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Hayden Stern - Trans Trad Music Festival
6 Plays5 days ago
Michelle Matlock talks with accomplished musician and community builder, Hayden Stern about the Trans Trad Music Festival and the importance of trans and gender nonconforming artists being visibly represented in traditional music spaces.
Transcript
Introduction to Trans Heartbeat and Hayden Stern
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Trans Heartbeat. I'm Michelle Matlock, president of Traction Trans Community Action. Traction is excited to introduce this new program series, Trans Heartbeat, where we're creating a space to celebrate and affirm trans existence, empower responses to the rising tide of transphobic rhetoric in our country, and showcase the power of trans artistic expression.
00:00:25
Speaker
I am honored to introduce a guest who is a brilliant musician and also a visionary community builder, Hayden Stern. Hayden is an accomplished violinist and the founder of Trans Trad, a groundbreaking new festival in Olympia, Washington, that celebrates and elevates trans and gender nonconforming performers in the world of traditional folk music.
Music as Resistance and the Birth of Trans Trad
00:00:51
Speaker
At a time when trans communities are facing escalating attacks, Hayden is using music as both a form of resistance and a beacon of joy. Today, we're going to hear about Hayden's journey as an artist, the inspiration behind trans trad, and the courage it takes to create a space like this in the current climate.
00:01:11
Speaker
This is Trans Heartbeat.
00:01:20
Speaker
Hayden, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to Trans Heartbeat. Thanks, Michelle. It's great to be here. Will you state your name, your pronouns, and where you're from? I am Hayden Stern. I use he and they pronouns, and i currently live in Seattle, but I grew up in Northern California.
00:01:39
Speaker
Can you share a bit about your own musical background? What drew you to traditional folk music and how has your experience as a trans person shaped the way you connect with and interpret this musical tradition?
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I kind of ended up drawn to traditional folk music a little bit by coincidence. I... Started playing violin when i was seven years old, classical violin. I'd begged my mom to let me play for a few years, and I think she finally decided it would be less annoying to have a beginner violinist in the house than to to hear me asking her again.
Hayden's Journey into Folk Music
00:02:15
Speaker
And, you know, after about a year of playing classical violin, it became clear that some parts of it didn't work very well for me, even though I loved the instrument. There's a lot of just standing and playing alone in front of a teacher.
00:02:29
Speaker
And I was a pretty shy kid. And my mom heard about ah day camp for kids in the Santa Cruz Mountains run by a nonprofit called Community Music School of Santa Cruz.
00:02:41
Speaker
It was a Celtic music kids day camp for all different instruments. And she sent me there and something in my life just kind of came into focus in this bizarre way. It felt like I did not have a choice, but like it just turned out that the organizing principle of my life from that moment on was Scottish fiddle.
00:03:02
Speaker
And it was sort of strange. People are like, why that? What? And I'm like, I'm not in charge. Like this just, this just happened to me. but And it's been my obsession ever since.
Evolution of Traditional Music and Trans Identity
00:03:18
Speaker
I think there's something about it where it's very communal and you know I think at its best, it cares about tradition and lineage, but it cares about how the those things change and evolve continuously in an ongoing way.
00:03:36
Speaker
And I think as a trans person, the One of the things that's really interesting to me about this music is that, yes, some aspects of this music are very old, but it's also very new. It's in the present day.
00:03:50
Speaker
How it's changing right now is an important part of the tradition. And I think similarly, you hear conversations about transness, about like either this is very new and like out of sync with tradition or whatever it is, which is not true. Trans people have existed for a very long time, but maybe that hasn't looked how it looks now. And who trans people are now and what we do now is part of history. It is part of something important.
00:04:16
Speaker
And so I sort of like these sort of parallel ideas of Tradition isn't some sort of like conservative ideal of what used to happen and adhering to that. It's this like thing that we evolve and like co-create in communities of practice together.
00:04:33
Speaker
So trans trad is such a unique and inspiring festival. Can talk us, can you walk us through the moment you first imagined it? What was the spark that made you say this needs to exist?
00:04:46
Speaker
And what do you hope audiences and performers take away from it?
The Impact and Goals of Trans Trad
00:04:51
Speaker
So Trans Trad came to be right after the election. Myself and my co-organizer, the amazing musician and songwriter Alex Sterbaum, were sitting in my living room feeling pretty depressed.
00:05:07
Speaker
and pretty despairing in that moment. And we were talking about it and i said to them, i was like, what can we possibly do to improve anything from here? We're just folk musicians, you know? We didn't train into something super useful in this moment. And then we looked at each other for a second longer We're like, well, we're folk musicians and we're also folk musicians who organize things.
00:05:42
Speaker
We are not just sort of passive participants in this tradition. You know, Alex has a lot of experience with event organizing in sort of folk music world and I have a lot of experience with it from past careers and past sort of walks of life that I've had.
00:06:01
Speaker
And we looked at each other and thought, well, should we do a music festival? It seems kind of silly to do a music festival, but that has to be better than not doing anything.
00:06:12
Speaker
And so that was sort of this original spark of like, if we all just do whatever we can, even if it feels like it's not enough or it feels frivolous, then we have a bunch of somethings that are being done in response to this really dark political moment.
00:06:29
Speaker
So we thought about how much both regional and national talent right now in the trad music world is trans and non-binary. We have like a very, very, very queer scene.
00:06:44
Speaker
And the way we sort of thought about it and what we want audiences and performers to take away from it is that our entire community, not just the queer parts of our community, but all of it are better and richer and more skilled ah for having this trans talent.
00:07:03
Speaker
And that as this close knit community, it's our duty to protect and uplift and give opportunity to those in our community who are more at risk.
Representation and Challenges in Folk Music
00:07:24
Speaker
So folk music has deep roots in history and tradition, as we mentioned, but it also has been a space that has sometimes excluded marginalized voices. Why do you think it's important for trans and gender nonconforming artists to be visibly represented in traditional music spaces?
00:07:39
Speaker
And how does trans trad challenge and reshape the narrative of who gets to be a part of this tradition? Now, you kind of just answered that, but if you could... I can definitely talk more about this. ah Yeah, for sure. For sure.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think folk music has been very exclusive. It still is very exclusive of marginalized voices. You know, even our local, much more queer friendly scene, it's still a very white scene.
00:08:11
Speaker
um I think there are a lot of sort of progiveness. problems of what gets considered tradition, what is like actually considered a kind of music that gets to sort of count in traditional folk and who the people are who are sort of worthy figureheads of that.
00:08:30
Speaker
I don't think trans trad solves all of those problems, but I do think It does gesture towards this idea that one of the problems of our current social and political moment is a really narrow view of what counts as tradition and who counts as tradition bearers.
00:08:49
Speaker
And I think it does sort of put the problem in front of people who might otherwise want to ignore that. I think that there's something to be said for building a space that centers trans people performers and trans voices and and trans ways of thinking and interpreting performance and music making.
00:09:11
Speaker
But that is not an exclusive space otherwise, right? Anyone's welcome as long as they can be cool. And I think there's a way that music can invite people to come into a space and maybe be a little more normal than they would otherwise be because they want to get to hang with whoever they perceive as cool in that moment. And I'm not, I'm not above leveraging the power of of coolness in that way. You know, I think that can be really useful.
00:09:41
Speaker
And yeah, I think transness in itself is an act of saying like nothing is immutable people can change people can change in really dramatic ways in order to embody their best selves and to live their best lives and an individual can change the fact of their body it's a small thing to change the fact of who a tradition includes or you know what what it means to sing a certain song or
00:10:11
Speaker
how we we treat each other in this community. So I think that there's this nice reminder of the sort of fluidity and like openness of human experience when we're all given the the freedom to have it.
Community Building and Networking at the Festival
00:10:30
Speaker
So at its heart, music is about connection. How do you think trans trad will help build community among trans and gender nonconforming artists? Yeah, I think trans trad has this great opportunity to help those of us who are trans and gender nonconforming musicians find each other and network and get each other gigs. I think, you know, there are some people in our community who are very open openly trans and others who maybe aren't and getting us in all in the same place to make music together and talk to each other. um
00:11:05
Speaker
That feels really special. And that there are people who will be attending the festival who aren't trans, but they are bookers. They are dance weekend organizers. They are people who are in charge of making gigs happen. So that kind of cross-pollination feels really, really useful.
00:11:23
Speaker
Me and Alex are going to run a workshop for trans artists on booking and getting gigs and sort of trying to decode some of the hidden curriculum that happens in the music industry. There are so many things where you just have to know what's supposed to happen to be seen as a competent professional. And i felt excluded for a long time because of that until I started learning how to decode it and met the right people and met people where I could ask really silly questions about like, how do you book a gig? You know, how do you record an album? How do you all of these things that feel like they happen to other people by magic are the result of a lot of deliberate steps anyone as an artist can take to build both talent and administrative skills. So we're really looking forward to chatting about that and giving people a sort of checklist that they can go home with to then, you know, connect with
00:12:20
Speaker
and work towards you know becoming the kind of acts we can then book next year at the festival um or that we can recommend to other folks.
Celebrating Growth and Honoring Pioneers
00:12:28
Speaker
And kind of on that note, I think one of the most exciting and surprising sort of connection points has been how many local and regional trans music acts reached out to us about booking.
00:12:42
Speaker
So many that we had to say no to a lot of really amazing folks just because of schedule constraints, but it feels really exciting to have this pool of people to connect with, to recommend for things, to maybe hire next year.
00:12:56
Speaker
It feels really inspiring to see how much great trans music is happening in the Pacific Northwest right now. I think that that's a really beautiful thing. That's amazing.
00:13:07
Speaker
So there in a second, there's going to be an opportunity for you to share the website and any other social media stuff. But before we get to that, I just want to ask you, is there anything that you wanted to share about your journey and this, the beginnings of this festival that I didn't ask you about or anything that you wanted to mention or get out there?
00:13:29
Speaker
I guess one thing I want to say is that, so I found my way into doing traditional music professionally in large part to the because of the generosity and openness of spirit of musicians and organizers like Alex, who saw someone who maybe wouldn't have seen themselves on stage and thought, let's invite you in let's welcome you, let me help you get the skills that you need to thrive.
00:13:58
Speaker
And it's felt like an honor to then get to do the same thing for sort of the next sort of cohort of up and coming musicians. And I think that's a lot of the spirit that trans trad is in is we owe so much to the people who saw us and really encouraged us and let us know that we were actually welcome um in this scene and that we would be treated well. um We owe so much to the people who fought for things like gender neutral role terms in contradancing. This shift towards a more explicitly queer friendly culture in traditional music and dance.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I think I would be amiss if I talked about trans trad without sort of honoring that, that ah we are not doing this in a vacuum. We're preceded by a lot of other folks doing really great, smaller work.
00:14:53
Speaker
Amazing. So where can everybody find you? Websites, social media, all the
Where to Learn More About Trans Trad
00:15:01
Speaker
things. Yeah. So our website is transtradfest.org.
00:15:06
Speaker
And we're also findable on Facebook and Instagram at transtradfest. There's a mailing list on our website. Hayden, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your music, your incredible vision with us today.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This has been great.
00:15:27
Speaker
Hayden, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your music, and your incredible vision with us today. Trans Trad Festival, it's a living, breathing testament to the resilience, creativity, and joy of trans and gender non-conforming communities. And that's revolutionary.
00:15:45
Speaker
To our viewers, I hope you've been inspired by Hayden's courage and creativity. Let this be a reminder that even in the face of hostility, we can still build, still create, and still celebrate who we are. Keep listening, keep creating, and keep shining your light. This is Trans Heartbeat, and I'm Michelle Matlock.
00:16:04
Speaker
Until next time.