Knight Foundation Arts Challenge 2015
Queer voices, especially queer voices of color, have been systematically ignored in the telling of Detroit’s musical narratives. With rare exceptions, queer musicians, singers, promoters, journalists, and audiences have been ignored and silenced in the telling and re-telling of Detroit music history. Through outreach our project will directly address this absence. “Queering Detroit Sound” will create an online exhibit dedicated to the relationship between race, sexuality, and sound built from new and already-existing oral history interviews. The culmination of the project will be a panel discussion, free and open to the public, at the 3rd annual Detroit Sound Conservancy Conference in 2016 in Detroit, Michigan. We believe that this project will benefit still living musicians and musickers to take their place in the larger discussion of Detroit music history preservation and archival practices.
Spring 2015