You might think that Beyoncé’s
Sasha Fierce or Tyra Bank’s feisty callouts are an extension of their strong
personalities. You’ll be surprised to learn that New York’s underground,
drag-based Ballroom or ‘Ball’ subculture is the real inspiration. Balls see
GLBT New Yorkers strut their stuff in elaborately-crafted stage shows that mix
drag, couture and dance. Participants hope to win trophies and secure praise
for their ‘realness’. Since the 80s, the styles, sounds and symbols born from
Balls have been referenced by a plethora of musicians and performers – with
little tangible benefit to the community itself.
Balls play host to a
type of dancing queen worlds away from ABBA. African American and Hispanic
members of New York’s GLBT community have dominated Ball for decades. The
community is characterised by external prejudice and internal struggle, with
members often involved in sex work, drugs and alcohol abuse, and subjected to
hatred and bigotry. Some have been abandoned by their families due to their
sexual orientation whilst others have endured poverty or mistreatment at home.
Participants in Ball
find shelter in ‘houses’, which are sub-groups led by a senior Ball individual.
With evocative names like Xtravaganza, LaBeija and Legacy International, these
houses nurture and develop talented youngsters (‘Ball children’) to become
legends of the scene. They also serve as surrogate families, providing the
acceptance and support that participants’ relations often fail to provide. Ball culture provides
community members an opportunity to forget their daily financial and social
struggles, emulating the wealth and ease they see in society’s elites but have
little hope of attaining themselves.
Ironically, a segment
of those elites – namely celebrities - have gained prosperity by taking
influence from Ball culture. Madonna, Beyoncé, Scissor Sisters and Azealia
Banks have all appropriated aspects of Ball in their music and performances,
including stage outfits, poses and lyrics. While the music industry generates
revenue from its appropriations of Ballroom culture, the collective rarely
enjoys the spoils of its labour.
There are not only
financial implications, but cultural ones too. Ball veteran Lee Soulja and Father
of the House of Khan Luna Khan believe that when the sub-culture is
appropriated by the mainstream, “a lot of people still don’t know where it came
[sic] from”. The Ball community strongly believes that society should be aware of
when Ball culture is being referenced, and what it actually entails: poverty
and fantasy in equal measure.
Acknowledgement
is a tenuous issue. Beyoncé has professed to take inspiration for her alter ego
Sasha Fierce from the cutthroat performance style of New York drag queens. She
has described Fierce as “the more aggressive, more glamorous side that comes
out when I'm on the stage”. Like Ball
participants, Beyoncé uses the persona to project an exaggerated image separate
from reality. Knowles is everything that members of the Ball community wish to
be – rich, powerful and celebrated. However, her name-checking of Ball culture has
not transferred any of those attributes onto the community.
Despite the
high-profile nature of Ball culture knock-offs, actual members of the group
rarely shake their low socio-economic status or anonymity. Occasionally,
individuals break into the spotlight.
Madonna’s 1990 single ‘Vogue’
took its name and synonymous head-framing dance from the Ball circuit. Madge
briefly provided some fame and financial advantage for two Ballroom dancers she
recruited for the song’s promotion. Azealia Banks employed similar methods with
her track ‘Fierce’, inviting a husky New
York drag queen to recall his memories of 1980s Balls over a percussive house
beat.
But even these
concessions are relatively basic. They are concerned with glamour and luxury,
rather than the daily life or identity of Ball participants. Members of the
community (or ‘Ball children’) celebrate their sexuality, physicality and race
to a supportive – albeit limited – audience at Balls. Many wish for fame so as
to further broadcast their sexual identities, and improve their quality of
life.
Some argue that popular
appropriations of Ball culture achieve the former goal, promoting GLBT culture
positively to large audiences. Others, however, believe that the actions of
Madonna et al are tantamount to pillaging.
It is
also thought that by melding Ball culture to fit the demands of popular
audiences, artists patronise the collective. They present a one-dimensional,
simplistic version of a group that is as tragic as it is joyful, relying on
aspects of the culture that are easily digestible.
One
avenue of this superficial referencing is the bespoke terminology that has
gradually emerged from the Ball circuit. Phrases like “throwing shade” and
“spilling tea” codify Ball culture, and distinguish it from broader society.
They also provide a selling point for pop songs, setting a track apart from its
chart competitors through wacky lyrics that convey nonsense and fun.
A case
in point is the Scissor Sisters’ ‘Let’s
Have A Kiki’. The track’s title arouses curiosity, while its
prim-and-proper rap verses are matched with a bizarre range of Ball culture
phrases. Soulja and Khan claim that the track has left much of the Ball
community feeling “like they are being ripped off”. “It’s cute that they are
using Ballroom language, but why can’t they just simply add in a reference to its
origin?” they ask.
New
Yorker and dance music performer Cherie Lily recognises the importance of
crediting the Ball circuit. Her high-energy song ‘WERK’, which she describes as “a tribute to the scene”, draws
heavily on Ball vocab: “gimme face”, “realness”, and “a legend never dies”
stutter over a pulsating electro beat throughout. New York nightlife
personalities appear in the ‘WERK’
video, making clear the influence that Ball culture has had on Lily’s music.
“Without them, I wouldn't have been able to express the vibe,” she says.
Even
when Ball culture is acknowledged (in the cases of Beyoncé and Cherie Lily, for
example), broader understanding of the community’s experience is usually
limited at best. The financial difficulties, drug abuse, prostitution, familial
rejection and violence that have characterised the community’s underbelly are hidden
beneath an exterior of flamboyance and exhibitionism. This surface is never
scratched through by entertainment industry heavyweights.
A token reference is
better than nothing, however. According to DJ Johnny Dynell, Madonna was (and
is) seen by Ball particpants “as a thief who was exploiting them and making
money from their scene”, without verbally paying credit to it.
Similar issues are at
play closer to home. Aboriginal hip hop is not a high-profile genre for
commercial radio listeners or chart devotees. Its influence on broader
Australia hip hop, though, is considerable – and rarely acknowledged.
Sydney-based rapper
Munkimuk is renowned by his peers as the godfather of Aboriginal hip-hop. He
believes that Australia’s flourishing hip hop circuit owes much of its success
to the work of underappreciated and uncredited forbears. Recalling the scene’s
early incarnations, Munkimuk describes “this little thing that only these sorts
of races [Aboriginal, Islander and Lebanese] were into” – a means of conveying
personal experience, often closely tied to ethnicity and subjugation.
A run-through of the
today’s best-known Australian hip hop artists - Hilltop Hoods, 360, Drapht and
Bliss N Eso - reveals a markedly different ethnic make-up. An anthology called The Best of Aussie Hip Hop released last
year focuses on the genre’s recent commercial successes. Aboriginal hip hop is
notable in its absence from the tracklisting, given the sway Aboriginal artists
have held. Such omissions will only widen the existing fissure between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists in terms of financial and cultural
recognition.
For years the
Australian accent was commercially detrimental for hip hop. According to
Munkimuk, using one’s actual accent rather than a faux-American twang “was
looked upon by mainstream music listeners as weird”. He believes that
Aboriginal hip hop helped local acts become comfortable performing with their
natural enunciation, ultimately producing a more distinctive national flavour.
The
influence of Aboriginal culture doesn’t end there. Wire MC’s track ‘It’s A Modern Day Corroboree’ infers a
link between hip hop and traditional indigenous oral story-telling. Perhaps the
narrative style that now underpins local hip hop owes its roots, to some
extent, to this initial adaptation by the Aboriginal hip hop community.
Although
non-indigenous hip hop acts currently rule the commercial roost, Munkimuk
thinks that Aboriginal rappers remain a source of uncredited inspiration.
“Aussie hip-hop artists are right onto the indigenous scene,” he says. The
stories of Aboriginal rapper are still being told, but seldom on a commercial
stage.
To an extent, the
commonalities between Aboriginal and non-indigenous hip hop can be attributed
to the nature of the genre. Rap is, at its core, about overcoming adversity.
The difficulty here, then, is that indigenous struggles aren’t being given the
same voice as others.
Likewise, Ball culture
and pop music hold intrinsic commonalities. Both are based around the desire to
forget one’s circumstances in favour of another world of glamour, energy and
happiness. More than any other factor, the transformative, escapist nature of
pop helps explain why Azealia Banks raps about the glitz of Ball culture,
rather than the prostitution and drug abuse that it’s so closely linked to.
Some
members of the Ballroom collective are happy to accept their lot, content in
the knowledge that they have inspired popular movements. According to Johnny
Dynell, the process of mainstream adaptation follows a familiar pattern. “Some people will make money from it,
some will become famous but most will just fade away. It's cultural Darwinism,”
he says.
Others will continue to
fight for recognition, keen for the world to understand the source of its
entertainment and the turmoil and trauma key to its development. The desires of
this party are epitomised in the 1988 film Paris
Is Burning, which exposes the shiny facade of Ballroom competitions and the
frequently sad circumstances that give rise to them. Drag queen Dorian Corey summarises
the community’s position – past and present – when he says that “everybody
wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world”.
