Dancing Toward Freedom
It was Memorial Day weekend 2011, and Awad Bilal was twerking in front of a thousand people.
Bilal was a touring dancer for New Orleans bounce queen Big Freedia at the time, and they’d rolled into a festival in Connecticut — only to find what Bilal recalls as an audience of “weird young white boys” who reacted harshly to Freedia’s fabulous spectacle. “They threw bottles at us,” he says. So Freedia and her band cut their set short and headed to a local diner, where the twerking didn’t stop.
“Here we are at this diner, living our best lives,” Bilal recalls. “There’s such a strength in being with your crew.”
Today, Bilal, 34, has a crew of his own: Too Free, the dance-music trio he sings in with bandmates Carson Cox, 34, and Don Godwin, 49. The three come from strikingly different backgrounds — Cox sings in post-punk band Merchandise, and Godwin is a longtime recording engineer — which helps them elevate classic house sounds in exhilarating new ways. Their debut, Love in
High Demand, is a bass-heavy odyssey that ranges from relentless club energy to disco nostalgia and atmospheric R&B.
Too Free’s members all live in or near Washington, D.C., though Bilal is the only one who grew up there; at hometown shows, they’ve made a point of sharing bills with local black artists. “It’s very intentional,” Bilal says, “making sure we’re not playing with all-white-dude indie bands.”
For Bilal, Too Free is all about the escape found on a great dance floor. “I go to raves with my partner a lot,” he says. “There is something about that music that gives back to you — that gives you power.”