LGBTQ Plus plus plus
LGBTQ+ music & the TRAИƧA project part 1
Part 1: LGBTQ+ plus plus plus
Introductory note
I’ve been working on this piece for a while now. Wanting to get it right. To do justice to those LGBTQ+ and trans people who bring so much to music, and whose lives are and have often been a struggle because of the cultures of discrimination and exclusion they live with. In the USA, the election of the Trump administration signalled a sea-change in policy towards diversity in general, and the status of queer and trans people in particular. And then, on the 16th April, in the UK, the High Court ruled on a case that will profoundly affect the status of trans people, and how the Equality Act applies to them. The full implications of this will play out in political and legal spaces, but it’s clear that the trans community will need the continued support of allies in wider cultural contexts that will, in all probability, prove to be as or more important that court rulings and political posturing. There’s more to be said on this, but for the time being here’s the first feature piece on the place of LGBTQ+ artists and allies in the musical worlds I explore…
Beginnings
Here’s a (short) rabbit hole for you to follow down…
On a Listening2… post in February 2025. I highlighted a track by Meernaa. Her 2023 album So Far So Good has a bit of 80s Sade about it and this, in turn, led me to check out what Sade Adu might have been up to since those heady days. It turns out she has recently recorded and released her first new song since 2010! The track, Young Lion is a moving tribute to her trans son, artist Izaak Theo Adu-Watts, and appears on a new collection called TRAИƧA, released at the end of 2024. I’d read about TRAИƧA back in November when the collection was reviewed in the Guardian. It’s out on streaming platforms and is out as a vinyl boxset very soon from https://shop.redhot.org
To start you off, here’s Sade’s Young Lion – it’s full of love and very, very beautiful…
It’s a good time for these TRAИƧA recordings to be released. It’s also about time that I wrote about these themes on Ziggy’s Lament. In these days of ‘the awful orange one’ and his proclamations, plus legal edicts in the UK, it seems essential that the long history and deep creativity of queer and trans communities are celebrated and supported.
This post and a second one in a few weeks are intended to celebrate the music produced by queer, non-binary and trans artists. In this first piece, LGBTQ plus plus plus, there’s a bit of background and some of my own reflections on the contributions that LGBTQ+ artists and communities have made to music and popular culture. It’s a personal view, of course, and therefore partial and incomplete, but there’s always more to hear, discover and learn about music in general – and LGBTQ+ life, culture and music in particular.
In the second feature, I’ll offer a more detailed rundown of the epic TRAИƧA album project itself. I’ll also be following up with music-related reflections and features on LGBTQ+ issues and artists into the future – and inviting contributions from queer artists and music lovers themselves.
Red Hot and Blue
Some background to TRAИƧA. In 1989, Leigh Blake and John Carlin set up the Red Hot Organization) in New York as a response to the AIDS crisis. AIDS was ravaging the gay community, and had a particularly devastating effect on creative and intellectual culture in New York. In 1990, Red Hot released a record of Cole Porter songs, Red Hot and Blue, with contributions from artists like Neneh Cherry, David Byrne, Sinead O’Connor and many more. Like a lot of compilations it was a little patchy but did feature some great artists and tracks. Sinead O’Connor’s take on You Do Something To Me is wonderful, and the video is roaringly, delightfully camp…
More importantly, in terms of its mission, the album was a success, selling loads of records worldwide, raising millions for AIDS work. Over the next few decades, Red Hot went on to release a whole swathe of compilations and albums, with a particular focus on supporting AIDS research and LGBTQ+ community health projects. Looking at their back catalogue and the artists supporting them over thirty-odd years of work, its a reminder that equality of any kind requires solidarity – people who are not oppressed or marginalised standing alongside those who are – and music more often than not plays an important role in speaking out in this way. Red Hot have stepped up strong with their latest project, TRAИƧA. It’s certainly an ambitious one. They write:
It takes time for new worlds to be born – time and space and slow, sustained belief. It takes courage to grieve the worlds that died before this moment, and those that might have arrived but never did. TRAИƧA, the new compilation from storied activist music production organization Red Hot, spotlights the gifts of many of the most daring, imaginative trans and non-binary artists working today. It also softens the edges of the world we know, and invokes powerful dreams of the futures that might one day thunder from its cracks.
Activism isn’t always all about strong hard edges, they tell us, but about creating dreams, supporting courage and producing something beautiful and memorable in the process. Music is an art form that does this just by being there – in its very creation – and, in my view, artists from the queer and trans community have produced some of most seminal music over the past few decades. Furthermore, the struggles of queer artists to come out and be seen in hostile political and media environments has been one of the most hopeful aspects of recent cultural history. We are talking here about deep histories and connections that often start in the underground (as they always do with music) and the ways in which those with power always try to rewrite history, particularly in relation to the marginalised and oppressed.
This is happening again in Trump’s USA, here in the UK, and across the world. For the past decade a culture war has been raging around gay and trans people and their rights, culminating in the edict that the US state will only recognises two ‘biological’ genders. This won’t change the realities: that gender is fluid and complex and always has been, and that trans and gender non-conforming people have always been around in human cultures. Once again it is likely to be more dangerous and difficult to be transgender and, in some places, to identify as LGBTQ+ in any guise. With right-wing extremists in government in many countries, gay, trans and queer rights are going to be under greater threat in coming years. It’s up to all of us who value equality and cherish great music and musicians to stand with them.
Shifty discos
I’ve always been intrigued and drawn to the way music – particularly popular music – emerges from the creative, cultural underground. Jazz, Punk, Disco, House and all the others came from the streets; from marginal and illicit cultures; from dancing (and sex) in warehouses, speakeasies, backrooms and house parties. The norms of ‘straight’ society are always there to be overturned – to take a ‘pop’ at, so to speak. But it’s not just about rebellion, but also finding ‘home’. If you’re ‘different’ in towns, villages and cultures where difference is frowned upon or forbidden, then the place to go to is often the ‘City’, to find the places where people ‘like us’ live and hang out.
So, it’s not surprising that generations of queer and young people of ‘difference’ headed to places where they could be themselves. It’s also not surprising that these sub-cultures and families have been and are still consistently attacked by the powers-that-be in many countries across the world. In the USA, the history of how Disco and then House music emerged from gay, black clubs is a story that has been well told (but still worth reminding ourselves of). Likewise, the histories of how Black and Latino LGBTQ+ people in the USA had a tradition of living in Houses – places where they could be with their ‘chosen family’. These traditions – going back beyond the 60s (culminating in the Stonewall rebellion), but also way back to the drag parties of the late 1800s – had transgender and gender non-conforming people at their heart. It’s how people like Marsha P. Johnson and Stormé DeLarverie are now regarded as heroes of queer American history, and why trans artists such as Anohni highlight their achievements and activism in their music. Witness her beautiful tribute to Marsha P Johnson taken from her debut album…
However, it’s not just about transgender and queer identifying people. Dust Reid, one of the producers of the TRAИƧA album, said this about the background to the broader background to the project, which brings a broader vision to the project, and gives it a new urgency:
“Whether you identify as trans or non-binary or otherwise, if you took the time to explore your gender, get in touch with the feeling side of yourself, maybe we would have a future oriented around values of community, collaboration, care, and healing.”
When I was young, I saw both sides of this cultural dilemma. I was a sensitive boy and, back then in 1970s North East England, being a sensitive boy was to be a ‘puff’, and to be a ‘puff’ was to be relentlessly bullied. Kids who were gay, or thought to be gay, kept their heads down. So Dust Reid is spot on. A society built with diversity and acceptance at its heart, would benefit everyone, wherever they are on a spectrums of gender and/or sexuality. These values – cruelly dismissed and discarded by the current crop of right wing ideologues – show care for all.
When I was in my teens, of course, there was also a ‘gender-bending’ element to rock and pop music, as ‘Glam’ came on the scene. In retrospect, Glam was strange. It was often men in rock groups trying not to look effeminate whilst pretty much cross-dressing. Some of this was performative fashion, of course, and died out when punk came along to subvert things even further, but we all knew who the real ’Queen’ was: Ziggy himself – Bowie. And David’s changing style and influence lasted for decades.
The sexuality of artists like Freddie Mercury, George Michael, Elton John, Morrissey, Madonna and others was, to some extent, semi-obscured behind the glam and camp of 70s and 80s pop music, though they undoubtedly opened the door for future queer artists. However, many people would argue that Bowie was the real deal. He wore dresses because he wanted to. He was open about his sexuality and was definitely and provocatively gender non-conforming. More importantly he inspired thousands of young fans to find the confidence to be themselves. As the title of Darren Bullock’s book on LGBTQ+ musical history puts it, David Bowie Made Me Gay, and this was true for generations of young queer and questioning people, setting the stage for a new breed of ‘out and proud’ musicians, and changing the face of music and culture forever. I’m not going through all that history here – there’s loads to search for online and elsewhere – but I would recommend Bullock’s book, as well as Sasha Gaffer’s Glitter Up The Dark, and the more recent The Secret Public by Jon Savage.
For my part, and I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone this, but when I saw David’s mini-kimono - the one he wore in the Moonage Daydream video above – I really wanted one. A black version, with white embroidery. Probably worn over a pair of high waist baggy jeans to be on the safe side…
Into my student years, I loved Tom Robinson’s call to arms to Sing If You’re Glad To Be Gay in 1978 and, though Bowie didn’t make me gay, artists like him helped me see that being different and in touch with my ‘feeling side’ was OK. So, from Tom Robinson to Boy George to Jimmy Somerville to Mark Almond to K D Laing to Kae Tempest to Lady Gaga to Rahim Redcar (aka Christine and the Queens) to Anohni to Chappell Roan and many, many more – the next waves of queer music and musicians were more overt and visible than those who had come before.
I never did get up the courage to buy that kimono though…
Later, as a young adult, happily married with three daughters, I settled into a version of myself I was OK with – including the sensitive stuff. I was cis-gender and straight identifying but always enjoyed, and often preferred, the music, values and culture that emerged from queer life. Disco of course, then House, and when Bronski Beat’s seminal The Age of Consent came out in 1994, it sparked such a sense of recognition and empathy in me for the young person who moved from home to somewhere else – because they felt different, and were treated as if they were…
Over the years, people in my family and friendship groups came out as gay – including my sister and eldest daughter. In my work as a teacher and therapist, I was able to help, support and learn from many queer young people and adults – some of whom struggled with their sexuality and gender identity, others who didn’t – and also saw a number of friends, clients and acquaintances come out as non-binary or transgender over the years. Some days the whole creative scene seems queer to me! Many of the straight musicians and creatives I love are ‘queer adjacent’, and the queer and trans music scene itself is a rich, colourful explosion of sound, joy and courage.
The bottom-line truth in all the fuss around transgender rights and the so-called ‘woke’ agenda of identity politics, is that trans people are subject to more violence, abuse and ignorance that almost any other group in society. It’s also true that the attack lines from right wing commentators against trans individuals and those who support them are remarkably one-dimensional. Loud and angry, and denying an integral part of human culture over millennia. In truth (and duh, obviously!) being in relationship with trans people is the same as being in relationship with anyone else. Messy, funny, joyful and sometimes sad, despairing and complicated. Sometimes sadder too, as there’s something of a world weary, grieving quality that emerges from a lifetime of being shunned, misunderstood and doubted.
It’s true that the creative world has many queer and trans people in and around it. There are a good number of LGBTQ+ artists and allies in the music world and, as I have said, a lot of the best and most influential music has come, and continues to come from this rich and diverse community. And just to be clear, it is a community – however disparate. Those who try to separate out trans people from other gay and lesbian groups, as if there it is possible to draw these kinds of boundaries, get short shrift from the majority of queer artists and their allies. The music project I’ll be focussing about in part 2 – TRAИƧA – makes this point eloquently and beautifully, using the music and words of many, many of the best musicians and artists working today.
Subverting the centre
Normy values are constructed. Racially. Psychologically. Sexually. They are gendered and built from patriarchal values. If your profile turns out to be in the big bulgey, normy bit on a bell curve (whether it’s in relation to your gender, sexuality, ethnicity or neurotypicality) then you’re being told that the world is built for people like you and you are allowed to fit – conditionally . If you’re on the edges and ends, then you’re either subnormal and a freak (on the one hand), or supernormal and possibly dangerous (on the other). You can choose to fit from the edges, I guess, but if you choose not to you run the risk of being ignored, controlled, excluded and discriminated against. It’s a shitty system that has been totally manufactured by the men who’ve constructed and sustained the norms and values of our capitalist times. It’s called patriarchy…
Musicians, on the whole, don’t want to be normy. They don’t much care for normy, patriarchal values and, in fact, are often in the business of exploring, deconstructing and transgressing them - not necessarily in that order. I’m not just talking about making a massive noise or and breaking all the boundaries at once – though that might be one strategy (Throbbing Gristle or Jayne County or Queercore anyone?), but other ways of subverting norms might be…
one…. ignoring them completely
and/or
two…. taking a norm and twisting it so its all glittery and almost unrecognisable.
I’m going to finish part one of this piece by highlighting two new pieces of music that I’m very excited about at the moment, both from queer artists, which illustrate these two kinds of challenge to the normy values that build the assumptions about what seems to be ‘just how things are’.
Subverting norms strategy 1: Ignoring them completely
Kae Tempest: Statue in The Square
Kae Tempest is almost certainly working up to a new album release if their recent flurry of small gigs was anything to go on. If you’ve followed Tempest’s music and writing over the years, you’ll know that they are one of the most respected writers, poets and performers in the UK right now. For me, their 2019 album The Book Of Traps And Lessons, is one of the great albums of that or any other decade, and seeing them play that album in Oxford with my sister and sister-in-law was one of my greatest gig experiences in recent years. I’m also particularly fond of Tempest’s collaboration with Speakers Corner Quartet on the track Geronimo Blues, (you can find the Glastonbury 2023 performance of this in the bonus bit below…).1
Tempest has been on a big life journey over the past few years, and has found themselves in the place they want to be in their life, coming out as non-binary in 2020. You can find a portion of that story in the moving 2023 BBC documentary Being Kae Tempest (find it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001sxfm, which leads directly into their most recent work.
Tempest’s work has always had a sharp political and social edge, combined with an emotionality that can move me to tears. You won't be surprised, then, that I consider their latest release, the single Statue In the Square, as typically excellent – a defiant tribute to the trans and non-binary community. Basically, Kae Tempest is a national treasure and a bit of a lyrical genius….
They never wanted people like me round here But when I'm dead, they'll put my statue in the square They used to tell their children not to stare But when I'm dead, they'll put my statue in the square Yeah, they're ten a penny, we're rare And when we're dead, they'll put our statues in the square They can shake their heads in despair But we been here from the start and we ain't going nowhere
And here’s Kae Tempest’s message on the release of this wonderful, uncompromising and funny future classic…
Kae writes:
I love this song. I love everything about how we made it, I love how it feels to deliver these lyrics and how it was to shoot the video. I am so grateful for the amount of energy raised by everyone involved. There is power in showing up for yourself and showing up for your people. I hope this song powers you up. I hope it moves you. Take courage my friends we got this x
Subverting norms strategy 2: Taking a norm and twisting it so it’s all glittery and almost unrecognisable.
Julien Baker & TORRES - Sugar in the Tank
One of the other tropes around at the moment as the Trump delusion spreads across the USA, is that country music is the soundtrack to the GOP and MAGA. It’s true that the Nashville C & W establishment has that reputation, but even before Beyonce blew the chaps off the white cowboy myth with Cowboy Carter (following her excellent dive into the Black and Queer origins of Disco and House on Renaissance), Alt-country and Americana has been taking the genre in different directions.
I came across the upcoming album, Send A Prayer My Way, and this song from it, in my usual circuitous way. Julien Baker is part of the band, Boygenius sometimes referred to as ‘indie supergroup’ (alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus). I haven’t got into Boygenius much, but I was intrigued when this new record flashed up on my suggestions list. This collaboration is between Baker and non-binary artist, Torres (aka Mackenzie Scott) and on the surface it’s an album of really well-played, traditional country and Americana songs. The themes, on the other hand, are around Baker and Scott’s experience of being queer in the USA, and growing up in conservative, christian families and communities.2
I love all the tracks from the album released so far. They have a real freshness and wit about them, but I particularly like Sugar in the Tank. You’ll see why in the video, as a traditional country square-dancing concert in an American barn slowly transforms into a celebration of queer joy – like transposing Yee Hah to Studio 54 or something… It’s glittery and wonderful and I can’t wait for the album to drop!
Conclusion
Of course, the world of LGBTQ+ music and musicians is so vast and ever-changing that it’s impossible to do it justice here. I’ll be making connections and exploring further nodes and corners and of the queer music scene(s) in future posts, however, and the follow up to this post will be a more detailed run-down of the TRAИƧA album project. Look out for it in a few weeks…
Bonuses
Bonus 1: Kae Tempest has been a collaborator with musicians and rappers since their career started, and their relationship with Speaker Corner Quartet is long-standing and affectionate. The track Geronimo Blues from the 2023 album, Further Out Than The Edge, features a typically biting, elegiac lyric from Kae Tempest, and this performance from Glastonbury of that year is both joyful and beautiful:
Bonus 2: Here are the two artists - Julien Baker and Torres – talking on the Daily Show about their new album, Send A Prayer My Way and some of the ways that their journey subverts or transforms what it means to be both queer and spiritual in a very lovely way…
Thanks this generous piece, it resonated. I just wrote about clubbing as a kind of queer communion, and your reflections on music as archive, protest, and dream-space hit the same note. There’s something sacred about the way queer culture survives through rhythm and reinvention, even when the world feels unlivable.
TRAИƧA feels like both an elegy and a promise. Looking forward to reading part two and to dancing through the cracks with the voices you’ve so thoughtfully uplifted!