E.N.T.I.T.I.E.S.: A Series Looking at Some of the Most Important Contributors to Nonconformity, Underground Culture, and Doing Things Differently
E.N.T.I.T.I.E.S.
Every Nonmale, Totally Innovative and Tireless Individual Enriching Society
August 27, 2020
By E.M. Malinowski
This series bears an inherent focus on innovators of the electronic and dance music canon who happen to be queer, noncis and/or nonmale. It is not meant to be a list of artists you’ve never heard of, nor a basic list of queer or female artists. It is a list of artists whose songs, synths, riffs, beats and voices are deeply familiar but whose names escape you – and henceforth escape you no more. These artists emerged in and defined underground, experimental, subversive spaces and never fully left those spaces, despite any blips of commercial success or well-deserved name recognition. This series does not seek to say something that hasn’t been said before but rather wishes to zero in on the brazen uniqueness of artists you may or may not know.
Episode 1
SYLVESTER
Although he is far from unknown, Sylvester’s creative, mind-bendingly nonconformist style of being is something set apart from – but largely informative of – his musical legacy. To discuss Sylvester purely in terms of his musical talent is to place him in a single-tiered box (blasphemy!); to credit him as a rule breaker is to misunderstand how dignified and classy he was; to think of him as a queen is to miss the boat on his divine Blackness and gender fluidity; to call him an important figure is to pass over countless examples of inspired and unapologetic living; to focus on his battle with AIDS is to place him in a museum instead of honoring a dynamic individual. In short, it’s best not to think of Sylvester as any one thing. He is a multiverse, and in many, many ways he goes on living today.
It is of course extremely important to avoid undercutting Sylvester’s contribution to music. Through-and-through, he was a wildly talented singer and performer. His image is only rarely skipped over in literature on disco or dance music history: the pervasiveness of “Do You Wanna Funk?” is second to his “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, an anthem that the world at large seems to know. “Someone Like You” may sit unfamiliar today but it hit the charts in 1986, receiving remix work from Larry Levan and original cover art by Keith Haring. His iconic collaborative relationship with Patrick Cowley married dance music to outness, rattling the mainstream with the power of liberation (although Sylvester carried himself in a way that suggested he was born liberated, and I really think that is the case).
It has been said that Sylvester’s studio recordings, especially the earliest ones, are watered down compared to his cosmic showpersonship. That is to say, the real Sylvester experience was in the club, at the music hall, or outdoors at one of his famous performances during Castro Street Fair. Think of his famous organic outshining of the anarchy of Cockettes’ shows, demanding that his slots were his own. Audience members who regularly dropped acid before the show reported walking away with confused memories of what happened during the show, besides Sylvester. His sobering talent and presentation shook people up out of their suspended state and made a lasting impression. In ‘79, Sylvester was invited to lead a grieving San Francisco into a new era, post Jamestown, post Milk assassination, and after HIV started to hit the community. Sylvester and Two Tons O’ Fun (Martha Wash and Izora Armstead, two more utterly empowering figures orbiting in the Sylvester solar system), performed disco hits to the style and pace of easy listening and hymnic overtures, impressing the cultural significance and artistic integrity of Sylvester and the disco movement upon the White empire of classical music. To undo the stickiness of his own popular success and recapture it in a completely different, almost impossible seeming environment is certainly on par with Sylvester’s rulebreaking/rulemaking principle and record-setting versatility. It clearly worked: he was given the keys to the city that night at the opera house.
Only boundless spaces and impossible places suited the Sylvester journey: no constraints, no temporal limits, no closets. As Chrissy labored to detail in the 2018 article for Red Bull, Sylvester was a cover song artist and extraordinaire, someone who in a sense DJed with their voice and presence by appyling popular music to queer narratives. This is of course in the style of the previous generation of entertainers, where it was customary to perform both original and popular songs before a spellbound audience. Sylvester’s regular covers of Josephine Baker (Sylvester’s favorite), Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, et al. (at The Stud!) is certainly rooted in cultural celebration and forwardness; it can be also seen as one of many ways in which Sylvester did not conform to social norms or cling to a particular type of status. He actively avoided doing performance the way others prescribed to, embracing any anachronistic opportunities to tout his class and celebrate heritage.
Left to right: Martha Wash, Sylvester, Izora Rhodes Armstead
These accomplishments are but a glimpse into how powerful Sylvester and his nonconformity was and continues to be, how during his life he cut through and defied standards every time he entered – or exited – a room. His astonishing impact on Castro history, San Francisco history, performance history, drag-as-more-than-just-a-stage-thing, gender expansiveness, and how to live life as someone who doesn’t give a damn – this all outweighs but further invigorates his recognizable falsetto and on-stage magnetism. These are undoubtedly parts of the universal whole. Sylvester broke every rule he possibly could as he made his own rules. He was too disciplined for The Cockettes, but he was also too wild for organized community, a firecracker who’d enter a competitive, ladylike space wearing a dildo-fringe jacket while bouncing around on a pogo stick but would keep a clean house and drink champagne around feral party people.
“When I conform too much, it makes me nervous”. That’s one of the purest aspects of the underground mentality, isn’t it? Avoid selling out. Be brazenly defiant. Practice inclusivity and love. Hold yourself accountable. Experiment wildly to find new modes of expression only to never return to the same ones twice. Sylvester’s story, if it can be shoved into any one thing, is about revolutionary nonconformity, about how playfulness and performative individuality can push the envelope in lasting ways. He is beautiful, profound, and undoubtedly one of the highest ranking patron saints of the underground way of life.
Learn more about Sylvester’s life by reading Joshua Gamson’s biography, watching the very recent short documentary featuring Billy Porter and Bernadette Baldwin (Sylvester’s sister), and listening to his high energy records!
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E.M. MALINOWSKI is a scholar of cultural history and philology who produces and DJs under the name Experimental Housewife. She is a gender nonconforming lesbian and adores deep and progressive house from the 90s.
