A queer revolution playlist by Otamere Guobadia
Music is a coming together, says the London-based member and writer; in agony, in protest, in prayer and in ecstasy
By Otamere Guobadia Image courtesy of Otamere Guobadia Thursday 4 June, 2020 Short read
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In the immortal words of Nina Simone, ‘an artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times’. Artists of colour, queer artists and artists who sit at the intersection of both these identities, understand and embody this duty more than most.
Music and revolution have always been indivisible. When I envision the abstracted ideal of liberation, it is foregrounded by music that swells with the tide of our collective ambitions. Music that sweeps us beyond our difficult and present times, and into the bravest of new worlds.
Pride is the vital, gorgeous and frantic celebration at the centre of our queer revolution. It is about resistance, perseverance and survival, but it is also about connection, love and queer joy. Pride encompasses the journey, its pilgrims and our destination. It is the kindness and kissing, the soapbox, the fight and the fury. There is no room for shame here, just the glorious consonance of loving freely; the rightness, the desirousness, and the music of it.
I wanted this playlist to embody the yearning and the mania, the melancholy and the riot. Music that speaks to our impulse, our fun and the urgency of the lives that we live now. Pride is necessarily a collision: the clashing of our dreams against those who would tell us our love is wrong; our bodies pressed together in agony, in protest, in prayer and in ecstasy. Our voices, with the voices of our forebears, raised to an unignorable fever pitch. It’s all music. These songs are for dreaming, and for the world we build after the dreaming is done. The revolution will be soundtracked. Take a moment to dance to it.
@otamere
In the immortal words of Nina Simone, ‘an artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times’. Artists of colour, queer artists and artists who sit at the intersection of both these identities, understand and embody this duty more than most.
Music and revolution have always been indivisible. When I envision the abstracted ideal of liberation, it is foregrounded by music that swells with the tide of our collective ambitions. Music that sweeps us beyond our difficult and present times, and into the bravest of new worlds.
Pride is the vital, gorgeous and frantic celebration at the centre of our queer revolution. It is about resistance, perseverance and survival, but it is also about connection, love and queer joy. Pride encompasses the journey, its pilgrims and our destination. It is the kindness and kissing, the soapbox, the fight and the fury. There is no room for shame here, just the glorious consonance of loving freely; the rightness, the desirousness, and the music of it.
I wanted this playlist to embody the yearning and the mania, the melancholy and the riot. Music that speaks to our impulse, our fun and the urgency of the lives that we live now. Pride is necessarily a collision: the clashing of our dreams against those who would tell us our love is wrong; our bodies pressed together in agony, in protest, in prayer and in ecstasy. Our voices, with the voices of our forebears, raised to an unignorable fever pitch. It’s all music. These songs are for dreaming, and for the world we build after the dreaming is done. The revolution will be soundtracked. Take a moment to dance to it.
@otamere
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