Bogha-Frois: a rainbow for folk, for us, and for all
(Bogha-Frois members Pedro Cameron, Marit Fält, Rachel Sermanni, Grant McFarlane, and Nic Gareiss in conversation at Waterstones, Glasgow)
Yesderday I had the sincere pleasure of joining members of Bogha-Frois in conversation at Waterstones in Glasgow. Taking its name from the Gaelic word for “rainbow,” Bogha-Frois is a collective of traditional and folk musicians who identify as LGBTQIA+ and their allies. I delivered the following remarks at the event. Before I began, I shared that one of the things I love about this project is that it brings queerness and tradition into mutually-expansive conversation with one another. To that end, I encouraged those preset to “hooch” or “hiss” as they felt moved. (1)
In Gaelic folklore a rainbow, a bogha-frois, with both ends in the same county portended an imminent death in that community. Our rainbow, with its arch stretching across this entire country does the same. A death to disavowal.
When I was 21, I came to Scotland for the first time. I had just come out and was looking for “people like me” who shared a love of ballads, puirt à beul, strathspeys, jigs, and reels. At the Ben Nevis pub in Glasgow while white straight cis- boys played too fast or too loud for me to dance I asked a straight white cis- boy taller than me if he knew of any queer people working in these traditional forms. “There’s nay gayers in Scottish music,” he replied.
I knew this couldn’t be true. We are everywhere, not only in high camp commercialized urban art forms of the 20-21st century but also in rural arts, heritage arts, the rougher hewn, and in every era of history, though we may not have been allowed to be visible. I knew this twelve years ago from a hunch, from my gut, and as a dancer, also in my hips, my ankles, and the skin on the soles of my feet. But also because I had made out with a boy in the bathroom of that bar that very night.
“Folk,” from “volk,” embraces all. But, at least in German, “volk” is a noun, and tradition is a bunch of people and folk is what they do. While once used to narrow us into nation states, these folk sounds and shapes now amplify the hopes and dreams of the underheard, the underseen, the underwanted. In this sense our Bogha-Frois is for all and for us….
For all genders, all sexes, not just two
For those whose sexual desires have been cast as outside the acceptable
…and for those who don’t experience sexual desire at all
For all bodies, all sizes, all abilities
For all colors, all ethnic backgrounds, all languages
The stately and the stateless
The indigenous and the newly-arrived
For all socio-economic backgrounds
For the human and those whose identities transcend colonizing taxonomic nomenclature
For those who present their queerness on public panels and those who prefer to perform their queerness silently
For those who are drawn to one gender and those who are drawn to many
For the firm and the fluid
For those who share life and libido with one person and for those who share these with many bodies
For those who have been tied to this place for centuries, and for New-Scots, as well as for those who are passing through.
And as thrilling as it is to make this list, to give callouts, I’m reminded that no list of queer identities - or anti-identities - will ever be complete. Because, to quote a Queer Celt, Oscar Wilde, there are loves with names we dare not speak, or which haven’t yet been given (or shackled by) names at all.
This rainbow is for anyone afraid to sing a certain pronoun, to play an instrument deemed inappropriate for their gender, to dance a particular role or invite someone onto the floor at a ceilidh while a cis- straight white authority shouts, “it can’t be two blokes” or “women need to follow.”
It’s for her.
For they/them.
And lastly but not least, for him.
So here’s a “hooch” to Bogha-Frois. To this rainbow that’s for folk, for us, and for all.
Bogha-Frois: LGBT+ Voices in Folk debuts at Celtic Connections tonight, 3 Feb. at 8 pm! Tickets still available here.
First Footing is a collaboration between dancer and dance researcher Nic Gareiss, the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education, and the School of Scottish Studies with support from Creative Scotland. For engagement opportunities check out the First Footing website.
(1) I was first exposed to the queer tradition of hissing by Taylor Mac’s gender-stretching theatre work. Thanks to Mats Melin and Jennifer Schoonover who first made me aware of the “hooch” as a vernacular Scottish utterance of joy and encouragement in their forthcoming work on percussive dance in Scotland.
Honour to sit and hear this speech spoke. x