july 2023: ode to (black, femme) joy
The joy is in Adeva. It’s palpable as she serves up familiar soul lyrics over a gospel house beat and Grace Jones aesthetics. The joy remains despite her having to issue a verbal “Warning!” or rail against a beau’s empty promises, promises, promises. The joy is also instrumental. It inhabits every frenetic atom of fidgety tech in Shinedoe’s classic “Phunk.”
The joy is experimental. It’s on the sharp edges of Loraine James claiming to like the simple stuff, within a decidedly complex and angular sound world. It it cross-continental, it's the east coast of the U.S. and the eastern region of Africa, it’s where Suzi Analogue and Turkana meet, with the bubblegum rapping of Queens D. Light as the cherry on top.
It’s there behind the masks and hazmat suits of Altern-8 rave bangers; from sampling Aretha Franklin’s “Jump To It,” to equal-billing with disco deity Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King on a redux of her hit “Shame,” to showcasing P.P. Arnold in the production and music video of the ecstatic “E-Vapor-8.”
The house divas have it. It's in CeCe Penistion reminding us that he, indeed, loves her too. It’s in Crystal Waters’ commanding and direct contralto.
It’s in the saxophone; from Norma Jean Bell’s inky velveteen tones to Jana Rush’s audacious, curvaceous use of the horn, warping it, pitch-shifting it around skittering footwork programming on “Moanin’”.
It’s in Uniiqu3’s loving dedication to Jersey club orthodoxy, and in Lulu Be.’s genre-blend diversity, shot through with her onomatopoeic purring, ballroom calls, dancehall and Chicago rhythms.
It was in K-Hand’s ebullient embrace of classic house for her series of Project records on her label Acacia Records. Rest, in perfect joyful peace.
It’s in Anz’s sharp sensibility for other decades, in her glittering, gleaming ‘80s pop production with George Riley. It’s in the contrast of an innocent girlish verse against a womanly chorus, cemented by Yavahn in ‘95 on “Everybody Be Somebody.” It’s in Nia Archives brushing the dust and cobwebs off jungle conventions, and Rochelle Jordan’s reinvention of the sultry dance music chanteuse for a modern era.
Too many attempts have been made to separate the joy from its identity, too many times. But it’s resolutely there - in the uncredited voices and elegant lip-syncing of model beauties in hit Eurodance music videos. It is the scaffolding around our femme, queer Ugandan siblings of the Anti-Mass Collective, who now face the cruellest of threats.
It is an unbroken continuum. From Fonda Rae’s iconic pipes on “Touch Me” and “Living In Ecstasy,” to Sherelle mashing up horns and piano chords and whistles on “Jungle Teknah,” a Frankensten’s monster of rave maximalism, to the face-melting industrial techno chaos of Femanyst’s “Bat Shit.” It is Beyoncé inviting Madonna in, to recalculate and reprogram what she stole with “Vogue.” It’s the lifeblood of NIKS & T-N’s Synergy.
Black femme joy perseveres in spite of, not because of. It is in the gallows humour of Crystallmess, clashing minor and major keys, informing us that “Just Because It’s A Funeral Doesn’t Mean We Can’t Rave.”
DOWNLOAD FLYER German translation by Thilo Schneider / Artwork by Alp Klanten