blocks of disco; producers Patrick Cowley, Giorgio Moroder, Tom Moulton and Marc Cerrone, were steeped in queer culture, the BPMs they brought to our dancefloors as vital to our history as the colours on our equality flag. Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, Cerrone’s Supernature, Patrick Cowley’s Menergy, or Tom Mouton’s epic remix of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive all ensured this syncopated sound was our sound. And the DJs that took those tunes and made them our anthems; David Mancuso, Stacey ‘Hotwaxx’ Hale, Larry Levan, Ken Collier, Ron Hardy, Sharon White and Frankie Knuckles, they created a home for us all.

A home attacked on 12 July, 1979, when radio DJ Steve Dahl launched the outright racist and homophobic campaign Disco Sucks at his Disco Demolition Night, literally detonating a pile of disco records on a Chicago baseball field. An attempt to reclaim the airwaves from a genre far too close to its

gay roots for the rock radio DJs’ liking, Disco Sucks knew its language of hatred would be tolerated as the AIDS crisis began to unfold. Declaring disco a ‘musical disease’, Dahl embedded a sense of shame to the genre just as the world’s media and politicians found a new reason to demonise the gay community. The soundtrack of the ‘other’ wasn’t about to become the soundtrack of them.

And so, the distance between the music and its queer disco roots grew. Even the industry’s attempt to repackage early ‘80s Hi-NRG disco for the heterosexual audience without the gay element failed in all but one sense. The genre was soon topping the pop charts and playing in every nightclub but with divas such as Evelyn King and Eartha Kitt the straight version of disco turned out to be even camper than Sylvester had ever been.

But regardless of the disconnect, one of disco’s destinations was always meant to be – house music. The sound that arguably has taken over the world, created in the clubs of Chicago and Detroit, honed to perfection by those disco devotees, soul disciples and early electronica adopters and icons of the dance music scene Levan, Knuckles, Hardy, Collier. Embraced yet again by the disenfranchised disco darlings of the LGBTQ+, Black and Hispanic communities, house music united the club kids, losing it together on a dancefloor to a four-to-the-floor beat high on phwoar-tothe-core ecstasy pills. London’s Trade, Brighton’s Wild Fruit, Leeds’ Speed Queen and Manchester’s Flesh may have been some of the first queer few to fly the house flag, but it was Shoom and the Hacienda that grabbed the headlines.

From Balearic to banging, house and rave became a global phenomenon, condemned by 1994’s UK Criminal Justice Act whilst simultaneously being hailed a must-do destination by Turismo Eivissa. House music was teaching the world to Jack, smiley faces and all.

House wrapped the world in four-to-the-floor into the noughties, but something happened that would have made Disco Sucks campaigner Steve Dahl proud. It lost its gay roots, its soul, funk and R&B roots, the very connection to the genres it had come from. The back-to-basics ethos of sweaty darkrooms and those original circuit party HIV/AIDS charity fundraisers disappeared as the noughties saw house music become a brand, its soul remixed to the point of no return as dirty cash became all. Sure, there were some moments of creative bliss and parties whose memories will forever bring the blush, but the disco rebels who’d brought us those sequined beats were now just package-house music reps. The party brands were now seemingly just a means to a product tie in. A culture that brought us the sashaying New York vogue balls of New York had morphed into an industry producing packaged perfume tat for the high street whilst the disco, funk and soul divas we once cherished were airbrushed from the house sampled credits they deserved. (Loleatta Holloway will you ever forgive us?) As the distance between what we were and what we’d become made us dizzy, the LGBTQ+ contribution to dance music seemed a lost story destined only for afterparty moan-ins with fellow queer elders.

But then forty years on from the year I can’t forget, came a connection to queer disco days long forgotten. Horse Meat Disco lifted its head up from its temple of disco devotees at The Eagle in south London, released a compilation of rare and beloved disco on Strut Records and gave us a lesson to detour for. A lesson of diversity and inclusivity and a fucking good time. Thanks to a lad called Ribs and some unicorns, the dance music community began to appreciate the importance of disco and the role the LGBTQ+ community had played in creating that thing we call house. Journalists explored stories, podcast hosts connected with creators, DJs dug in crates un-played and clubbers fell in love with the reality behind the (disco) spin. Studio 54 became a disco addict’s gateway drug to some of the genre’s finest moments whilst the Disco Discharge, BBE and Deep Disco Culture compilations charmed our dancing pants off.

And finally, those queer wonders who had made our own LGBTQ+ scene so influential were being hailed the legends they truly were; DJs Tallulah, Jeffery Hinton, Princess Julia, Chris McKoy, Malcolm Duffy, Steve Thomas, DJ Paulette, Tasty Tim, Smokin’ Jo, Tony de Vit, Guy Williams, The Sharp Boys, Freddie Thomas, Queen Maxine, Kath McDermott, Luke Una, Sophie, Michelle Manetti, the list as endless as the memories they created for us.

‘A lesson of diversity and inclusivity and a fucking good time’.

Of course, for memories to exist and those connections to disco to continue, we’ll forever need nightclubs, DJs and queer parties but with the COVID pandemic jeopardising their future and the LGBTQ+ community who call them home, I’m very aware of the triteness of declaring disco is the only connection we need this Pride Month. We need to ensure the spaces that house those glitterball spinning parties, including Horse Meat Disco, Bitch, Please!, He She They, Homoelectric, Little Gay Brother, Glitterbox, Femme Fraiche, House of Go Bang! and Downlow, can survive.

We fought off the bigots who believed disco sucks, now we need to save our communities from those who believe disco is disposable. Yes, we can tell our tale of when disco conquered the world, helped create a thing called house and turned on a beat called techno, but we must always shout loudest about the open-minded disco dancing homos, dykes, trans, non-binary folks and queers who made it so. The lessons are there, the glitterballs are waiting, the talent we have today is outstanding and the venues can be saved, we just need to keep on being there. Loud and forever proud of our contribution to dance music, proud of our disco history, proud to dance. Together.

M Magazine | 45

The power of audio: a look at queer representation on the radio

Hattie Collins explores which independent UK radio stations are putting in the work to represent the full scope of varied LGBTQ+ voices, and asks whether the same is happening in commercial and regional radio.

As a music lover growing up in the ‘90s who happened to be queer, there appeared to be little intersection between my worlds – and certainly not in the pages of Smash Hits or on Radio 1, so I sought out the closest approximations: Madonna and Prince. The former for her proximity to, and allyship of, the queer community (she made it feel like being queer, in every sense of the word, was very cool) and the latter for his gorgeously ambiguous androgyny that existed effortlessly on both the masculine and feminine spectrum.

But while both megastars blurred the lines of identity and sexuality, they were mostly, if not wholly, heterosexual.

It took an awful lot of undoing of my own internalised homophobia to fully appreciate the musical brilliance and individual bravery of the LGBTQ+ artists that did exist during my formative years. I fled far from k.d. lang, Sylvester, Erasure, Elton John and, one of my absolute favourites now, Bronski Beat.

Yet in 2021, should I want to listen to people singing about same-sex love, I have more than a handful of options. In fact, it is staggering how many out, loud ‘n’ proud LGBTQ+ musicians have flooded the charts since the beginning of the millennium – and over the last decade in particular. Can

you imagine that prior to 2010 there was no Frank Ocean, Mykki Blanco, Kim Petras, Hayley Kiyoko, Syd, Kehlani, Arlo Parks, Romy Madley Croft, Troye Sivan, MNEK, Olly Alexander or Sam Smith? Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus were barely born. Johannesburg had yet to create queer collective FAKA, Korea’s only openly gay k-pop star, Holland, didn’t exist and down in Nashville, Karen and the Sorrows, Lil Nas X, Orville Peck, and Brooke Eden had yet to make country music so fantastically queer.

In the UK alone there are a number of excellent emerging queer musicians including Joesef, Darkoo, Hope Tala, L Devine, and my new favourite, London’s Loraine James whose excellent album Reflection, is released on Hyperdub this month. With so much output from so many names, are we seeing this reflected on radio, both in terms of what is being played and who is playing it?

Over on Apple Music Radio [Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits and Apple Country], I’d venture to say we are. Full disclosure: since 2019 I have hosted Proud, a queer radio show on Apple Music 1 where I interview musicians about the songs that have shaped their journeys through life. I’ve spoken with k.d. lang, Billy Porter, Janelle Monae, Ricky Martin and Ben Platt

Sherelle

Photo: Phoebe Cowley

M Magazine | 47

Photo: Charlotte Rutherford

MNEK

alongside Girl In Red, Serpentwithfeet, Romy, L Devine and Arlo Parks. The music we play is almost exclusively by queer musicians or allies, both established and emerging.

And I am not the only gay host in the Apple Music radio village. My peers include Ashley ‘Dotty’ Charles as well as Ellie Prohan, Nicole Albino of Nina Sky and my Proud pal MNEK, who hosts his version of the show over on Apple Music Hits and Hunter Kelly who heads up Proud on Apple Country. More visibility comes courtesy of artist-fronted shows from Elton John, St. Vincent and Young M.A. Apple’s Pride month content is similarly comprehensive with exclusive DJ mixes, guestcurated playlists and Pride Talks, a video iteration of my show.

I am pretty – ahem – proud to work with a platform for whom representation goes beyond tokenism and which seeks to create meaningful connections and conversations with traditionally underrepresented communities.

There’s a similar story to be found via other broadcasters too. On 6 Music, Tom Robinson, The Blessed Madonna and Amy Lame all front weekly shows while Rostam and Honey Dijon recently featured on the Lose Yourself series. NTS is reassuringly inclusive; hosts on the station include drag queen and ‘confrontation popstar’ Cindy Lee, pop star Clairo and electronic guru Yaeji. After Pride with John Atherton is just one show I’d recommend listening to on NTS this month. You can also listen to Hooversounds with Hooversounds owners Naina (also of Apple Music 1) and Radio 1’s Residency host Sherelle, who has also just set up a brand new platform, BEAUTIFUL designed to cultivate new music and scenes within the Black and LGBTQ+ music community. ‘I want to use BEAUTIFUL’s influence to create something for the better.

BEAUTIFUL will plan to connect many Black electronic artists from in and around Europe and also the World via the label, building our fan-base and workshops,’ said Sherelle via a press release. ‘BEAUTIFUL will also move into the ownership

of space. BEAUTIFUL will be looking to own clubs globally that prioritise Black, LGBTQI+ nights and culture. We want to create more spaces for the communities to thrive and I want the security of knowing that Black & LGBTQI+ nights will continue to cultivate the amazing scenes that we already have. But will also break the glass ceiling above us. BEAUTIFUL will put music of Black origin as the focal point. BEAUTIFUL will make it easier for future generations and help protect and grow the scene into something beautiful.’

I mean, how beautiful is that?

It is of course Pride month and 6 Music is nearing the end of ‘Loud and Proud’, its month-long LGBTQ+ series of programming that has included a fascinating deep dive on Ballroom culture, curated shows from Ezra Furman and John Grant, takeovers from Sleater-Kinney and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK finalist Bimini and much, much more.

‘We put this special series of shows and mixes together to support and shine a light on the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month. As a queer person myself I know how important it is to see and hear people like me in music and culture and we wanted to celebrate those voices,’ says Camilla Pia, Assistant Commissioner, 6 Music.

Pia and their team are mindful that it’s about sustained and longterm support of the queer community rather than chucking out a quick bit of content during June. ‘By devoting shows in daytime, evenings, overnight and over the weekends we hoped this would make a real impact,’ they continue. ‘All of the artists we reached out to were thrilled to be asked, I think because we give so many of them a platform all year round and they are core artists for us so it didn’t feel tokenistic. In many cases we have played an integral part in helping to build their careers.’ 6 Music has been mindful to reflect a diversity of voices as well as experience; it’s not always about aiming

‘More often than not, it’s the disruptors and independents that fast track conversations around sex, identity, race, religion and class.

But it must not be left to them.’ solely for the more recognised names. ‘It was important to balance those icons that the 6 Music audience already know and love with newer voices who we thought our listeners would be into, [to] champion the incredible work they have been creating, whether that’s from the worlds of fashion, dance and drag to club DJs who give the community a safe space to be themselves.’

While independent and online broadcasters are proving to be increasingly far-reaching in their coverage of queer content, are we seeing the same across mainstream radio? It’s wonderful that two drivetime shows on Radio 1 are fronted by gay male hosts – Nick Grimshaw and Scott Mills – and Adele Roberts is the station’s Weekend Breakfast host. There’s also guest mixes from Jodie Harsh although, as far as I can see, there’s just one ‘Pride Month Special’, via BBC Introducing which is highlighting ‘the best from the LGBTQ+ community from the Introducing Dance world’.

Current playlists don’t fare much better, particularly when you consider we are in the middle of Pride. Of the 41 tracks across Radio 1’s A-C list the only discernibly queer artist I can see is L Devine with her latest single, Girls Like Sex. Radio 2 managed to pop Joan Armatrading on their C-list although she’s also, again, the only discernible LGBTQ+ presence among the 27 acts featured. Heart handpicks Sam Smith, Jess Glynne

Olly Alexander (Years & Years)

and Miley Cyrus for their current favourite songs (Smith features twice, on their own track Dancing With A Stranger and alongside Calvin Harris on Promises). Lil Nas X, Becky Hill, Years & Years, Yungblud and Troye Sivan (who features on You alongside Regard and Tate McRae) are playing on Capital at the moment. Once again, it’s up to 6 Music to seek out lesser-known voices: they currently have Mykki Blanco, Sleater-Kinney, Ezra Furman, John Grant, Honey Dijon, Self Esteem, Du Blonde and Rostam on regular rotation. All artists far outside the mainstream.

It takes those with an interest in the queer community (i.e., other queer people) to shine a light on these lesser-known voices. One of my other jobs is over at Vogue where I regularly spotlight emerging queer musicians or highlight new queer songs set for release.

Having more LGBTQ+ commissioners, producers, hosts and DJs across radio – as we see at stations like Apple Music 1/ Hits/ Country, 6 Music, NTS and community radio such as Margate Radio and Brighton’s BTN1 – ensures a much higher level of representation and true diversity. And these folk too must represent the variety of voices and experiences within the queer community: non-binary, trans, POC and the differently abled.

In 2020, BBC radio Wiltshire presenter Shivani Dave used their show to come out as non-binary during a Pride special on the station. ‘The presence of non-binary representation in mainstream media like the BBC is virtually non-existent,’ they said in a statement after coming out live on the show. ‘In coming out so publicly I hope to show other non-binary people that they should be proud to embrace who they are.’

It’s indicative of contemporary culture that we are seeing huge strides in some ways and a step back in others. More often than not, it’s the disruptors and independents that fast track conversations around sex, identity, race, religion and class. But it must not be left to them.

Sherelle, it seems, has the right idea – create what doesn’t exist so that others can be what they see.

M Magazine | 49

Photo: Sam Le Roux

PRIDE IS NOT FOR PROFIT Composer Alex Groves on what Pride means to him and how LGBTQ+ music creators can blaze a trail for themselves.

‘Pride doesn’t need to rely on organisational gatekeepers to be legitimised.’

It’s Pride Month and for LGBTQ+ people across the country it’s a time for protest and celebration, a chance to acknowledge how far we’ve come and how far we have to go.

For me, it feels like we all walk that little bit taller this time of year. There’s a little bit of weight that gets taken off our shoulders every time we assert our queerness and stake our claim to the world.

I remember my first London Pride – only a few years ago – when I walked through London without the slightest bit of shame. Sitting on the tube and gleefully smiling at my fellow revellers, I realised this is what it felt like to not have to police myself for fear of being singled out. My home city had been transformed right in front of my eyes. LGBTQ+ people were out and proud on the street, living their lives unapologetically and coming together in a shared recognition of what we’ve all lived through.

But Pride is a tale of two rainbows. With increased visibility comes increased opportunities for profit, and the commercialisation and commodification of Pride becomes a hotter and more fiercely contested topic every year. On 1 June, social media logos turn rainbow-hued, branded merchandise appears in the shops, and people start arguing about whether or not kink should be allowed at Pride (it should). In the world of classical music, things are no different – arts organisations are quick to show their support through rainbow flags and Pride programming but, if these things are wheeled out just for June, how deep does the support really go?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy to see the progress the classical world is making and it’s heartening to know that conversations are being had and work is being done.

However, Pride doesn’t need to rely on organisational gatekeepers to be legitimised. In the history of LGBTQ+ rights, it wasn’t about waiting for the powers at be to catch up with the times and make changes in response to polite requests. The rights and freedoms we have today are the hard-won results of years of protest and struggle led by some of the most marginalised within our community. We mustn’t forget that these rights are not set in stone; a new Section 28 style law has been passed in Hungary just this week and the continued barrage of anti-trans stories in the British media shows we’re a long way from true equality.

LGBTQ+ spaces are most often created by us, for us.

Club nights, bars, social groups, and even healthcare are organised by queer people, for queer people. Only once the trail has already been blazed do those in power sweep in and announce their support. So why should it be any different in classical music? We don’t need those at the top telling us how to be proud, we already know how to do it. It doesn’t require a grand stage, fancy lights and an overpriced interval drink, it’s about community and a sense of belonging – an understanding of what it feels like to be othered by the rest of society. As long as the classical world continues to revolve around the outdated idea of the white, cis (often straight) male genius then how queer are things ever going to get?

Why wait for them to open the doors when we can blaze a trail ourselves?

Instead of being thankful for the odd social media shout out, we should take our money and support our own community. After all, some of these places will continue to book those who don’t see us as equals regardless of their public pronouncements. By envisaging a queer classical future freed from the current limitations of gatekeepers and organisational politics, we have the chance to create spaces that shine a light on the LGBTQ+ experience in a way that doesn’t seek to exploit it for profit or social capital.

I know that I can’t wait to head back to LGBTQ+ nights and venues and I also know that I’m not the only one. The pandemic has stopped us from coming together under the same roof and living without fear of intimidation. Once we’re allowed, I can’t wait to get back out and soak up queer performance and drag, and dance the night away with friends old and new. But what if we brought this energy to the classical world too? What if we carved out a space of our own to reimagine classical music? What would that look, sound and feel like?

This Pride Month, instead of getting bogged down with corporate merchandise, how about we take a moment to inject some creativity and queerness into our musicmaking? Whether that be as listener, composer, performer or producer, let’s give ourselves the time to dream, to imagine the world we want to see and to go out there and make it a reality.

M Magazine | 49

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