About 12:30 a.m., we visited this place and found approximately 5,000 people, colored and white, men attired in women’s clothes, and vice versa. The affair, we were informed, was a “fag/masquerade ball.” This is an annual affair where the white and colored fairies assemble together with their friends, this being attended also by a certain respectable element who go here to see the sights.

This is an excerpt from a 1928 report filed by investigators with the Committee of Fourteen, a citizens group that fought to crack down on illegal alcohol sales inside New York City hotels. The investigators had stopped by a club in Harlem one night in February, unwittingly dropping in on a gender-bending bacchanal: the Hamilton Lodge drag ball.

Affairs like the Hamilton Lodge ball were a precursor to the modern ballroom scene, a performative, queer and largely African-American counterculture that still thrives in many U.S. cities, including Baltimore. The documentary Paris Is Burning captured the scene at its height in 1980s New York City, and Madonna — riding a wave of house music that soundtracked ballroom performances — got everybody voguing like a ballroom star with her 1990 hit “Vogue.”

Oct. 15, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art celebrates ballroom culture with a half-day event dedicated exclusively to the art form. The featured guest is Keith “Ebony” Holt, a veteran ballroom performer who’s also a youth outreach coordinator for Baltimore’s health department. He represents the Baltimore chapter of the House of Ebony — essentially a clique, or a family, of gay black men who perform in ballroom competitions.

Bandwidth spoke to Holt and the Smithsonian’s Nicole Shivers in advance of Saturday’s soirée. The event promises to borrow a grandiose aesthetic from Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare’s short film, Un Ballo in Maschera, on view now at the museum.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Bandwidth: Keith, can you talk about what ballroom means to young, gay black men? 

Keith “Ebony” Holt: Ballroom, basically, was created for [them]. It was a place that we could call our own [where] we felt safe. [In ballroom,] you could be whatever it is that you wanna be. As we all know, when a lot of young, black gay males or transgenders come out to their families, sometimes their families are not with it. They may out them or they may be like, “We no longer want to communicate with [you].” And for a person that may be 15, 16 years old — or basically whatever age you are — that really hits you hard. So the ballroom scene … gave you another family outside of your biological family.

“With this event, we’re in one of the biggest museums in the world. Now our form of underground art is being welcomed into the mainstream.” —Keith “Ebony” Holt

OK, so the film Paris Is Burning documented the ’80s ballroom scene in New York. When we talk about ballroom now, what are we referring to?

Holt: We’re talking about the whole entire scene. Voguing, of course, gets the most attention because it’s fun to watch and you have people like Madonna that came out with it, or you have Vogue Evolution on America’s Best Dance Crew. However, it’s so many other categories — such as runway, or realness, which is basically how well a transgender person may be able to blend into society. Paris Is Burning … is kinda outdated. The younger generations definitely took it and made it their own. So it has completely, completely changed. It’s not the same underground scene that it once was in Paris Is Burning.

Do you still do a lot of performing?

Holt: I do perform. I still walk. Voguing really isn’t my category. My main category is actually runway. You can kinda look at it like Project Runway mixed with America’s Next Top Model. Runway at the Smithsonian [requires you to take] a piece of African art. It can either be a painting or a sculpture, and you have to make your outfit basically represent whatever art that you chose to create. It really takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of brain energy for you to really sit and really create something such as that. Then… you actually have to walk like a model would.

Nicole, why did the Smithsonian want to do a ballroom event?

Nicole Shivers, National Museum of African Art: As the curator for performing arts, I’m always looking for something new, innovative and engaging to dispel the myths, the clichés of Africa. Being a big fan of Yinka Shonibare and especially this video piece, Un Ballo in Maschera, which looks at the grandness of things, what better fit than to look at the ballroom scene, where they can show off and show out?

Can you talk about the African influence within ballroom?

Shivers: The traditional masquerade, or the traditional theater-in-the-round [are African influences]. Also, it’s a way of conveying a message [and] honoring someone, so I think those are the two main similarities.

Holt: And I think that with just the LGBT community, we wear so many masks on a daily basis, especially when we go out. So many people look down on the LGBT community for various reasons, so we have to put different masks on when we just walk outside our house. With this event, we’re in one of the biggest museums in the world. Now we can finally take our masks off and say that we are finally being accepted. Now our form of underground art is being welcomed into the mainstream. Even if it’s just for one night, it’s still the beginning.

The Voguing Masquerade Ball begins with a panel discussion at 4:30 p.m. at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. The ball starts at 7:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Shown at top: A still from Voguing For a Cause, produced by Great Big Story

“I think about the idea that our bodies are policed at other places, and what are the possibilities of feeling free somewhere, and what are the possibilities of connecting with each other in ways that aren’t blocked by language?” says Kristy La Rat — stylized as Kristy la rAt — through a crackly phone. “Parties are a way of creating unexpected interactions, which are hopefully really positive and transformative.”

As the collective makes clear on the Facebook invitation for its five-year anniversary Friday night: “This fiesta is a mixed-community-amor, queer-fly, immigrant-posi, POC-centered, genderpolice-free, nena-run, friends-welcome, mucho-respeto space! No wackness, no one-identity-dominance! You are importante, loves! Gracias a todxs por ser inspiradorxs.”

Kristy la rAt started Maracuyeah — the name is an enthusiastic take on maracuyá, the Spanish word for passion fruit — with fellow DJ Mafe Escobar, known as DJ Mafe. Since its inception in 2011, the collective has grown to include other D.C.-area “Latinx” DJs, including Carmen Rivera, aka DJ Carmencha. (The “x” is a way to eliminate a/o gender distinctions in Spanish words.)

The community has stretched beyond the city, to Mexico, Austin, Texas and Paris. The goal is “world domination,” DJ Mafe deadpans, but then lets a laugh escape. She’s been in Paris for a couple of years, spreading the Maracuyeah gospel.

But despite that increasingly international reach, Kristy la rAt believes in keeping some of the action firmly in D.C.

“One strong element is a very local party that contributes something to the local scene,” she says. Both Kristy la rAt and DJ Mafe have backgrounds in community organizing.

The five-year anniversary show is Friday at a regular venue, a Salvadoran restaurant in the U Street NW neighborhood named Judy’s. Before the birthday bash, the DJs reflect their time together and what the future holds.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bandwidth: What is your relationship to music? How did you come upon music and how does it play in your life?

DJ Carmencha: It’s hard to define my relationship to music. I think that my relationship to music started in my living room listening to records with my family, and I try to carry that with me everywhere I go. All those songs and the way they make me feel in my heart.

DJ Mafe: I think growing up a Colombian, you’re pretty much surrounded by music 24/7. So you go to the store, you go anywhere and there’s music blaring there. In my relationship to music, it’s very important. I’m in finals week right now so I’m listening to a lot of music. I love this app called TuneIn where you can listen to radio stations from across the world. So I started with a radio station in Cartagena, Colombia, and then I moved to a station in Lagos, Nigeria, and then one in Tallahassee.

Kristy la rAt: In childhood, it’s how I related to different parts of my family and understood moving between a lot of different spaces. it was kind of like the soundtrack of different experiences that helped me make friends and move through hybrid identity spaces. And then I would also say that growing up in this area, one of the amazing things is that it’s one of the more all-ages type city. So if you’re a teenager, maybe 13, 14, music was the way I could socialize with other people, express myself, even as a participant. I feel like also another really important part of music is raising money for different things. Some collectives I’ve been a part of here, they’re really grassroots efforts and a lot of the time, we end up getting into DJing as a great way to throw parties and raise money and fund our organizations that didn’t have any other funding.

“I don’t really believe that music can exist in an apolitical vacuum at all. We’re working with all different kinds of music at our parties. We’re touching on themes of gender and race and ethnicity and migration and safety, and all those are political and social concepts.” — DJ Carmencha of Maracuyeah

So following that, how exactly did you get into DJing? What made you want to be behind the table as opposed to in front of it, in a sense?

Kristy la rAt: Now looking back, a big purpose was to support different community initiatives. It was for grassroots radical organizing without having to deal with some sort of funding world or a funding world that didn’t want to fund what we were doing. But also, I started organizing and DJing dance parties in Lima when I was there during college. We organized a femme-organized — or “nena-run,” as they say in Spanglish — event space, so we brought a lot of elements of our identities into the vision and how we wanted to move and how we wanted boundaries and how we wanted our bodies to feel existing in that space and how we express ourselves. So kind of creating a space for our experience was a big part of it.

DJ Mafe: For me, I started DJing in college, first at the radio station and then I started the first Latin-alternative party there because I was tired of all the parties that were just Top 40 Latin music. There’s so much music and artists to showcase that are different from mainstream Latin Top 40. And then when I got to D.C., it was also on the idea that nobody else was playing the music that we wanted to hear, so we just took it upon ourselves to play it and learn how to be great DJs and create these spaces and tour.

DJ Carmencha: I came into DJing after working at a radio station in Berkeley, California. I started realizing that one of my favorite parts was picking the songs to play between talk segments and sharing music with people and feeling their reactions to the music.

DJ Carmencha (Courtesy Maracuyeah)

Did it take very long to learn to DJ? What are some of the tips you’ve learned over time?

DJ Mafe: Technology is different, I would say. I started going at it with CDs and then learning the different tools. So just understanding how to do better mixing and understanding the different types of files and different types of sounds like if it sounds bass-y or not and if they go together or not, but also play with those differences. I remember there’s a lot of, how you say, prejudice if you don’t play a song or how the song should be played. So sometimes we were just like “f**k it, we don’t want to continue with the same BPM, let’s just mix it and change it up.” So I would just say keeping up with technology and covering those tools has been important.

DJ Carmencha: I was very privileged in taking a workshop that Kristy organized with another DJ in D.C. for women and gender-nonconforming people of color to learn some of the basics of digital DJing and organizing parties. And that definitely helped me very much feel more confident with what Mafe’s describing in playing with the tools and playing with the technology and experimenting. Just letting go of that perfectionist fear of making mistakes. But I’m still learning.

Kristy la rAt: One thing that I think is important before learning how to DJ is to think about your goals. Especially right now there’s a lot of hype in DJ culture and the atypical, mythological example of making it big very quickly as a DJ. And I think if that’s part of your goal, that’s fine, but it’s good to be realistic because that’s not most people’s experience. And the same elements that happen in society definitely play out in the DJ world, like attaining different levels of economic success and popularity. It’s very traditional in that way with, you know, discrimination and lack of opportunity. I think that’s why it’s important to have identity-based workshops and identity-centered spaces. Sometimes it’s easy to get confused on why you want to DJ, so just take a second to write down your purpose. Also, I think making playlists is half the battle of DJing, right? Like, a lot of the time it’s what you hear and curation is a huge part of it. And having your friends, too. DJing has always been a collective experience and a vehicle for more collective experiences that I just wouldn’t have enjoyed 100 percent alone, ever.

How have your parties changed?

Kristy la rAt: Well, we’ve learned a lot in how to organize these spaces and in the way that we DJ. And we’ve gotten a much stronger community over the years which means more people can hold down the space in a more collective way instead of the few of us who are organizing. Even the music collection has gotten a more hybrid in terms of playing with a bunch of different genres. And the space is a lot more centered on people of color and queer identities feeling welcomed, as well as everybody, but those identities feel more centered than when we began so that’s kind of cool and that was a goal and something that we’ll keep working on.

Should music always have a political role, or does it just have a social function? Or is it a combination?

DJ Carmencha: I think it’s hard to make a distinction between political and social for me. I think anywhere you exist in a space, you’re saying something with your actions or movements or the songs you’re choosing. I don’t really believe that music can exist in an apolitical vacuum at all. We’re working with all different kinds of music at our parties. We’re touching on themes of gender and race and ethnicity and migration and safety and all those are political and social concepts.

DJ Mafe: For me, music is how to share the immigrant experience and the immigrant experience is very political itself. I think it’s very difficult to separate, just as Carmen said.

Has it been hard keeping these spaces safe?

Kristy la rAt: I would say, even like safer spaces is a challenging proposition given the social conditions we’re working with that play out in most public spaces. So I’ve helped organize parties from house settings where you have more control to club settings where you really have to put your trust in the venue. I think that’s something that people don’t expect, to really create agreements with the venue and conversations about what would security look like and what would interactions look like and what does escalation look like. How do we want our guests to be treated or addressed, even thinking about something as simple as checking an ID. We have discussions on having those respectful interactions and having people not feel like their gender is being policed at the door when they’re coming to a place looking for a positive social experience. It’s a lot of work and it’s an ongoing set of questions that we’re looking to address. When we started working with Judy’s, the restaurant that we work with, it’s all-gender bathrooms, but it’s a whole system you have to work on. It’s a huge challenge and one of the most important challenges in organizing a space.

DJ Mafe: It’s just s****y when you go out to a place and you don’t have security or there’s not a positive space. Being harassed can ruin the whole night, so a space should be more open and safe spaces should include best security practices. People should demand more when they go out so that more of these practices can be shared and applied.

What tips can you give to people coming to a Maracuyeah party?

Kristy la rAt: Respect. And think about each other’s humanity. Not putting hands on other people unless you know they want you to. Not singing along to horrible words that you can’t say since they aren’t part of your identity. Just because a song is playing, doesn’t mean that gives you a pass to use that language if it’s not your place to.

Maracuyeah’s five-year anniversary takes place April 29 Judy’s Bar and Restaurant.

“I blatantly confront racism and white supremacy with my music and performance,” says the rising vocalist and rapper from Baltimore, Maryland.

With a mix of Baltimore club music, jazz and noise rap, Ali’s music blends an assortment of styles with critical theory. He strikes a balance between “turning up” and exploring deeper issues — such as living amid racism.

“I think people are over this s**t, this bubblegum music,” Ali says. “You need to go back and make music about the people again.”

Today Ali debuted his newest EP — called Mongo, after his middle name — via the Fader‘s website. A month ahead of the release, we talked about about white people listening to his work, how he feels biologically programmed to make music and what kind of “mainstream” he’d like to be.

Bandwidth: What does accessibility mean to you? Who should listen to your music? Who can listen to your music?

Abdu Ali: Who should be listening to my music? That’s a complex question. Who can listen to my music or who can interact with it… like my newer stuff, specifically, is made for POC [people of color] to raise their consciousness about social issues or self-empowerment — or just help heal. Whether they’re dealing with — well, I feel like we’re all dealing with post-traumatic slave syndrome or just the oppression of POC on the regular. My newer stuff is specifically for them. And then I have some songs that are just for people who are underrepresented: women, POC and queer, trans, intersex.

Then some songs, it’s just turn-up s**t — like, I got this new track coming out called “Did Dat” which is just being, like, patting yourself on the back like, “I did that! I killed that. I slayed it.”

As far as who should listen to it, I mean, everybody should listen to it. Everyone can benefit from listening to it; I definitely do. I made it, but I still benefit from listening to it, performing it. Everyone can listen to it. But when it comes to who is it for, that’s when I dissect it a little bit.

Warning: explicit lyrics.

Are white people coming to your shows, too? Do you feel some type of way about white people consuming your music?

You can’t really avoid that. Do I feel some type of way about them coming to my shows? Not necessarily, because it’s just positive energy and I welcome that. I don’t feel no kind of way. Do I feel some kind of way in a positive way when there’s a lot of POC and queer people there? Yeah, I feel really happy to see them. But as far as seeing white people, I just don’t feel no type of way. So, it is what it is. I don’t feel negative about it. Support is support and I appreciate that. But it ain’t like I’m bending my performance or bending my words to make them feel comfortable or anything. It’s still very much black music and for my people, you know. A lot of people be talking about that, too, but it’s hard because the more popular you get, the more… you know what I’m saying?

How do you see your music spreading?

Hmm. I like looking at it like levels — like you can be “mainstream” like Rihanna, or you can be “mainstream” like [Trina], but I don’t know, I do definitely want to get to a global level. My dream is to be able to connect to all black and brown people all over the world, you know? So I want to be global in that way, but “mainstream” as far as like, MTV Video Awards, and s**t like that, no. I don’t care about that s**t [laughs].

You’ve done writing before music and you’ve done a lot of visuals. Which is more important to you, the writing aspect or the visual aspect? Is it a combination of both? And a larger question: Are people more receptive to words or images?

Today, people are more receptive to images, for sure. I think back in the day it was words, but today, Instagram, Facebook, everything is image-based. When I make a music video for a song, people know those songs more than the songs I don’t make videos for. But what’s more important to me is the words and the production, for sure. I feel like they both need to be visceral and provoking.

Performance-wise, it has to resonate because every time I make a beat or something like that, I always think about how people are responding to it. I guess, really, the performance is more important than anything … I really, really think the performance is what solidifies me as a musician and an artist. It’s real. It’s not makeup. It’s no nothing. It’s no walls up.

How do you take care of yourself?

I don’t know, I ask myself that all the time. Because I’m always ready to be over this s**t. It’s hard. It’s like a drug, though. It’s a blessing and a curse. I can’t stop doing music — like, I really can’t stop. I have some, like, moments of fear, moments of discouragement, but I just gotta keep going. I always think of insects — like ants and bees, like they have jobs or whatever. One’s assigned to be a worker bee or worker ant… I feel it’s kind of like that where it’s just this innate, biological, thing of fate where I just have to do music.

Growing up outside of Detroit, the birthplace of techno, Servito had plenty of peripheral exposure to underground dance music, but it was at Club Heaven, an after-hours spot at Woodward and Seven Mile, where he first witnessed the full power of a gay club environment. “It was queer, it was inner-city, it was black, it was trans. You walk into a place like that, being a kid from the suburbs, and it’s predominantly black and gay and Ken Collier is pumping incredible records,” he remembers. “Just being able to witness that energy was special to me.”

Heaven closed in the early ’90s, and Ken Collier passed away in 1996 (due to complications from diabetes), but he was part of a pioneering generation of queer DJs that ushered dance music through its earliest days. Alongside legendary figures like Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy, he operated during a time when these beats were largely being created, played and, most importantly, danced to by queer people of color. Storied clubs like the Paradise Garage in New York and The Warehouse and The Music Box in Chicago featured undeniably brilliant tunes, but they were moere than just sites for dancing and ushering in influential musical movements — they were places of respite for the queer community. Long before any notions of “safe space” had entered the mainstream, these dance floors also played host to conversations, both verbal and non-, about exactly what it meant to be queer.

In contrast, today’s celebrated dance culture seems almost overwhelmingly straight. Although queer artists continue to lead electronic music’s push into bold new directions, the sounds being created by young contemporary acts like Arca, Lotic, Total Freedom and others tend to eschew traditional dance floor formulas in favor of something more abrasive, experimental, future-facing and conceptual in nature. Compared to what this new generation is coming up with, the sounds of house, techno, and disco have been labeled as downright conservative — and, given their relatively static formulas, the charge certainly carries some weight.

“Those genres are in an era of refinement, not so much innovation,” says Carlos Souffront, a San Francisco-based, Detroit-reared DJ who, like Servito, was also lucky enough to see Ken Collier work his magic at Heaven. From a compositional standpoint, these classic dance floor sounds may no longer seem revolutionary, but they do represent a marked improvement over the ostentatious, Euro-flavored circuit music and Top 40 fodder that has dominated queer nightlife for much of the past two decades. “It was dreadful,” says Souffront, thinking back to his younger days in Detroit. “If I wanted to hang out with gay people, I had to tolerate the worst music that everyone else seemed to love. I always felt like an outsider in queer spaces, but I was desperately drawn to them.”

Honey Dijon, a transgender artist raised on house music in Chicago, shares a similar sentiment while reflecting on her experiences DJing in New York during the late ’90s and much of the ’00s: “I had to make a living as a DJ … so I had to do a lot of compromising and incorporate a lot of [pop] music into my sets. It was really painful for me because I consider pop music to be corporate music …. I respected Madonna and the work she did, and I liked her earlier work, but I felt that if she put out a record, it was something that I had to play in order to appeal to people, especially to gay audiences, [regardless of] whether the record was good or bad.”

Simply put, from the mid-1990s forward, much of queer nightlife suffered from a deficit of taste, something that can be traced back to the devastating impact of AIDS. “A lot of people might have bridged the gap with an oral history of where I came from, but there are not a lot of people left from that generation to hand that down,” says Chris Cruse, who organizes an underground, queer-oriented party called Spotlight in Los Angeles. “There are some, but maybe they weren’t as hedonistic as the people who ended up disappearing in the ’80s and ’90s.” Ron Like Hell, who DJs as one half of Wrecked and works as a buyer at New York’s Academy Records store, remembers the impact that one mentor, a DJ from St. Louis who died in 1992, had on him back in his hometown of Albuquerque. Ironically, he can’t recall the man’s name, but the knowledge passed down remains fresh in his mind. “We had many great long conversations about clubbing and his personal life,” says Ron Like Hell. “He really loved records and clubbing and told me about [Chicago house legend] Larry Heard — no one else did. If he had kept on living, he could definitely be carrying some of that fire into today’s conversation about queer history.”

During the height of the HIV/AIDS era, circuit parties played a central role in queer nightlife, initially as benefits during the worst throes of the crisis. Over time, however, they grew in size and scope, many of them becoming massive “fly in” events dominated by commercial music and what some found to be an alienating aesthetic. “For a lot of us, the imagery on the flyer — the shaved, smooth guy and shirtless, beautiful boys — isn’t really our identity,” says New York’s Ryan Smith, who works as a booking agent and serves as the other half of Wrecked. “We didn’t really feel comfortable on those dance floors. They didn’t feel like home to us, so a lot us were going to see parties in traditionally straight venues.” His DJ partner Ron Like Hell concurs: “60-80% of my club life has been all about preferring to go to more straight parties because of the musical talent [they brought]. These guys were preserving more of our gay disco dance music history than gay DJs were at that time.”

That history is important, and a new crop of queer DJs and promoters are taking steps to reclaim it. Most prominent among them is Honey Soundsystem, a San Francisco collective that simultaneously pushes new sounds while celebrating the legacy of queer dance music. Often explicitly. Through a series of parties and well-received reissues, the crew has been instrumental in spurring the resurgence of interest in synthesizer wizard Patrick Cowley, a brilliant Bay Area songwriter who collaborated with the disco star Sylvester and tragically passed away in 1982, an early victim of AIDS. In 2015, Honey Soundsystem teamed up with Red Bull Music Academy for an event celebrating four decades of queer nightlife at the long-running San Francisco gay club The Endup, and used its DJ residency at Chicago’s Smart Bar as a platform to create a multi-faceted exploration of gay culture called Generators.

And Honey Soundsystem is by no means alone in its efforts. In recent years, a network of like-minded queer and queer-positive parties has developed across the nation, including A Club Called Rhonda and Spotlight in Los Angeles, Wrecked in New York, Dickslap in Seattle, Macho City in Detroit, Honcho in Pittsburgh and Men’s Room, Queen! and Hugo Ball in Chicago, with additional club-nights continuing to pop up all the time. These events are by no means uniform, yet they do seem to share an affinity for tastefully curated programming, transitory environments, uninhibited sexual freedom and a soundtrack of classic (or at least classics-inspired) dance music.

While the music at these parties is in many ways looking backwards — some of the records being played are literally decades old, and even the newer songs on offer are often designed to emulate, or at least reference, the salad days of dance music — they can’t just be written off as exercises in nostalgia. Honey Soundystem co-founder Jacob Sperber cites the intrinsic value of playing a song that’s “written by a gay man, about a gay man,” while Cruse points to the artists that produced these records and the voices that populate them, even in sample form: “A lot of them are black women or black gay men. Those voices are important.”

Of course, queer history and culture goes well beyond music and nightlife, and for much of the past decade the dominant narrative has centered on the drive towards mainstream acceptance. The 2015 legalization of gay marriage stands as this movement’s crowning achievement and queer people are seemingly more visible and accepted than ever before within the context of American culture. Still, not everyone in queer circles is happy with what they see as the increasing normalization of their community. “I have no desire to be accepted or validated by someone who is heteronormative,” says Dijon. “If you look, [straight] relationship models haven’t worked out so well. Their gender issues haven’t worked out so well. They’re still arguing about the differences between men and women.”

“I’m interested in holding on to our culture,” says Cruse. “I don’t aspire to a heteronormative life, so I think it’s important to keep creating these queer spaces, because if you don’t, you’ll see everyone get whitewashed, assimilated — it’s so boring. The desire isn’t for us all to be the same.” His Spotlight parties reflect this sentiment, and not just in terms of the clientele or the impeccably curated music — the environments themselves run counter to the mainstream. Exclusively staging his events in loft and warehouse spaces, off the usual club grid, Cruse puts just as much effort into piecing together the sound system as he does the construction of the darkroom, a key element of every Spotlight party. “They’re there if you want to use them,” he says. “It’s not mandatory. It’s just acknowledging that we have a sexual side to us. If you need to slip off into the darkroom, you can, and come back with a new friend — it’s not frowned upon or embarrassing.”

Chicago’s Men’s Room parties, which require all entrants to remove either their top or their bottoms before they walk through the door, are even more intensely sexual. “We only do our parties in spaces that allow sexuality to take place out in the open,” says resident DJ Harry Cross. Currently held at a venue called The Hole, the party previously took place at the Bijou Theater, the country’s oldest gay adult cinema and sex club before it closed in 2015. Over in Pittsburgh, the monthly Honcho events happen at Hot Mass, a party space inside of a gay bath house. “As gay culture has become more mainstream,” says Honcho founder Aaron Clark, “we needed to have the option for not everything to be family-friendly. It’s probably the only place that people can party in this city, find someone to hook up with, and get a little bit dirty in the club.”

It wasn’t long ago that this kind of overtly sexual attitude was frowned upon in the queer community, at least publicly. Even as new treatments have lessened the level of devastation, the psychological scars of AIDS continue to be felt. “Since the AIDS crisis, the message has been clear: There is only one way to have sex without getting HIV,” says Sperber. “For gay men specifically, as intrinsic as it is to put a wig on, is the fear that sex might kill you. Imagine taking a pill that changes all of that — it is some sci-fi movie s***.” He’s referring to the recent appearance of drugs like PrEP and Truvada, which drastically reduce the risk of transmission and have been credited with helping to reinvigorate the sexual element of queer nightlife. “In many ways, Truvada has created a ‘glory days’ feeling in the clubs,” says Sperber.

“There’s a level of freedom that’s not necessarily present in other parties, a freedom towards hedonism,” says Steve Mizek, a Chicago DJ who heads up the dance-music record labels Argot and Tasteful Nudes, and previously helmed the influential electronic music website Little White Earbuds. “There are a lot fewer inhibitions about body image and really letting go and dancing and doing whatever you want with whomever you want.”

At Los Angeles’ A Club Called Rhonda, a more mixed event which often bills itself as a “pansexual party palace,” being comfortable isn’t necessarily about hooking up — it’s more about being fabulous, with a crowd known for its over-the-top attire and outlandish behavior. “You see the queer people up on stage,” says co-founder Gregory Alexander, “in various forms of dress, with fans, dancing, voguing all over the floor, then you’re going to want to be part of that, because you realize that’s welcomed and put on a pedestal at our club.”

Rhonda’s elaborate decorations are another essential ingredient, as Alexander explains: “We like to go the extra mile and not only make an environment that feels free and interesting, but looks free and interesting.” Sperber takes a similar approach at Honey Soundsystem, stating, “It’s the last thing that certain promoters think about, but for a gay man, it’s just kind of instinctual to want to create a more pleasurable space.”

“It goes back to the stage, the theater,” says Ron Like Hell. “Lights, makeup, wigs, costumes — people love a show. Artists have always been uninhibited, whether they’re homosexual or not, and queer culture goes back to the days of classic, true, amazing entertainment — the spectacle of people being more than themselves, and unashamedly so.” There’s a political element too, as Sperber points out. “The culture of drag and the culture of parades,” he says, “and the idea that liberation came through these things that made people uncomfortable but were actually really theatrical and have been around forever … it intrinsically follows into the party spaces.”

“There’s something in the struggle that creates great art, music and community,” says Nathan Drew Larsen, co-founder of Chicago’s Hugo Ball. A self-described “polysexual, oppositional, surrealist” party with a political bent — its manifesto rails against “carpetbaggers, sanitizers and cultural dilettantes” — Hugo Ball was also conceived to combat the fractured nature of the city’s nightlife. “We just wanted to create something where people could get away from that and mix,” says Larsen. “We’re not a men’s party — I’m transgender …. Our whole point is to be open to just everybody across the spectrum.”

When it comes to inclusion, there’s certainly more work to be done. “Even in the alternative part of the underground, white men still dominate,” adds Larsen. Still, there are reasons to be optimistic. Souffront, Dijon and Servito — all three queer people of color — have seen their profiles rise significantly as of late, both in the U.S. and abroad, where they regularly play at top-line festivals and vaunted nightspots like Berlin’s Panorama Bar. (Last year, Servito was even voted onto Resident Advisor’s annual — and highly influential — DJ poll.) Honey Soundsystem has also seen its gig calendar dramatically spike in recent months. These artists are flying the flag for the queer history of American dance music. “Disco and house music, it’s all derived from the gay community,” says Servito. “A lot of us feel strong about that and more connected to it than ever. The way things are in dance music today, in club culture, it’s predominantly straight. It’s just a matter of time before [queer] people start to latch on and take what’s theirs.”

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

“Femaphilia was basically a word that I created as a response to undertoned elements within the queer communities globally of femaphobia, and in the mainstream culture as well,” Barnes says. “Femaphobia,” he says, refers to a fear of “things that are feminine — especially feminine guys.”

“Femaphilia” counters that fear. It embraces “the love of the feminine,” he says, “to celebrate all the positive aspects that I’ve noticed so far on this journey.”

It’s also the name of Barnes’ new single. Alongside producer, DJ and singer/songwriter Rich Morel, Barnes recently began making music under the name SISTR MID9IGHT.

SISTR MID9IGHT happened by chance. Barnes says Morel spotted him performing in drag in 2014, and asked him if he sings. Why, yes, Barnes replied — he’d been singing almost since he was a toddler. So he and Morel began meeting regularly, laying down tracks in Morel’s home studio in Takoma Park, Maryland. The duo’s debut, “Femaphilia” officially arrived Monday.

Barnes says the subterranean and sensual track derives inspiration from ‘70s icons including Iggy Pop, Grace Jones and David Bowie. (The name “Sister Midnight” comes from a song co-written by Bowie and Carlos Alomar, recorded by Iggy Pop for The Idiot.) It’s all about “this hard, gritty, but also very seductive sound.” Barnes wrote the lyrics — inspired by an impromptu selfie session — and he says it reflects his life experience.

By day Barnes works as a manager at a local boutique, but he’s been performing in drag for the last five years. His stage name? Pussy Noir.

“Pussy Noir is this kind of black girl that went to Europe and came back to America and is really that epitome of French, smoking, cool, after-sex seduction,” says Barnes. “You know, [wearing] that gorgeous dress that’s just falling off the shoulder, revealing just a little bit of the nipple.”

Barnes explains that when he performs with SISTR MID9IGHT, there’s not a hard line between Jason Barnes — musician and person — and Pussy Noir. That said, Pussy Noir encapsulates his work to create visibility and sexual agency for the feminine male, who he says can be trivialized in mainstream media and culture.

“We’re there, we’re part of the gay world, we’re in the movies,” Barnes says. “A lot of times [it’s] comedy… [or] a buffer of something else, but not necessarily being a central character who actually is a sexual human being.”

Barnes says Pussy Noir and SISTR MID9IGHT are “branding this idea that I hope people understand and don’t fear it, and will look at it and say, ‘This is part of our world.’”

Barnes says the duo has more music on the way.

March 5, SISTR MID9IGHT makes its live debut at Comet Ping Pong in Northwest D.C.. While there’s no such thing as a typical SISTR MID9IGHT show yet, expect true showmanship from the duo.

“The costumes are coming out,” says Barnes. “I am expecting big furs and all red and body skimming, and a lot of sweat by the end of it, for sure.”

SISTR MID9IGHT performs March 5 at Comet Ping Pong.

David Bowie plays Maryland’s Capital Centre, 1974 (Hunter Desportes)

On his first trip to the U.S. in 1971, Bowie was detained by immigration officials at Dulles Airport who were “suspicious of his fey manner and flowing pre-Raphaelite locks,” according to Bowie biographer Paul Trynka. He later made his way to Silver Spring, stopping at the family home of Mercury Records’ Ron Oberman and chowing down at a local restaurant, Washington City Paper recalls.

Bowie would go on to play numerous concerts at Maryland’s Capital Centre, including a stop on his Diamond Dogs tour in 1974. Thirty years later, he played his final local gig: a 2004 concert in Fairfax. Reviewing the show for the Washington Post, Dave McKenna wrote, “with a set that covered more than three decades of classic recordings in two-plus hours, David Bowie reminded a crowded house at the Patriot Center on Sunday how far ahead of the curve he so often was.”

Fans of the late music and style beacon gathered for a memorial in D.C.’s Malcolm X Park last night, and H Street hangout Sticky Rice hosted a Bowie karaoke session. But if you missed out, there’s plenty Bowie mourning/celebrating left to do in the capital region.

Check out this list of local tributes, below. (Did we overlook one? Drop a comment below, tweet at us or email bandwidth@wamu.org.)

State of the Union/David Bowie tribute
Jan. 12 at JR’s Bar & Grill
This Dupont Circle bar offers a double whammy tonight: a drinking game for President Obama’s final State of the Union address plus a Bowie tribute.

David Bowie Tribute Party
Jan. 14 at Rock & Roll Hotel
At this free party, DJ Ed the Metaphysical spins Bowie all night on the Rock & Roll Hotel’s second floor.

Let’s Dance
Jan. 14 at The Crown in Baltimore
David Bowie’s 1983 single “Let’s Dance” was one of his most popular songs ever, and his album by the same name is his top-selling record to date. No wonder — both are dance-floor gold to this day. Thursday in Baltimore, DJ Pancakes spins a night of ’80s dance tunes, sprinkled liberally with Bowie’s poppiest.

Holy Holy plays The Man Who Sold the World
Jan. 14 at Birchmere
Booked before news broke of Bowie’s death, this show at Alexandria’s Birchmere features longtime Bowie producer Tony Visconti and ex-Bowie drummer Woody Woodmansey playing the late star’s third album, The Man Who Sold the World, in full. As far as local Bowie tributes go, this is as real as it gets.

A Queer Tribute to David Bowie
Feb. 13 at Phase 1
Queer-friendly dance party GndrF?ck “celebrates Trans* folk from all around the spectrum,” according to its Facebook page. Next month, the soirée focuses on tunes from Bowie, whose famous gender play and bisexuality made him an icon for queer people everywhere. Resident DJ Ego spins.

Top photo by Flickr user Sarah Stierch and 1974 Bowie image by Hunter Desportes used under a Creative Commons license.

Diaz and her bandmates — sister Phanie Diaz on drums and longtime friend Jenn Alva on bass — embrace traditional rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, delicate indie-pop and devastating post-punk with the same alacrity. As a live act, Girl in a Coma embodies all the power-trio glory and intensity of The Jam. The band’s most recent album, 2011 LP Exits & All the Rest, is widely considered to be its best.

For now, though, Girl in a Coma is on hold while its members pursue other projects. Phanie Diaz and Alva have a new band, Fea, and Nina Diaz’s debut solo album, The Beat Is Dead, scheduled for release in spring 2016.

With National Hispanic Heritage Month in full swing across D.C. and the U.S., Diaz recently passed through D.C. to perform at a National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts gala. Bandwidth spoke with the musician about her involvement with the organization, her recent transition into sobriety and her experiences as a musician in San Antonio, which — like D.C. — is a relatively large city without a major music industry.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Bandwidth: This trip started around the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts gala. How did that come about?

Nina Diaz: What I’ve come to realize is that in Hispanic arts, it’s a small world. We’re all connected, which is a good thing because in my culture we’re all like family. “What can I do to help you?” “Don’t piss me off.” It’s very close, [with] forgiveness and anger, but we still — bottom line — want to help each other out.

How I got hooked up with [this gig] was Felix Sanchez from the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, he’s the one who puts it together, and his nephew is a fan of Girl in a Coma. He went to Brown University with my manager, Faith. So that’s how they are connected.

It seems that part of the foundation’s mission is furthering the presence of Latino and Hispanic artists in media — in entertainment and music. Does that resonate with you?

It does, especially now that I’m understanding what I could possibly do. With Girl in a Coma, it just happens to be that Jenn and Phanie are gay. It just happens to be that we’re all women. It just happens to be that we’re all Latinas. We just want to play music. So, with that, we started our thing without us knowing we were influencing the gay community and Latina communities. Then we took on the responsibility.

Girl in a Coma is known as being such a well-oiled machine, and it seems that with your solo project, you’re pacing things a bit differently.

Yeah, my manager is noticing what each of us did in Girl in a Coma, because now we’re split. [My role in] Girl in a Coma has always been the writer — and the victim in a lot of situations, too — and feeling like the weird front singer. Phanie’s the business, [like,] “Let’s say yes to everything.” Jenn is the muscle. Phanie’s a big reason why we were constantly on the road, which is not a bad thing. It taught me to be strong on the road.

“This is a big deal for me, to put my guitar down. It’s symbolic of me letting go, of me asking for help. To be able to do this shows how much I’ve grown. I’ve been through so many different phases: diva, quiet, all these different things. And the person I’m becoming now, I’m actually liking.”

I think I heard you say once that a lot of what benefits Girl in a Coma is that your bandmates were your sister and your friend first, and your bandmates second. Does that approach come into play with your band now?

When we first started to form, I knew right away that I wanted Jorge [Gonzalez, of Pop Pistol] to play drums. I knew I wanted my band to be made up of San Antonio-based musicians. I wanted to give people a chance to make their way up, rather than well-known musicians already, and paying them $200 a show or something ridiculous which I can’t afford right now. I wanted to give other San Antonio musicians a chance; maybe after playing with me, who knows where this could take them?

When we started, it was all new for me to be a boss. Right now, we’re still in the middle of getting to know each other. But of course, with Jorge, it happened by accident that we ended up [starting] a relationship. It’s funny, they say, “Don’t eat where you s**t,” but a lot of people do it, like No Doubt and Selena. So we definitely have that relationship, but then balancing it with, I’m his boss. But it’s good that he’s the drummer, so he doesn’t get in my way too much.

Speaking of Selena, you’ve been doing “Techno Cumbia” in your solo sets. Of course, you did “Si Una Vez” on Adventures in Coverland. You’ve also done “Come On Let’s Go” from Ritchie Valens. As far as U.S.-born artists of Latino background, do you feel a connection to those artists?

I definitely do. Especially not being fluent in Spanish. Ritchie Valens, Selena — their first language was English. … They felt more comfortable speaking English than speaking Spanish. I feel the same way, I’m not fluent at all in Spanish. I can sing it, but I’m still learning how to speak it. …

So, I can’t help but feel connected with them. But I’m also me. A lot of times I’d get so caught up in trying to be like someone else… that you forget who you are, and you end up being like a poser, you know? … Now at the point where I’m at, especially with my solo music, I find myself thinking for me, and knowing I’m Nina Diaz, these are my struggles, and this is what I’m going through right now.

It strikes me that there are parallels between San Antonio and D.C., where they’re these relatively large cities with significant Latino populations and no real music industry in the city. Do you think that not growing up in L.A. or Nashville helped develop your music more organically?

Yeah. If I had been from L.A. or Austin even, I don’t think I would’ve had the grasp over my music that I do, with such emotion and passion. … Unfortunately, not a lot of bands stick together because they don’t realize you need to go out and tour. You need to get out. You can’t just stay here.

You’re so known as a guitarist. To step away from the guitar — is that freeing in a way?

Yeah. It is. Like I told Travis [Vela, her guitarist], this is a big deal for me, to put my guitar down. It’s symbolic of me letting go, of me asking for help. “Can you carry this?” It’s a symbolic thing for me, and to be able to do this shows how much I’ve grown. I’ve been through so many different phases: diva, quiet, all these different things. And the person I’m becoming now, I’m actually liking.

I would imagine there could be unexpected challenges doing what you do, suddenly sober.

Oh yeah. I’m the biggest challenge to myself. It’s not so much other people. It’s funny, when I’m at a show and someone will come up to me and say, “Do you want a beer?” Someone next to them will go, “She doesn’t drink.” It’s nice to know that people have my back. You will never see a drink in my hand, nor will you ever see a straw up my nose ever again.

In a way, though, I’m the biggest person who can cause conflict for myself. If I just tell myself, “You’re not good enough,” or if those voices start coming in my head, of, “Why is it taking so long? What are you doing wrong?” That’s when I can drive myself crazy, or when a trigger can come at any moment. Being that I’ve been through so much, and I’ve put my family through so much, I know that I would never, ever have a drop of alcohol or ever go back to doing hard drugs again, because of all the pain. But talking about it is the way that I let it out, and getting other people to tell me their stories. I love that.

[But] you’re working at a bar?

Yeah, I’m bar-backing at Limelight in San Antonio, but it’s kind of slow. I’m doing open mics there on Mondays, and that’s a lot of fun. I used to do open mics at this bar called Martini Ranch about four years ago. It was a good time. But then that’s also when I was in my dark times as well. But now, being clean and sober, some of the acts that come through it’s like, “Ah, that’s why I did drugs.” For real! But then, God bless them. They’re having fun.

Now I can look at the bar and not feel anything. I can literally be behind the bar and be like, “I want a Red Bull,” or something else instead. Nina at 16 years old, if she had been at that job she would have been drunk in the first five minutes of working there.