Leather and liberation

Queer and trans music showcase comes to Tulsa

The Not Enough! Queer & Trans Music and Art Festival has been providing a space for experimental LGBTQIA+ musical acts since 2010. The community-oriented festival launched in Portland, but has since traveled to Detroit, New Orleans, Winnipeg and other cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

“It started as a desire for different queer, trans and gender non-conforming people to get together and build community around creativity and create a space for people to meet and collaborate,” said Edgar Fabián Frías, a Tulsa Artist Fellow and one the event’s original organizers.

Tulsa is the next in line to host the festival thanks to Frías and their partner, Thaddeus Pedisich. The two are hosting the Not Enough! Showcase on June 12 at Cameron Studios to give locals a taste of the festival before bringing the full event to town in 2020.

“We’re excited to bring it to Tulsa,” Frías said. “Thaddeus and I had been going around to different punk shows and music events here and seeing that there are tons of queer and trans folks who are definitely wanting more of that type of space.”  

Omaha “leather daddy dance freaks” Plack Blague will headline the showcase, bringing their sludgy brand of industrial noise to Tulsa for the second time this year. “It makes us feel proud that cities like Tulsa are creating queer events and festivals like this to help educate and encourage people of all ages to be proud of themselves and know they aren’t alone in today’s political environment that isn’t always that accepting,” founding member Raws Schlesinger said.

Not Enough’s mission is to create a space for experimentation and collaboration within the LGBTQIA+ community, which is not always given that chance.

“Just seeing the magic that can happen when people are given that platform—especially queer, transgender and non-conforming folks—because a lot of us aren’t given that platform. It gives people hope and that feeling like, ‘People do care about my creativity,’” Frías said.

“We enjoy knowing that Plack Blague may empower people to be themselves or even discover new things about themselves,” Schlesinger said. To this end, attendees can expect “a visual and aural experience that grabs the audience in total control. With flashing lights, throbbing beats and the stench of leather that fills the room full of sweat soaked homoeroticism.”

In addition to locals Astrophoria and the L.A.-based Bustié, Frías and Pedisich will also perform as GayCay, their “frenzied mutant synth punk” project that spreads the gospel of queer liberation.

“This is a way to really celebrate the beauty, the magic, the power, the strength and the sacredness of queer and trans people,” Frías said.

Not Enough! LGBTQIA+ Music and Art Festival Showcase
Cameron Studios, 303 N. Main St.
June 12, 9 p.m., free