On a rehearsal night in 1981, a group of singers from Washington, D.C., got together to sing a song that may sound easy now, but it was anything but easy back then. They stood together and sang openly and proudly as gay men.
Some of their names may appear in the concert program. Some people couldn’t. Being publicly associated with gay groups in the capital carries real risks. At a time when being known as queer could mean losing your job, family, home, and future, they stuck together anyway.
Five days after the founding of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC (GMCW) on June 28, 1981, the first public reports of what would become the AIDS crisis appeared in the press. What started as a chorus quickly became something much bigger. It has become a community, a refuge, a record of survival, and a place where queer people can claim their voices be heard when the world chooses fear, silence, and abandonment.
Performers from the Washington DC Gay Men’s Choir sing and dance on stage.GMCW
Forty-five years later, a connected story is told in a different rehearsal room. The young singers of GMCW’s GenOUT Youth Chorus stand in front of thousands of people with adult members of GMCW behind them, literally and symbolically showing them that it’s possible to be a queer adult just by their presence. That joy can last, that community can last, and it’s not all about adversarial political moments.
In conversations with GMCW Chorus member and History Chair Chuck Willett, GenOUT alumnus and GMCW Chorus member Anjali Murthy, and Nashville Major Miners Artistic Director Matthew Pyles, they reinforced the idea that LGBTQIA+ choruses provide a space for queer people of different generations to find each other, learn from each other, and help imagine the future.
After the 2024 election, more than 50 adult GMCW choir members participated in GenOUT Youth Choir rehearsals. We didn’t rehearse for the first hour. they listened. Young singers spoke of the fear, anxiety and helplessness of being affected by political decisions that left them too young to vote. Adult singers shared how previous generations endured hostile regimes, public health crises, discrimination, loss, and fear by refusing to face these forces alone, rather than pretending they were harmless.
That’s what intergenerational queer connections bring. There is no guarantee that everything will be easy. It provides evidence that there is a surviving precedent.
For many LGBTQIA+ youth, especially transgender and nonbinary youth, that evidence can be life-changing. The broader national conversation often turns their lives into topics of debate, campaign slogans, or policy goals. But in the Queer Chorus, young people can meet happy, visible, flawed, resilient, creative, and present adults who have lived through change and are still coming into their own.
Members of GMCW’s GenOUT Youth Chorus pose together.GMCW
In recent years, GMCW has become home not only to gay men, but also to trans singers, non-binary singers, women, and straight supporters. Its evolution does not erase the identity of the chorus founders. It extends the founding promise.
That promise has also taken on new forms. In preparation for Trans Visibility Day, GMCW singers collaborated to create Swann Street Voices, a salon-style performance named in honor of William Dorsey Swann, a former slave from Washington, widely known as one of the first known drag queens in American history. The program featured trans and nonbinary performers, trans conductors, poetry, music, and visual art. The trans community is not monolithic. They contain many voices, many stories, and many stages of growth.
This effort is not limited to Washington, DC. LGBTQIA+ youth choirs are on the rise because the need is growing. In Tennessee, where LGBTQIA+ people have been targeted by state politics, Nashville Major Minors is creating a space for young people to sing, build friendships, be supported by gay and lesbian adults, and explore their identities without having to constantly defend themselves. Adult volunteers help musically and emotionally, while also healing parts of themselves by providing support that may not have been available to them when they were younger.
Anjali’s story shows that continuity. After singing with GenOUT for four years, she stayed in her hometown to attend college and joined GMCW as an adult member. As a youth singer, he helped create a mentorship program that connected GenOUT members with GMCW singers. As an alumnus, he returned to speak and sing at Youth Invasion. This is living proof that youth programming doesn’t end when singers get older. It continues through leadership, service, remembrance, and restoration.
For 45 years, GMCW It showed what can happen when queer people build institutions strong enough to hold their joys and sorrows at the same time. As attacks on LGBTQIA+ youth, especially transgender and non-binary youth, intensify across the country, we need to fund and protect them where they are not reduced to politics.
Members of the Washington DC Gay Men’s Choir perform at a GMCW concert.GMCW
For more information about the Washington DC Gay Men’s Choir and the GenOUT Youth Choir, please visit: GMCW.org.
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