Tag: trans music tuesday

For this Trans Music Tuesday, another electronic music visionary! Glenn Copeland (he/him, also professionally known as Beverly Glenn-Copeland) is a genre-defying singer, songwriter, and pianist. After starting his career in jazz and folk, Copeland brought his warm intimate sound to electronica in 1986 with self-produced album Keyboard Fantasies. Ahead of its time, it didn’t originally sell many copies, but was rediscovered in the 2010s, leading Copeland to go on his first international tour at age 74!

I highly recommend the Keyboard Fantasies documentary about the album, the tour, and Copeland’s story behind the scenes. Here’s my favorite song from the album, performed live with touring band Indigo Rising:

Sources: https://www.them.us/story/beverly-glenn-copeland-the-ones-ahead-interview
https://youtu.be/n_U-NZC7EoE?si=6rbmfF-Gc8zdQLgm

Happy Trans Music Tuesday! This week’s artist is Lucas Silveira. He made history in 2006 as the first out trans man to be signed to a major label with his rock band The Cliks. In the years since, he has made more music with the Cliks (both before and after he started T in 2010), and gone independent as a solo artist. I listened to his solo album “The Goddamn Flowers” on repeat in the nerve-wracking early days of my voice change, and found it super reassuring.

In addition to leading by example, Silveira directly mentors trans and non-binary music artists through the Toronto-based “Transcendence In Sound” program. Here’s the Cliks’ “Savanna”:

Sources: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/lucas-silveira-first-trans-man-major-label/
https://canvasrebel.com/meet-lucas-silveira/

Happy Trans Music Tuesday! Today’s featured artist is Liniker (she/her), a Black Brazilian singer-songwriter. Her music, solo and with her band Liniker e os Caramelows, mixes elements of soul, jazz, reggae, samba, and more. She made history in 2022 for being the first trans artist to win a Latin Grammy, with her win for Best MPB Album (Música Popular Brasileira). Here’s a beautiful performance of her song “Presente”:

It’s Trans Music Tuesday! Here’s a cool historical trans musician I learned about from Eli Erlick.

Masoud El Amaratly was an early-20th-century singer from what is now Iraq, and a mustarjil, a word in his Ahwari culture for what we might now call a trans man. He started publicly identifying as a man around age 18, and also started gaining success as a singer around that period. He recorded songs in the abuḏiya style in the 1920s and 30s, which were popular throughout Iraq and in neighboring countries. He’s a great example of how trans people lived and thrived even in the past, and have been welcomed in regions that now are much more hostile. Transphobia is not inevitable or eternal – it comes and goes, and we’re still here.

Sources: https://ajammc.com/2023/06/26/iraq-trans-history-masoud-amaratly/, https://web.archive.org/web/20250915204559/https://digital.newint.com.au/issues/52/articles/891?srsltid=AfmBOooDdoij0etO65qy89DvlArb9U6VwQF7UmqHlqUv0rdYnVAjhbOg