Fanfare for Gay Pride
— a loud burst or musical flourish greeting an auspicious event or person(s)
If there has been any other constant, besides change, in our Community it has been the power of music. From the first night of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, music has played an integral part in the LGBT Community.
Patrons gathered inside the “Stonewall Club” on that sweltering night to grieve after the funeral of their beloved Judy Garland; to listen to the jukebox and catch-up; and to dance with someone who looked and dressed like them. What they could not have imagined a few hours later would be the drag queen kick line outside protesting the police raid by singing
In good times or bad, music has helped us dance in the rain, express our love, and celebrate our pride, and most of all, bind us together as a Community. For this reason, theOUTfront is celebrating Gay Pride Month with a daily series, “Sounds of Pride –The Music of Community, Love, and Equality”
Our first selection pays tribute to the Stonewall Veterans who were there that night, and came back three more nights, protesting and forging a Community. The same way sound emanates in concentric, spherical waves outward from one point, so too does the Gay Rights Movement emanate outward from that one moment into the largest global civil rights movement in history.
Making it even more remarkable is that it wasn’t started by politicians or celebrities or “taste makers.” It was started by every day, “common” gays and lesbians, queens and queer kids who became the “accidental” heroes and heroines of our Community because they had had “enough!”
To them theOUTfront dedicates openly gay composer, Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which “celebrates the Universal belief that the greatest deeds are accomplished by the common folk from all walks of life without fanfare…”
Welcome to Gay Pride 2018
#proudOUTloud
