The Phreak N’ Queer Music and Arts Festival returns for another weekend of musicians and visual artists showcasing their talents at venues throughout Philadelphia. The fourth-annual event brings together a wide range of performers with the idea that visibility is necessary to create social change.
The festival is the perfect fit for drag performer, spoken-word artist and rapper Icon Ebony Fierce, who has performed at the festival in previous years.
“Phreak N’ Queer represents true performance art in the queer form and showcasing queer artists, performers and drag queens in all forms,” Ebony Fierce said. “We have a yoga event. We have a drag brunch. We have different bands from all over. It’s a nice variety of things going on throughout the weekend. It’s not specifically for drag or burlesque performers. It’s for all forms of expression. It’s different drag than the mainstream drag performances.”
Fellow hip-hop and spoken-word artist Moor Mother Goddess, also known as Camae Defstar, also sang the praises of the festival as an opportunity for like-minded performers to come together.
“I’m really all about community and one of the organizers who is a friend of mine reached out to me,” she said about joining the festival. “If they need me to perform, then I am there. I’m really into supporting community organizers. I like collective line-ups, anything that makes things comfortable. It’s great to perform with people you organize with and play music with in other projects. There are really important bands as far as the trans community out here in Philadelphia so I’ll do things like that.”
Defstar’s prolific output of hip-hop will grace the stage at Phreak N’ Queer and attendees might get a preview of the EP she plans to release later this summer.
“I wanted to just showcase that I can rap,” Defstar said about her upcoming EP. “Sometimes the hip-hop I do is too weird and experimental to see that I can actually do the classical form of hip-hop and keep things simple. So this is me showcasing that I can do that even though it’s an industrial hip-hop album.”
This year’s Phreak N’ Queer Festival will also see the debut performance of “Brave,” a new musical collaboration between Andrew Marsh and Mark McCloughan, who both perform in two vastly different local groups.
“This is the first project we’ve done together,” McCloughan said. “Andrew plays with a group of classical musicians [Murmuration Improv]; they do improvised chamber music. This project is more electronic. We use synthesizers and samples. As for me, I play in a band, Totally Super-Pregnant, and we do electronic-pop music. It’s a new experience for me working in a collaborative-songwriting structure.”
Like the other performers involved in the festival, McCloughan said he and Marsh were attracted to the intent and the supportive environment.
“I like the mission statement and it feels like a very positively charged environment,” he said. “It’s not competitive. It’s about supporting the artists involved in the community and coming together and sharing that.”
Phreak N’ Queer Music and Arts Festival runs through Aug. 3 at various locations in Philadelphia. For more information and a detailed list of performers and events, visit phreaknqueerfestival.wordpress.com.