When musicians Noah Demland and Sam Johnson first talked about collaborating, a number of their conversations centered on a series of questions: What makes music queer? And can you tell a person is queer by the sound of the music they’re making?
Though the two never landed on an answer, both said the interrogation pushed them to dig deeper into music that more directly confronts gender and otherness. This exploration gives shape and definition to “Contrary Motion,” an evening of solo and ensemble performances for which Demland and Johnson have served as co-artistic directors, and which debuts at Urban Arts Space on Friday, June 21.
“I think for me, a lot of this is showcasing these alternative queer musics,” said Demland, who received his introduction to queer music largely through the punk scene, pointing to bands such as Tribe 8 and Team Dresch as foundational. “Tribe 8 was pretty notorious. They definitely had shows canceled, and they got a lot of flak from the queer and non-queer communities for the ways they played with violent imagery, taking back the violence that had been used against women in ways that people sometimes misunderstood.”
In addition to works composed by Demland and Johnson, the concert will also feature ensemble interpretations of pieces by a pair of historically overlooked queer composers, including “Gay Guerilla” by Julius Eastman and “Quintessential” by Pauline Oliveros.
Johnson received their introduction to Eastman’s music via the song “Stay on It,” with Johnson recalling how “the organized chaos” of the recording enthralled him from first listen.
“With ‘Stay on It,’ [Eastman] establishes this groove,” Johnson said. “And that groove just keeps happening, and there’s lots of repetition. And then the groove begins to morph, and you add an extra note and take out some notes. And it builds and builds and builds until the whole group begins to tear apart the groove, going into basically free improvisation and moving into what we would call ugly sounds. … And then everything snaps back into place as if nothing ever happened. … And the first few times I listened, it was just pure delight at the transgressive nature of it, where it’s like, ‘We’re building this thing and then we’re going to tear it down.’”
Over time, Johnson said the repeated building up and tearing down of the rhythm came to signify the push for queer liberation and the need to repeatedly dismantle systems of oppression, deepening the song’s resonance for them.
Both Eastman and Oliveros are composers who have historically existed outside of the canon. Johnson recalled how in undergrad they were subjected to dismissive whispers about Eastman, with a classmate making reference to a composer who used “the N-word and F-slur in titles” and “how absurd that was, how disrespectful to this serious artform.”
“One of the things that really made me excited to dig into [Eastman’s] music more came from looking at the titles [of his compositions] and how he chose to center that punk spirit, because a lot of the early queer music I was exposed to was intentionally offensive, reclaiming these slurs and almost flipping them,” Demland said. “His music really fits into that world of minimalism, but the titles are almost like a big middle finger to that establishment.”
With Oliveros, Johnson witnessed similar disdain, recalling how one music history professor mocked the “silly” healing nature of Oliveros’ compositions. “It’s an intellectual shortcoming when we can’t engage with what this music is actually trying to do,” Johnson said. “And I think that’s part of the reason why these composers have gotten lost – misunderstanding and ignorance.”
The fearless, unabashedly confrontational approaches taken by Oliveros and especially Eastman have taken on added weight for Johnson and Demland as the two have navigated the current social and political environment, which has seen members of the LGBTQ+ community increasingly targeted by Republican legislation and slandered by politicians and the press as “groomers” and worse.
“They’re saying they’re not fit to be teachers and they’re pedophiles and all of these horribly untrue things,” Johnson said. “That kind of rhetoric is still in our cultural system, and for Eastman I think it is the middle finger, and it’s, ‘Okay, if this is what you’re going to call us, how can we reclaim these words for our own use?’ It’s reclaiming some dignity for people who are queer.”
If Eastman and Oliveros walked similar paths on opposite sides of the same fault line, with Oliveros embracing warmth and Eastman confrontation, Johnson and Demland see similarities in how the two embraced improvisation, creating compositional pockets in which ensemble players are tasked with listening and responding in the moment to what is going on around them.
“Everyone is given more agency in these pieces than say in a Beethoven symphony,” Johnson said. “Everyone can listen and make choices, as if we’re cooking this music together, composing it in real time together.”
In one rehearsal, ensemble member Dan Seibert, who also performs as part of the Columbus rock band Hello Emerson, compared the experience of workshopping these pieces as “journeying through the desert together.”
“And I was like, ‘Wow, I never would have described the music in that way.’ But it also showed that he totally got it,” Johnson said. “He articulated something about the mutual support and the moment-by-moment decision making, where it’s about asking, ‘How can we get through this? How do we support one another in getting through and taking responsibility for the whole score?’ And I felt a bit of relief in that, knowing these people really got it, and that they were in it with me.”
