Singing and Swinging with Linda Tillery

In passing her on the street, one might not realize just how many stories Linda Tillery has to tell in terms of witnessing history. Truth is, this 57 year old woman has sung with many legends - from Wilson Pickett to Cris Williamson to Carlos Santana - all while living through an era when she and her peers were fighting for equal rights on three different levels: as a woman, as an African-American and as a lesbian.

Tillery first entered into the music business by auditioning for an r&b band called the Loading Zone in the late ’60s. The kind of music the group performed was admittedly not her first love - she cites crooners in that regard - but their timely appeal allowed her to experience opening slots for everyone from Janis Joplin to Cream. Following that stint, Tillery spent much of the ’70s as a percussionist/vocalist for hire, garnering studio gigs with everyone from Odetta to Richie Havens and more.

In passing her on the street, one might not realize just how many stories Linda Tillery has to tell in terms of witnessing history. Truth is, this 57 year old woman has sung with many legends - from Wilson Pickett to Cris Williamson to Carlos Santana - all while living through an era when she and her peers were fighting for equal rights on three different levels: as a woman, as an African-American and as a lesbian.

Tillery first entered into the music business by auditioning for an r&b band called the Loading Zone in the late ’60s. The kind of music the group performed was admittedly not her first love - she cites crooners in that regard - but their timely appeal allowed her to experience opening slots for everyone from Janis Joplin to Cream. Following that stint, Tillery spent much of the ’70s as a percussionist/vocalist for hire, garnering studio gigs with everyone from Odetta to Richie Havens and more.

Around the same time that Tillery was gaining increasing respect as a studio musician, a tiny, independent record label called Olivia Records was just getting off the ground. To any of you readers who take your queer freedoms for granted, imagine this: at a time when the word ‘homosexual’ still had to be whispered to avoid everything from ostracism to physical harm, a small group of lesbian women put their hearts, souls and life savings into a label that provided them the opportunity to record music that included songs about women-loving-women. Tillery recalls that period with much fondness. “I had never been in any situation where women were singing love songs to other women and expressing their longing and desire for a person of the same sex. I had never been to a concert although I certainly was becoming aware of people like Cris Williamson, Meg Christian, Holly Near.” After watching the scene from a distance, it all changed for her when in 1976, an all-woman’s band called Be Be K’Roche asked Tillery to produce their next album. “I looked at them as if they had spoken to me in martian! I had never produced a record before, but I said ‘ok, this is how you start.’ So I met with Judy Dlugacz of Olivia, we set the date and I went about producing this record. It was really an incredible, moving experience to be in the presence of women who were dedicated, who set about to do the best job that they could possibly do, and nobody said ‘you play like a girl.’

Tillery admits that there were many highlights during her decade with the label, as an artist, producer and session player, but one of her favorite moments was being involved in a musical statement designed to counter-attack the extreme homophobia of that period. At the time, a singer named Anita Bryant - also famous for her series of commercials plugging Florida orange juice - reacted against a Florida county who passed a human-rights ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. While Bryant campaigned loudly against queers who “recruit our children” the Olivia dykes created a protest-mixed-with-humour collection they dubbed ‘Lesbian Concentrate.’ The entertaining and effective disc included the songs “For Straight Folks Who Don’t Mind Gays But Wish They Weren’t So Blatant”, “Don’t Pray For Me”, and “Ode to a Gym Teacher.” “We made this in [Olivia founder] Judy’s living room,” recalls Tillery, “and it was such a great time! We set up, started playing and it was the most fun I’ve ever had making a record. The label has an orange juice can with the words ‘Lesbian Concentrate’ on it,” she laughs.

Years later, after a host of studio work, Tillery’s musical focus suddenly changed when watching singing in a play entitled ‘Letters From A New England Negro’ in 1992, which introduced her to some field recordings of traditional African-American music. Led by her deep conviction, she decided to create a project that would help spread that history along, the kind of storytelling that she herself calls “survival music.” Tillery dubbed the outfit The Cultural Heritage Choir. “I can’t emphasize how important black music has been in my development as a musician and human being,” she explains. “The purpose was and is to present African-American roots music to as broad an audience as we possibly could. That we have achieved and continue to do.”

With spirituality so integral to the music, the question can’t help but be asked; has there been any repercussion from the religious community as a result of her being an out lesbian? “I think that the African American community at large is still grappling with how to accept homosexuality. For a lot of people who consider themselves to be devout, homosexuality is not acceptable. What is not acceptable to me is someone who would call themself a Christian who might express hatred or disdain towards another person. To me, negativity and Christianity really don’t have a place together. I don’t consider myself any less black because I ‘m a lesbian and I don’t consider myself any less lesbian because I’m black. I am who I am.”

To find out more about her latest projects, head to http://www.culturalheritagechoir.com/

Written by Denise Sheppard

Denise Sheppard (scribe at shaw dot ca) is a self-employed journalist/editor who likes long walks, candlelit dinners and writing for U.S and Canadian national mags and websites. Her fave topics are human rights-related pieces and entertainment journalism.

Wargasm

I didn’t look that scary in high school. I must have weighed about 100 pounds. No tattoos yet. Various hair colors. Both my ears pierced. Most people thought I was a girl right away. I had a habit of wearing skirts, too, completing the illusion. I wasn’t scaring anyone. In my defense, I wasn’t really trying to scare anyone. Not like my friend Vincent in whiteface and a giant shock of black hair threatening to spit blood on people if they didn’t give him a dollar in the hallways. This was the winning tactic I think. People were half convinced he was a zombie. He really liked that.
On top of it all, I decided to come out as a freak. I didn’t know if I was gay or bisexual or what I was. I was polyamorous, not straight, not normal. A weirdo. I got sick of hiding it so I stopped. I stopped hiding anything. So, for a while, I was that faggot. The one in homeroom. The only one in the school. It seems stupid to say “the only one”. There were 1200 people in my high school. Of course I wasn’t the only one. But for a while I was. Me and Elton John, who, the smartest at my school were beginning to suspect, may have had some gender issues. Somehow, however, Rob Halford had managed to escape the finely honed pubescent gaydars of just about every one of them. Muttonchops, assless chaps and screechy voice aside, not one of them figured out what he was “Headed Out to the Highway” to actually do. That’s right. Fuck the first roadside highway workman he could find.

My friend Vincent was a lot of help. When he was around, I didn’t get my ass kicked. Vincent was a big guy. When people wanted to beat me up, he threatened them and then hit them up for a dollar. He may have made a little money on this, I don’t know. But he couldn’t be around all the time. So he taught me how to stay safe. He taught me that you don’t have to win a fight to win it. Sometimes you just have to lose the fight better than the other guy wins it. Easy. Once, at some suburban yuppie bar, in a parking lot where I tried to help Vincent fight some giant Izod Monkey, he just pulled his penis out. No one wants to fight you while your penis is flapping around in front of them like some garden snake on LSD dragging a couple of kiwi (let that sit in your head for a while). I was surprised at how well that worked. Vincent was the expert at losing better than the other guy won.

So he taught me how to do that. Later on that week when Doug, this big, tough, wiry burnout threatened to stomp me into the urinal, I told him what Vincent taught me to say. “Look, Doug. You’re going to win this. That much is totally understood. You’re bigger, stronger, hell, you’re huge. And you’re stupid, which means hitting you in the head won’t work, either, and I respect that. But I’m going to fight back anyway and I promise you I’ll break something on you. Your finger, your nose, your arm. I’ll bust something up on you. And then you’ll have to leave this bathroom and tell everyone the faggot did it. And while it’s healing, everyone’s gonna know the faggot broke something on you.”

Miraculously, it worked. Even Doug, magnificently descendent from generation after generation of consanguineous look-alike siblings understood that I could lose better than he could win. No amount of serial inbreeding could keep him from protecting himself from the shitty win. He knew exactly what the shitty win looked like and what it meant. The shitty win means you really lose. And Doug was a C student at best.

One of the most compelling parts of the story people tell about the crucifixion of Jesus from the Christian Bible is the fact that Pontius Pilate experienced possibly one of the shittiest wins in all of modern literature. He had the power to kill - the same power exercised by James Bond, random killers, serial murderers, butchers and little boys with magnifying glasses poised over anthills, and he used it. And what he got for his troubles was the birth of a whole new religion that turned his name into a codeword for the biggest “shitty winner” in the history of mankind. If he had been half as self-aware as Doug, the C student, he would have seen it coming. Makes you wonder what the ancient Semitic school system looked like.

From this humble shitty win, most people had their first literary experience with a martyr. A martyr is a powerful device that allows people to ignore the content of their position and the collateral disagreement in the first place and instead concentrate on how they have been victimized. Martyrdom doesn’t address issues, it transcends them. It creates mystery and validity where there may have been stupidity and vacuity. It turns bad guys into good guys, bad ideas into possible ones, and winners into murderers.

Sadaam Hussein was tried, convicted, and executed under the umbrella of a military occupation of Iraqi soil by a government hand picked to contain his enemies. Regardless of how formal and de jure the current Iraqi government MAY be, the perception is that it is not. The perception is that it is a government in the service of a foreign power. In the shadow of rampant Sunni/Shiite sectarian violence, this government, with the approval and backing of the American government, provided one more excuse for death.

Much of the evidence would have been inadmissible in an American court. The first judge, an ethnic Kurd, resigned over excessive government interference in the trial. The second had well publicized personal animosities towards Hussein. Three of his defense lawyers were shot. The ones who survived protested the lack of protection. His new defense lawyers had no experience in the relevant areas.

Hussein, during his time in Iraq, supported and favored the Sunni minority. This minority famously had gathered supporters through a historical oppression they faced at the hands of the Shiite majority. Many moderate Sunnis had stopped supporting Hussein until the US invasion, which many Sunnis position as an anti-Sunni occupying force. What they get from this is a high profile martyr, more usable in death than in life, that can stand as an example of the humiliation and persecution faced by Sunni Arabs. What they get is a symbol of Sunni resistance, a flag to rally behind. They got a man who, in their minds, was murdered for the crime of being a Sunni supporter. A man whose image will adorn rallying flags carried by Sunnis under the new Shiite and Kurd dominated government.

What Hussein got was the right to stand next to hundreds of men throughout history killed under ignoble and suspect circumstances by people who believed differently than they. He got to place his name in the history books next to martyrs and prophets, poets and statesman. This cruel, vindictive, petty man got the right to list his name next to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the book of men murdered by an overwhelming opposition who feared them.

And what did we get in exchange? About 250 pounds of newly dead human body in a world where dead human body is looking like the greatest overabundant planetary resource. We got to be on the side of the killers. We got revenge. We got to bare some teeth and crow about the joy of murder all over the internet. We got to hand over a prisoner war to be executed, advancing that simple model for all further conflicts. We got the right to be indelibly linked to a brutal hanging all over the world. We got the right to proudly demonstrate that we remembered none of the messages of Rwanda or Burundi, or The DRC. We got the right to our own stupidity, popularized by the image of George Bush sleeping through an execution that will provide grist for civil conflict for decades.

We got a shitty win.

Written by Jim Marcus

Jim Marcus is a singer/songwriter, director, photographer, writer, performance artist and social activist. And really, that list doesn’t even touch the surface of all the things he’s done or is doing.

A founding member of the seminal Industrial band Die Warzau, Jim Marcus has worked with artists in all genres, from Bjork to Revenge, Steel Pulse, Pansy Division, Machines of Loving Grace, George Clinton, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, Pigface, Little Louis, and more. Die Warzau’s fifth album, “Supergangbang” is slated for release in October of 2006. Mr. Marcus is also currently at work on his first solo release, entitled “Wonderland”.