11 minute read
Flesh Festival
Fields of freedom
With 100 per cent of its bill comprised of underrepresented artists, the FLESH FESTIVAL is pushing back against decades of male-dominated festival line-ups – and hosting a next-level party in the process
Words SHARAN DHALIWAL Photography ROXY LEE
Party people: letting loose at the first-ever Flesh Festival
Samantha Togni, organiser (left)
Above: DJ, producer, record label owner and Flesh Festival creator Samantha Togni; opposite: thousands of festivalgoers flocked to Hertfordshire for the inaugural event
Beautiful people catwalk up and down the small platform at Radlett train station on a Saturday morning, waiting to be transported to a venue more worthy of their outfits. This is the weekend of the first-ever Flesh Festival, a two-day queer camping event with a focus on house and techno music, and there’s an excited buzz in the air. As more trains arrive from London and beyond, the group grows, all strutting their stuff before elegantly floating towards the waiting shuttle bus. Names, pronouns and smiles are exchanged, and suddenly everyone’s oversharing. Someone is running late, so the bus is held up to accommodate them – no one is left behind. And as the venue gets closer, so do the passengers, forming bonds that will be strengthened even further during late-night tent visits to swap playlists and stories.
This new musical gathering, the first of its kind to be held in the UK, is the brainchild of Samantha Togni, the internationally renowned DJ, producer, and director of electronic music label Boudica. Born in Italy and now based in London, Togni creates spaces that give a platform to unrepresented people from all genders, cultures and backgrounds in the music industry. It’s a mission that has taken them across the world from Japan to America, and now brings them – along with a few thousand festival attendees – to a field in the south of England. Or a couple of fields, to be precise, down a country road on the edge of the town centre here in Hertfordshire.
The festival site comprises two large stages, with a handful of activity tents and stalls lining the grounds. The security team – handpicked by the organisers – are all queer, and most are female. They’re respectful with their bag and body searches, making sure to ask politely before doing anything. This is the inaugural event, and while the organisers may feel a slight underlying panic as people start to flood into the venue, festivalgoers’ spirits are high. Everyone entering the grounds knows this event is for them: queer people of colour, trans people, non-binary people – all those who traditional festivals often fail to accommodate.
Conversations about gender inequality at traditional festivals have been
increasing over the past few years, with people finally demanding more female headliners on bills, instead of the same old male-fronted bands. A 2017 report by the BBC showed that 80 per cent of UK festival headliners were male. This inequality inspired an initiative named Keychange, set up to promote change by supporting underrepresented artists in the music industry.
Shirley Manson, frontwoman of the iconic ’90s rock band Garbage, and an ambassador for the organisation, said she was “utterly outraged” by the BBC’s findings. But when the study was updated earlier this year, it showed just minimal change: 74.5 per cent of festival headliners are still male solo acts or allmale bands. Just 13 per cent are female, while 12 per cent are a mix of male and female musicians. Only one headline act identified as non-binary. It would seem that the pandemic allowed for a relapse; any intended changes appear to have been scrapped.
It’s this culture that Flesh Festival was created to counteract. “Straight after the pandemic, we saw the same festivals running the same line-ups with the same big names,” says Togni. “And, as always, the demographic was the same, too. We worked so hard on visibility and diversity, and this was the outcome? That was a big force behind [creating] Flesh.”
Here, 100 per cent of the line-up is comprised of underrepresented artists, with 90 per cent of that made up of women, trans and non-binary artists from a wide spectrum of ethnicities. “As festival programmers and promoters, we have a responsibility to our audience, and we wanted everyone to feel represented,” Togni says of the event’s intersectional manifesto. “I think visibility is paramount in inspiring the new generation, so that was number one for us. We’re disrupting the norm and creating a space for the community.”
Apopular DJ on London’s queer nightlife scene, and a member of the BIPOC collective Pxssy Palace, allyXpress takes to the decks on the main stage at 1pm, her long plaits falling forward as she moves with the music. This is the first festival main stage she’s ever opened. “Everyone is so good at what they do, but they’re not booked because they don’t have a huge name or following,” she says later of the line-up. “It’s necessary to give people a platform, to give them more coverage.”
Relaxing post-show in the VIP area (a picnic bench in a cordoned-off section of the field), allyXpress – who has moved from New Zealand to London via Australia – talks passionately about her craft, despite the many hurdles artists like her still face. “In the creative industries, it’s hard to make money,” she says. “And being a woman, trans, or anything that isn’t a white straight male, the work is triple hard. Things just aren’t given to us. I’m a big brown girl with a huge personality, so anything I do is amplified. I don’t get given the benefit of the doubt. I’m guilty until proven innocent.”
It’s these conversations with emerging artists that are missing in the larger festival industry, as are non-binary, trans and gender-fluid acts, women of colour, and queer performers. Billie Eilish drew the biggest crowd at the 2019 Reading Festival – a fact still used to argue for change, as are the examples of Florence + the Machine, Jessie Ware and Dua Lipa. But, say advocates for wider change, such as Togni, what many of those attempting to improve representation in music seem to miss is the fact it still only accommodates straight whiteness. “In terms of being a festival programmer, you see people rely too much on known names,” says Togni. “If we don’t nurture the headliners of tomorrow, how will they become headliners? We need to create a more sustainable ecosystem to survive.”
Flesh Festival is not only about representing the people on stage; the weekend also provides a safe space for the crowd that’s not readily available on the London nightlife scene. Here, queer bodies that are usually policed become visible. Any initial shyness is helped by seeing others embrace themselves: thongs make a return, nipples are rarely covered, scars are displayed proudly. “I’m just being myself, no hiding. There’s nothing stopping me, and I’m not scared of it,” says one trans man, covering his scars with sun cream. All done, with a harness now attached to his chest, he grins proudly. Two people begin a passionate kiss. They get lost in each other, ignoring everyone else and knowing they’ll encounter no harm. Someone walks by in chaps and they squeal in excitement when a friend slaps their behind.
“Something I hear is the feeling of being safe,” says author and activist Sabah Choudrey, who has travelled up from London for the festival. “You can see it: relaxed queers in the sun, trans people with their scars proudly visible, all kinds of genders expressed uniquely, cultural appropriation at a minimum, POC behind decks and stalls… That’s what made me, as a trans person of colour, feel safe and represented.”
The festival shows its young age, with last-minute line-up changes, dropouts, abrupt set endings and closed tents – but most festivalgoers seem to accept this as a learning process, and it doesn’t seem to dampen spirits. As the first day comes to a close, those too cold to sleep alone are welcomed into neighbours’ tents for the
Rain dance: the Flesh Festival crowd remained undeterred by the presence of dark clouds and the threat of showers on the second day
allyXpress, DJ
night, sharing body heat in return for gossip and stories.
Sunday begins with dark clouds and the threat of rain. People are lying on the ground, still recovering from the night before. Others are contemplating cold showers and whether alcohol intake is acceptable before noon – many decide it is. “This weather is homophobic,” a group of people joke on their way to the bar.
London DJ, writer and sex-positive stripper Aisha Mirza lays the foundations for the day’s musical offering with a set interlaced with Bollywood mash-ups. AR Rahman’s classic Chaiyya Chaiyya – from the iconic film Dil Se – plays across the field, and brown bodies sway robotically to the scratchy voice of [Bollywood singer] Sapna Awasthi as if they’ve been programmed to initiate dance mode. “The festival has an incredible line-up full of Black and brown baddies,” Mirza says after their set. “Unfortunately, I think the industry’s landscape is too treacherous for queer and trans artists to work safely within it in general. Queer spaces are flawed, too, but they’re
certainly preferable.” Mirza has spent a lot of their time in queer and trans spaces within the music scene, having started their own event, Misery – a sober QTIBPOC party centring healing and joy. “I create these kinds of spaces for a living, and I learned quickly that I just couldn’t be arsed with speaking to white men,” Mirza says. “But I would say men continue to dominate. Well, that’s what I hear.”
The figures support this observation. In 2020, a study by industry organisation UK Music found that the proportion of women working in music had risen from 45.3 per cent in 2016 to 49.6 per cent but, despite that rise, there was a steady decline in female representation in senior roles. Compared with other participants in the survey, minority ethnic and women in the industry have a larger representation in lower-income brackets, with 33.6 per cent of minority ethnics earning less than £15,000 and 59.4 per cent being female.
These issues are amplified by the fact that the industry relies heavily on Black artists to sell records and produce music, yet Black people still hold less than a fifth of senior executive roles. When looking at the music industry as a whole, ethnic diversity rose from 17.8 per cent in 2018 to 22.3 per cent in 2020.
Positive spaces created by events such as Flesh Festival allow people to circumvent this reality. One of the biggest acts of the weekend is Afro Pasifika DJ and self-proclaimed “Indigenous Fem Queen” Shakaiah Perez, aka Lady Shaka. Born in Aotearoa – the Māori name for New Zealand – and famous in London for being both a party-starting DJ and the director of Pulotu Underworld, a global collective celebrating pacific music and culture, Lady Shaka is one of the most anticipated acts of the weekend, and as the crowd congregates for her set, the sun finally reveals itself.
She moves from behind the decks to party with the crowd in between Azealia Banks’ 212 and J-Lo’s Waiting for Tonight. As her energy takes over, transporting the crowd to Lady Shaka’s world, it’s welcomed with twerking and affirming screams. As her set ends, smiles adorn every face. Chakras are aligned, drinks replenished, lipstick smudged, layers removed. Everyone feels centred again. S everal dance-packed hours later, Flesh Festival’s fields begin to empty as happy but slightly frayed festivalgoers board shuttle buses back to Radlett train station. Despite a few teething problems, the weekend has been a success. And beyond this, founder Togni hopes others will take inspiration from Flesh Festival and continue the push forward. The organisers themselves are already reaching out to the community to find new and different ways to make lasting progress. For example, this year they ran a competition for queer, trans and intersex people of colour, with two scholarships at the DJ and music production school London Sound Academy as prizes, plus a slot playing at Flesh Festival.
“We’re a very small organisation,” says Togni, “and if we can make this change, imagine what larger organisations could do. Don’t be afraid. If it doesn’t exist, it’s a good thing. Take new ideas and knock on doors. If you think [creating a new space] is valuable, there’s someone else out there who thinks it’s valuable, too.” fleshfestival.com
