On Jan. 31, crowds swayed, couples danced and one member of the audience jumped in with the band for an impromptu solo harmonica performance—and that was just the opening reception.
The Chicago History Museum kicked off the 10th anniversary year of "Out at CHM"—its program series dedicated to exploring Chicago through the lens of gender, sexuality and nonconformity—with an event dedicated to the blues. "Fifty Shades of the Blues: Song, Soul and Sexuality" featured a lively performance by blues artist Katherine Davis during an opening cocktail reception in the Exelon Wing on the second floor of the museum.
Sharon Bridgforth and Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones followed the reception with a presentation in the auditorium that included songs, readings, interaction with the audience and video clips. While giving a brief overview of blues music to the audience, the presentation focused mostly on what Jones described as "the liminal truth of the blues."
"We mean the term 'liminal' to mean an unfixed location or identity," she said. "It is the most profound place of possibility because it is not rooted in a single reality."
Jones said that blues occurs in liminal spaces such as juke joints, honky-tonk dives and boarding houses.
"And who do we find but the social transgressives? The folk who cannot easily find home place in socially constructed, socially sanctioned location with socially constricting rules," she said.
"Like queerness, liminality is the space of possibility in which people are not bound to the social structures, but are given freedom to conceive, to imagine, to make," Jones added.
Bridgforth ended the presentation a reading of Honey Pot, a story about a man whose woman is stolen by another woman who he ultimately learns to respect.
Bridgforth, a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2009, is the recipient of The Theater Offensive 2012 Out On the Edge Award. Her recent work, delta dandi, will be published in an upcoming Northwestern University Press anthology titled solo/black/woman, with E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Servera editing. Jones is an associate professor of theater and dance and of African and African Diaspora studies at the University of Texas-Austin. She is currently writing a book on the use of jazz aesthetics among theater artists.
The series continues Thursday, March 21, with "From Chicago Out to the World: Advancing International LGBTQ Human Rights" featuring speakers Sid Mohn and Lynette Jackson at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N, Clark St. It will end its 10th year on May 16 with an event in celebration of the Museum's upcoming exhibition Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair with the program Fierce & Fabulous: A New Look at the Ebony Fashion Fair featuring exhibition curator Joy Bivins.
Out at CHM began development in 2002, and is a partnership with the Center on Halsted. For more information visit www.chicagohistory.org/planavisit/upcomingevents/out-at-chm.
