Men’s Music Festival 2008

June 22, 2008

MEN’S MUSIC FESTIVAL
Curator: Blackberri
SomArts
3pm to 7pm
Tickets: $10-$15 Sliding Scale

Blackberri

Qcc presents its first ever Men’s Music Festival: a day of music you’ll never forget.  Come on by, pick up lunch or dinner at our outdoor grill, chill and take in six grade A musicians. Hosted by Blackberri, you will be exposed to different styles of music in a relaxed atmosphere.  Featuring Patrick Haggerty, Ernest Lijoi, Scott Free, Deepdickollective and more TBA.  The schedule will be posted on the website. 

Men’s Music Festival

Gay music pioneer Patrick Haggerty wrote and produced the first gay country music album Lavender Country in 1973, and his band performed up and down the west coast at some of the earliest gay pride events, including San Francisco Pride in 1974. In 1999, twenty seven years later, the Country Music Hall of Fame finally acknowledged Lavender Country as a “first”, and invited him to archive the album at the Hall of Fame, center-piecing his contribution in a well researched article on the history of gays in country music. It appeared in the Journal of Country Music in 2000.  In 2004, Country Music Television invited Haggerty to Nashville to talk about Lavender Country in a televised documentary entitled Forty Greatest Firsts in Country Music.

Still an active musician, Haggerty has made several CD’s, and spent the last several years working with noted gay country music artist Doug Stevens, touring the country and producing At the Dry Creek Grange Hall with Steven’s band “Pearl River”.  A long time resident of Seattle, he currently performs over one hundred fifty shows a year  with his music partner, Bobby Taylor, around western Washington. 

Haggerty married his domestic partner of twenty years, Julius Broughton, in Canada three years ago. They live in the Seattle area.  He also has a daughter and son-in law, Robin and Maxwell Boland, a grandson, Maxwell Boland II, and a son, Amilcar Navarro who films and edits progressive documentaries in New York.

Artists

Patrick Haggerty	Blackberri
Ernie Lijoi	Scott Free

Artists Biographies

Blackberri probably has been one of the most visible black queer artists in the country. He is a pioneer in Gay music. His 1st big appearance was in 1975 on KQED’s first gay music concert Two Song Makers, splitting the headliner duties with the late Steven Grossman. Blackberri has shared the stage with many great musicians such as Carlos Santana, Bo Diddley, Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins, Gwen Avery, and Holly Near.  He’s appeared in the Music of the Americas Festival, featuring Silvio Rodriqez and other world renowned musicians in Cuba at the 1997 World Youth Festival. Blackberri has toured both coasts and all points in between.  His overseas performances have been enjoyed in Europe, Canada, Cuba, and several Central American countries.  This international musician’s music has traveled the world on records like Blackberri and Friends Finally to award-winning 
films like Looking for Langston. His song “Eat the Rich” won the National Academy of Songwriter’s competition award.   Performing live is what he does best. This talented 
singer/songwriter sings his heart in and out.


Deep Dickollective

Deep Dickollective was formed in early 2000 by Juba Kalamka, Tim’m T. West and Phillip Atiba Goff. The three began working together after Kalamka and West met at a screening of black gay filmmaker and scholar Marlon Riggs‘ film Tongues Untied. Kalamka and West later met Goff on the campus of Stanford University, where West and Goff were enrolled in PhD programs.

Kalamka and West had been performing for years as MCs but had few opportunities to work as out queer artists until encountering each other and Goff shortly thereafter. Kalamka had begun recording an experimental spoken word project called Pre/tensions with San Francisco blues and avantgarde jazz whiz Dick “Deluxe” Egner and with groundbreaking queer hip hop group Rainbow Flava, but both were interested in the possibility of creating a project that would push buttons around race, queerness and masculinity in hip hop all at once.

Frustrated with the resistance they had faced from an allegedly progressive “conscious” spoken word scene, the three began jamming together in private on Stanford’s campus and came up with the skeletons of about 20 songs, 13 of which would become their debut recording BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo. In a moment of anger while discussing their difficulty with the local scene (West had been performing at readings and with bands since his arrival in 1998, but lost all of his bookings once the scene became aware that he was gay) Kalamka blurted “well, if them girls can call themselves the Punany Poets (a then popular Oakland poetry group), we can be Deep Dick Collective!”. The name was then shortened to “Deep Dickollective”, but the initials “D/DC” remained as the three letter abbreviation seemed to roll off the tongue well. What started as a parodic exercise to vent frustration became a blooming underground yet internationally critical success, that has to date involved 11 queer men who have recorded as members of D/DC.

Patrick Haggerty

Gay music pioneer Patrick Haggerty wrote and produced the first gay country music album Lavender Country in 1973, and his band performed up and down the west coast at some of the earliest gay pride events, including San Francisco Pride in 1974.  In 1999, twenty seven years later, the Country Music Hall of Fame finally acknowledged Lavender Country as a “first”, and invited him to archive the album at the Hall of Fame, center-piecing his contribution in a well researched article on the history of gays in country music. It appeared in the Journal of Country Music in 2000.  In 2004, Country Music Television invited Haggerty to Nashville to talk about Lavender Country in a televised documentary entitled Forty Greatest Firsts in Country Music.

Still an active musician, Haggerty has made several CD’s, and spent the last several years working with noted gay country music artist Doug Stevens, touring the country and producing At the Dry Creek Grange Hall with Steven’s band “Pearl River”.  A long time resident of Seattle, he currently performs over one hundred fifty shows a year  with his music partner, Bobby Taylor, around western Washington. 

Haggerty married his domestic partner of twenty years, Julius Broughton, in Canada three years ago. They live in the Seattle area.  He also has a daughter and son-in law, Robin and Maxwell Boland, a grandson, Maxwell Boland II, and a son, Amilcar Navarro who films and edits progressive documentaries in New York.

Ernie Lijoi is a composer/lyricist in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York, where he has been writing music and lyrics for various new works since 2001. .

He has cut three CDs of his original songs and was honored to be named Billboard Magazine’s “Unsigned Artist of the Year” for his second album, Bliss, in 2000. His third album, Better Days, also garnered generous praise with Billboard dubbing him a “bona fide star.”

After this third CD, Ernie moved to New York City, eager to combine his compositional experience with his passion for theater. A song he wrote while under the BMI’s tutelage, “All I Want for Christmas,” was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2004. His songs have been sung by choruses and cabaret artists in Boston and New York.

Ernie is presently involved in several theater projects. The show Monsters, for which he has written the music and lyrics, is scheduled to open in Boston in September of 2006. Another project he is working on is Very Confused People (Love is Hell), for which he is writing book, music and lyrics. A reading of this new piece is planned for spring 2006. He is also working on the book and lyrics to the show Under the Influence, with several composers; and he is a contributor to The Wedding Project, a musical with composer Barbara Anselmi at its helm.

When not working on Monsters and other musicals, Ernie still performs as an actor/singer in theater pieces and travels to do solo shows with his guitar. In his down time, he is working on a collection of humorous autobiographical essays, titled Enlighten Up.

Scott Free

Scott Free, the queer-rock singer/songwrtier extraordinaire, is one of America’s leading openly-gay artists. His sometimes humorous, sometimes angry, always touching songs of queer life have gained him acclaim in both gay and straight media across the globe. His early forays into rap produces his first single ‘Beat The Rap’, who’s video was on rotation on Black Entertainment Television. Scot’s first full-lenght release was a complete shift in gears – an anthemic, queercore CD called ‘Getting Off’. His second release ‘The Living Dead’ received 4 Gay/Lesbian American Music Award nominations. He received two Outmusic Awards in 2005. He was named outmusician of the Year for his CD ‘They Call Me Mr. Free’ and his community activism.

All three of his CDs have reached #1 on the Outvoice.net music chart. Scott has appeared on QTV “Queer Edge”, Canada’s MuchMusic video channel, and has been featured on National Public Radio’s ‘All Things Considered”. He hosts the annoual ‘Alt Q’ (an LGBT music festival) at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, now in its sexth year. He is the host and curator of ‘Homolatte’, the longest running queer performance series in the country, at Big Chickes/Tweet in Chicago. His 2008 release is entitled ‘The Pink Album (a Pop Opera).