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| Gay Jazz Festival, Philadelphia (Photo: Bruno Bollaert, taken from The Examiner) |
Last May, Philly magazine announced that history was about to be made with the organization of the first Gay Jazz Festival in the US. The
announcement intrigued me. It rather seemed to me like history was going backwards. I
visited the website of the William Way LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender)
Community Center that would host the - I quote:
“groundbreaking” - event looking for more. One read: “Philadelphia has enjoyed a
legacy of being a great music city. We’re also a city that affirms the lives of
LGBT people. Hosting the first LGBT jazz festival in North America provides an
opportunity to showcase the rich and vibrant culture of our city. (...) The festival will serve as the
finale for the William Way LGBT Community Center’s annual music series and
highlight the intersection between sexual orientation and gender identity within
the jazz community.”
I believe that an important principle when dealing with other
people, other cultures, is to first
listen to the people themselves, to try and get to know and understand them
better; their thoughts, their life experiences, their sensibilities, their
needs and convictions. Thus, I am sure the Centre must have had a clear view on
the necessity of a gay jazz festival, but still, even after consulting its
website, it was not clear for why this initiative might be considered “visionary”.
Why would gay jazz musicians need a gay jazz
festival to present their work? Would this help raise awareness regarding gay
people´s rights? Could it be because they don´t usually have a place in the
jazz festivals being organized in the US and abroad? Why should a music
festival aim to highlight “the intersection between sexual orientation and gender
identity within the jazz community” (and how would it do it?) and not simply
the artists and their music?
I am frequently asking myself
more or less the same questions when it comes to disabled artists. People
working with them and the associations representing them claim that they don't
usually get to see their work presented in the usual festivals and the
programming of cultural venues in general. It is considered of lesser quality
and many times, once a venue programmes a show or an exhibition, they feel that
they have filfilled their obligations towards disabled artists and no more is
needed in a season. This is a reality indeed. Are we moving forward, though,
and are we somehow solving the problem by organizing “special” disabled artists
festivals, exhibitions, etc.?
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| Michelle Ryan, "Intimacy", Unlimited 2014 (photo taken from the Unlimited website) |
Between 2 and 7 September
another edition of the festival Unlimited took place in London, a big event, with works especially commissioned for it,
which “celebrates the artistic vision and originality of disabled artists”. In
a country like the UK, which, compared to others, has already taken a number of
necessary steps towards respecting disabled people´s rights, what is the role
of a festival like Unlimited today?
Between 13 September and 15
October the Musée de Grenoble is organizing Le Mois de l´Accessibilité. One reads on the website that the museum invites people with disabilities to
discover their exhibitions and activities during the whole year, giving all
necessary assistance. So, what is the purpose of this “special” month?
Considering these and other
initiatives, I keep questioning myself who attends these festivals, exhibitions,
activities and what happens after? Do they attract the already “converted” or
they appeal to a wider audience? Do gay or disabled or black artists become more
acknowledged by the sector and the public? Are they seen as the professionals
they are? Are we moving towards an inclusive representation, where they are
seen first and above all as artists, or rather curators and audiences still go
to see something “special”, confined in a specific space and time, its “own”
space and time? Do these festivals help us move towards caring more and more
about the art and less and less about “the rest”?
I´ve written in the past
about promoting shows which involved disabled people without giving a “warning”
to the public that this would be the case. People bought their tickets, watched
the show, they might or not have felt a certain discomfort and some left very
pleasantly surprised with the quality of what they had seen. Wasn´t this a step
towards learning that the “rest” didn´t actually make a difference? Shouldn´t
our goal – the artists´, the curators´, the education and communications
professionals´, the disabled people´s associations´ - be to work towards
turning the difference mainstream?
When reading “Museums and Migration” (ed.
Laurence Gouriévidis) this summer, I was pleased to see that this was the
principle followed in some museum exhibitions in countries like Canada,
Australia or the UK, countries with high levels of immigation that have seen at
certain times government strategies that aimed to deal with “the tension
between the recognition of a culturally diverse society and the need to
articulate a national identity that projects a culturally cohesive nation”
(Mary Hutchison and Andrea Witcomb, p.228). These museums moved beyond the
ethnic festival, the Week of China – India – Pakistan – Nigeria – Bolivia, etc.
(usually concentrating on music and food), and looked for ways to turn the
migrant communities´ stories part of the main national story and to “promote
positive feelings about people feeling at home across cultures and the idea
that people in many parts of the world live within cultures that are already
transnational, cosmopolitan and characterized by cultural hybridity” (Kylie
Message, p. 60).
I believe that this is the way forward;
it´s to stop drawing attention to the difference and making it part of the
story. I quoted once before Morgan Freeman who considered
Black History Month to be ridiculous, refusing to see his history resumed in a
month, and, when asked “So, how are we gonna get rid of racism?”, he simply
answered: “Stop talking about it!”. Do we still need
gay, black, disabled, ethnic months-festivals-fairs-shows? Maybe we still do, I
don´t deny it. But do we also have a plan for moving things forward?
More on this blog
The beginning and the ending of a b&w week in Vienna
Other texts
2 comments:
As a gay man who can't avoid the overwhelming het community - I do like to see gay people's contributions specifically highlighted. The heterosexual presumption straight-washes even out gay performers (or writers or ...) unless the connection is made explicit. Thus even though there are gay people contributing to every aspect of society it remains easy not to see them/us. When we are not seen, we are disregarded - and stereotypes remain unchallenged, thus hardened.
I went to a night of gay comedy last month - these performers often work in front of mostly straight audiences - but in a gay context they could feel more free and more comfortable.
While she was alive the poet Elizabeth Bishop refused to allow her poems to be included in anthologies of exclusively female poets as she didn't want her work ghettoized. Since her death her poems have appeared in anthologies devoted to women. Were her wishes betrayed? I don't know. I do know she died alcoholic and in the closet (more or less).
Many thanks for this, Glenn. Things are exactly as you describe them, I know. I understand the need to be among one´s "own", we all have it, but I don´t consider this to be groundbreaking. It is a human need, but I don´t think it´s the way to work against stereotypes. I wish to go to a gay comedy and be with all sorts of people and I wish for all of us to "understand the joke". I think that if we wish to fight the stereotypes, we need to be together, to have the chance to get to know each other. Open-minded people will go to a gay event, those limited by stereotypes will not, so nothing will change.
As a woman, I don´t believe I would feel comfortable in an all-women event. My mother did that for me, I now must take things a little further. Once I was asked if I was ever discriminated for being a woman. I might have been, but the truth is that I didn´t realize it, because it doesn´t cross my mind that anyone would even try to discriminate me for being a woman. It´s a process, isn´t it? We have to go through the different stages, but we need to be moving forward.
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