Activism in the Arts: I’ve Got U Under My Skin: AIDS & Clas­si­cal Music is an exhi­bi­tion com­prised of print scores, audio record­ings, and an accom­pa­ny­ing QR code lis­ten­ing list curat­ed by Kevin Madill, Music Librar­i­an, the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia (UBC). Works exhib­it­ed were select­ed from the music col­lec­tion of UBC’s Library or bor­rowed from anony­mous lenders. The exhi­bi­tion runs from Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022, to Jan­u­ary 15, 2023, in the foy­er of the UBC Music Art and Archi­tec­ture Library of the Irv­ing K. Bar­ber Learn­ing Centre.

I grew up in small towns across rur­al Cana­da. I was liv­ing in a small town in South­ern Ontario when I came across the first guy who got it. He was a Black kid. Nobody liked him. He was a lon­er. He was even estranged from his par­ents when he found out. Regard­less, they agreed to take him in. They put him in a back room, cut a hole in the door, and fed him water and food through it. He died in that room, unable to get out of bed to feed him­self, or go to the bath­room. He prob­a­bly died in his feces of star­va­tion before the worst kicked in. And that was just the beginning.

I’ve loved clas­si­cal music since hear­ing Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flow­ers on Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion radio at the ten­der age of 4. But where was that music dur­ing the years of pain, loss, and fear. Research­ing for this exhi­bi­tion, I found blogs, con­certs, and record­ings mark­ing the moment. But no exhi­bi­tions to draw atten­tion to the numer­ous clas­si­cal music scores ded­i­cat­ed to remem­ber­ing. It’s been near­ly forty years. This can’t real­ly be the first exhi­bi­tion to point to clas­si­cal music and ask what it had to say about it all? Really?

What lies below is an oppor­tu­ni­ty. An oppor­tu­ni­ty for some­one much younger to push off the sum­ma­riza­tion of ideas and sam­ples I list. All for the pur­pose of build­ing a bet­ter remem­ber­ing. Some­thing stronger. Some­thing last­ing. Some­thing that refus­es to give up and creep away when giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to forget.

Exhibition

One thing is cer­tain with age: the accu­mu­la­tion of per­son­al his­to­ry. Some of it you may want to for­get. Some of it you can’t help but for­get. And some of it you should nev­er for­get. For those of us old enough to have lived a part of our adult lives through the 1980s and 90s, the AIDS cri­sis falls into the lat­ter category.

Projects deter­mined not to let fade the his­to­ry of the begin­ning of the AIDS pan­dem­ic include the book Let the Record Show: A Polit­i­cal His­to­ry of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (Schul­man, 2021); the archive HIV In My Day (Uni­ver­si­ty of Vic­to­ria, 2022) com­prised of oral his­to­ry inter­views of British Columbian long-term HIV sur­vivors and their care­givers; and the archive AIDS Activist His­to­ry Project (Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty, n.d.) that pro­vides open access to mate­ri­als gath­ered from HIV/AIDS social move­ment orga­niz­ers active across Cana­da in the 1980s and 1990s.

Join­ing such projects is I’ve Got U Under My Skin: AIDS & Clas­si­cal Music, an exhi­bi­tion of 26 scores and record­ings care­ful­ly select­ed from an aca­d­e­m­ic library’s music col­lec­tion and serv­ing to make evi­dent the com­plex­i­ties that char­ac­ter­ized the clas­si­cal music scene’s response to the begin­ning of the AIDS pan­dem­ic. Var­i­ous themes emerge and inter­sect through sound, score, and pack­ag­ing: health edu­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty build­ing, sense mak­ing, con­cretiza­tion of past events, and expres­sion of loss.

Tak­ing cen­tre stage in health edu­ca­tion is the Chrysalis Records 1990 release Red Hot + Blue, a vinyl LP dou­ble album offer­ing up con­tem­po­rary pop musi­cians per­form­ing cov­er ver­sions of Cole Porter songs. Pro­ceeds from sales went to ben­e­fit AIDS research. The print­ed inner sleeves serve as a vehi­cle for health edu­ca­tion, packed with infor­ma­tion under head­ings such as “what aids is + isn’t” and “what to do about it.” In her adap­ta­tion of I’ve Got U Under My Skin (1990), Neneh Cher­ry com­bines pop, rap, and clas­si­cal gen­res to exhort lis­ten­ers to: “Wake up to real­i­ty.” “Share your love. Don’t share the nee­dle.” Cherry’s mes­sage, when pro­mot­ed as a sin­gle, reached a wide audi­ence hit­ting num­ber 25 on the UK charts (Offi­cial Charts Com­pa­ny, n.d.). Adja­cent to Red Hot + Blue but com­ing from halfway round the world are the win­ning scores from the UNICEF Malawi fund­ed 1991 and 1994 choral com­pe­ti­tions. UNICEF Malawi is a non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion based in Lilong­we known for using dance and music to advo­cate for the rights of chil­dren and women (UNICEF Malawi, n.d.). Matthews Ezra Chadza’s Women, Avoid AIDS (1991) and Yobbe Lungu’s Care for the AIDS Patient (1994) bring the social prac­tice of gath­er­ing to sing into the domain of prac­ti­cal health edu­ca­tion tools.

The gal­va­niz­ing role of com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing the ear­ly stages of the AIDS pan­dem­ic is doc­u­ment­ed in the exhi­bi­tion through rep­re­sen­ta­tion of com­mu­ni­ties that are less famil­iar. Arthur Russell’s Instru­men­tals (2017) and Coil’s Theme from the Gay Man’s Guide to Safer Sex (1992) are select­ed from the under­ground and exper­i­men­tal music scenes of New York City and Lon­don respec­tive­ly. The 1992 Gay Man’s Guide to Safer Sex was an instruc­tion­al doc­u­men­tary fund­ed through Pride Video and the Ter­rence Hig­gins Trust, a British char­i­ty sup­port­ing ser­vices in sex­u­al health. The video was updat­ed in 1997 and is still in dis­tri­b­u­tion. One exhi­bi­tion vit­rine is giv­en over to the works of women com­posers: Pauline Oliv­eros, Mered­ith Monk, Jani­ka Van­dervelde, Jan­ice Giteck, Annea Lock­wood, and Lau­ra Kamin­sky. Vandervelde’s Pos­i­tive Women: Susan (1997) for nar­ra­tor, female cho­rus, and vio­lin bol­sters the efforts of AIDS sur­vivors to speak for them­selves by set­ting to music Susan Gladstone’s first-per­son nar­ra­tive orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the 1992 alter­na­tive press paper­back Pos­i­tive Women: Voic­es of Women Liv­ing with AIDS (Rudd, Taylor).

The ear­ly years of AIDS for some com­posers were just as con­found­ing as they were ter­ri­fy­ing. Theirs was a strug­gle with how to make sense of the moment. Neely Bruce in The plague (1991) for vocal quar­tet and elec­tron­ics and Mered­ith Monk in Plague: for mixed voic­es (2014) turn to the past in a search for under­stand­ing. Par­al­lels are drawn between the Bubon­ic Plague of the 14th cen­tu­ry and its impact on Medieval Europe and AIDS and its impact on con­tem­po­rary soci­ety. Monk builds a bridge to the past through musi­cal style and con­tent that allows her to con­clude that “suf­fer­ing, igno­rance, and vio­lence are con­stants through­out his­to­ry as are joy, com­pas­sion, and love” (Jowitt, 1997, p. 156). The 2017 per­for­mance of Monk’s Plague by the Young People’s Cho­rus of New York City is a tes­ta­ment to the abil­i­ty of youth from one gen­er­a­tion to achieve an empa­thet­ic and sen­si­tive read­ing of a defin­ing moment that shaped another.

Clas­si­cal musi­cians var­ied in how they chose to cap­ture that tur­bu­lent moment and con­cretize it in their music. Bob Ostertag cap­tures his­tor­i­cal imme­di­a­cy in All the Rage (1993), an exper­i­men­tal album with the Kro­nos Quar­tet, by includ­ing record­ed sound from the 1991 AB101 Veto Riot, San Fran­cis­co, an action incit­ed by Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor Pete Wilson’s pro­scrip­tion of pro-gay leg­is­la­tion. Robert Mag­gio in Win­ter Toc­ca­ta: I Can’t Believe You Want To Die (1996) for solo cel­lo riffs off of Lar­ry Kramer’s 1989 Reports From the Holo­caust: The Mak­ing Of An AIDS Activist. Mag­gio turns the cel­lo line into Kramer’s voice “imi­tat­ing the dri­ving rhythms of this writ­ing, cre­at­ing melodies out of favourite sen­tences” (Mag­gio, n.d.). Fol­low­ing a request to com­pos­er Lyle Chan for a phys­i­cal copy of his score String Quar­tet: An AIDS Activist’s Mem­oir (L. Chan, per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence, May 31, 2022), Chan gen­er­ous­ly includ­ed notes on how he embed­ded into the com­po­si­tion his expe­ri­ences as an AIDS activist in NYC dur­ing the peak of the AIDS cri­sis. An excerpt from the score shows Chan’s trans­la­tion of ACT UP’s sig­na­ture chant “ACT UP Fight Back Fight AIDS!” into music. And there can be no bet­ter exam­ple of close­ness to the moment than Robert Savage’s AIDS Ward Scher­zo (1992) writ­ten by the com­pos­er while on his hos­pi­tal bed.

Cul­tur­al expres­sions of loss abound across artis­tic move­ments, gen­res, and for­mats. The ear­ly years of AIDS are no excep­tion. For Richard by Annea Lock­wood was the composer’s con­tri­bu­tion to the AIDS Quilt Song­book (1993) itself ded­i­cat­ed to bari­tone William Park­er who ini­ti­at­ed and brought the song­book project to life. String Quar­tet No. 4 “Buczak” (2000) was com­mis­sioned from com­pos­er Philip Glass by Geof­frey Hen­dricks in remem­brance of fel­low artist, Bri­an Buczak. Jan­ice Giteck’s Om Shan­ti: To Peo­ple Liv­ing with AIDS (2019) was com­mis­sioned by the Insti­tute for Move­ment Ther­a­py in Seat­tle after the loss of the Institute’s Direc­tor, Peter Guiler.

Remem­ber­ing is the antithe­sis of for­get­ting. Phys­i­cal objects such as the scores and record­ings pre­sent­ed are pow­er­ful moti­va­tors for the act of remem­ber­ing. But what of the objects and their own his­to­ries? Not all objects of inter­est sur­vive to ful­fill their role in moti­vat­ing remem­ber­ing. Julius East­man, whose music explores queer and Black rad­i­cal pol­i­tics, is rep­re­sent­ed in the exhi­bi­tion with the LP Stay On It (2022) and the score Pre­lude to the Holy Pres­ence of Joan d’Arc: Solo vocal impro­vi­sa­tion (2021). East­man died alone and des­ti­tute in 1990, liv­ing briefly in Tomp­kins Square Park. His record­ings and scores were con­fis­cat­ed when he failed to pay rent and much of his work is now lost. The New York Pub­lic Library took action dur­ing the ear­ly years of the AIDS pan­dem­ic to save what it could from the stu­dios of NYC artists and com­posers lost to AIDS. Mate­ri­als gath­ered now lie in an exten­sive insti­tu­tion­al archival fonds (New York Pub­lic Library, Archives & Man­u­scripts, n.d.). Not all of the cre­ators’ estates, how­ev­er, have agreed to allow the Library to make the work pub­lic. With­out doc­u­men­ta­tion, works are lost. With­out per­mis­sion, works such as those of Robert Sav­age can’t be acces­sioned into any library and must remain unpub­lished, hid­den, and forgotten.

Pho­to cred­its © Kevin Madill, Robert Ablenas

About the Author / Kevin Madill is Music Librar­i­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia (UBC). Pre­vi­ous posi­tions include admin­is­tra­tor, man­ag­er, and liaison/collections librar­i­an in aca­d­e­m­ic and spe­cial libraries in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da includ­ing the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, New York, and Pratt Insti­tute, Brook­lyn. He has served as Adjunct Fac­ul­ty with the UBC Mas­ter of Library and Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies pro­gram where he taught col­lec­tion devel­op­ment. He holds a Mas­ter of Library and Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies from UBC, a BMus (Hon­ors, The­o­ry and Com­po­si­tion) from West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, and an MFA and BFA from UBC. Kevin’s cre­ative work explores the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of moder­ni­ty, sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, and por­trai­ture. His art­works are held by sev­er­al muse­ums in the Pacif­ic North West and avail­able for online view­ing through the solo exhi­bi­tion Van­cou­ver Mod­ern: on the lim­its of por­trai­ture.