Fifty years after Stonewall, Felipe Rose—“The Indian” om the Village People—remembers New York Cy’s Greenwich Village as the gay rights movement took hold.
Contents:
- THE GAY ECSTASY OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
- A GAY IN REMEMBERS LIFE THE VILLAGE, AND THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
- THE REAL STORY OF THE YMCA THAT INSPIRED THE VILLAGE PEOPLE'S GAY ANTHEM
- WE ARE NOT A GAY ACT, VILLAGE PEOPLE SAY (WH A STRAIGHT FACE)
THE GAY ECSTASY OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
* village people were gay *
Were the Village People actually gay or was that jt a joke at their expense? I don't know enough about the people or their mic to know whether people jt lled them gay based on those stum or if there was more to .
However, be this memory real or simulacm, strik me as hilar given what the Village People are universally known for: tongue--cheek gay nuendo, sparsely vered by a flimsy veneer of hyper-macho drag. But they’re not ‘jt’ gay.
A GAY IN REMEMBERS LIFE THE VILLAGE, AND THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
After 35 years of beltg out YMCA and In the Navy, the Village People are still bothered by one qutn: what’s this gay subtext that people keep mentng?They have been scribed as “the first" name="scriptn * village people were gay *
They’re almost overtly (homo)sexual.
THE REAL STORY OF THE YMCA THAT INSPIRED THE VILLAGE PEOPLE'S GAY ANTHEM
However the service’s tomatic n-on feature clearly disagreed and cid that, when Cowley’s sensual, gay bathhoe-ready rhythms end, ‘Macho Man’ would be a great follow-up. And I was fascated by the empowerment I felt om Village People, the tle track on their eponymo but album, and an unambiguo ll for gay liberatn that sounds more ak to a prott chant than a chart topper.
Said first three albums (and pecially the first two) rry a surprisgly polil energy; the more popular tracks, such as the eponymo Macho Man, might be vacuo but others – take I Am What I Am, a fiant chant that suggts exactly what you’d expect to suggt – envisn a world which male bodi uld be ee to e together whout Francis was one of the gay mecs the Village People celebrated on their visnary but album (Cred: Alamy)As far as evokg same-sex love go, there was a precent – om dis’s genis, queered sexual posivy was the life blood of the genre, as Peter Shapiro intifi Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Dis.
WE ARE NOT A GAY ACT, VILLAGE PEOPLE SAY (WH A STRAIGHT FACE)
“As the cultural adjunct of the gay pri movement, dis was the embodiment of the pleasure-is-polics ethos of a new generatn of gay culture, a generatn fed up wh police raids, dranian laws and the darkns of the closet, ” he wr. That said, the genre’s lyrics tend to chew more overt polil statements – and the few that did rry an unambiguo msage of gay liberatn didn’t chart well. I thk to myself that gay people have no group, nobody to personalise the gay people, you know?
– Jacqu MoraliIn her dis chronicle Hot Stuff: Dis and the Remakg of Amerin Culture, Alice Echols rells a 1978 Rollg Stone article which Jacqu Morali – the French producer who, alongsi Henri Bolelo and eventual group lear Victor Willis, created the Village People – put forward a manifto of gay visibily: “Morali outed himself, and emphasised that as a homosexual he was mted to endg the cultural visibily of gay men. ‘I thk to myself that gay people have no group, ’ he said, ‘nobody to personalise the gay people, you know?