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#BORNTHISDAY: GAY JAZZ ARTIST, STéPHANE GRAPPELLI
As the rerr ran, my host—known for his fierce telligence and for the refement of his playg—kept referrg to “that faggot” who had produced a somewhat homoerotic documentary of the once-betiful tmpeter and sger. The jazz world is one of the last cultural ontiers of old-fashned macho, and , homophobia ns rampant. Sce terviewg that pianist, I’ve met a multu of jazz figur who pri themselv on soulfulns and sensivy, yet are as sensive as rednecks on the subject of homosexualy—pecially s prence jazz, which is not nsirable.
One saxophonist, a gay man his early 60s, sums up what he se as the persistg attu: “If you are gay, you nnot be playg this mic that requir you to have a much higher level of ttosterone. ” A veteran sger who has worked wh European big bands remembers walkg out on one of them, fur at beg “harassed” by homophobic slurs. “Gays are the last whippg post society, ” he says.
Some attentn was drawn to the qutn the ’90s, when three outstandg jazz micians—pianist Fred Hersch, vibraphonist Gary Burton and sger/pianist Andy Bey—all me out publicly as gay men. Two years earlier me Lh Life, David Hajdu’s bgraphy of arranger-poser Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967), one of the very few openly gay jazzmen of his (or any) time. But Strayhorn worked mostly behd the scen, and until recently was easy to thk that jazz, like the Boy Suts, had no gay element at all.