PERPETUAL CHANGE — Georgie Jessup, A Recent Incident

Being a working musician brings with it a certain degree of behind-the-scenes stress few fans or audience members are ever aware of. When you’re a trans musician, there’s a lot more to deal with than just your write-rehearse-record-tour schedule. Regardless of what genré your music falls into, it’s almost a given that at some time in your career, you will experience some discrimination. And it’s not the kind that could be called music criticism.

Georgie Jessup is a well known transgender musician who is also an activist for gender politics and Native American concerns. She has several albums, and has been featured in this column before (August 2005 and August 2008), and she recently experienced a form of discrimination in the form of a gig cancellation from an unlikely source.

Gerogie was scheduled ot play at a small club/restaurant know as The Seafood Shack in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on February 20th. The club has a mostly lesbian clientele, and was recommended to Georgie by a friend of hers, blues singer Ursala Ricks from Baltimore.

Georgie has recently taken on a musical partner who plays multiple instruments, including pedal steel and piano. “It makes for a pretty full sound for just two poeple,” she said. “I’ve spent the last year re-working a lot of my songs, so I was really looking forward to the gig.”

However, if you’ll remember, Mother Nature had other plans for the east coast that month, and that’s when all the events leading up to this huge hassle for Georgie started. She picks up the narrative from the day of the storm.

“Because of all the snow, I figured it was best to cancel the date,” she said. “The owner gave me several other choices to reschedule, and I picked March 27th. She said if I was able to get out of my drive way, she had not re-booked the date and I should come down.”

With help from a neighbor, Georgie did get out and headed for the gig. She had a small group of fans who managed to show, plus her duo partner made it as well.

Georgie had a small crowd of 6 or so patrons in the main music room of the club. However, in a room adjacent to this, there were perhaps a dozen or so people who didn’t pay any attention and were just plain rude to her. One song of hers is called “Rehoboth” (which means “room for one more sinner”) and which discusses what went on between the Native Americans in the area and the original European settlers.

“You’d think that if somebody came and was singing a song about your town, it would keep your interest, you would listen,” she said. “The bottom line is, after the gig, the owner sent me an email saying she got nothing but negative feedback. She thought I was good, but all her regualr clientele gave nothing but nagative feedback.”

The owner told Georgie that she would move her next booking to a week night instead of a weekend, because she probably wasn’t a “good fit” for that time slot. Because of her day job, that just wasn’t an option, though.

Georgie wrote back and said that the reception had been rather “cold” and that she felt it was more about the “T” in GLBT than it was about her performance. The owner countered with a phone message saying she couldn’t believe Georgie thought it had anything to do with people being prejudice against trans people.

Given Georgie’s longevity as an activist and work in many different parts of the country, the question that comes to mind is; is there actually an acceptance problem within the greater community…an acceptance problem between the G, L, B, and T?

‘You know…without a doubt,” she said. “In my experience, it’s lead me to come to that conclusion. I’ve played GLBT events before…and the only people who really grab the attention at an event are drag shows or lesbian singer/songwriters. I know how this works.”

As an activist for Native American causes, Georgie is extremely well known and has performed at several major gatherings and pow wows across the country. She doesn’t change her song list for these shows, and what she plays touches on gender issues as well as Native American issues.

“The amazing thing to me is that the audiences are primarily middle class white Americans,” she said. “Here is this group of people who are already a minority and their way of life is kind of laughed at and devalued to a certain degree. They’re putting a transgender person on stage to entertain, like when the dancers take a break. They’re putting me out there in front of this audience with an album called American Holocuast. If I had half the support from the G, L, and B community…I’d really be doing well out there in the world. They’re putting a white transsexual in front of their people. That really takes balls on the part of the promoters.”

One thing that most male to female trans people find to be a commonality is once the choice is made to start confronting who you are, you often face a flood of emotions similar to what teenage girls experience. This often leads to middle age people inadvertently perpetuating female stereotypes. Georgie believes this might be one of the reasons that lesbians often resent MtF trans people: they had to fight against these same stereotypes in order to be who they are.

“What’s frustrating for me is that I’m trying to break through that BS,” she said. “Not only talking to the lesbians, but I’m trying to talk to my fellow sisters to stop all this and just be yourself.”

So, in the long run, where does music actually fit into this thing we call GLBT?

“What I’ve found, and what’s particularly hurtful for me is when I’m being shoved aside and ignored from a community that’s supposed to include me. Understand…I’m trying to bridge the gap with everybody. I’m saying that there’s a reason gay and lesbian people have a problem with transgender people…it’s because it’s so confusing who we are.

“That’s why when all these gay rights things come around, they exclude transgender because they think it means ‘Oh, we have to put up with 900 pound men wearing tutus to work everyday.’ I’m not sure that just because you wear a dress, it makes you a woman. Same thing…it doesn’t make you a transgender person just because you throw a dress on.”

Georgie regards her music, her spiritual beliefs, and her life as a trans person to all flow together as in a circle. “Thrugh my music — and I work hard to make my songs not just to the trans community — I’m trying to make a connection to everybody,” she said.

In regard to The Seafood Shack gig, Georgie feels she was shown a lack of respect, but so what? “You are a performer, or singer/songwriter, because it’s what you have to do. It’s in you as much as the transgender issues are in you. That’s why you keep going and keep trying to find your audience. You do it because you love it, because you love the music or the songs you write.”

In spite of this one gig hassle, there’s some really good things that have happened to Georgie as well. She was named Transgendered Favorite Musician for 2009 at the Stone Wall Society’s Pride In The Arts Awards on March 21st. She will also be performing at the IFGE Convention in Alexandria, Virginia on Friday, April 23rd.

For more information on Georgie Jessup please visit her website, her MySpace page (where you can listen to complete songs) or CDBaby.com where you can purchase her CDs.

www.cdbaby.com/cd/jessup2)

ALSO THIS MONTH

Marina

I’ve received advance copies of more dance CDs, so to close out this month’s installment, here are some brief reviews.

UK artist Marina Diamandis, a.k.a. Marina and The Diamonds, will release The Family Jewels, with a pre-release promotional EP that included 3 tracks — 2 remixes of I Am Not A Robot and Obsession. This is an extremely well  done debut project, and Marina will obviously be making more music in the future.

Macy Gray returns with her first album in three years, entitled The Sellout. The promo disc I have has six remixes of Beauty In The World, as well as the album cut. The album version is of course the best cut, and has an almost anthem-like quality, delivered by a singer with an amazingly powerful voice. The album will be out in late June, with tour dates to follow later.

Agnes

Swedish artist Agnes, who has been mentioned here before, has released a remix disc of her single Release Me. Along with the main album cut, there are seven remixes, two of which are instrumentals. It’s the instrumentals that are probably the most interesting, but that’s a personal call on my part. Agnes’ voice is remarkable, and she’ll continue to make some great music, especially since she’s so young. (I just happen to find instrumental dance mixes to be a nice change.)

Little Boots

An album that I found intriguing on the very first listen is Victoria Hesketh-a.k.a. Little Boots‘ — Hands. Granted, it at first sounded like another synth-pop laden dance project, but after more than one listen, it’s turned out to be an extremely musical dance album. Now, by saying it’s “musical”, that’s not to say that the ubiquitous 4/4 beat isn’t there, it is. But it’s not mindlessly running through every tune. Besides the singles Stuck On Repeat, New In Town, and Remedy, there are some surprises. Ghost could almost have existed in another life as a cabaret, or European dance hall, or even American Vaudeville sort of tune. It has that type of old world feel. Symmetry has some very interesting keyboard work happening on top of the beat, and just under the vocal. As a writer, singer, and musician, Little Boots is quite a find. Her MySpace page has music and photos.

Category: Music, Transgender Fun & Entertainment, Transgender Opinion