Out Artists on the Rise
Team Gina’s expressive brand of rap combines their shared experience as children of the ’80s, and their love of all things pop.
The Seattle-based duo of Gina Genius, 27, and Gina Bling, 26, audaciously sample Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” simultaneously referencing My Little Pony, and themes from the queer rights movement.
“We’re synthesizing all the elements of pop culture that we grew up with and mashing them up to create something new,” Genius. “We’re also trying to bring a perspective that’s kind of utopian—we want to represent the perfect queer paradise that doesn’t exist yet, that maybe exists at our shows.” Components? “Well, there’d be really great outfits,” muses Genius, giggling. “And really great dance moves.”
While Gina Bling is a Seattle-born former “musical theatre junkie,” Genius, who hails from D.C. via Brooklyn, is a former folk singer. The beat-heavy duo, who met in 2006 at a Scream Club show, sport matching attire (think booty shorts, wristbands) when they break it down every first Friday at Seattle’s Wild Rose bar. Their debut CD, gina gina revolution, was released this year by Crunks Not Dead and Don’t Stop Believin’ Records.
The two giggly femmes, who just finished touring with MondoHomo Dirty South, share one other love: butch girls. Hence these memorable lyrics from their Sir Mix-sampled track “Butch/Femme”: “I like butch girls and I cannot lie/You other femmes can’t deny/When a butch walks in all the femmes wanna fuss/’Cause it’s like one of them and thirty of us.”
For more on Team Gina, visit myspace.com/teamgina. –Melody Wells
Hip-hoppers to country crooners, this year’s up-and-comers are here, queer and ready to entertain
Swan Island
You haven’t heard of Swan Island yet, but you will. Their name belongs to a Portland industrial park that’s home to unclaimed FedEx packages. The title of the group’s latest CD, The Centre Will Hold (Holocene Records), is an inverted line from a W.B. Yeats poem. Their dance-metal sound combines Riot Grrrl and classic rock influences with hip-hop beats.
Founded in 2004, Swan Island has toured with such queercore staples as Bitch, Lesbians on Ecstasy, DJs Johanna Fateman and JD Samson and The Gossip. Often compared to Sleater-Kinney for both their name and regional origin, their sound more closely resembles Led Zeppelin.
Swan Island’s apocalyptic, end-of-U.S.-empire lyrics are the work of singer Brisa Gonzalez, her perspective shaped by university studies in indigenous rights activism. She and drummer Vera Domini, friends since sixth grade, watched local bands like Team Dresch rise. Brought together by Portland’s overlapping dyke and music scenes, Domini and guitarist Aubree Bernier-Clark (the star of Sleater-Kinney’s “Jumpers” video) started the band, adding friends over time. Bernier-Clark, of Louisville, Ky., brought rural Oregon native Torrence Stratton (who quit the band to work for Intel). Texas-born bassist Bob E. Kendrick recruited famed guitarist and producer Radio Sloan. “Radio and I have been tight since 1996,” says Kendrick. “She’s really pushing us to the next level.”
The unabashedly queer quintet’s star is likely only to rise, and they’ve got the chops to hold their own in the mainstream. Says Domini, “I don’t think people will care that we’re a bunch of butch dykes if we just bring it.”
Visit myspace.com/swanisland for more info. –MW
