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As Coachella kicks off another season of sun-drenched music and fashion, it’s important to remember the deep roots connecting modern music festivals to a vital lineage – the legacy of queer music festivals. These gatherings have been spaces of liberation, community building, and artistic expression for the LGBTQIA+ community, with a lasting impact that ripples through today’s festival scene.
This year, Coachella was very gay, with numerous rising stars like Renee Rapp, Ludmilla and other openly queer artists taking the stage and proudly embracing their queerness – proof that mainstream festivals are creating space for a broader range of identities.
But we need to talk about the lineage of LGBTQ+ artistry and festivals that underscore the decades-long struggle for representation and visibility. Because tracing the history reminds us that today’s Coachella successes didn’t happen overnight.
So what’s the history?
Festivals play an overlapping role with queer circuit parties, which bring queer promoters and themed events to nightclubs and other locations. Circuit parties are just one example of LGBTQ nightlife, which includes cabaret, bars, the ballroom scene, and house culture. If you add those ingredients into a pot, seasoned with the history of back to land movements where lesbian separatist land communities adopted the behaviors of large festivals like Burning Man or Woodstock, and where protest was coupled with moving our bodies outside of cities and into large open meadows to camp and play and dance, then you have the breeding ground for a history of queer music festivals.
The Michigan Women’s Music Festival, which ran for 40 years before its controversial 2015 closure, was a groundbreaking example. Despite its tumultuous end nearly ten years ago due to collisions related to trans exclusion, festivals like Michfest that focused on music festivals for women laid the groundwork for imagining a world of music and queerness all enmeshed into a single space where music and queerness could fully intertwine.
The battle to close the Michfest gates came with it a hole that may never be filled, though many continue to try. Its workshops, multiple stages, tented cities – family-oriented focus or sex den – bred iconic spaces, such as a woman of color tent, and custom-built structures and lessons of community-making that have become influential to queer music festivals across the world.
At queer festivals you are likely to find queer bodies, music, and more:
While some festivals have ended, others continue to thrive or emerge. Here are some of the best to note from history:
Here are some that are thriving now:
Queer music festivals have a potent history of blending celebration with social justice advocacy. Street festivals worldwide harness music to fuel parades, marches, and powerful displays of resistance. Queer joy at these events becomes a defiant response to social injustices.
However, it’s crucial to remain critical of celebratory events that can obscure urgent political struggles, as in the concept of “pinkwashing.” The 2013 die-in protesting Israeli pinkwashing poignantly illustrates this tension, reminding us that even within spaces of joy, protest persists.
Organizing festivals requires tremendous energy and resources, often relying on paid staff or dedicated leadership. Lisa Vogel’s leadership at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival is a notable example; beloved for her feminist vision, she ultimately made the difficult decision to close the festival in 2015. This highlights the ephemeral nature of festivals: some cease operations, some evolve, while others are newly born.
Today, queer circuit parties like Queerchella (NYC) bring elements of queer music festivals into the mainstream. Events like Coachella, while not explicitly queer, reflect the influence of their predecessors through inclusivity, diverse artist lineups, and a focus on self-expression through fashion and community building. Like its queer ancestors, Coachella has become a space for flamboyantly fierce fashion, artistic self-expression, and the building of communities based on a shared love of music.
Through these changing forms, queer festivals remain vital. They are sites of both joyful celebration and urgent protest, fueled by the enduring power of music, identity, and the freedom to fully express oneself.
As you experience the energy of Coachella, remember the revolutionary spirit pulsing through the lineage of queer festivals – a spirit that reshapes the modern festival landscape and ensures spaces for vibrant community and continued activism.
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz is a Black lesbian archivist and librarian living in NYC. You can find her online at shawntasmithcruz.com.
