Roberta's War

Today, when we remember all those people who served their county in times of war to ensure future peace, I’m writing the first of three articles on transgender war veterans from three different conflicts. Almost a year ago I wrote about a transgender pioneer called Roberta Cowell. To mark today’s Remembrance Sunday I’ll going into more detail about her war service.

Robert Cowell was born in 1918, seven months before the Armistice we commemorate next week. She was baptised Robert and spent the first part of her life up to the 1950s as a man. In 1935 she entered the RAF.

During several summer holidays during and after her schooldays Roberta travelled around Germany. This was shortly after the rise of the Nazi regime, and in 1934 Roberta was arrested for filming Nazi soldiers. She was released a few hours later after persuading the police that she had destroyed the film (she hadn’t). So when war broke out in 1939 Roberta had already experienced Nazi imprisonment.

As I mentioned in my previous article on Roberta her war service got off to a shaky start. Eager to become a fighter pilot Roberta soon discovered that she got airsick. Undeterred she pursued her flying career and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps. Her expertise with engines and mechanics led to his first posting being as officer commanding the Heavy Repair Shops – in Iceland.

After a few months she managed to be transferred to the RAF. She was assigned to an aerial reconnaissance squadron. There were several occasions where Roberta could easily have been killed before encountering any Nazi planes.

Just a couple of days before the D-Day landings in June 1944 Roberta was making a high level sortie over the French-Belgian coast. Before she could attempt an attack she noticed her oxygen supply was getting dangerously low. Descending from 31,000 feet to a safer height she experienced anoxia – the bends – and lost consciousness.

Quite remarkably Roberta’s plane flew for about an hour unpiloted, being shot at by anti-aircraft posts near Zeebrugge. The RAF radar station at Kingsley tracked the plane’s movement over the English Channel, puzzled that no radio contact could be established. Eventually Roberta recovered enough to recognise the radio calls and responded. She was totally disorientated and unaware of what had happened in the past hour and was guided back safely to the ground. It was a lucky escape.

After Paris was liberated following the successful D-Day landings Roberta and several fellow pilots went to the city to join the celebrations. They were feted as heroes, a stark contrast to the reception Roberta got a few months later from the Germans. The end of the war seemed to be in sight but for Roberta the hardest part was yet to come. But before that there was an encounter with a Messerschmitt that shook her up badly.

On 6^th November (70 years ago this week) Roberta was in her Spitfire at 36,000 feet over Hengold. She was surprised by an unexpected attack from above. Usually the Nazis would attack Spitfires from below, but this time Roberta encountered a twin-enginned jet Messerschmitt diving towards her, guns blazing. Roberta swerved and tried to climb away.

The Messerschmitt was faster and more agile than Roberta’s Spitfire and there seemed to be no escape as the German plane swooped again and again firing all its guns as Roberta desperately tried to find cover. Fortunately she found a bank of cloud through which she dived. When she emerged from the other side there was no sign of the Messerschmitt. It had broken off the attack. It was another lucky escape.

On 18^th November Roberta was back in the air making a low-level sortie with another plane piloted by Flight Lt. Draper. They attacked several targets, coming under heavy fire from the Nazis. Roberta’s engine took a direct hit and cut out. Another shell punched its way through her port wing.

Unable to pilot her plane and too low to use a parachute Roberta believed that her time was up, that she was going down in a “blaze of glory” like so many other young fighter pilots before her (she was 26 years old). As the plane dived Roberta “felt an absolutely certain conviction that this would be the very last thing I should ever know” (from “An Autobiography: Roberta Cowell’s Story”, published by Heinemann 1954).

The plane was almost out of control – almost. Roberta pulled the plane out f its dive just before hitting the ground to make a crash-landing into a German field. Nazi soldiers arrived within moments, but not before Roberta managed to radio to Flight Lt. Draper that she was alive. She now found herself a prisoner of war.

She realised that the best chance she had to escape was to do it sooner rather than later. Before she arrived at the interrogation centre in Frankfurt Roberta had made two attempts to escape. After being held for three weeks in solitary confinement (as punishment for her escape attempts, she assumed) Roberta found herself on a train with 150 other POWs heading for Stalag Luft I.

The period of her incarceration is gone into in some detail in her autobiography. Roberta describes in particular the lack of adequate food, and mentions that at one point the prisoners resorted to eating cats – raw! She did, however, find her expertise with engines a useful means of keeping sane by being a mechanics tutor to other prisoners.

In April 1945 the Red Army advanced towards Stalag Luft I. The Nazis intended to evacuate the camp, transferring the prisoners to another one. The POWs refused to leave. Several days later the Germans agreed to abandon the camp and the POWs welcomed the liberating Red Army on May 5^th. The first thing the ex-POWs wanted was food, but their stomachs had shrunk so much during their lack of nourishment under the Nazi command that most of them could only manage soup. Roberta recounted in her autobiography that some men even forced themselves to eat more, which ruptured their stomachs and, sadly, caused their deaths.

After demobilisation Roberta started several businesses, which are mentioned in my previous article about her.

On Armistice Day, the day after tomorrow, I’ll write about the life of a transgender veteran from a completely different conflict.

Star-Gayzing : Out Of This World - Part 8

Today I conclude my mini-series on asteroids named after lgbt people. We come right up to date with the naming of asteroids discovered since 2001. As before I’ve quoted from the original citations and added extra information were necessary.

(57901) Hitchens                   Discovered 9 Feb. 2002. Name published 11 Nov. 2010. “Christopher E. Hitchens (b.1949), an intellectual of broad interests who lists “disputation” among his hobbies, lectures copiously and writes for a number of periodicals as a pundit and critic. Hitchens is the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Mother Theresa and George Orwell.” Hitchens died in 2011, and wrote in his autobiography of his affair with several future members of the British Cabinet.

(142091) Omerblaes              Discovered 29 Aug. 2002. Name published 22 July 2013. “Omer Michael Blaes (b.1961) is an astrophysicist at the University of California Santa Barbara, working on the theory of accretion onto compact objects. He is best known for his contributions to the hydrodynamics of accretion disks, including analysis of shear instabilities and the magneto-rotational instability.” Dr. Blaes in the compiler of the Out Astronomers list I mentioned in January.

(155083) Banneker    Discovered 30 Sept. 2005. Name published 4 Oct. 2009. “Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806) was a freeborn African-American farmer, clockmaker, writer and scientist. Self-taught in mathematics and astronomy, he wrote six published almanacs that sold throughout the mid-Atlantic region. He assisted in the 1791 survey of the Federal Territory (the District of Columbia).”

(246247) Sheldoncooper      Discovered on 20 Sept. 2007. Name published 3 July 2012. “Sheldon Cooper, portrayed by [openly gay actor] Jim Parsons, is a geeky fictional character on the TV series ‘The Big Bang Theory’.”

(212991) Garcíalorca            Discovered 23 Feb. 2009. Name published 25 May 2010. “Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director, best known for his “Rural Trilogy”, consisting of the plays “Bodas de sangre”, “Yerma” and “La Casa de Bernarda Alba”. He was murdered by Nationalist militia on 1936 Aug. 19, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.”

ASTEROID ALLIES
Asteroids that are not named after lgbt people but have lgbt links.

(38980) Gaoyaojie     Discovered 23 Oct. 2000. Name published 2 Apr. 2007. “Gao yao-jie (b.1927), a retired medical doctor, was a pioneer on AIDS prevention in China. In 2001 she won the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. Recently she received the Vital Voices Global Partnership award.”

(64291) Anglee          Discovered 23 Oct. 2001. Name published 7 June 2009. “Ang Lee (b.1954) is a Chinese-American film director, whose films include ‘The Wedding Banquet’ (1993), ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (2000) and ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (2005). This last film won him the Academy Award for Best Director.”

(196000) Izzard          Discovered 15 Sept. 2002. Name published 9 Feb. 2009 “Eddie Izzard (b.1962) is a British stand-up comic and dramatic actor whose writing and performance as an ‘executive transvestite’ in Dress to Kill earned him two Emmys. He co-wrote and starred in 'The Riches' and has prominent roles in ‘Valkyrie’ and ‘Ocean’s 12’.”

(90481) Wollstonecraft         Discovered 16 Feb. 2004. Name published 25 Jan. 2005. “Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was a revolutionary champion of gender equality. Arguing that the rights of women, as those of men, rely on intellectual, economic and legal autonomy, she challenged the mores of her time and influenced feminist thought for centuries."

(232923) Adalovelace           Discovered 15 Jan. 2005. Name published 25 Apr 2013. “Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852), daughter of George Gordon Byron, was an English mathematician and writer known mainly for her work on Babbage’s analytical engine. Her notes are important in the early history of computers, so she is considered the world’s first computer programmer.” Lord Byron has asteroid 3306 named after him.

Even though this is the last in this official mini-series there are many new names given to asteroids every year and I intend to give an annual update on those named after lgbt people and their allies in the future.

Bambi and the Ladybird

As in previous years I’m giving November a transgender theme to tie in with the international Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20^th November.

This first trans article this month also features my 2014 theme of music. There are quite a few transgender singers, and we’ll look at two transgender pioneering singers from France.

First is a singer who created something of a sensation when she returned to France following reassignment surgery in Morocco. Her stage name was Coccinelle (“Ladybird” in French), though her real name was Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy, and she was born in Paris in 1931. Even though male by gender at birth Coccinelle always thought of herself as a girl even as a child.

In her teenage years Jacquline went to a fancy dress party in a red dress with black polka dots. She was dressed as a ladybird – a coccinelle – and after that was often used that as a nickname, sometimes shortening it to Coxy.

Coccinelle made her stage debut at a famous Parisian transvestite cabaret venue in called Chez Madame Arthur in 1953. She was soon invited to perform at an even more famous cabaret venue called La Carrousel. The two clubs were owned by a formidable couple called Monsieur and Madame Marcel (Monsieur ran La Carrousel and Madame ran Chez Madame Arthur). It was at La carrousel that Coccinelle met the second of todays French transgender singers, Marie-Pierre Pruvot, known as Bambi.

Four years younger than Coccinelle and born in French Algeria, Bambi found the confusion and frustration at living in a male body more difficult than it might have been in France. It was after seeing Coccinelle in a touring show from La Carrousel that Bambi decided to leave Algeria and become a showgirl. She arrived at La Carrousel in 1954 and lived with Coccinelle for a time. In terms of their performance Bambi and Coccinelle were quite different. Coccinelle was well-known for the vulgarity of her performance, often with too much make-up (deliberately) and costumes that frequently revealed her nipples. Bambi was less ostentatious and more glamorous.

In 1958 Coccinelle decided to complete her transition and went to Morocco for reassignment surgery. When she returned to La Carrousel she surprised her fellow showgirls in typical ostentatious style by throwing off all her clothes to reveal her new all-female body.

Bambi realised that she too wanted full reassignment surgery. This created problems in her relationship with her then boyfriend and it was another two years before he made the trip to Morocco to follow in Coccinelle’s footsteps.

There had only been a handful of people who had successfully undergone reassignment surgery, and such a transformation often made headline news. Coccinelle found herself at the centre of attention, something she revelled in. She became something of a cause celebre, often being labelled as the “first French transsexual” to do whatever she did. However inaccurate this may have been on occasion she was certainly the first French transsexual to be legally married in a Catholic church. The wedding made the front page of most newspapers.

In 1960 Coccinelle married sports journalist François Bonnet. In today’s environment of protracted debates on lgbt rights to religious marriage ceremonies it seems quite strange to us that Coccinelle’s marriage could even have taken place. Apparently she was only required to be re-baptised with her female name. Even at the ceremony in Notre Dame Cathedral Coccinelle caused controversy by wearing an off-the-nipple wedding dress. As well as confetti the bride and groom were showered with tomatoes as they left the church. The marriage, unfortunately, didn’t last. They divorced two years later, and Coccinelle was to marry twice more.

Throughout their performing careers both Coccinelle and Bambi appeared in several films. Coccinelle also gave interviews raising the awareness of transgender issues and educating society on what being transgender actually meant.

Bambi returned to education while she was working at La Carrousel. Her school days in Algeria were not pleasant and she found it difficult to learn. After 1968 she entered Sorbonne University and earned a masters degree in 1973. Having also earned a teaching degree Bambi went to Cherbourg to begin teaching literature. By now Bambi had given up her cabaret career, something she still misses, and never advertised her life as a transgender showgirl. To her pupils and colleagues she was Marie-Pierre Pruvot.

Coccinelle, in the mean time, was still advocating for transgender rights and in 1994, with her third husband, founder the Association Denevir Femme (Association to Become Woman). This organisation, as its name suggests, was to offer support and advice on health and surgery issues for transgender women. She also helped to form the Centre d’Aide de Recherche et d’Information Sur la Transsexualité et I’Identité de Genre.

Even though Bambi had stopped performing by the start of the present century Coccinelle held on to her showgirl roots and opened her own cabaret and nightclub in Marseille in 2002. She was in her 70s by now.

In 2006 Coccinelle suffered a stroke. She was hospitalised for several months and died on 6^th October.

Marie-Pierre Pruvot – Bambi – still lives in France. In honour of her work in education she was appointed an Officer of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and will be 79 years old next week.

To end, here is an excerpt of Coccinelle from the documentary film “Europe di Notte” (1958), followed by a short film of Bambi.

 

 

 

Screaming Scores

Considering today is Hallowe’en there’s a noticeable absence of decent horror films on British television tonight. And I’m not referring to modern slasher/zombie films. I mean proper horror films like those made by Hammer. Hammer’s first horror film “The Curse of Frankenstein”, was shown on Monday. Next time you see it take more time to listen to the music. It was composed by one of the most prolific horror film composers, James Bernard (1925-2001).

An Oscar winner and a wartime code-breaker James Bernard’s fame rests on his long association with the Hammer films, and the Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing Dracula/Frankenstein films in particular.

Before going into detail about his Hammer work I’ll take a few minutes to look at his musical background. Born in the Himalayas into a British military family James was sent to England to live with his aristocratic grandparents. It was a typical “Downton Abbey” childhood, with a piano in the nursery on which he began to play when he was about 6 years old.

Through his mother James claimed he was descended from Thomas Arne, composer of “Rule Britannia”. I haven’t had time to check this, but it’ll make a good “Out of Their Trees” article in the future.

At school he met Benjamin Britten who was visiting a schoolmaster, and who encouraged James to compose. They stayed in touch when James left school and served in the army during World War II. During the war James met his first life partner Paul Dehn, a major in MI6 who went on to write the screenplay for “Goldfinger” (among many other famous and popular films). After the war James enrolled at the Royal College of Music. On graduating he was asked by Britten to copy out his new opera “Billy Budd” for his publishers. James attended the opera’s premier with E. M. Forster.

James’s wartime work on the Enigma machine with Alan Turing, and his Oscar-winning screenplay, are best left for another time. Let’s return to his Hammer horror film music.

James had been composing for stage and radio productions for several years before he was approached by the chief music director of Hammer films. He was impressed by James’s score for the BBC radio production of “The Duchess of Malfi” and asked him to compose the music for Hammer’s “The Quatermass Xperiment” (1955) – one of my favourite films.

Readers may be familiar with the music from the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. The use of violins to produce a harsh, discordant, almost screeching sound which the “Psycho” shower scene best illustrates was actually pioneered by James Bernard in his two Quatermass films. Violins were generally used to provide a romantic or soothing emotion and James used the discordant technique throughout his films. Horror films have copied this musical technique ever since.

Hammer moved into the serious horror genre with the afore-mentioned “The Curse of Frankenstein”. James had been a life-long fan of horror and suspense, so he had the right credentials to write for horror films. You can often feel his enthusiasm fro writing a horror score in a lot of his work.

In 1958 Hammer made its first Dracula film, and in total James wrote the music for 9 Frankenstein and Dracula films for Hammer. He also wrote for other Hammer horror classics such as “The Gorgon” and “The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires” (his last Hammer score).

James was fortunate enough to compose the music for the film versions of three of his favourite boyhood books – “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, “She” and “The Devil Rides Out”. “She” was my introduction to Hammer films. It was shown on tv when I was a young teenager and I’ve never forgotten the impact it made on me (I had nightmares about that lava pit!). It was also the music which stuck in my mind. The main theme sounded very eerie and atmospheric. None of the subsequent Hammer films that I’ve seen have ever given me the same feeling, so I suppose the music for “She” must be my favourite James Bernard score.

James wasn’t even 50 years old when he “retired” and went to live in the Caribbean. He continued to compose for documentaries and to horror programmes, including two episodes of “Hammer House of Horror”.

For a few years Hammer horror films lost their popularity following the rise of American slasher and monster films like “Hallowe’en” and “An American Werewolf in London”. But the cult status of Hammer revived at the end of the 20^th century and James found himself a popular contributor to documentaries and conventions.

I’ll end at the beginning – the beginning of horror films. In 1997 James was asked to compose a score for the classic early silent horror film “Nosferatu” (1922).

I wasn’t sure which of James’s scores I wanted to let you hear. In the end I’ve chosen the main theme from “Dracula” (1958), where you can almost sing along to the music with the blood-thirsty count’s name.

Ruby and Tiny

Back in July I wrote about lgbt drummers and briefly mentioned the jazz drummer Ruby Lucas. It seems appropriate to write more about her today, during Black History Month UK and immediately after my piece about the Harlem Renaissance.

Ruby Lucas was born and raised during the Harlem Renaissance. She grew up in to become a member of a small all-female jazz/swing band and, with the partner Tiny Davis, founded a popular lesbian and gay bar in Chicago.

Much of what we know about Ruby’s life comes from her position as Tiny Davis’s partner. There’s very little information which tells us about Ruby as an individual in her own right. Most of her story is told in relation to her place in Tiny’s life.

Ruby grew up in Kansas City. Whether that is where she was born or not is uncertain. I’ve tried to track her down on the US censuses for 1940 and 1930 without success, so I cannot tell you the year of her birth or her family circumstances. It is almost certain, though, that Ruby was raised in poor surroundings.

Ruby learnt to play the piano as a youngster, and this leads me to suspect that there was music in her family background. Perhaps her parents were musical entertainers of some sort during the Harlem Renaissance years. Ruby’s musical talents were obviously encouraged by someone and she also learnt to play the drums and bass.

As a performer Ruby used the stage name Renei (or Renée) Phelan. I have seen a couple of references which indicate it was the other way rough – Ruby being her stage name and Renée her real name. I have also listened to interviews where Tiny Davis uses the name Renée for Ruby which might be supportive of this. Again, a search of the US census reveals nothing definite.

It was in Kansas City that Ruby met Tiny. Ernestine “Tiny” Davis was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-female, inter-racial, jazz/blues/swing band which toured America during World War II. Tiny was in Kansas City performing with the Sweethearts in 1948 and was organising refreshments at the after-show party when she met Ruby. There must have been an instant connection, because shortly afterwards Tiny left her husband and children and lived with Ruby.

Soon after the war the International Sweethearts disbanded and work for female black musicians was difficult to find. Ruby not only became part of Tiny’s personal life after that but also a member of a new all-female band called Tiny Davis and the Hell Divers. This was a smaller band than the Sweethearts, just 3 or 4 members which would find work in many more smaller venues than the dance hall. Tiny was band leader and trumpet player and Ruby played the drums. The Hell Divers undertook small tours of the US and Caribbean.

Ruby and Tiny moved from Kansas City to Chicago shortly after forming the band. Tiny hinted in a 1988 documentary that they left Kansas because of their relationship (they were “thrown out” of Kansas, in Tiny’s words).

In Chicago the Hell Divers performed in clubs and bars, some of them gay and lesbian clubs. But tastes in music were changing. The swing and jazz sounds of the 1930s and 1940s were being replaced at the top of the music charts by rock’n’roll. With tour dates diminishing Ruby and Tiny decided to open their own club in the early 50s, “Tiny and Ruby’s Gay Spot” on Wentworth Avenue in Chicago. It soon became a well-known venue for gays and lesbians to gather and hear Tiny and Ruby perform live.

The Gay Spot could have gone into the 1960s had it not been for the ubiquitous urban redevelopment in many cities. In 1958 Tiny and Ruby’s Gay Spot was demolished to make way for a new road, the Dan Ryan Expressway.

With their own venue gone Ruby and Tiny returned to performing in other venues around Chicago. They had acquired something of a cult following by then. In the end it was the progress of time that stopped them performing. Tiny developed arthritis which prevented her from standing for long periods on stage. Even so, it was 1982 when they last performed professionally – that’s nearly 30 years after Tiny and Ruby’s Gay Spot first opened.

In 1988 Ruby and Tiny were featured in the documentary mentioned above, “Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women”, in which they performed together and with Tiny’s family. This documentary is featured on the DVD release of “Before Stonewall”.

Tiny Davis died in 1994. Ruby Lucas survived her. Nothing is recorded of Ruby after this, perhaps someone out there can let me know.

I’ll leave you with this clip from the 1988 documentary.

Renaissance Women

Following on from my article last Sunday on lgbt Renaissance composers here’s a look at a more recent group of lgbt Renaissance musicians, those in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.

It is something of a misnomer to call the movement a true Renaissance. There was no consolidated or focussed cultural or artistic past to be reborn, unlike the medieval Renaissance which saw the rebirth of learning and art resulting from the rediscovery of long forgotten and ignored Ancient Greek writings.

The Harlem Renaissance began quietly and was a consolidation of many cultural influences from African-American communities as they converged on New York City in what is called the Great Migration at the end of the 19^th century. The consolidation of these influences began to be noticed in the 1920s when many African-Americans began publishing their writings and new musical experiences of modern cabaret, blues and jazz were being created.

When we look back at the Harlem Renaissance we see many names emerging as pioneers of black American culture. Many of these names are of women. But we must remember that the culture of 1920s USA, even though it seems close to ours, was different. In her recent undergraduate thesis “Women-Loving Women: Queering Black Urban Space During the Harlem Renaissance” Samantha C. Tenorio points out that within the black community of the period the term “women-loving women” “…implied a particular intersectional identity of race, gender, sexuality, and often class, due to the systemic impact of racism that produced wealth inequality, wherein the woman-loving woman’s identity as a black, often working-class, woman of non-normative sexuality located her at the lowest position of almost all social hierarchies in the United States…” Today the contributions and influence of women to the Harlem Renaissance is seen as equal to that of the men, but it wasn’t thought so at the time.

The fact that the majority of those involved were of the first generation of black Americans not born into slavery is very important. Despite their lack of wealth and property they were able to find a self expression which their parents and grandparents never had.

This new self expression included the freedom to meet and socialise in public. Nowhere can this be more evident than in the music and entertainment venues whose influence spread throughout the rest of the 20^th century.

Jazz and the blues are both seen as deriving from the music of the slaves and the southern states. The blues continued the slave-music convention of expressing a desire and hope for an improvement in the singer’s life. The desire to be free from slavery turned into a desire to be happy, wealthy or accepted in society. Acceptance included sexual orientation, and many of the famous female blues singers of the Harlem Renaissance sang about same-sex acceptance.

No-one expressed this same-sex acceptance in blues more openly than Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886-1939), who is known as “the Mother of the Blues”. She was one of many female performers who began their career on the American vaudeville stage of the southern states. It was on that circuit that Rainey first heard the blues. Using influences from both southern country and northern urban sounds Rainey developed the blues into a medium which became popular with all audiences and became commercial enough for record producers to start marketing the blues to Americans of all heritages and social groups.

Sexuality was a large element in both Rainey’s performance and lyrics, using this in her most well-known song, “Prove It On Me Blues” in which she challenges the listener to catch her with anther woman. It was performed with a knowing look, and it is generally accepted that Rainey was indeed bisexual.

During a tour of Tennessee another influential blues singer joined Ma Rainey’s show. She was the “Empress of the Blues”, Bessie Smith (1894-1937). To say Bessie led a colourful life is an understatement. Hers is also a genuine “rags to riches” story of how a woman from a poor black family used her talents to amass wealth. Most of this was achieved through a recording contract. In 1923 Bessie’s recording of “Down-Hearted Blues” sold over three quarters of a million copies in America in 6 months.

Bessie’s private life was hardly private at all. She never his her tempestuous, sometimes violent, temper, nor her sexual preferences for both men and women. She led the sort of life to which legends attached themselves, though one story may be true. It is said that she once shouted at a female lover that she had 12 women in her show and she could sleep with one every night if she wanted.

Bessie’s untimely death, like so many others of legendary performers, is also surrounded by legend. The plain truth is that she died from injuries she sustained in a car accident in 1937 at the age of 43.

From these influential pioneers, and from other female performers of the Harlem Renaissance, blues and jazz disseminated across the whole of American society and established itself as a timeless genre which still has many fans and performers to this day.

Renaissance Men

As a sort of prequel to my article on composers of the Baroque period here is my look at some from the preceding period, the Renaissance.

The term Renaissance has been used many times over the past 600 years to denote a rebirth of culture, though in a couple of days I’ll write about a more recent Renaissance which was more of a cultural explosion.

The Renaissance period spans the 15^th and 16^th centuries. It saw huge developments in art and culture which are still familiar to us today through art, literature, architecture and music.

I’ve said many times before that we should be careful not to picture the past with a modern mind. Attitudes and societies change. The very development of the Renaissance is testimony to that. So we have to forget modern sexuality labels. None of the people I mention today would have considered themselves as gay or bisexual.

There are several Renaissance composers I want to mention today. Their sexuality has been queried and looked at by musicologists and historians in recent years.

The first composer is Dominique Phinot (c.1501-c.1556), a popular composer in his own time. He was an early pioneer of a form of music that was particularly influential among the next generation of composers, including one I’ll mention later.

Music was pretty bland in the early Renaissance compared with the myriad of styles we have today. An innovation which was an early experiment in stereo sound was pioneered (though not invented) by Phinot. In the large cathedrals of medieval Europe the sound of 4 male singers would reverberate around the naves and chancel. People like Phinot thought “what if we split the choir into 2 and have them stand in different parts of the cathedral and sing alternately”. This was known as polychoral music. The experience of hearing voices echoing around a cathedral from first one side and then the other, of being surrounded by music, was something worshippers had never heard before.

Most of Phinot’s career was spent in Italy and southern France though, thanks to the development of printing and musical notation, he and other composers found their works distributed throughout Europe. No-one is sure when Phinot died. The generally accepted story, first recorded in 1560, was that Phinot was found guilty of sexual behaviour, sodomy, with a choirboy and was executed shortly after 1555.

There were other composers who wrote polychoral music beside Phinot. A contemporary of his had a very similar polychoral style. He was called Nicolas Gombert (c.1495-c.1560). Gombert developed the style by increasing the number of singers. Four male singers was usual for the early Renaissance choir. Gombert increased this to 8, and sometime to 12, singers. This was also new. I suppose it was the start of the male voice choir and gay men’s chorus that have become so popular.

Gombert’s use of another technique, counterpoint (the singing of 2 different harmonic melodies at the same time), was also among the most accomplished of his time. Perhaps too accomplished, because the Council of Trent (1545-63), which laid down the artistic ideals of the succeeding Baroque period, required more clearly distinguished texts to be sung in church music. As a result Baroque composers wrote fewer and simpler choral works in counterpoint.

Like Phinot Gombert is said to have been charged with sodomy against choirboys. He was employed in the Imperial chapel of Emperor Karl V as “maitre des enfants”, the “master of the children” in the choir. This meant he travelled with the emperor around the Holy Roman Empire acting as choral manager and composer. In 1540 he was replaced in this office. According to a later report Gombert was found guilty of sexual contact with boys in his charge. He managed to escape execution but was sentenced instead to several year’s hard labour on the galleys.

Just how much hard labour he endured is difficult to determine but in the 7 years he served in the galleys he managed to compose a motet which Emperor Karl found so moving that he pardoned Gombert. Perhaps he only served the first part of his sentence in the galleys – he was in his late 40s when sentenced, well into middle-age for the Renaissance. Surely he couldn’t have lasted 7 years doing hard labour AND write a motet.

After his pardon Gombert retired to Tournai, his conviction ruining his future prospects (something celebrities have discovered for themselves in the UK recently after several high-profile sex abuse cases).

At the time when Gombert was being sentenced for sodomy another composer was born who managed to escape both execution and sentence for sodomy. He was Giovan Leonardo Primavera (c.1540-1585).

As with other composers of the Renaissance, including the ones I’ve already mentioned, Primavera spent most of his time in Italy composing for the various courts and church patrons who encouraged the arts and music of the period. Like Phinot and Gombert, Primavera was a popular composer in his lifetime. His most famous work, though rarely heard, is a madrigal based on a homoerotic poem.

In 1570 Primavera was one of several people accused of sodomy at the Church of Our Lady of Loreto. It began with the arrest of one of the church’s canons, Luigi Fontino, who was accused of sexual acts with one of the new choirboys, a teenager called Luigi dalla Balla. Under the threat of torture Fontino confessed and was beheaded. Young Balla confessed under torture to willingly having sex with other men and was whipped and banned from the Papal States. One of those he confessed to having had sex with was Giovan Primavera.

Primavera was to be put on trial but he managed to escape and may have gone to Venice. The next 15 years of his life were relatively quiet. He continued to compose, and may have lived after the publication of a book of his madrigals in 1585.

As for young Luigi dalla Balla, he seems to have become a composer as well. It may be too much to think that he and Primavera might have met again. After all, Primavera spent a lot of his time in Venice, and there’s evidence that Balla wrote a couple of pieces that were published in Venice in 1584 and 1587. They seem to have been in the same city at the same time – why shouldn’t they have met?

The Renaissance saw several changes in music that were pioneered or championed by what can be described as “queer” composers. Whether it was creating the male voice choir or developing new stereo experiences, the work of these composers influenced the development of music right down to the Riot Grrrl movement, the gay disco age, and the Harlem blues.