Originally posted as part of the Emerging Arts Professionals - Bay Area, Spring 2011 Blog Salon.
“Katrina played a big part in spreading bounce… We were displaced all over the world. People were trying to find bounce music like it was a drug.” ~ Big Freedia (on Late Night with Carson Daly)
I was introduced to Big Freedia – a transgender star of New Orleans’ bounce music who has a hit song entitled “Azz Everywhere” – last year via Namane Mohlabane and the New Parish. In that one concert, it felt like all my worlds – Southeast college parties, Brooklyn dancehall sound systems, and gender-fluid Oakland – had collided and settled comfortably around me. I can only imagine what it would have felt like if I had been one of the hundreds who had come to the Bay Area from New Orleans. The rapid tempo, the booty-shakin’ bass, the gritty, insistent call and response could very well have sounded like “home.”
At one point in the show, the beat dropped out and Big Freedia’s acapella verses hit hard. We all stopped gyrating and caught our breath to witness this person who was giving her all, working a limelight that was a long time coming and might not last. I looked around and wondered, how many in the room could feel the history in Big Freedia’s voice and follow that thread to the story of New Orleans?
If we’ve learned anything from DJ Kool Herc having to reach out to hip hop fans to cover medical expenses, we cannot depend on market forces to assign value to the subcultures that make up this nation’s legacy. It is too easy to equate cultural stewardship with a certain class. At the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that the cultural forms that have the investment of time and money from their audiences are the ones that thrive and become representatives of what we value as a whole.
One day I found myself inputting plans in my Google Calendar for an evening out. San Francisco Ballet at the War Memorial Opera House at 8pm… Big Freedia at Public Works at 11. In that moment, it saddened me to think that while the San Francisco Ballet has multiple tiers of support, is touted as one of the city’s gems, and will probably live on for another 73 years, the event at Public Works is only one of Big Freedia’s many solo shows in a packed schedule. She performs up to six nights a week, working the music circuit from nightclubs in New Orleans to SXSW, attempting to bank on a “trend” that’s just reaching cult status after 20 years.
Who will be cultural stewards for Big Freedia and bounce music? Can we get the hipsters that dive into the safe space of “shaking for Big Freedia” to also support the post-Katrina communities that remain dispersed throughout the U.S.? Can we get urban Black communities to embrace “Big Freedia, the Queen Diva” AND move towards accepting the LGBTQ community as a whole? In the attention deficit world of “click, click, done” viaKickstarter campaigns how do you get someone who buys one ticket to one concert to understand the effects they could have on a subculture?
Sometimes you have to start where you are, build relationships, and hope the significance sinks in.
In the dance world, intimate artist-audience conversations are too often a “benefit” reserved for high-level donors. When I created the DANCEfirst! salons at the Museum of the African Diaspora, attendees jumped right in, taking in performance, asking the hard questions after, and coming back the next month. In the push for empowered citizens of culture, I am inspired by local institutions who are making the move to deepen relationships. YBCA’s Big Idea Nights earned it a reputation as “that museum that throws really good parties.” Oakland Museum’sOakland Standard gets me out almost every First Friday for the eclectic, socially-responsive activities that celebrate local community.
If we look at engagement alone, cultural stewardship is evolving. We are a DIY, participatory culture – we curate our own shows and raise our own funds. Now we just need to be consistent. See ourselves as “supporters” and not just “consumers”. The difference is what will ensure that the art we value, that speaks to our multiple voices, continues to receive the support it needs to be heard.
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