Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: I was so excited. This place was allegedly mecca for
Speaker 2: like gay people and it was underground. Frankie Knuckles was
Speaker 2: the DJ. He was playing all kinds of stuff that
Speaker 2: I certainly had never heard before. I was just taking
Speaker 2: it all in because it was really the first time
Speaker 2: that I had seen people who identified as queer or
Speaker 2: gay in one place. And I remember, right as I
Speaker 2: was about to go down the stairs to go to
Speaker 2: the dance floor, I spotted these two young women sitting
Speaker 2: next to each other and they were holding hands, and
Speaker 2: I just remember my heart like beating fast, like I
Speaker 2: just had a flutter.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: being gay was the worst thing I could ever be. Now,
Speaker 1: as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn that by seeking
Speaker 1: out our history, and what I've found are people and
Speaker 1: stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we'll meet Lari Branch, one of the pioneering DJs of
Speaker 1: house music. We'll learn about the queer Black origins of
Speaker 1: house music, how it's queer history was largely forgotten, and
Speaker 1: how Laurie has fought to preserve it. From my Heart podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Gonsolves and this is what we loved. The
Speaker 1: first time I really heard a house music track, I
Speaker 1: was fourteen years old and I was deep in the closet,
Speaker 1: but I think it was fairly obvious that I was gay.
Speaker 1: I had just won tickets to a Lady Gaga concert
Speaker 1: with my best friend, and right before she came on,
Speaker 1: she put up a countdown video and the soundtrack was
Speaker 1: this house remix and it was an intro to her
Speaker 1: song Dance in the Dark, and I had never heard
Speaker 1: beats like that before. And as the music crescendoed, the
Speaker 1: tension of the song was building and building, and the
Speaker 1: beat dropped into this funky, sexy groove, and all the
Speaker 1: gay men around me were losing their minds. There was
Speaker 1: something about it that gave me permission to lose myself too,
Speaker 1: And looking back, it was really one of the first
Speaker 1: moments I felt truly free. I didn't care about acting
Speaker 1: manly or boyish like I usually always did. I was
Speaker 1: just me. It's not surprising because house music was created
Speaker 1: in queer spaces, by and for queer people as an
Speaker 1: escape from discrimination. My next guest, Lori Branch is a
Speaker 1: legendary house DJ now, but in the late seventies she
Speaker 1: frequented the Black Gay Club, where house music was said
Speaker 1: to be born, and it was the first place she
Speaker 1: felt free to be the queer person she was too.
Speaker 1: When was the first time that you realized you were
Speaker 1: a little bit different than the other girls? Oh?
Speaker 2: Boy, I think I realized I was different as early
Speaker 2: as maybe eight or nine years old. But by the
Speaker 2: time sort of I think puberty started hitting and there
Speaker 2: was a physiological thing happening where I was like attracted
Speaker 2: to people, maybe twelve thirteen. I think that was initially
Speaker 2: to a girl in my class who was already developed
Speaker 2: and all the boys liked. And her name was Denise,
Speaker 2: and she was really beautiful, and I was this scrawny,
Speaker 2: little underdeveloped child. But I remember thinking it would be
Speaker 2: great if I could introduce Denise to my big brothers,
Speaker 2: and it was my way of sort of getting closer
Speaker 2: to her.
Speaker 1: Your way of getting closer to your crush was sort
Speaker 1: of ironically introducing her and hoping she'd get together with
Speaker 1: one of your brothers exactly. So you know, what was
Speaker 1: it like growing up in Chicago as a queer kid.
Speaker 1: I presume you weren't out at that time, But what
Speaker 1: was it like sort of having those feelings and growing
Speaker 1: up in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I was. It was just it's like, really
Speaker 2: the early seventies and being in Chicago. I lived with
Speaker 2: a pretty conservative family. My father was a minister, my
Speaker 2: mom was a teacher. They were pillars of the community.
Speaker 2: Everybody loved and respected them. We had one of those
Speaker 2: kool Aid houses where everybody gathered, and I got signals
Speaker 2: early on, maybe as early as ten years old, that
Speaker 2: homosexuality was a bad thing. There was a moment where
Speaker 2: in my household we had the Ebony magazine. If you
Speaker 2: were black in America in the sixties and seventies, everyone
Speaker 2: had Ebony magazine. Everybody subscribed to it. Ebony and Jet
Speaker 2: those were the popular magazines. And I was reading an
Speaker 2: article about Johnny Mathis, and Johnny Mathis was this very
Speaker 2: popular R and B pop crooner from the fifties all
Speaker 2: the way up through like the nineties. He had pretty
Speaker 2: strong career, and I was sharing with my mom, like,
Speaker 2: he's so cute, and she had such disdain for him,
Speaker 2: and she said something about his homosexuality and the way
Speaker 2: she was describing it. And my mom's pretty sweet, so
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen her have that level of vitriol towards anything,
Speaker 2: so it kind of surprised me. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with homosexuality? And she got really angry and
Speaker 2: she said something like something really vulgar, you know for
Speaker 2: my ten year old ears. And I was just kind
Speaker 2: of distraught, and I realized that, Okay, so whatever he's
Speaker 2: doing is not good and I need to pay attention
Speaker 2: to that. I think it was more unconscious than anything,
Speaker 2: so I learned to, you know, be quiet.
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned that your dad was a minister. What
Speaker 1: was it like growing up religious? Were you going to
Speaker 1: church multiple times a week or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm from a couple of different religious backgrounds. So
Speaker 2: I'm part of the Kojik family. That's the Church of
Speaker 2: God in Christ. It's a very very conservative Apostolic faith
Speaker 2: that came out of Memphis, and my great grandfather was
Speaker 2: a bishop, very popular minister, and they are strongly homophobic.
Speaker 2: That was really a huge influence in my life. And
Speaker 2: my dad was a Baptist minister, and I recognized that
Speaker 2: all churches had no space for gay people, and it
Speaker 2: would come up once in a while in sort of
Speaker 2: non obvious ways, but all of those clues sort of
Speaker 2: added up in my head, like this is not kind
Speaker 2: of safe to be who you are where you are.
Speaker 1: So you're living in this religious conservative family. When were
Speaker 1: you first introduced to dance music.
Speaker 2: My first exposure to dance music that really stands out
Speaker 2: for me was actually an eighth grade party when we
Speaker 2: graduated from eighth grade, I think this was nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 2: and I got asked to slow dance. This guy, Brian
Speaker 2: asked me to slow dance, and it was to Diana
Speaker 2: Ross's Love Hangover. And if you know that song, love Hangover, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it starts off really slow and then it breaks into
Speaker 2: a disco song. But I remember feeling released, like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: this is like a dance song and we can sort
Speaker 2: of dance independently. I realized I loved dance music. There
Speaker 2: was something that was sort of liberating about it that
Speaker 2: you could do on your own and that it didn't
Speaker 2: depend on a partner. No one had to ask you
Speaker 2: if you wanted to dance. And that became even clearer
Speaker 2: when in nineteen seventy seven Saturday Night Fever came out
Speaker 2: and John Travota, who every girl in America had a
Speaker 2: crush on at the time, including me, was just like
Speaker 2: so sexy and dancing. And I was too young to
Speaker 2: actually see the movie because it was rated R and
Speaker 2: my parents, as I mentioned, were very religious, so I
Speaker 2: couldn't even sneak out for fear that I'd be caught.
Speaker 2: So I bought the soundtrack because I could buy music,
Speaker 2: and that's really where I was exposed to disc And
Speaker 2: then I started buying other dance music and playing it,
Speaker 2: and my parents were not happy at all. As a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, they called it that disco fever shit.
Speaker 2: We don't want that disco fever shit in our house,
Speaker 2: and it became kind of a punchline.
Speaker 1: So fast forwarding a couple of years, you end up
Speaker 1: going to kind of a precocious high school that sort
Speaker 1: of exposes you to a lot of different kinds of
Speaker 1: people that you had never met before. Who were some
Speaker 1: of the people that you met there that kind of
Speaker 1: influenced you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to a high school called Limbulum Tech.
Speaker 2: It was way outside of my neighborhood. It was like
Speaker 2: an hour bus ride and most of the kids who
Speaker 2: went there were from all different parts of the city,
Speaker 2: and so I was exposed to know different kids from
Speaker 2: different races, different communities, different economic exceellons, different points of view,
Speaker 2: and it really opened my eyes to what was outside
Speaker 2: of South Side of Chicago. I recognized by the time
Speaker 2: I was fifteen sixteen that I was starting to be
Speaker 2: attracted to other girls. And I had other friends who
Speaker 2: were just, you know, beautiful young experimenting with in their minds.
Speaker 2: And they were these artsy guys who were just fun
Speaker 2: and quirky and interesting.
Speaker 1: You said they were artsy, but I'm guessing they were queer.
Speaker 2: They were. And we were all very closeted to each
Speaker 2: other because I think we were honestly trying to figure
Speaker 2: it out. Like I genuinely love these guys so much
Speaker 2: so that my friend Jean Pierre would spend the night
Speaker 2: at my house. John Pierre was this cute guy. He
Speaker 2: was half Japanese and half African American, and he was
Speaker 2: really pretty and he looked different than everybody else. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so I was sort of drawn to that. And
Speaker 2: I think my parents must have known something, because that
Speaker 2: was the first time they ever let a boy spend
Speaker 2: the night at my house, you know. So I think
Speaker 2: they were wise to it. As long as we weren't
Speaker 2: talking about it.
Speaker 1: There was an energy that you were attracted to.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. He had a wide musical taste. He had all
Speaker 2: kinds of records and we would play in his basement
Speaker 2: and he would expose me to things I hadn't heard before.
Speaker 2: And I also considered myself a pretty good judge of
Speaker 2: good music. I had a lot of siblings and we
Speaker 2: who had music in our house. We all took lessons
Speaker 2: and piano and guitar and all that, but what he
Speaker 2: was playing for me felt different. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: there's a club called the Warehouse where you can hear
Speaker 2: this music. And it's a gay club, so it's a
Speaker 2: lot of gay people there. And I'm like, okay. So
Speaker 2: none of us were out, but I was intrigued. And
Speaker 2: I don't know how he heard about it because he
Speaker 2: was younger than me. I was seventeen, he was sixteen.
Speaker 2: You have to be eighteen to get in. But he
Speaker 2: figured we could get some fake IDs. We found a
Speaker 2: very i'm sure not reputable place on Maxwell Street in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and someone said, just go to that guy in the
Speaker 2: van on the corner. He'll make you fake ID. Sure enough,
Speaker 2: it was like, I don't know ten dollars and he said,
Speaker 2: what do you want on it? Took a picture of us,
Speaker 2: filled in what we wanted, laminated gave it to us
Speaker 2: and it did not resemble anything like a driver's license
Speaker 2: or a state I d nothing, and we ended up
Speaker 2: scheming to go to the Warehouse.
Speaker 1: The Warehouse is said to be where house music got
Speaker 1: its name. It was a gay black dance club in
Speaker 1: Chicago that was open from midnight to eight am. There
Speaker 1: was a resident DJ there named Frankie Knuckles, often considered
Speaker 1: the godfather of house music. He was a gay black
Speaker 1: man from New York who would played disco records in
Speaker 1: gay bathhouses and gay clubs, but he wasn't getting very
Speaker 1: far there, so he jumped at the opportunity to move
Speaker 1: to Chicago and open the Warehouse in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Over time, he began to develop a new kind of
Speaker 1: music there. It was everything from R and B to
Speaker 1: German electronic to disco, but mixing in his own effects
Speaker 1: and beats that people hadn't really heard before. The sound
Speaker 1: system was also state of the art, architected by Richard Long,
Speaker 1: the gay man who designed the sound system at Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four.
Speaker 2: My family was not excited about me going to any
Speaker 2: after I was club. I dare not even mention that's
Speaker 2: what I was hoping to do. So once John Pierre
Speaker 2: and I decided we're going to go to the Warehouse,
Speaker 2: I had to come up with a scheme that would
Speaker 2: allow me to be out all night because this club
Speaker 2: didn't open until midnight. So I had an older sister,
Speaker 2: her name is Lynn, and Lynn had small children that
Speaker 2: I would occasionally babysit. So Lynn went along with the
Speaker 2: scheme that I would babysit and mom and dad would
Speaker 2: not be the wiser. And you get to the warehouse.
Speaker 2: It's an actual warehouse on the west side of the
Speaker 2: downtown Chicago area in the West Loop, pretty deserted, a
Speaker 2: lot of vacant buildings. But this music was pulsing, you know.
Speaker 2: We drove up and one of our friends had a car,
Speaker 2: and we drove up and parked and you could you
Speaker 2: could feel the thumping sort of pounding in the car
Speaker 2: as we approached the building, and it was like so exciting.
Speaker 2: I just remember feeling so excited. I'm like I'm just
Speaker 2: about to have this experience. I don't know what it is,
Speaker 2: but I'm excited. And we nervously walked up long flight
Speaker 2: of stairs to get to the doorman. We showed our
Speaker 2: fake IDs. He gave us the once over and said
Speaker 2: five dollars and we got in.
Speaker 1: It's the late seventies. Laurie knew she was queer, but
Speaker 1: she was closeted. She came from a conservative religious family,
Speaker 1: but there was something about dance music that made her
Speaker 1: feel free. She heard that the Warehouse played the best
Speaker 1: dance music in Chicago, so she and her friends schemed
Speaker 1: a plan to get in and it worked, but she
Speaker 1: had no idea how the music and the people there
Speaker 1: would change her forever. What was it like when you
Speaker 1: actually get inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was so excited to be inside. This place
Speaker 2: was allegedly mecca for like gay people, and it was underground.
Speaker 2: I was just taking it all in because it was
Speaker 2: really the first time that I had seen people who
Speaker 2: identified as queer or gay in one place like that.
Speaker 2: And I remember, right as I was about to go
Speaker 2: down the stairs to go to the dance floor, I
Speaker 2: spotted these two young women sitting next to each other
Speaker 2: and they were holding hands or one of them had
Speaker 2: their hand on their leg. It was intimate, whatever the
Speaker 2: pose was, and I just remember my heart like beating fast,
Speaker 2: like I just had a flutter, and this kind of
Speaker 2: shill of excitement just run through me, like Okay, this
Speaker 2: is really cool, so let me call myself, follow my
Speaker 2: friends and go to the dance floor. And we descended
Speaker 2: these stairs into this room with like it wasn't a
Speaker 2: huge space, maybe at tops a couple hundred people, but
Speaker 2: it was sound that was unlike anything I'd ever heard before,
Speaker 2: this kind of surround sound, expertly ecue for your body
Speaker 2: to experience it, just to feel the base and the highs.
Speaker 2: Just everything was sort of crisp. Crisp but not loud.
Speaker 2: It's hard to explain it, like when sound is just
Speaker 2: so perfect, and I remember feeling that sensation and we
Speaker 2: were entranced. Frankie Knuckles was the DJ. You know, he's
Speaker 2: he was pretty famous. Not at the time, he was
Speaker 2: just kind of the club DJ, but he became famous
Speaker 2: over the years, and he was playing all kinds of
Speaker 2: stuff that I certainly had never heard before. And it's
Speaker 2: just a freedom that I got a taste of that night.
Speaker 2: That I was like, this is the coolest thing I've
Speaker 2: ever experienced, Like, this is the coolest thing I've ever
Speaker 2: experienced in my life up to that point, And like
Speaker 2: I was already thinking about next week, Like how do
Speaker 2: I get out of Like I can't babysit every weekend,
Speaker 2: but maybe I can, you know, how do I get
Speaker 2: here every week?
Speaker 1: What about this music do you think spoke to you
Speaker 1: and your queer friend group that you were going with.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that there was an energy that was
Speaker 2: unlike what we would see or hear at like a
Speaker 2: typical sock hop or something else that we had been
Speaker 2: exposed to, and the energy was queer. It was just energy.
Speaker 2: It was people who were liberated, who were dancing to
Speaker 2: you know, Rev and Carl Beans. I was born this way,
Speaker 2: and you know the village people. I mean, there was like,
Speaker 2: you know, there was a bit of a revolution going
Speaker 2: on in the late seventies for queer people. So going
Speaker 2: to the warehouse, none of us were really out out
Speaker 2: to each other. I mean I think we had sort
Speaker 2: of a silent understanding that that's what was going on,
Speaker 2: but no one had voiced it. And being in the
Speaker 2: warehouse sort of gave us the liberty to express ourselves differently,
Speaker 2: and it was it was a difficult thing for the guys.
Speaker 2: Even in an environment where they're surrounded by a gay men,
Speaker 2: they were still there was still some tension around that,
Speaker 2: and so we would we would dance in a circle
Speaker 2: with me in the center of it and my guy friend.
Speaker 2: Sometimes four or five guys dancing with me and I'm
Speaker 2: in the center of a circle. So they felt like
Speaker 2: they were still okay. I'm like, guys, you don't need
Speaker 2: to do this. And so that went on for maybe
Speaker 2: a few weeks and I saw someone who was kind
Speaker 2: of checking me out, and I'm like, I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to go dance over here with her, So I
Speaker 2: want to be with her. I want to go dance
Speaker 2: with her next to her, And that's what I did,
Speaker 2: and they were forced to dance with each other, and
Speaker 2: I think that was it. I think we were out
Speaker 2: after that. I think that's what gave us the license
Speaker 2: to actually talk about it, like, oh, who was that?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was a girl, she was really cute.
Speaker 2: Did you get her name? You know? So then you
Speaker 2: could have like a real conversation about dating and what
Speaker 2: you want to do and who you like. And we
Speaker 2: were young, and we were lucky to be caught up
Speaker 2: in that moment, and so I think it represented like
Speaker 2: the perfect soundtrack for us coming out.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like to be a part of this,
Speaker 1: you know, incredible underground scene where for the first time
Speaker 1: in your life, coming from this really conservative background, you
Speaker 1: are now around people that are like you.
Speaker 2: The best way I can describe that is that it
Speaker 2: was very freeing to me, and it was very It
Speaker 2: confirmed who I was to me, you know, and it
Speaker 2: confirmed it really validated my existence in a way that
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with me. It just strengthened that resolve
Speaker 2: in me, you know, to be okay with who I was.
Speaker 1: It's the early eighties. Laurie has been sneaking out going
Speaker 1: to the Warehouse several times. The music was breathtaking, and
Speaker 1: she loved the community. She found it was a safe
Speaker 1: space for her as a queer young person who was
Speaker 1: coming of age. One of her friends that she went
Speaker 1: to the Warehouse with, Eric, started a social club and
Speaker 1: began throwing high school parties where they'd playhouse music and
Speaker 1: charge money to attend. And he proposed something to Laurie
Speaker 1: that she couldn't resist.
Speaker 2: Eric worked at a newspaper, like a high school newspaper
Speaker 2: called New Expression, and he was seeing how all these
Speaker 2: teenagers were throwing parties. And this guy was really smart
Speaker 2: and he was creative, and he was like, I think
Speaker 2: we could throw parties. I think we could make money
Speaker 2: this way, and so he started this group called Vertigo.
Speaker 2: It was a social club and it was not just
Speaker 2: limited to our high school. They were throwing parties, were
Speaker 2: teenagers from all over the city. And how old were
Speaker 2: you seventeen? Wow, they were you know, they were entrepreneurial
Speaker 2: for sure. And so they've been doing it for a
Speaker 2: few months when Eric and he's like, you should join
Speaker 2: our group, but you should join as a DJ because
Speaker 2: there aren't any women DJs in our circle, you know,
Speaker 2: that are doing this kind of music in these parties,
Speaker 2: and there weren't at the time. So I learned how
Speaker 2: to DJ, and then djaying was not as easy. I'm
Speaker 2: not trying to slight any new DJs. I know that
Speaker 2: it takes skills still, but we did not have the
Speaker 2: digital technology that is a great assist to DJs. Now.
Speaker 2: Everything was analog. You're playing with live instruments from so
Speaker 2: you didn't have the ability to sink anything, and you
Speaker 2: really have to. I mean, it took a lot of
Speaker 2: practice to be able to blend songs together. So I
Speaker 2: became the DJ for the group.
Speaker 1: And did your parents know about this? Where were you
Speaker 1: kind of practicing?
Speaker 2: Well, my parents knew about it because Vertical was the
Speaker 2: successful teen group. They would have hundreds of kids at
Speaker 2: these parties, so they at sixteen seventeen, they could leave
Speaker 2: with five thousand dollars at the end of the night.
Speaker 1: Each kid would pay a certain amount of money to
Speaker 1: get in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like five dollars, you know, some four
Speaker 2: or five dollars. It wasn't a lot, but if you
Speaker 2: pack in you know, a thousand kids, you've made five
Speaker 2: thousand dollar. I mean some of these parties had like
Speaker 2: five hundred, six hundred and seven hundred kids up to
Speaker 2: a thousand. But my parents knew full well what I
Speaker 2: was doing, and they didn't They didn't disagree with it.
Speaker 2: They saw that I was very interested in that it
Speaker 2: was potentially making money. They even gave me money to
Speaker 2: help with one of the parties. So they were lukewarm
Speaker 2: about it, but they all that it was keeping me
Speaker 2: in the house because I had to practice all night,
Speaker 2: so they were okay with it.
Speaker 1: So at this point, were you guys calling it house music?
Speaker 2: We weren't calling it house music. And even as a
Speaker 2: young DJ, we were calling it punk out music because
Speaker 2: it had elements of punk and it had elements of disco,
Speaker 2: so we just called it punk out. But by nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one eighty two, there was a record store called
Speaker 2: Imports et cetera, and that's where many of us DJs
Speaker 2: went to buy their records. They were so sick of
Speaker 2: people coming in saying I heard this song at the
Speaker 2: warehouse and here's what it sounds like, that they created
Speaker 2: a section called warehouse music, so so you could go
Speaker 2: in and like just go like, here's what Frankie played
Speaker 2: last week. Eventually, the warehouse closed in nineteen eighty two
Speaker 2: and that warehouse music was sort of less important, so
Speaker 2: they shortened it to like house music. I was talking
Speaker 2: to one of my buddies, Djlady D, and she said, well,
Speaker 2: we thought we called it house music is because it's
Speaker 2: what we were hearing we went to house parties. We
Speaker 2: were hearing this disco mixing at house parties, so we
Speaker 2: called it house music. And for some people that's their
Speaker 2: definition of it. I like to say that they're all right,
Speaker 2: but the warehouse was a huge part of that story.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, now, it sounds like you have sort
Speaker 1: of this newfound confidence as a queer person, Like you
Speaker 1: have not only come out to yourself but to your friends,
Speaker 1: and you have this amazing community around you that is
Speaker 1: supportive of you and even encouraging of you to continue
Speaker 1: to find yourself. So what was it like coming out
Speaker 1: to your family who is pretty conservative?
Speaker 2: Coming out to my family was not an easy thing.
Speaker 2: My mom was doing some spring cleaning and she found
Speaker 2: an old notebook from like my senior year in high school,
Speaker 2: and I was writing some kind of queer poetry with
Speaker 2: a gay friend, and we were writing like queer notes
Speaker 2: to each other, like little silly poems, and she was like,
Speaker 2: what is this. I don't understand you know what this is. Basically,
Speaker 2: she was confirming her suspicions. And while she may have
Speaker 2: known that all along, she didn't like that she was
Speaker 2: seeing something in writing and that I was taking on
Speaker 2: some identity that was a little bit more obvious. So
Speaker 2: she was pretty pissed. She said, I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: your father. He's not going to be happy about this.
Speaker 2: So my father came home. We went down to the
Speaker 2: laundry room to have a private conversation. He was pretty upset.
Speaker 2: He asked me if I wanted to be a man.
Speaker 2: He sort of thumped me real hard in the chest
Speaker 2: when he made that point. So you want to be
Speaker 2: a man, and I said no, I don't. Well he said,
Speaker 2: well you're out of here, you know, just get out,
Speaker 2: leave everything, leave your car, leave everything, you can take
Speaker 2: a bag, and you're out. You are dead to us.
Speaker 2: And that was that. I think I had a party
Speaker 2: to go to that night, so I didn't stay angry
Speaker 2: too long. I was like, well, let me get in gear,
Speaker 2: because either I was DJing that night or I was
Speaker 2: just going out. I had something to do. But I
Speaker 2: couch surfed for you know, a good while, maybe for
Speaker 2: like a month or two before my father sent my
Speaker 2: brother in law to look for me. And he found
Speaker 2: me and he said, your parents want you to come home.
Speaker 2: Not they're sorry, but they just want you to come home.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I guess so, you know. I was
Speaker 2: tired of couch surfing, and so I went home and
Speaker 2: they had another talk with me, like you don't have
Speaker 2: to be dead to us anymore, but you do have
Speaker 2: to be in therapy. And you can't like bring this
Speaker 2: disco fever shit in the house. You can't like be gay.
Speaker 1: So they had sort of begun to associate your involvement
Speaker 1: with house music with this sort of queer identity that
Speaker 1: you were now proud of and a part of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they definitely associated house music, disco dance with queer
Speaker 2: life and that they saw that as the worst thing
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: So while you were staying at your parents' house, were
Speaker 1: you still secretly going to play shows and still being
Speaker 1: involved in house music even though they had kind of
Speaker 1: told you that you couldn't.
Speaker 2: Be I didn't stop anything at my parents' house. House
Speaker 2: music was an escape for me, and not only that,
Speaker 2: but the DJ part of it was really equally important,
Speaker 2: and it was so important that like I put everything
Speaker 2: else aside, Like school was so unimportant to me, you know.
Speaker 2: It was like I want to be in this energy
Speaker 2: as often as possible, and I want to be around
Speaker 2: these people as often as possible. So we went out
Speaker 2: every night. We were always finding something to get into.
Speaker 2: And most gay people in the eighties, you know, had
Speaker 2: these double lives, maybe triple life, you know, where you
Speaker 2: could be fully out in some places, somewhat out in
Speaker 2: other places, and not out at all in other places.
Speaker 2: But I don't remember carrying all that much. I felt like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I was so cocky. I just felt
Speaker 2: like they were late. We caught them late. Everyone's late.
Speaker 2: Like we're doing the right things, like we are ahead
Speaker 2: of the curve, like this is where the nation should
Speaker 2: be moving, Like we're free and we're open. And I
Speaker 2: just felt like they didn't get it, that the rest
Speaker 2: of the world wasn't getting it, but my group was
Speaker 2: getting it, like we understood, you know where this music
Speaker 2: is going to take us, Like everybody should be free
Speaker 2: and liberated. I think house music was definitely a symbol
Speaker 2: of my freedom.
Speaker 1: When we come back. Just as house music takes off,
Speaker 1: many of Laurie's fellow DJs begin disappearing, and she decides
Speaker 1: to leave djaying altogether. By the late eighties, house music
Speaker 1: was going global. It had left Chicago and traveled to Europe.
Speaker 1: Laurie was ecstatic the music scene that she helped shape
Speaker 1: was reaching new audiences she never imagined, but the queer DJs,
Speaker 1: producers and promoters that she pioneered this music with didn't
Speaker 1: seem to be benefiting from this commercialization. In fact, she
Speaker 1: was noticing that they were disappearing, they were dying of aids.
Speaker 2: I would see that with these massive music festivals that
Speaker 2: were happening popping up, you know, at Abiza and all
Speaker 2: these other places all over the world, and when I
Speaker 2: would hear songs that I knew were influenced or informed
Speaker 2: or created by, you know, the queer community, and yet
Speaker 2: you would see who was getting paid to do these
Speaker 2: parties and paid as DJs promoters, and who wasn't just
Speaker 2: getting any shine, you know. I mean I felt sad
Speaker 2: about it. And part of it was that I was
Speaker 2: just connected to it so closely in the beginning, and
Speaker 2: some of those people who should have been there just weren't.
Speaker 2: They just they weren't. They were gone, or they just
Speaker 2: weren't getting the credit. And Frankie Nickles did pretty well.
Speaker 2: He had a pretty active career and was a part
Speaker 2: of a lot of those festivals. But even Frankie I
Speaker 2: felt like, was not given his propers. You know, he
Speaker 2: should have been a gazillionaire like some of these others.
Speaker 2: But we didn't control those circles. Like any other black
Speaker 2: art form that is commodified in the United States, leaves
Speaker 2: black hands pretty quickly. That's a history of it of
Speaker 2: the United States and black music.
Speaker 1: Why do you think the pioneers were disappearing.
Speaker 2: I think that the black queer pioneers were starting to
Speaker 2: disappear for a few reasons. Some of that was because
Speaker 2: AIDES was taking people out left and right. So some
Speaker 2: of the early vocalists, for example, some of the early
Speaker 2: DJs by the late eighties, you know, they were starting
Speaker 2: to disappear. They were getting sick, and you know, I
Speaker 2: remember feeling that loss of community, especially around the late eighties.
Speaker 2: While one part of the community was rising, another part
Speaker 2: was sort of going away.
Speaker 1: The group of boys that you had originally went to
Speaker 1: the warehouse with, what happened to them?
Speaker 2: Several of them died, you know. In the early nineties,
Speaker 2: we just had a tsunami for the people that I
Speaker 2: was hanging out with. Two of my best friends they
Speaker 2: died within a year of each other, you know, from
Speaker 2: HIV related complications. Others you know, got very sick, and
Speaker 2: others moved away. So some of my friends, seeing what
Speaker 2: was happening, were like, I need to Get out of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Dads wasn't just taking the lives of DJs. It was
Speaker 1: also taking the lives of journalists that were elevating the
Speaker 1: profile of the Chicago house scene. One of them was
Speaker 1: a friend of Lori's named Robert Ford.
Speaker 2: Robert was the publisher of a couple of zines, one
Speaker 2: called Think Ink and one called Thing Magazine that were
Speaker 2: so important for queer communities. He was promoting, like all
Speaker 2: the new tracks that were coming out, so he was
Speaker 2: interviewing artist. He was a pioneer, a thought leader, and
Speaker 2: a taste curator and you know, sort of a cultural icon.
Speaker 2: And I think it was around ninety three somewhere around
Speaker 2: there where he was joining a board of directors that
Speaker 2: I was on. I was on a board of directors
Speaker 2: of this organization called Horizons, but it was, you know,
Speaker 2: primarily for the LGBT community. It had a lot of
Speaker 2: youth programs, and I learned that Robert was going to
Speaker 2: join the as well, and I got really excited because he's, Oh,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen him in a couple of years. He's
Speaker 2: been doing so well his magazine and all that. And
Speaker 2: he shows up for the meeting and he looks so
Speaker 2: different than what I remember. I had just seen him
Speaker 2: like a couple of years before, but he was gaunt,
Speaker 2: and you know, he was still very spirited and had
Speaker 2: a lot of energy and ideas, and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is great, but I just don't think he's going
Speaker 2: to make it. I remember just like my heart dropping
Speaker 2: when I saw him, because he looked like people who
Speaker 2: were not doing well with HIV and not living long.
Speaker 2: And he didn't. He didn't live long after that, and
Speaker 2: I just was shook by that experience. I just remember
Speaker 2: sitting in that room and seeing him and just kind
Speaker 2: of taking it all in, like what it meant to
Speaker 2: lose somebody like him. I recognize all this untapped potential.
Speaker 2: You know that this is the guy who was making it,
Speaker 2: who was doing what we needed to be done, like
Speaker 2: taking our community to the next level, you know, promoting
Speaker 2: and publishing and getting in the right circles and meeting
Speaker 2: the right people and introducing the right people to the
Speaker 2: right people, Like that's who we need it. And I
Speaker 2: don't think the community really understood what we lost when
Speaker 2: he passed away.
Speaker 1: How was all of this affecting you as a DJ.
Speaker 2: I think that I was trying to prioritize my life
Speaker 2: as a young person, and it was a hustle and
Speaker 2: a lot of the people who built the house music
Speaker 2: community were hustling. But I was also growing up. You know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to start a family, I wanted to be
Speaker 2: in love. I wanted to move around the country, and
Speaker 2: you know, having crates of records that you've got to
Speaker 2: keep up with and equipment and small gigs that are
Speaker 2: not paying you very much kind of weighs you down.
Speaker 2: And you couple that with the fact that so many
Speaker 2: of your peers are getting sick and like looking terrible.
Speaker 2: I mean I kind of wanted to distance myself from
Speaker 2: it a bit, which is part of the reason that
Speaker 2: I left Chicago was that just it felt like people
Speaker 2: were you know, like it was being sort of co
Speaker 2: opted by these bye bye I shouldn't say co opted.
Speaker 2: It was being nurtured by folks who I didn't really
Speaker 2: hang out with a lot, you know, like straight guys
Speaker 2: on the South Side. But my core group was falling apart.
Speaker 2: You know, they were getting sick, they were trying to
Speaker 2: go away, they were addicted to drugs, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to distance myself from that. And you know, I had
Speaker 2: a college girlfriend who was from Ohio, and she was
Speaker 2: bright and bubbly and represented a total different life for me,
Speaker 2: and so I kind of took that path for a
Speaker 2: few years.
Speaker 1: So it was sort of like the house music that
Speaker 1: you had been a part of from its beginnings was
Speaker 1: really different and it wasn't something that you wanted to
Speaker 1: sort of be close to anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that what I experienced, like
Speaker 2: like any anybody experiencing some thing when you are it's
Speaker 2: new and it's different and you're part of this great mix.
Speaker 2: You know, it gets old. It was still a part
Speaker 2: of me, but I really didn't come back into it
Speaker 2: until maybe like nineteen ninety one. So I took a
Speaker 2: few years off. When I moved back to Chicago, I
Speaker 2: was hanging out with one of my buddies. His name
Speaker 2: was Rob, and he was the one who was encouraging me.
Speaker 2: He's like, huld get back into it. You know, you
Speaker 2: still have your records there at your mom's house. Just
Speaker 2: get your stuff and we can buy new things. You
Speaker 2: can borrow mine and get back into it. And so
Speaker 2: he encouraged me, and I did. I stepped right back
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you got back into the house music scene,
Speaker 1: but it was really different.
Speaker 2: You know. I think that the absence of those people
Speaker 2: who are with me in the beginning has always motivated
Speaker 2: me to expand the definition of family and the definition
Speaker 2: of the queer community. And I've embraced that. I have
Speaker 2: new friends, I have young friends. There are people who
Speaker 2: were young when I was doing it who kind of
Speaker 2: looked up to me, and and now they're doing it big.
Speaker 2: You know. Honey Dijon was a friend of my little brother,
Speaker 2: my little brother Carl, and one day I met Honey
Speaker 2: at my parents' house and just the cutest little thing
Speaker 2: sort of reminded me of like a young Grace Jones,
Speaker 2: and she was very attracted to like our energy, and
Speaker 2: I could tell that she was kind of studying what
Speaker 2: was going on. And later on she would come and
Speaker 2: hang out with me and my girlfriend downtown in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and so we got to know each other very well.
Speaker 2: And she was, you know, I think, on the rise
Speaker 2: back then, you know, just way ahead of her time,
Speaker 2: just the way that she dressed and presented herself. And
Speaker 2: you know, it was with Beyonce's Renaissance album where Honey Dijon,
Speaker 2: you know, contributed to sharing the Chicago sound and the
Speaker 2: sound of house music with one of our most influential
Speaker 2: artists of the decade of the century, Beyonce, and where
Speaker 2: she recognized the importance of the queer community as contributors
Speaker 2: to that sound, and did that in a very public
Speaker 2: way during her acceptance speechs at the Grammys.
Speaker 1: In July twenty twenty two, Beyonce released her highly anticipated
Speaker 1: album Renaissance, a house music record that fans and critics
Speaker 1: say pays homage to the black queer people that pioneered
Speaker 1: the genre but who were largely left behind in its globalization.
Speaker 1: Seeing Honey Dejon, a black trans woman from Chicago, produced
Speaker 1: music for the album, was special for Lori. Even though
Speaker 1: many of her friends who had helped birth the genre
Speaker 1: weren't around anymore. She was witnessing a new generation of
Speaker 1: black queer DJs carrying on their legacy. Beyonce publicly acknowledged
Speaker 1: the queer origins of house music at the Grammys when
Speaker 1: she won the award for Best Dance Electronic Album. After
Speaker 1: being forgotten for so long, Lori and her friends were
Speaker 1: finally getting the credit they deserved on the world stage.
Speaker 2: That was a moment, you know, seeing that happen, and
Speaker 2: even the debates that happened afterwards. I felt like it
Speaker 2: sort of crystallized a moment for us, like you've got
Speaker 2: to recognize you have to recognize the importance of this moment,
Speaker 2: and that she is writing a wrong and that might
Speaker 2: not feel comfortable for everybody, but that's the truth.
Speaker 1: So you had sort of witnessed the sunsetting of one
Speaker 1: queer generation that was part of this music, but now
Speaker 1: the rising of another one.
Speaker 2: I feel like I was right in the crosshairs of that,
Speaker 2: Like I was lucky and privileged to have survived, you know,
Speaker 2: that era where many of my friends are not here
Speaker 2: anymore to talk about it, lucky enough to have been
Speaker 2: an inspiration for younger people who are doing it very
Speaker 2: well now.
Speaker 1: And you know, we just mentioned kind of how you
Speaker 1: had lost so many friends. Did losing those friends sort
Speaker 1: of inspire you to then make sure that people knew
Speaker 1: the full history?
Speaker 2: Losing my friends is the inspiration for me to continue
Speaker 2: to tell this story because they're not here to tell it.
Speaker 2: And I also tell the story for people who don't
Speaker 2: have the courage. Even today, I put myself out there
Speaker 2: for the people who can't do it, for themselves anymore.
Speaker 1: Laurie has been so passionate about keeping the memory of
Speaker 1: her house pioneers alive that she teamed up with the
Speaker 1: Design Museum of Chicago for an exhibit on the history
Speaker 1: of house music. The exhibit recognizes the queer contributions to
Speaker 1: house music all the way from its birth up until now.
Speaker 1: You know, Laurie, it feels like almost every quick person
Speaker 1: I know, including me, loves this music. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is about it, you know, And as someone
Speaker 1: who literally makes house music, what do you think is
Speaker 1: in this music that speaks to us queer folks across generations,
Speaker 1: across ages, across races, across genders.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that house music helps people to be free,
Speaker 2: that there is an underlying current of love and energy
Speaker 2: and presence. And when you think about the queer community,
Speaker 2: you know, we spend a lot of time kind of
Speaker 2: defending our lives, you know, whether it's in our families
Speaker 2: or you know, making up stories, you know with the
Speaker 2: uber driver, Oh you know, who wants to know? Am
Speaker 2: I married? You know, it's a lot of energy that
Speaker 2: goes into that. And this is a place where you
Speaker 2: don't have to do any of that, where you are liberated,
Speaker 2: you are affirmed. It just allows us to be who
Speaker 2: we are. And not only that, it's a celebratory music,
Speaker 2: it's a movement that the through line has always been
Speaker 2: about celebrating who you are, not just accepting you, but
Speaker 2: celebrating you. You know, and that you know that's that's
Speaker 2: a very loving thing.
Speaker 1: You know. Speaking of love, it's so clear that you
Speaker 1: have so much love for the queer folks that you
Speaker 1: pioneered this music with. What do you think they would
Speaker 1: want people to know about the music now that we
Speaker 1: love the house music, now that we love so much.
Speaker 2: I think that they would probably want you to know
Speaker 2: that this was done for you, that this was this
Speaker 2: was planning seeds that they may not ever see grow,
Speaker 2: This was thinking about future generations, and this was about
Speaker 2: creating something that it was part of an evolution. I
Speaker 2: think that's what my friends and my associates who are
Speaker 2: no longer here would want people to know that this
Speaker 2: was for you. This music was for queer people, but
Speaker 2: that's who it was made for. And everyone else read
Speaker 2: the benefits of it, but that's who it was made for.
Speaker 1: But we loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves New
Speaker 1: episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
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Speaker 1: of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We
Speaker 1: Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers are
Speaker 1: Shehino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Me and Maya Howard. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jay Bronson and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode,
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Speaker 1: next week.