Thursday, 6 September 2012

Mighty Realness









From his website:
At his yearly, highly anticipated Gay Pride Day Concert in San Francisco in the late 1970's, Sylvester, reveling in his role as a local superstar, ignited the crowd. As shown in the Academy Award winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, Sylvester inspired all the clones, fairies, leather guys, and even the preppies, to dance like they were one big, happy, multi-racial family of queens. He even lured a surprisingly demure Harvey Milk onto the dance floor...

...at a time when the rallying cry of the gay liberation movement was "Come out of the closet," to see a black queen on stage, "being real," altered perceptions, changed attitudes and helped many thousands of fans feel better about themselves. What's more, Sylvester helped all gay people of color gain a measure of visibility that was often elusive in the world of muscled white men. Today Sylvester endures as an inspiration- and still shows all of us that we all have the power to pursue our own "realness."




RIP


Sylvester James (6th September 1947 – 16th December 1988)

8 comments:

  1. LOVE LOVE LOVE SYLVESTER!

    Love you, too, sweetie darling!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You KNOW I love him too!

    AND you two Bitches.

    Sylvester SHOULD have been born on the 7th along with Thombeau but his mother went into labour early.

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    Replies
    1. Everybody is a star! Everybody is one... Jx

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  3. Makes me want to have a Sylvester party, and we all dress up in one of his many looks, sing and have drinks!

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    Replies
    1. Dance with me in the disco heat, Come on and dance! Jx

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