It’s rather fitting to have watched Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music at the tail end of pride month as LGBTQ+ rights are yet again being politicised and stripped while its community are demonised. Queer people of various sorts have existed for more than 24 decades, obviously. But in his massive theatrical undertaking, playwright and performance artist Taylor Mac integrates his own queer sense of self into American history.
Through song, spoken word, and flamboyant theatricality, he tells the sort of the United States of America, using music to celebrate all kinds of humanity and asking us as an audience to see ourselves and our struggles across time...
Icons of queer non-fiction cinema, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, have captured this show into a neat and tidy 106 minutes with verve and a clear line of sight to Mac’s sensibilities. For the directors, it is another essential queer classic to rank alongside The Times of Harvey Milk, The Celluloid Closet and Common Threads: Stories of the Quilt (the former was not co-directed with Friedman). For myself it's probably the best concert documentary I have seen since Dave Chappelle’s Block Party in 2006 (and certainly since Beyoncé’s Homecoming).
Mac’s show, when performed live, was typically divided into four six-hour portions. Relatively bitesized. But in October of 2016, he performed the entire 24-hour set at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in front of 650 people (they could go off and sleep and there were food stalls set up). The film, by virtue of not being an endurance test all its own, has been necessarily cut down. Those of us who have not seen any of its performances live will no doubt wish it were longer. How could we not? But to distil it down into anything beyond its radical form is a struggle. Epstein and Friedman with their editor Brian Johnson (editor of Buena Vista Social Club among others) have cut and culled and produced something nevertheless effervescent (you also wouldn’t know that they have sneakily inserted bits from other performances). Shot by Buddy Squires with much more intent and purpose than many concert documentaries these days, the film accentuates both the incredible intimacy and the mammoth scope of the show in equal measure.
It is a joy to watch. And vibrantly queer, too. Cut throughout are interviews with Mac (plus his collaborators) as he explains some of the intent behind the show (plenty of mystery remains) and particularly what it means allegorically in relation to the AIDS epidemic. As song lyrics tell one story, Mac sometimes tells another. And as unexpected song choices give way to deeper, potent interpretations, the so called great American songbook opens up in ways that surprise and endear, but also shook me at least to the core. There is also plenty of discussion about the intricate costumes of Machine Dazzle, who uses Mac as a canvas (with his own version of final cut) to tell the changing of American values and ideals through all manner of bric-a-brac, fabrics and appliques.
Queer art has existed as long as queer people have. Whether people knew it or not at the time is beyond the point. Whatever people may say, there isn’t a person alive who hasn’t sung along to or danced with a piece of music that didn’t have some sort of queer input. Shows like Taylor Mac’s are bold and brave and wonderfully entertaining in concept along, but they take on so much more reverence once you peer into them even just ever-so-slightly. With this documentary concert film, Epstein and Friedman have captured lightning in a bottle (or a bit of it at least) so that we can take it with us forever. And for many queer people of Mac’s era, it is those memories of people that sustained and propelled them along. As we move through 2023 as America’s supreme court says it is okay to discriminate against LGBTIQ+ people yet again, hopefully it can propel us once again.
Release: Streaming on HBO.
Award chances: It's best hope lies with the Emmys, although it has missed the cut-off for this years ceremony.