To kick off National Coming Out Day, the LGBT Resource Center has decided to bring the Athens Boys Choir to Ohio University.
To kick off National Coming Out Day, the Ohio University LGBT Center will host Athens Boys Choir for an evening of spoken word poetry and self described “homo-hop” music.
The name Athens Boys Choir is a somewhat deceiving title because the group only consists of one person, Harvey Katz, a Jewish transsexual artist from Athens, Georgia. When the group was created it was a two person operation, thus the name, but it has been a solo act since 2005.
“It’s a lot of fun because people think it's an actual boys choir but it’s actually just one person,” Delfin Bautista, the director of the LGBT Center, said. “He is a young upcoming artist who I hope will resonate with folks, and I hope that students are able to connect with him on that level.”
Saturday marks the 26th anniversary of National Coming Out Day and Katz will speak at the rally held in Front Room from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“Being a solo act can be super hard, but I'm a Pisces, born in the week of the lone wolf with a fierce, potentially harmful sense of independence,” Katz said. “I've made it work for me. There's something very "we vs. the world" about it, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't kind of into it."
The themes of sexuality and gender are definitely part of Katz’s show and writing. He said he wants to be super relatable to everyone, whether they’re queer, straight or transgender, he wants everyone to be able to find relevance in his work.
“People should expect to be entertained … to feel vulnerable and uplifted and laugh and come out wanting to create art or community or change or all of the above,” Katz said. “It's largely a spoken word poetry show so it's pretty darn intimate.”
The Athens Boys Choir will take place Thursday at 7 p.m. in Walter Hall for free and open to all.
“(Katz) touches on things that we don’t always feel comfortable talking about and presents it in an artistic and funny way,” Bautista said. “Hopefully this will be the beginning of many conversations to come.”
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